Flick Critic

I had just recently filmed another wedding this past friday. Jackson Kitchell accompanied me in filming the ceremony as well as the reception. We used a total of four cameras to make sure that we had enough coverage to work with in post. The only problem we had with the wedding was that the priest didn't want us to pass the middle of the room, so we had to shoot back really far from the actual wedding ceremony which was a difficult thing to do. It's a good thing jackson had a big enough lens to get close ups of the ceremony. Overall, it was really well done and went smoothly, so I can't wait to get the edit finished.

This past weekend, I had the pleasure to film a promo video for the cover band, Burnt Sienna. I originally met the lead singer of the band while working with Zach Gaus on a lot of previous work. After meeting Tony, he was impressed with the quality of some of my work, so he decided to bring me out to his local performance at Building 24 out in Wyomissing.

At the club, the band was absolutely amazing. I was a VIP for the night, so I was allowed to do anything and everything I could possibly do in order to film the band. I was running around on stage, up in the balcony, in the pit in the front row shooting up at them. The location was extremely dark, but I was really impressed and happy as to how well the 50mm f1.8 lens was while shooting footage for the promo. Overall, I had a great time, and would like to film there again in the near future.

This past weekend was the weekend of the annual 4500 Digital Video Competition. Last years competition was a mad house with all of the drama that was caused between the two BCTC teams. This year though, was the complete opposite. The team consisted of just two people, Jackson Kitchell and I. We decided to have Aaron Meehan included on the group as well, so just a total of three guys with a complete stress-free weekend. No drama or arguments of any kind were created amongst the members of the group, which was amazing and I was surprised that it actually went that way.

This experience, whether it will give us The Best Picture title or not, really allowed Jackson and I to get to know each other personally and be able to become close friends. This will benefit us in the long run because we will be able to work together more efficiently when we go to states this week as well as any future assignments that we decide to tackle together as a team. I am glad of the outcome of the competition this year and I hope that next year will be another year of relaxation without stress.

Today, I had shot all of the studio footage for the very first episode of Backlot. Originally, the shoot was supposed to be all done live in the studio, but with all of the other things falling behind and getting in the way, we decided to edit it in post rather than switching it live. Overall the shoot went really well. Zach Gaus, the host of Backlot, did an excellent job for his first time, especially when not given the script ahead of time to look over.

There are some technical difficulties while trying to shoot the footage today. The first was the the teleprompter was faulty and would constantly shut off and not work properly, causing the shoot to last longer than expected. The other main situation was audio. No matter how hard I tried, Zach's levels in the audio meter seemed to be distorted. The reasoning was because of a frequency issue with the wireless lav, so we decided to use the other microphone that was wired rather than wireless. This gave us absolutely the best audio that we could get. I really enjoyed the shoot today. It wasn't too stressful and at the same time, was really easy to fix the minor mistakes. Tune in next week for the release of the first episode.

Tonight was the biggest, most stressful shoot of all I Give Up shoots that we have had so far. The difference between the scenes that we have already shot and the ones that we had to cover today was the fact that it required a lot more people to do their jobs and get everything organized the way it should be compared to before. We had to deal with extras as well in this shoot whereas the previous shoots didn't need any extras.

The most stressful part of the entire day was that our actress who portrayed the part of Sophie in I Give Up was absolutely terrible, and didn't know any of her lines. This set us back an entire hour until we just decided to let her go and find another Sophie. Luckily, Alessandro brought along his friend, Cassandra, which played the roll beautifully. In the end, everything turned out pretty well, but the stress began to boil through all of the cast and crew today, which is something that we are trying to keep to a bare minimum.

I had just finally finished my first music video I've ever attempted to make. The video was for a guy named William Barry, who is a local singer/musician that wants to get his name out there for people to see his work. I told him that I would be willing to help him get out there my making several music videos for him, so that he can upload them to youtube and obtain an audience. I charged him little to nothing to create the videos; one being that he is not made of money right now, and two is because I just wanted a couple more videos to add to my reel.

Well, this past weekend was one of the busiest yet for the production of I Give Up. Saturday was scheduled to specifically finish the rest of the apartment scenes that we didn't originally cover on our first shoot. Since there were a LOT of scenes taking place inside the apartment, this shoot was imagined to be a long one. It turned out that the shoot from beginning to end on Saturday was a total of 13 hours, which is an incredible amount of time to shoot all on one location. The footage turned out to look really well. Unlike our first shoot, we decided to just light the scenes as best we could, and we will alter the look that we are looking for in post. This will give us the best possible picture in the final product.

Sunday was another major day for I Give Up. Sunday was scheduled for three major scenes taking place in three different locations. The first location was at a place called Wine Down. This is a little cheese and wine restaurant that provides that elegant look that we were looking for our scene. The footage from this shoot turned out really well as well. As for the next scene, we shot at Hair on the Avenue, which is the hair salon that Zach currently works at. I loved the way a lot of the footage turned out in this place, and it was so well lit inside the salon that we didn't need a lighting kit for this location, which helped us out a lot for time. The last location was scheduled to be at the Wyomissing fitness and training gym, but the actress we orginally had scheduled had canceled the night before the shoot. What our whole team was trying to do from then on was to find another actress or any girl that looks the part to play the role of Sophie in the film. We were searching all day, but had to end up canceling at the gym because we had no luck in finding someone. In all, the shoot dates this weekend were a success and we will work out the kinks that got in our way in the near future.