HopkinsCinemAddicts

Cocaine to London: What Comes Next... The End

This post will be my final post in the fun self-exploration and retelling of my filmmaking process that has been this blog. In the six posts I have made before this one, I have explored the sometimes inspiring and sometimes depressingly stressful moments that can arise in the pre-production process and while the process has not yet finished, it is nearing the end, the transition into the production phase of Cocaine to London.

See, just ten minutes before beginning to write this post, I sent in my request to the JHU-MICA film cage, reserving the equipment that will be used to film my short film in just over a month’s time. In two days I will have my last camera test with my camera team, refining and perfecting the last of the complex, handheld shots that we will have in the film. All of our actors have been officially casted. Our shooting schedule is due in a week. Everything that we began over two months ago is finally reaching its end. To celebrate this moment, I would like to explore what comes next: the last few elements of pre-production I have to do and what I should begin to expect from the production and post-production of the film. 

As for pre-production, much of my work now is in directing my actors and making sure they are fully prepared for the shoot that is to come. The main aspect of this element is organizing and leading table reads for my actors where we can go over the script and the required nuances of each character, together. Now because all of my actors are in different locations, some as far as New York, and because my script is quite long, these meetings will have to be over Zoom and spread across multiple meetings. I am very excited for this process, though, as it is the first indication of what the final product, the final performance will be. I will be able to hear my work finally be read aloud by the people who will actually be the characters, the first time that the script will truly be brought to life.

From there, all that is left is working with my camera team and production team to confirm the remaining nuances of the shoot from making sure that we all fully understand the shots to officially preparing the food pick-up situations and more… the tying of the final loose ends.

The shoot dates for Cocaine to London.

And then… it is filming time. My shoot will be a 7 day production with an added 8th prep day at the start. Based on the rough draft shooting schedules we have now and the total shooting length we have for the film, it will be a long shoot. It will also be a hard shoot at times. Whether it be the film’s inclusion of musical elements, or the difficulty of some of the very emotional acting performances, there are a lot of aspects of the shoot that can go wrong. I can’t say I’m not nervous, but by doing this blog series, I have learned all I can really do is make sure that I am fully aware of everything I need to do and make sure I give the entire crew the amount of information they need to feel just as comfortable. I trust everyone on the cast and crew and know that as long as we are all on the same page, we can overcome the difficult elements of this shoot.

Once the shoot is done, it is on to editing. I will work with our local production service building Digital Cave for color grading and color correction. We will hire a sound mixer and editor to create the best digital scoundscape of the film possible (a very important part of the film). And then, in early April to late May, Cocaine to London will premiere at Studio North’s Premiere Festival at the Parkway Theatre. There, this year-plus long journey will finally reach its climax. The work I have spent so long on will finally see the big screen.

Before I submitted this blog post, I looked back through the other six I had written. Seeing it all laid out, the entire process, it really put into perspective just how quick it all felt. It really does feel like just yesterday that I sat down, struggling with writer’s block, and crafted the first draft of what would ultimately become Cocaine to London. It was not always a great time, but right now, seeing this pre-production phase being almost completed, I can’t help but feel happy and proud. I know it is just a short film, but it is my first short film and the first time, maybe ever, that I have put this much effort into something. I don’t know how it will turn out, but all I can do is keep going and put as much effort into it as I can.

For now, I wait.

Cocaine to London COMING SOON!

Until some next time…

                        Devin

Cocaine to London: A Week of Breakthroughs

During my last post, I hated filmmaking. I am happy to report that things are looking up! I would like to take this post to update you all on our progress, primarily with the results of our Seed&Spark campaign as well as all of the meetings and decisions made over the last few weeks (I had a very busy Thanksgiving break). While this whole process is still extremely stressful, time-consuming and bothersome, these steps forward are reassuring. I can feel my second wind coming and I am very excited.

To begin, you’ll remember that we began our fundraising campaign through Seed&Spark and after a few days of filming a promo video and many more days of filling out all of the necessary text boxes on the site itself, we launched it to the public. Well, I am happy to announce that after a month of that site being up, we obliterated our goal of $3500! I am very grateful for support from my circle and even some complete strangers and am excited to put their contributions to good use. The extra money that we were able to raise also allowed us to tweak our budget sheet, giving us much more leeway for elements like craft services (food), production design and post-production elements. Again, I am very thankful to everyone who contributed and promise we will use your generosity well!

Our fundraising announcement photo posted on our Instagram! @cocainetolondon

With this big step completed, we were able to get the ball rolling on many other aspects of pre-production. For one, with this tweaked budget sheet being more or less set in stone, I was able to start messaging and meeting with the many departments and get their aspects of the pre-production phase started. Most notably, I am talking about the PD and costuming departments, who I was able to have meetings with, giving them their total budget so they can start shopping for the many necessary props and outfits which bring my script’s world to life.

On top of meeting with these departments, I also began meeting with my lighting department and my assistant director. This is because, at around the same time that the Seed&Spark came to a close, me and my camera team were able to finish our first draft of the shot list for the film! This is perhaps an even bigger moment than the Seed&Spark completing because while money is cool and all, it cannot compare to the creative milestones. After five weeks and about 12 hours of reading through the script and visualizing shots, we had created an outline for the film. The whole short film had been made, compiled together in a mess of Zoom sketches and incomprehensible hand-written notes… but it was there… in 69 meticulously planned shots.

This moment allowed us to begin creating everything we needed for shooting from the official Google Sheets based shot list to our shooting schedule (which is currently in the process of being built). It also made the entire shoot that much more imaginable. There are a lot of small things that go ignored in the grandiose discussion of set life, from where the cast and crew will relax between shots, to where to set up the video village (a location where the crew can watch the shot as it is being filmed) to how best we can have the crew multi task to finish the day quicker. With this shot list done, I was able to more easily visualize all of these gears in the giant mechanism that is making a film, fleshing the whole process out in my mind and making me much more confident in the feasibility and enjoyability that is possible on this set.

A sneak peek of our beautiful shot list!

Finally, we had another major breakthrough in the last week, this time in the casting department. You’ll remember, I was quite stressed out last post regarding our casting as we were having a very hard time casting our lead. I’m happy to report that with a lot of perseverance and a lot of cold DM’s on Instagram, we were able to secure many applicants and officially cast our protagonist! I am so happy with the person we picked, both for Viv (the lead) and for the recording engineer who we were able to recast successfully. Officially finding these two people leaves us with only one more character left to cast and a big weight off of our shoulders. Just like with the budget and the shot list, all of these breakthroughs help make the entire shoot so much more imaginable. I can see it, just over the horizon.

This does not mean we are in the clear. There are still a lot more things we have to do, but the ball is rolling on all of them and we are still within the schedule that we had created for ourselves so long ago at our first producer meeting. All I can do is keep it moving and look forward to the future, a topic I would like to explore in my next, and perhaps, final post, but we’ll deal with that when we get there.

 

Until next time…

                        Devin

Cocaine to London: Casting

In my previous blog post, I discussed me and my producers hitting a major milestone in the pre-production phase: launching our Seed&Spark page and beginning to fundraise for our project. It was a moment that took a lot of planning, hard work and energy out of me and while I wish I could say that it was met with a moment of peace and bliss… I would be gravely lying.

See, the reality of the situation is that finishing the Seed&Spark process gave me a weird feeling; an odd, unexplainable mix of adrenaline-fueled excitement and dread. Dread for how much more had to be done and how time had already ticked so far away. At this point we were already almost three months into the pre-production process and I was very proud of the progress, we still had a lot more to go. At this point, the excitement of first starting the process was starting to wane and all of our work ethics were going along with it. Also, classes were starting to ramp up in intensity and I knew this would affect everyone’s availability. So immediately the next day, fueled by both excitement and fear, I began on the other major aspect of the pre-production process: the casting.

In our initial meeting, my producers and I were able to create the Backstage page for the film and even before I finished the Seed&Spark, I finished up the necessary requirements for this page as it seemed easier and I wanted to make sure that we got started on casting as early as possible. The requirements for a Backstage account, are similar to See&Spark in some ways as they require elements like a logline, a list of genres, shoot dates, etc. However, with it being a casting site, most of the preliminary information is relative to the characters of the film. I had to explain each character, giving the applicants information about their physical features such as gender and race (if applicable), their required talents such as singing, playing guitar, yelling (all of which are very relevant to my script) and also just information on the character’s headspace so that the actor can give the best performance they can.

The homepage to our Backstage listing!

It is this ability to give a performance that is why we chose to use Backstage for this process. The other major aspect of creating our Backstage listing is the inclusion of Sides for each character. Sides are a small section of the script that the site shows to all applicants which allows them to record a virtual audition video to see both their acting skills as a whole, but also their synergy with the role itself. Luckily, I found that my script gave each character a lot of really big, important moments that require strong acting that I could send for each role. While the script would change throughout this process, rendering some of the Sides outdated, they still helped show the actor’s ability to portray the character and I was able to cast multiple people based on these Sides.

However, it is not all smooth. We were successfully able to cast two of our characters very easily in the antagonist and his father (the lead singer and drummer of the band respectively) but the other roles turned out to be much trickier. For one, there was a character of a Camera Guy who we successfully casted and then was sadly written out of the script a month later. We had to sadly tell the actor for the camera guy that his role had been cut which was disappointing considering his acting ability, but it did give us practice in giving people bad news, a reality we will have to become accustomed to. At the same time, we casted the role of the recording engineer, however recently learned that the timing would no longer work for her as she would have to travel a long way for the shoot and with the actor’s strike recently lifting, she did not want to miss out on opportunities in her own area. This also turned out to be okay in the end as luckily we had a lot of applicants for this role and are currently in the process of interviewing two more possible actors for the role.

A still from our first Zoom casting interview!

The most worrisome aspect of this casting process, an aspect that has still not been solved, is casting our last two characters: the mother character and her daughter… who is the lead of the film! Part of the worry is my own pickiness, with this lead having a lot of tough scenes that do not work if the performance is not as perfect as it could be, but one of the major issues with this casting was the amount of skills our lead needs to have. From playing the bass to playing the acoustic guitar to singing to being able to scream, we were already casting a shallow net made shallower by the fact that we wanted them to be within the area due to our struggling budget.

Now, usually I end these posts with a shift to how we learned from the experiences we completed and how they gave me excitement for the film, but the reality is… this casting process has really been pissing me off. I will instead end this post by speaking to the world of the Internet and requesting that if anyone is at all interested in filling our remaining roles or knows of people who would be, to message this email: [email protected]. Shameless plug, I know, I know, but we are getting desperate and why not use every platform I have.

Thank you in advance and sorry for the non-optimistic ending. Maybe next week, I’ll be less annoyed by the filmmaking process. Anyways, thanks for reading.

 

Until next time…

                        Devin

Cocaine to London: The Promo Video

One of the most integral parts of ensuring that we were able to keep on track of the timeline we had created (as shown in the previous blog post) was filming our promotional video. This would serve as something like the trailer for the film (although nowhere near as high-budget and cinematic as trailers often are), a way of introducing the project, its goals, our crew and more, while also doing perhaps the single most important task in a film pre-production: raising money. 

See, for the first few months of us officially beginning pre-production on COCAINE TO LONDON, the only thing we cared about was the budget. The amount we were able to raise would determine everything. It would determine if we could cast actors from out of state (as we would have to accommodate their gas/train prices and housing) or whether we would have to cast locally. It would determine how much we could spend on creating the songs for the film, as well as how much we could spend on the instruments and other production design elements and most importantly it would determine if the people on crew would be able to eat a full Potbelly sandwich or would have to again settle for just a half one every meal (we all are okay with these conditions, don’t worry). 

In order to obtain this figure, though, we had to create our Seed&Spark page (a page that is open for contributions for the next 5 days only, so check it out here, sorry for the plug). On this page, we had to define the components of the story from the plot, to the crew behind the project to the reason behind why I want to make this to begin with. The crown jewel of the site though is the first thing you see when you open the link: the promo video. So before, we could move forward anywhere else, we had to create this first.

The homepage of our Seed&Spark website!

It started, like everything else I do, with a script I scribbled together at 3am. This script would not go through many changes, but then would proceed to almost be completely ignored on the day of the shoot as it simply was not at all funny… my bad. In many ways though, this process was our test run of a lot of the ideas and desires we had for the actual shoot (minus the part where my script wasn’t funny).

After the script was made, we began making the shot list and shooting schedule, which would help us gauge how long some of our shots in the real film would take and how feasible they were to begin with. We did many similar techniques and ideas that we would employ in the actual shoot in January such as the long, tracking shot and the two angles we would use for our talking head portions of the film. This gave us practice and knowledge of these shots, how difficult they were, what we would have to prepare for, etc… and boy, did we need that. 

Not only were both shots much harder to light than we anticipated (especially with the much smaller crew we had to employ for the promo video due to filming it over the summer in Baltimore), but we also learned that the teleprompter we had planned on using to make our actor’s jobs easier for the talking head sections worked as a super strong matte box, darkening the image to the point that it was unusable. This forced us to have to create a second day to the originally one day promo video production, but it allowed us to solve this talking head problem, which means we already know what to do when we eventually have to repeat the setup on set. We also sadly had to cut the moving shot that we had filmed for the film (again, it was not funny) but it did allow us to have practiced the movements involved in the moving long take, as well as help us visualize the way we would have to light the space.

One of the two of our talking head angles, as seen in our promo video.

And okay, listen, I’ll be the first to admit that the promo video shoot was not the greatest thing of all time: we went three hours over on the first day, many shots were cut or changed day of, a cigarette was lit indoors (and then properly extinguished), but most of these issues came down to us simply not having enough time to consider them before the shoot. In reality, the shots in which my producers and my camera team (the wonderful Sophia Lin and Isabel Salas) were able to sit down and discuss in depth, went incredibly smoothly. The second day, especially, which we planned way more to ensure we did not go over time as we did the first day, was one of the most efficient and relaxed days of filming I have experienced in a while. 

By the end of the entire process (and another week or so of hating editing so much) we had a completed promo video and to be honest, there is a lot I don’t like about it. Luckily, though, I understand why I don’t like what I don’t like. I understand that these kinds of mistakes happen when I don’t plan as much as I should and don’t coordinate between all of my departments to the level I should be. Recognizing these issues is the first step though and we have already made steps to ensure that this form of under planning does not happen again, which I will go into more in future posts.

While I did realize this negative thing, I also realized just how much great there was in this promo video. From beautiful planned shots to fun dialogue to beautiful unplanned shots, I began to see my vision not only blossom, but expand to share the creative decisions and personalities of the crew surrounding me. 

Some beautiful (but not yet color corrected) shots from the promo video.

Proud of the work, of the people who created it and of myself, I uploaded the promo video, proofread the rest of the Seed&Spark page and launched the site. COCAINE TO LONDON was now open to the public. You can view the promo video (with its color corrected footage) here!

 

Until next time…

                        Devin

Cocaine to London: The First Producer Meeting

On April 22nd, 2023, at 10:15 AM, I was still half-unconscious in bed, scrolling mindlessly through something probably not at all funny, when I received an email from Studio North. At this point, it had been a month since I submitted the application for the Studio North Film Grant. I knew results would come soon, but even then, my heart sank seeing the notification pop up. Over a year of work already put into this script, this moment felt like the first act turning point that the entire process had been building towards. Still to this day, I don’t think I’ve read the whole email. All I saw was the first word: Congratulations!

I took a minute (maybe an hour… okay, maybe a few days) to be excited, before I immediately channeled these emotions into something else: productivity. A fire had been lit underneath me and the struggle I knew was looming on the horizon could only be countered by one thing: planning. So in late April, early May, as classes were winding down, I got to work.

Part of the initial submission process involved me collecting a crew for my film, or at least the beginnings of one. While some of my crew and their roles would shift from April to now, two people would remain consistent and it would be amiss if I didn’t shout them out here: my wonderful producers Cierra Gladden and Kaori Taylor.

See, one thing I forgot to mention is while I did get very motivated from this grant victory, it also means I got very annoying. Not in a mean, awful way but in the ‘this-is-my-child’, ‘I’m so nervous’, passion kind of way. The result was me bothering my two producers pretty much every day and I am super grateful that they have put up with me up to this point and put me in my place when I needed it.

All that being said, a lot of my annoying behavior was, at least at its core, necessary. We were now in the thick of things. We had just started a 1000 piece puzzle and the first step we needed to take was laying out all the pieces on our coffee table and trying to visualize the full picture. Our first producer meeting occurred on May 19th, after many texts were sent between the three of us, (mainly me chaotically listing things we would eventually need to do). During this meeting, we began the process of eventually.

The first photo taken at our first CTL meeting! Featuring Cierra Gladden (front) and Kaori Taylor (back).

Of the things we would need to plan for, there were six major topics. The first, LOCATION, was the simplest of the six. I knew that most of the film would take place in the JHU-MICA Film Centre’s Recording Studio, which was extremely helpful both for access and for moving time. There were two other locations that were outside, but luckily both Kaori and Cierra are from Baltimore, so they were both very confident in their abilities to find locations that matched my vision. It was at this point that a big aspect of being a director came into play: the idea of delegating tasks. With these six things needing to be finished and all three of us being students, I didn’t want to overwork anybody. I also wanted to pick people who seemed the most excited or interested in tackling that specific topic. Kaori had a few ideas for the exterior location of the recording studio and she seemed interested in finding more, so I assigned her to location duty.

The next topic was ACTORS. It was at this point that I was very grateful to have Cierra on the team as she has been through this process, already having won the Studio North FIlm Grant last year. She directed me to Backstage, the site that Studio North grant films have been using to cast actors all for free. We took a minute to make an account and I was assigned to begin filling out the necessary requirements of the site to make our casting public. This involved the details of the shoot itself such as location, timeframe and reimbursements, but also the details of the characters themselves with things like descriptions, age ranges and sides (pieces of the script that actors can read for their audition). I would be the one in charge of this actor process for the most part, but it would start being split between me and Cierra for reasons I will get to in a later post.

The next two categories, BUDGET and SEED&SPARK, go hand in hand and they are the topics we explored the least about in this initial meeting, just because of how expansive they are. Compiling the budget is perhaps the most important topic we had to figure out and for that reason, we mainly just introduced its existence and waited until we had more details on things like production design costs, actor reimbursement prices and whether or not I won any other grants. In a couple of months, Cierra, who I assigned to budget, would make three different budget plans based on the amount of money we eventually make, which was incredibly helpful for giving other departments rough estimates in the future. As for Seed&Spark, it is a money-raising site made specifically for film and it is the site we would use to raise more money. We would spend this session making Seed&Spark accounts and beginning the extensive process of creating our film’s page, such as planning a bit of our promo video, filling out the logline of the film and beginning to make incentives people receive for contributing.

We also touched a bit into the idea of MARKETING, but similar to budget, we mainly just created our Instagram account and said we would discuss this later.

Our current timeline for the month of October!

This leads us into the final topic of discussion: THE TIMELINE. It was this that took the longest, as we now had to take everything we had spent the last hour and a half discussing and turn it into a plan. We would spend another hour color coding all of these different topics in our Google Calendar, defining the day we needed actors by, when we wanted to start doing camera meetings, when we wanted to launch Seed&Spark, etc. The result was our entire film… fully planned out. An 8 month long process, not even counting post-production. After our meeting, I would stare at this Google Calendar for a long time. Here it was… COCAINE TO LONDON. It had begun.

 

Until next time…

                        Devin

Cocaine to London: A Pre-Production Mindset

Nine months after my initial first draft park session, I found myself at 11:55 at night, poorly-postured in the atrium of Gilman Hall. I was fervently typing, filling in the last information I needed to submit to the Studio North Film Grant. Months and months of work all leading to this moment. Stressed and sweaty, I melodramatically raised my finger high above the enter key, looked around to give the overdone cliche its proper pacing… not yet… and then brought my finger down. Before that, though… how did I get here?

A copy of the COCAINE TO LONDON draft submitted to the Studio North Film Grant.

The process to apply was expansive and multi-phased, however all extraneous material revolved around one thing: the script. For the rest of the summer I spent time working on that initial draft. I had already accepted that, in the short time before the application was due, I could not perfect it. So instead of nitpicking the story, I focused on one major aspect of this application process: logistics.

See, the application is judged in terms of two different categories: the effectiveness, creativity and success of the script, but also the feasibility of actually turning it into a film on a small budget. And currently my script was about fifteen pages too long, had about four or five too many characters and involved a literal POLICE CHASE. After a few weeks of lying to myself that this was shootable (“maybe they have some police cars for rent on Travelocity”) I finally accepted that making the script feasible would not be an easy feat. I had to rehash almost everything.

This time though, in order to avoid this same issue, I went into this rewriting process with a new mindset. While it was very cathartic to sit down for eight hours and write a nothing-off-the-table draft, I realized I needed to acknowledge and consider the logistical side of film as I wrote. So, when I sat down to write the new draft, it was not at some park. It was at my desk where I had full access to the internet and could Google any information I needed. It did not take eight hours like the first one, but multiple days as not only was I just writing, but experiencing my first taste of pre-production.

And looking back on it, many of the decisions and realizations I made at this moment have stuck all the way until now. For example, this is the moment where I recognized that I simply had too many locations for how much I wanted to do with this script. I recognized this from doing some research on normal setup times for the camera I wanted to use (an ARRI AMIRA) as well as asking some past grant film winners how long it took them to move locations when they did. In order to accommodate for these high times, I decided I would make the script something of a bottle film with most, if not all, of it taking place in a recording studio. Through some more research, I found that the JHU-MICA Film Centre has a recording studio in its building, which meant my crew would not even have to move location at all since all equipment would be in the Film Centre to begin with. This was the first major breakthrough in terms of logistics and while it did mean that I would have to force my script into the confines of one location, I strangely did not feel at all restrained. In fact, I felt rejuvenated. As someone who has never dealt with the producer side of film, and was very skeptical if they would enjoy it or not, it was very surprising how rewarding this moment felt.

The JHU-MICA Film Centre Recording Studio where COCAINE TO LONDON will take place.

From that moment on, I had a strange desire to work on the producer elements of this pre-production phase and I found myself moving away from the script and onto the Pitch Packet, the other major element of this application. A Pitch Packet is a large document that includes nearly all aspects of your project from a summary of the story and its characters, to the way you plan to shoot it and even a preliminary budget sheet. Surprisingly, these next few weeks were some of the most fun I had during this entire pre-grant process.

I found the production process was much less rigid than I anticipated and actually involved a lot of thinking on the fly and finding clever solutions around things. I found myself researching everything from restaurants that offered the most coupons and how to obtain them to how to properly time a shot and make a shooting schedule to prop and production design research. I truly felt connected to the script in a way I hadn’t before. It felt like the fleshing out of a character. My script was no longer just its story, but a living, breathing organism.

While this did make me more invested in the project, it also made me realize just how much work and stress it would take. This early production phase was not all perfect. As I began researching more and more I realized just how much I would have to juggle from making shots to casting to budget, etc. Worst of all, though, I realized just how much money I would need. The grant would only give $2,000, a figure that because of my plan of an 8 day shoot, would barely cover the cost of on-set food. I would need to do a lot more fundraising, a lot more promotion and even then probably have to make budget cuts. I realized this film would not be a walk in the park and while it worried me for a moment, the emotions then turned to excitement. I realized I was ready and at that moment I decided… this film would be made. I’d make sure of it.

 

So as 11:59 hit, I finished my email, read it over once, thought back to my preparation and this promise I made to myself… and hit the enter button. Then, I actually clicked send with my mouse because I remembered the enter button doesn’t send an email. Whoops.

 

Until next time…

                        Devin

Cocaine to London: The First Draft

Exactly 15 months ago, in the midst of the worst string of writer's block I have ever experienced, I decided to drive to a local park, lean against an oak tree and hope the stereotypically hipster vibe would finally give me inspiration to write a screenplay. Looking back on it now, I did not realize just how much this one drive, this one oak tree, this one script would take over my life. A little over a year later it’s all I think about and even then, the whole process is just beginning. This is the story of how Cocaine to London was born.

I am not good at writing. I know that may come off as self-deprecating, but it isn't. See, when I do write, it is very often something I am proud of, but the key phrase of that sentence is when I write. My writing process often alternates between a week of heavy inspiration and several months of not being able to even write a single action line: a bad ratio. Never, though, was this writer's block as bad as the summer of 2022. In 10 months of trying to write the pilot to a new television idea I had, I did not even open Final Draft once. It was very emotionally taxing and after a while of stressing over it, I decided to just push it aside and let the writer’s block end when it ended (hopefully soon). Then, I learned of the Studio North Film Grant, a monetary award given by Johns Hopkins University's student-led production company to two student filmmakers to produce and premiere their own short film. This opportunity was CTL's spark.

Cierra Gladden (middle) and Christian Reidy (right) after the premiere of their grant winning films.

As I arrived at the oak tree, I set an ultimatum to myself. No longer could I let this writer's block persist, let it hide in the background silently and eat away at my dwindling time. I decided, no matter what, by the end of the day, I would have something that I could work on through the summer and eventually submit to the Studio North grant. So with a charged laptop (73% is close enough) and an angry, writing-withdrawal-ridden heart, I took a seat and opened up a fresh Final Draft document. 

The first hour was a lot of brainstorming. Coming into this writing session, the last things I worked on had been high concept teleplays: ensemble stories of eclectic towns, cowboy sci-fi plots, etc. After some thinking about it, and wanting this script to be more shootable, I decided to follow the age-old piece of writing advice: write what you know. Right away, the answer came to me: music. 

I am no musician myself, but music has always surrounded my life from long car rides with my dad playing Metallica and The Mars Volta through his green iPod Nano to my mom throwing folk tunes and Christmas songs into our old CD player. Now, nothing makes me happier than discovering a new artist, hearing a new sound or even just talking about music with other audiophiles. All that being said, very often people who obsess over music are incredibly insufferable. 

This was CTL’s launching point: a script that includes both my love and very valid critiques of the process and people involved in making music. This developed into a story: a punk band carrying all of the angst, anger issues and pretension associated with the genre and the talented, but disrespected bassist just trying to make a living in the industry. 

Very quickly, I found a rhythm to the script, a framing similar to The Office that allowed me to cut to talking heads of the band members. This gave me the ability to explore each of the character’s internal thoughts as well as added a new layer of comedy I had not experimented with before. This, along with the sheer joy I had writing the different musical sequences finally broke me away from my writer's block. In fact, it propelled me into a flow state I had never experienced before. There were page long sections where I didn't even take a second to pause and think. It was all coming naturally. The dialogue already felt witty and layered. The action lines were messy, but potent. I even found myself inserting even more aspects of myself into the script from my fear of monetary stability as a writer to my stubborn, argumentative personality to my writer’s block itself. No more sci-fi cowboys or silly towns. I was writing a script that, for the first time, felt truly personal… and I couldn’t stop.

At 9:42PM (yes, I checked) I finished my first draft of Cocaine to London. A 30 page musical drama with everything from nepo-babies to fleeing the cops to implied profane acts with an orange, the script was a rollercoaster and as I closed my laptop (4%), I couldn’t not smile. The most elated I’ve maybe ever felt, I got back into my car, turned on some Carly Rae Jepsen and drove home.

My BeReal, the day after, reading the first draft for the first time.

The next day, I reread my masterpiece and realized it was perhaps the messiest thing I had ever written. Everything I loved about it the night before now felt like the worst possible decision I could have made. All that being said, I did not get discouraged. In fact, the exact opposite. I had proven to myself that I was still able to create a story, a fact I had begun to worry was no longer true. No longer did I feel trapped in my own head. Instead, I felt motivated. Tomorrow, I told myself, I will go back to the oak tree and I’ll try again and I’ll do that as many times as I need until I read it and have the same unwavering smile I had when I wrote it. No matter what it takes, CTL will be perfect.

 

I’ll be honest, though… I didn’t expect it to take 27 DRAFTS!

 

Until next time…

                        Devin

Sundown: Reflections (The End)

Before I knew it, the last day of filming had arrived. At times it felt like we were so far away from the finish line, but in just seven days, there we were. On this last day, most of our scenes were going to be shot outside, so we prepped equipment and blocked with actors for a few hours while waiting for the lighting conditions to change. There were just two actors left to wrap on before the shoot was over, so I could spend more time with each of them during our rehearsals, honing the performances I wanted from each of them. Our last shot of the night—and thus, the final shot of our production—was a labor of love from everyone. We spent the last few hours figuring out how to light and shoot the main character riding his bike outside after dark. One tungsten light, a makeshift camera car rig, and a lot of failed runs later, we finally arrived at (a very sleepy) “that’s a wrap!” It was also my AC, Isabel’s, birthday, so we went inside and had surprise cupcakes while everyone packed up to go home for the last time. I was excited to wrap up production and close out this chapter of Sundown. However, the end of production also meant the end of crew bonding, countless inside jokes, shared midnight delirium and getting the chance to create.

 

Aug. 27 - Car rig for a mobile shot

 

As wild, spontaneous, and downright exhausting as this experience was, I’m grateful for all that I was able to gain from the highs and lows of these past six months. By no means was this a perfect project, nor is Sundown a perfect story. Regardless, the experience I gained through all the writing, revising, scheduling, shooting, and reflecting upon Sundown was invaluable. With each mistake came a lesson learned for the future, and with each success came more motivation to keep pushing forward. My final thoughts regarding my experiences are as follows:

Director-Actor Relationships

I have never worked with non-student actors, especially across a longer production time across multiple locations. Sundown included a college professor, my cousin, a novice actor, and three experienced actors. Regardless of experience level, spending ample time connecting with my cast was key to establishing a mutual creative understanding of the project and each other. Working with a skill-diverse cast of six in these circumstances pushed me beyond my comfort zone in ways that I’m extremely grateful for. My actors, complete strangers, were willing to believe in me, and I had to do the same for everything to work.

 

Sneak peek :)

 

Technical Approaches

The choice to film just three months after getting the grant is one that I don’t regret, but my approaches to the process left much to be desired. Throughout the problems that arose—last-minute scheduling changes, casting stress, uncertainty—a common theme was role delegation. I’ve learned to better trust others on my crew with creative responsibilities regarding Sundown. It’s hard to relinquish full control of something that feels so precious, even though it's for the betterment of the project and myself. I partly missed out on the joys of having a talented, knowledgeable crew by not leveraging their expertise in places I should have. One such misgiving is not working with my camera crew to review dailies and having a set process of looking over the footage we shot, leading to increased feelings of anxiety during editing. No production is without its hiccups (or disasters); still, many of my anxieties (and much of my exhaustion) during production could have been mitigated by trusting myself to trust others.

 

Aug. 27 - Mini crew photo!

 

Sundown & Me

Approaching this project, I thought back to my time on Return 0;, another Studio North grant project I had the pleasure of working on as a rising sophomore. Reflecting on my time on that set, I felt so beyond my depth; everyone else seemed so knowledgeable while I was only starting my college film journey. Flash forward to one year later, and I’m exactly where I thought I was so far away from. This accomplishment didn’t negate the very inevitable imposter syndrome that arose multiple times throughout the process, which I recently spent the past ten weeks reflecting upon in my blog posts. If I didn’t constantly question my work, if I didn’t try to always improve upon myself, then I wouldn’t be an artist. Surviving the creative process and pushing through challenges led to me learning these hard truths. I want to continue creating work that feels personal to me, but work that also scares the living daylight out of me to create, just like Sundown. I want to pursue new projects that challenge my skills and urge me to improve and be greater in every way. I want to and will continue creating, succeeding, and failing. I’ve learned that I need to be less afraid of failing and failing wonderfully, failing and knowing that I’ll always try again. In the end, I’m glad I took a huge chance on myself with Sundown, my silly little short film.

Another sneak peek :)

Currently, we’re three months removed from filming and moving into the early stages of post-production. All that’s left is for me to say: thank you. Thank you to my wonderful cast and crew, my chosen family, for sticking with me throughout everything. To my professors and advisors, who gave me invaluable advice during each stage of production. To Studio North for giving me the creative means to embark on this journey in the first place. The next few months promise long hours spent editing and promoting the film. It also promises me moments spent reminiscing about our shoot through notes, names, places, and objects scattered about my digital and physical spaces; reminders of all the memories made. While the sun is beginning to set on this project, I’m eager to give rise to a new creative endeavor, the dawn of a new era. 

Sundown: Evening (Day Five)

After the roughest day in production, we had another break day. As always, I reflected on what happened the previous day and found silver linings. The day wasn’t all bad; the morning scene was successful, which featured Johns Hopkins’ own Dr. Jamie Young as our “psychiatrist” character. Furthermore, I was determined not to let one bad day of shooting ruin my energy for the rest of the shoot. I was especially excited for our final days as we planned to shoot all the scenes that were part of the original shorter script. The scenes that started it all.

The break was primarily used to take photos of my actors for “family photo” production design in the final location of the shoot, the main character’s childhood home. Here, I also got to talk more with my main actors and understand how they truly felt about the project—they were having a good time! Taking a relaxed moment to connect with my actors was vital for me and them to understand each other better, director to actor, and person to person. After the break day and a few conversations with my cast and crew, my attitude toward the remaining portion of the shoot improved. In my reflections, I understood (and continue to understand) that my mistakes and regrets about the film were lessons to learn from going forward.

Our final location was held at my paternal grandmother’s Baltimore apartment. She graciously let us invade her space for nearly twelve hours at a time, four days straight. The first day was focused on shooting the very first scene in the film, the opening conversation between the main character and his mother. Watching everything come together—the production design, the performance—I felt that my original artistic vision was genuinely coming to fruition. Later that night, we wrapped on one of my main actors. Directing him (and others) was a great push outside my comfort zone in working with non-student actors and adapting to various acting experience levels. Most importantly, my experience taught me many lessons in how to do what a good director does best: know what they want and how to get it.

Aug. 24 - “Young Mikey” and his mother

We began our fifth shooting day a bit later to get closer to the time of day we needed. We primarily focused on external shots that day, prompting us to move quickly with the ever-changing light. This day brought an obvious issue to my attention; the period my entire film centers around (sunset, or more aptly, sundown) lasts for a very short time. There was confusion on my part about what the lighting conditions would be at certain times and how long those conditions would last. As a result, we had to postpone filming one scene for over an hour since the reflection of the light outside at the story-accurate time of day was too strong. My Script Supervisor, Devin Andrada, was not happy with me regarding the continuity; but again, these are lessons learned for the future. Despite the issues, this shot was where my crew (specifically my camera and lighting team!) got to show off their skills with the setup and execution. Also, while waiting to shoot this scene, we got the quintessential sundown shot (not really, it was pre-sundown, early evening, but close enough).

Aug. 25 - Crew setting up for the window shot

The most exciting part of the day was starting work with my “Creature” actor for our one-shot scene. Here, the main character’s mother gets caught by the Creature, which we wanted to be able to execute creatively through a one-shot. Going through the prep for this was a challenge: clearing space for movement, blocking, framing, sound, and more. However, with each dry run and each take, the work began to pay off. We did about four or five runs of this scene, each with unique elements that could work well in the final film. This was our last shot of the night, which ended with us squealing over a take that worked, a shared success amongst the entire crew. More than any day before, I felt what I had been working to feel throughout the previous shoot days: a genuine sense of accomplishment that was validated by others’ enthusiasm.

Aug. 26 - Checking the front door, featuring my Sound Mixer, NIls

This sense of accomplishment carried me into the second-to-last day of production. The entire day was dedicated to the scene where the main character first encounters the Creature. The scene that started it all. We were staring down the barrel of an 8-hour day without much time for breaks; if we weren’t shooting, we were rehearsing, setting up for the next shot, or breaking down the previous one. I expected to be more stressed this day than on any of the others. I had anticipated it for so long. However, I felt more level-headed that day than I had felt on all the other days. I loved moving from shot to shot, setup to setup, as seamlessly as we did. The day ended with another one-shot where the main character meets the Creature for the first time. After 8 hours of work, the most significant part of our film was complete. I returned home well past midnight but felt more accomplished than ever. After three months of intense preparation and six days of shooting later, 80% of my short film was under my belt.

By this time, there was just one day left in our schedule. Approaching the end of production after an entire summer’s worth of work and anticipation was a bittersweet denouement. While I was eager to stop harboring self-doubts, finally get some rest, and generally move on, I also knew I would miss this experience for everything that it was. Sundown was coming to an end, and it was almost time for us to say goodbye.

Sundown: Morning (Day One)

When I awoke on the first morning of production, time felt unreal. It was a Friday, but it felt like a Monday. Day One. The beginning of what I had worked so hard to pull together over the past three months. I stayed up late to ensure everything was in order—printing scripts, shooting schedules, call sheets, everything. Soon, it was time for action.

Aug. 19: Late-night printing scripts. V4 with edits.

On day one, our call time was 9:00am at the Film Centre. Once I arrived, I met with my other leading actor (the adult version of my first actor), convened with my crew, and set prep into motion. Watching everything come together—camera setup, production design, hair and makeup, last-minute rehearsals—I was moving through my disbelief that something I had worked on tirelessly was coming to life. Meeting my actors was the biggest example of this; I loved finally connecting with my cast in person, going over lines, and feeling the energy they would bring their characters. I was not as nervous as I thought I would be stepping into the director role. I had my worries, sure, but I felt a natural ease in addressing everyone on set and commanding attention (in a non-intimidating way), mainly because I was given space to do so by my cast and crew. They trusted me, which was all I could ask for.

Back to reality—we needed to shoot! We began the day about 30 minutes behind schedule after arriving a bit late, so we worked quickly to set up a “therapist office” in the faculty and staff kitchen area. Once it was “all systems go,” pressing the record button, once to roll, once more to cut, was a transition past the point of no return—the first take, evidence that the film now existed in some way. Of course, I was then super particular about redoing the shot multiple times to make it “perfect” (whatever that meant). Already behind schedule, I was encouraged by my crew (particularly my Assistant Director, Mia DeAngelo) to move on, so we did. This scene, which exists about halfway through the film, had many elements: dialogue, multiple angles of said dialogue, lighting challenges, and more. It was the perfect way to test set dynamics and my directing style for the rest of the production.

Aug. 19: Our first scene in the “therapist office.”

After filming this scene, we had a much-needed lunch break while moving locations to shoot the last scene of the day and the movie’s final scene. This scene posed some challenges, considering how crucial it was to look and feel right. Even after messing around with lighting setup, character action, and camera framing, I’m not sure that the scene ended up where it needed to be. The instance of this feeling was, I soon learned, the first of many. Nonetheless, we wrapped in the early evening, saying goodbye to our supporting actress and moving equipment to our following shooting location before dispersing to our homes for the evening. The first night back set a dangerous precedent for production: wake up around 8am, go to set for no less than 8 hours, come home to work on production documents, and attempt sleep at 2am. This was my night, every night, without fail.

On day two, we were at my Assistant Camera’s house to shoot with my main actor at his “adult apartment.” We got to have fun shooting “nighttime” scenes in broad daylight, dirtying up a bedroom, and hiding our sound mixer in the shower for a bathroom scene. I originally planned to be in the space for two days, but I figured we could achieve everything in one very long day. However, we ran over schedule. I had to decide whether to keep people past wrap time for an hour or more or make sacrifices. Ultimately, I cut a relatively insignificant scene from the film, allowing us to finish on time.

Aug. 20: Day two, location two; bathroom of “adult apartment.”

With the extra day in our schedule, I held a production meeting with my crew to discuss plans for one of the most crucial scenes in the film: the climax, Scene 20. How painfully ironic that the climax of my film was the height of my experience on set-- for all the wrong reasons. First and foremost, this was the busiest day on set. Nearly all my cast and crew were present, totaling about 21 people on set throughout the day reporting to me. Second, this scene essentially functions as a set piece, requiring a lot of blocking and equipment prep beforehand. Even after 2 hours of rehearsal and my crew put in their best efforts to creatively light and shoot the scene, I came away from it feeling utterly defeated. I felt a painful shame as most of my cast and crew watched me fail to extract the performance I wanted. The imposter syndrome I had worked hard to stave off in the middle of the summer rushed back in the worst way.

Aug. 21: A camera/dolly blocking diagram for Scene 20.

Half of the film had been shot at this point, and I was disappointed with the most significant part of it. This was the culmination of my biggest failure in approaching Sundown: inadequate preparation. Even then, I’m not convinced that the failure wasn’t due in part to an unclear story, reflecting deeper insecurities about my project. Returning home, I felt a greater shame as I returned to my destructive routine of finalizing production documents the night before we shot. I spiraled into an identity crisis, ending my night seriously reevaluating my future in the film industry. This was my lowest point during production. However, I had no choice but to continue. As long as my cast and crew still trusted me to direct, I knew I had the support I needed to see the project through thick and thin. It was all I needed.

Sundown: August Whirlwinds

Once the first week of August hit, I was on 100. The work necessary to push us to the next stage included finalizing the cast, holding rehearsals, gathering production design materials, confirming locations, scheduling equipment rentals, and much, much more. Days felt like months leading up to the first day of production, given how much needed to be accomplished in the final days before we shot.

In the second week of August, I went shopping with my Production Designer, Elaine Lu Qu. In prepping for our trip, we went through each scene of the film and pulled out necessary props, costume pieces, and other set dressing elements. We went to Savers (thrift store), Walmart, and Home Depot for items like picture frames for family photos, sticker paper for custom prescription pills, and a wooden dowel for a melee weapon (that we never ended up using). Outside of our shopping trip, I worked on sourcing a prop gun for my Adult Mikey character. Luckily, Brian Song referred me to a local prop armament store that was extremely helpful in delivering a safe, affordable handgun on time.

Aug. 11 - PD shopping at Savers with Elaine, looking for books to fill a therapist's office.

The last five days were the most crucial in pulling everything together. Once I moved back to the city on the 14th, nearly everything that was not Sundown-related was evicted from my consciousness. In between unpacking and various store runs, nearly every moment of that week was spent prepping like mad. The first night in my apartment was spent rushing back from Target to direct a two-hour Zoom rehearsal with nearly all my actors, one of the last before we moved to shoot starting the 19th. We went over some near-final script changes, mainly just small edits to the dialogue, including changes to phrasing and clarifying how lines should be delivered.

In this rehearsal and in prior ones, seeing and hearing the story that I wrote come to life through early performances were surrealistic moments. I always emphasize how Sundown is not just “my” film— it carries with it the creative input of nearly everyone in my cast and on my crew. Watching my actors perform my story, turning it into our story, was when this sentiment felt real. Despite how exhausted I was on a personal and creative level, I always felt a budding sense of accomplishment after each rehearsal. That night, I prepared for what I knew would be another long day of preparation.

The next day, I went to my grandmother’s apartment with my mother and my brother to prep and dress the space before we shot there later the next week. Her space is small, so I wanted to be sure things were set up before I invited my cast and crew in for four days. More importantly, prep involved us getting rid of a China closet that was partially blocking the hallway I wanted to film in. Prepping her space was an all-day affair, but the next day promised some respite.

Aug. 15 - Goodbye China closet, you won't be missed.

Later that week, I went with my Key Hair and Makeup Artist, Abby Cloud, to go cosmetics shopping at CVS. I had sent out a survey to my cast, and most of my actors had their own makeup, but we bought more just in case. In the last few days before the shoot, I returned home to bring a wagon full of props and craft service snacks to my apartment. At that point, my bedroom became a storage closet for my film instead of being a functional living space, but I convinced myself that I didn’t mind.

Aug. 17 - Abby Cloud with me at CVS looking for foundation for our actors.

At this point, all our prep led to the final day before we shot, the end of the beginning. That morning, I met with Adam Rodgers to get some last-minute notes on my script (per a suggestion from Studio North). I was so, so very anxious going into our meeting. All of me felt terrible for burdening Adam last minute with a request for notes, but the meeting went better than I thought it would. With that done, I went later in the day to hold an officially unofficial prep day. I had also originally planned to spread equipment pick-up and prep over two days, but due to actor availability, I had to condense the two into one day. Luckily, my camera and lighting crew were flexible enough to be able to accommodate the change. Isabel, Christian, Elaine, and Chime accompanied me throughout the day while we picked up equipment, tested everything out, and visited all our filming locations for the week. Trusting in their expertise, we ended the day by leaving my grandmother’s house (which felt like two of my worlds colliding in ways I never thought they would).

Aug. 18 - Isabel testing out a fisheye lens (Hi Chime!); sad we never used it.

With cast, crew, locations, equipment, craft services, and more all set, there was one thing left to get in order: me. During the final week before filming, I had a one-track mind, a singular train of thought that never stopped to consider proper mental and physical health. While preparations were productive, they also came with mountains of stress. At this time, I realized I still didn’t know how to delegate tasks, especially those that seemed too cumbersome or burdening properly. I also tend to do most things myself out of fear of pushing my disorganization onto others, which led to me taking on many producer-specific roles. Sourcing snacks for craft services, making the shot list and shooting schedule, and creating call sheets every day was all too much, which I learned by the end of the shoot. I ended the last prep day with a mix of anxiety, excitement, sleep deprivation, and the hopes that everything for Sundown would go according to plan come sunrise.

Sundown: Quiet Before the Storm (July)

Nowhere to go but up.

Coming off the tails of June, I dove into the rest of the necessary preparation work for Sundown. I knew I had to be efficient and purposeful with how I spent the remaining days of my summer before we shot, and time was fading fast. Much of what was left to do should have been started, if not completed, the month prior. This included— but was in no way limited to— creating a shot list, another round of script revisions, figuring out funding, holding preliminary conversations with my camera and lighting team, and above all else, casting.

In keeping with the theme of “things-that-should-have-been-done-in-June-but-weren’t,” I worked with John and Aarushi to set up casting through Backstage as quickly as we could. For Sundown (V3), I was able to get the number of characters reduced from 11 characters to 6, which I still thought was a bit much for the caliber of my production. Furthermore, with the story I wanted to tell, I had no idea how difficult (or easy?) it would be to find a talented, available, predominantly Black cast for an unpaid student short film in just a month. There was only one way to know, and we moved to find our answer when we launched on July 6.

July 2022 - A snippet of the Backstage casting page.

We actually received our first submission for one of our leads, “Adult Mikey,” the same day we launched our listing. It took me a few days to figure out how Backstage’s notification system worked, so I ultimately didn’t see it until a few days later. But still, so exciting! This eased my doubts about the feasibility of the task of casting I laid out for myself However, my enthusiasm was undercut by the issue of needing the applicants to fit the creative and logistical needs of Sundown. Over the next four or five weeks that the casting page would be open, we sifted through 18 total applications, of which we casted 3 out of our 6 roles. In late July, we posted an open call to our Instagram which procured our fourth role of the “Therapist.” We held 6 callback virtual auditions throughout the month, making sure to ask questions about experience, logistics, and other pertinent information necessary should they be on set. The other two cast members came from personal connections: one family member of mine, and a Hopkins professor (reveal to come in a future entry!).

July 2022 - Redacted audition notes about a few of the actors that came through Backstage.

Casting non-Hopkins students, and really, casting anyone in the far periphery of my immediate circle was a huge source of anxiety for me. Learning how to communicate with working actors, moving through the audition process, ultimately rejecting applicants— it was a daunting prospect for someone who is very sensitive about nearly every one of my interpersonal interactions. Am I making this actor uncomfortable? Am I being too incessant with my emails and messages? Does my actor secretly hate me? These were feelings that would ebb and flow over the next few weeks and into August as I prepared to execute the role and responsibilities of a director. Regardless, I trusted in the process (and myself) and moved forward. By early August, we had cast (and confirmed availability) with all six of our actors.

The next pertinent thing to accomplish was establishing a plan of action for camera and lighting. I only worked on the script revisions for the next version (V4) later in the month, but I wanted to create a storyboard for parts of the story that I knew would stay the same. I met twice with my Director of Photography, Sophia Lin, and my 1st Assistant Camera, Isabel Salas, trudging through the script for hours to draft a storyboard. It was important that I rope them in for this process since I wanted their vision and creative expertise to inform the visual language of the film. Collectively, we came up with a few ideas for shots that I was very excited to execute in the coming weeks. I sent the storyboard to my grip and electric team (Chime Nwogu and Christian Reidy, respectively) to get them thinking about any equipment necessary to pull off certain shots. Towards the end of the month, I implemented the last round of script revisions to create a near-final version of the script, which included some much-needed edits. After talking with my camera and lighting crew, initiating casting, and generally spending more time on the project as compared to June, I felt much better about the possibility of Sundown.

July 2022 - Working on script revisions and the storyboard while on a plane back home from Indiana.

There was still one last thing to do: figure out crowdfunding. The issue of creating a “compelling, well-written, unbelievably beautiful promo video” still stood. Looking at the time and resources I had, I made the decision to postpone the fundraising launch until post-production. This meant that I needed to secure more private funding, which I was thankfully able to do without much issue. With the main elements of pre-production set into motion, we were on our way to be prepared for our August 19 start date.

July ended on a much better note than June as my confidence in the project—and myself— had been somewhat restored. Despite being constantly ping-ponged between work and my internship, I wanted to put my all into Sundown for the rest of the time I had left. This month presented personal and technical challenges as I explored uncharted territories with casting, budgeting, and general preparation for a short film. I knew that I was in for more challenges and surprises (both pleasant and less-than-so) in the weeks to come. Nonetheless, I had full faith in my cast and crew and we moved forward into August with a plan of action and the will to make it happen.

Sundown: Late May and the Chronicles of June

Pre-production for Sundown began in late May, a few weeks after the Spring semester ended. Looking ahead towards the summer, I had an internship, a part-time job, and a production for a short film lined up, so I knew I had to be efficient with my time. Before I left campus for the summer, I was able to get a head start on location scouting, visiting my then-Script Supervisor, Isabel Salas’ apartment. I learned a few things about location scouting, such as needing to note the location and quantity of outlets and windows, among other things. Isabel graciously allowed me to use their apartment during production, which was one of three locations successfully secured.

Once I got back home, I moved to build a concrete schedule for the entire summer. I held my first production meeting with my producer, John D’cruz on May 25. That same day, I got a fun little curveball thrown my way when my previous Assistant Camera emailed me notifying me that she would be transferring to Columbia in the Fall (now Harvard). Isabel then became my AC and everything was fine again. Before the month ended, I wanted a clear plan on how the rest of the summer was supposed to go. We began with creating a timeline that marked a plan for script revisions, crowdfunding, marketing, location scouting, casting, and ultimately, shooting.

However, plans are made to be changed, right?

Sticking to the plan was going well, that is, until we hit June. Before things went south, I was able to scratch a few things off the list, like sending in my second revision to Studio North, having pared the script down to a more manageable 13 pages. The much-needed Sundown (V3) finally existed and ultimately became the script I worked from for the rest of summer. That same day, I visited my grandmother’s apartment in Baltimore to location scout. Thankfully, she agreed to us using her apartment, so that was two out of three locations secured. I figured the rest of the locations could be created within the walls of the Film Centre (I was right, and this is what we did).

June 2022 - Location scouting, specifically, my main character's childhood home. The china closet needed to go (and it did!)

But back to plans changing and June being problematic. June was slated to be the heaviest month in terms of pre-production. The first task was to draft a script for and shoot the promotional video for the Seed and Spark crowdfunding platform. All I needed to do was create a compelling, well-written, unbelievably beautiful promo video and convince everyone I knew to donate to our project. Easy, right? Well, it could have been, but I became so paralyzed by my fear of failure that I fell down the rabbit hole of self-sabotage. The plan I had for my promo video quickly fell to bits.

Ideally, I would have cast a friend, shot footage that emulated the story, recorded a talking-head video talking about the film, edited it together, and moved on. However, being away from Baltimore (and everyone else I knew also being away from Baltimore) made it harder for my idea to become reality. Or, should I say, I thought it would make it harder. After watching so many other Seed & Spark videos, I convinced myself that there was no way I could create anything good in time and failed to do what was necessary to create a quality video.

May 2022 - Me attempting to shoot footage for the promo video. Not what I had in mind, and it was ultimately scrapped.

Issues with the video provoked more doubts about my project in general. Even writing the script for the video, I ran into challenges discussed elements of the story I still wasn’t sure of. I usually avoid moving forward on projects when all the details crystal clear; I couldn’t afford to do that with Sundown. The timeline I created forced me to keep moving—for better or for worse. This is when my self-doubt and inevitable burnout started to peak. Working 6/7 days per week and planning Sundown at the same time was emotionally draining. I asked myself “is this really going to happen?” nearly every day. My early summer burnout, mixed with a fear of failure and a splash of inexperience created a perfect self-sabotage cocktail. There’s a universe that exists where June 2022 was super productive and fulfilling for me. This isn’t that universe.

Pulling myself back to reality, I knew Sundown had to happen. Yes, because I made a commitment to Studio North, but mostly because I made a commitment to myself. I learned that had to lean on my crew members for external support since my well of internal motivation was running dry. John became my right-hand man and my biggest source of support in the early stages of the project. Aarushi Krishnan joined us as a co-producer early in the month, which I was extremely grateful for.

June 2022 - Aarushi joins 'Sundown' and I had more shoulders to cry on :)

June wasn’t a complete bust. We did set up the Seed & Spark project page without the video, highlighting the story, the crew, and some incentives for donation. June 6, we posted our first post to the Sundown Instagram, created by Nikki Ucheya, which received such positive feedback.

May/June 2022 - Our first marketing meeting and our first Instagram post. I was so overwhelmed with love.

June forced me to confront my deep-set insecurities about Sundown and about my abilities as a filmmaker in general. I am endlessly thankful for everyone I worked with in the early stages of Sundown. I (and my project) survived June, but the month was a lesson in knowing when to reach out for support. The month ended with us moving closer to casting, final script revisions, and of course, shooting. July threatened its own challenges, but after hitting the rock bottom in June, I had nowhere to go but up.

Sundown: A New Dawn (Beginnings)

Where do I begin talking about this project? Almost a year after its conception, I sit here reflecting on the journey of bringing my “coming of age thriller,” Sundown, to life. I’ll begin at the very beginning, eleven months ago when I wrote the pitch for my script.

 

October 2021 - Early October, when all 'Sundown' meant was the time of day. Little did I know what a turbulent semester this would be, so this is a moment of blissful ignorance, enjoying Hoptoberfest.

 

Fall 2021, the start of my sophomore year, I took Introduction to Screenwriting where I spent most of the term revising a script I grew to dislike by the end of the course. However, our final assignment was to write a new three-to-five-page script. In thinking about what to write, I searched for themes that attracted me. I thought back to a few months prior when I created a pitch for a five-page, no-dialogue film for Studio North’s production committee. In October, the committee was preparing to choose a short film to produce that semester, and I had yet to think of anything to pitch.

Around that time, my Intro class read the first few pages of Jordan Peele’s Us (2019) and I then decided to watch the full movie on Halloween. I resonated with the underlying theme of childhood trauma executed with a predominantly Black cast. Additionally, I thought about what kind of story works well with highly visual, extremely short formats. I needed a compelling exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution— all within five pages. With these elements put together, I settled on a thriller about a kid from Baltimore who experiences childhood trauma after he disobeys his mother one night. Intro Sundown.

 

October 2021 - Initial (and very messy) notes about the story in preparation for Studio North's production committee pitch session. Note the 4:21am edit time.

Writing the origin of the trauma and attempting to inject a semblance of Peele-esque cultural significance into my story, I thought about the phenomenon of “sundown towns” in America. The title alludes to the existence of towns and neighborhoods in the United States that implemented de facto segregation, using signage to usher people of color out of the town after sunset. While the story grew to abandon the idea of racial-based trauma, I enjoyed using “sundown” as a foundation to explore a story about a Black teenager who endures a unique trauma after staying out past sunset. This is where my main character, Mikey, comes in, and where the story of Sundown falls into place.

October-December 2021 - Cover slide for my 'Sundown' pitch deck. Excerpt from an early draft of 'Sundown.' So many lines to be cut in future revisions.

Though the production committee did not vote for my pitch, I decided to revisit Sundown for my final Intro assignment. I had only created a pitch for the committee, so I moved to write my first draft of Sundown in December. While writing the first draft, I had the idea to incorporate a time jump at the end. After Mikey disobeys his mother and gets caught by a “creature” after sundown, we see him ten years later, severely impacted by his childhood trauma. Though this pushed me slightly over the page limit, I was adamant that the reader (and eventually, the audience) should see the lasting impacts of Mikey’s childhood trauma on his mental health. Feeling confident in this addition, and tired after a long week of finals, I submitted Sundown the night of December 21.

December 2021 - The night I submitted 'Sundown' for my Intro to Screenwriting course; I made a last-minute solo trip to the last night of Christmas Village downtown. My COVID-conscious gloved hand holding a bratwurst. So cold, but so worth it.

After a tumultuous semester, I felt like Sundown was the victory I desperately needed, especially after weeks of working on other writing I had little passion for. In a way, I felt that the turmoil of my personal life catalyzed my decision to write about such a dark premise. I struggled with excess demands of my time, a less-than-comfortable living space, and the regular stress and sadness that comes with being a college student trying to do it all. Thankfully, I was able to channel my feelings into something productive: a story that I wanted to take further than a final assignment in an introductory screenwriting class. 

Our professor, Titus Burrell, encouraged all the Intro students to submit their pieces to the Baltimore Screenwriter’s Competition for the 2022 cycle. I knew I didn’t want to submit my main Intro piece, which I had grown to dislike for various reasons. After a bit of thought, and some (read: a lot of) external pressure from an impending January 21 deadline, I made yet another revision of Sundown, bumping it out from six pages to fifteen pages. With high hope (but low expectations), I submitted Sundown on the final day of the competition, emailing the Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts at 8:00am and running downtown to drop off my script at 3:00pm since it was too late for snail mail. It would be another four months before I heard anything from the competition (spoiler: I only made it to the second round, which I am still proud of nonetheless!).

January 2022 - Flyer for the Baltimore Screenwriter's competition.

January 2022 - Results from the Screenwriter's Competition. Baby steps (or something like that)!

In the meantime, another opportunity presented itself: the Studio North 2022-2023 grant cycle. The Studio North grant was something I learned about as a freshman, and I always had prospects of applying to it—during my junior year. I had a lot of trepidation about applying to the grant this year, mainly due to my (perceived) lack of experience and absence of an idea to produce. At this point in time, it’s early April, and I had not thought about Sundown in months during the new semester. Contemplating the possibility of applying for the Studio North grant, I eventually found my way back to Sundown and ultimately wrote another revision for the application. Despite my many anxieties, I took a leap of faith and applied to the grant cycle in early May (after much encouragement from Film and Media friends and faculty). In the face of all my self-doubt, I was one of two students to win this year’s production grant— news I celebrated through more end-of-semester stress and a nagging cold.

May 2022 - The Studio North premiere for the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 grant cycle films (left to right: Abena Ababio, Ruby Baden, Mary Yan, Ellie Rha, and Brian Song), the day before I pitched 'Sundown,' and two days before I was awarded one of two grants for the 2022-2023 cycle.

This news was as much to my excitement as it was to my chagrin: now, I had to somehow produce a short film. My self-doubts began to creep back in as I looked towards the next year with less-than-positive prospects. However, by this time, I had received coverage notes from the Screenwriter’s Competition, along with pitch notes from the Studio North executive board. Both sets of comments sent me well on my way to beginning a third revision, which I aimed to complete in early June, giving myself approximately one month. Looking at the summer ahead of me, I began to set things in motion to fundraise, cast, and ultimately film Sundown at the end of the summer. With a fast-approaching production timeline and a lot of work to do, I knew I would be dedicated to Sundown as if it were a full-time job. I had much to think about, such as where and how I’ll cast, logistics, budget, art direction, and much, much more. More than anything, I knew I had to trust myself if any of this was going to work, which was the hardest part. Taking yet another leap of faith, I took the first step towards a summer of preparation for my first short film. 

May 2022 - Back home, on a long walk I used to think through my plan for the rest of the summer. I couldn't possibly anticipate the kind of summer I was about to have, but I had my moment of peace before the craziness began.

Nurikabe: The End of a Very Long Beginning

This is the end to a very long beginning. Looking back at the past three years, I don’t think there was a day I didn’t spend thinking about this project in one way or another. And as we move into production, I feel like it would be good to reflect a bit on some of the things we learned from the experience.

 

1. Motivation is not discipline: At the beginning of any creative endeavor you probably feel very motivated. After all, it takes enthusiasm and creative energy to come up with an idea for a project. And maybe that motivation will carry you through developing that idea into a workable outline. But eventually that motivation fades. It doesn’t fade forever, of course, resurfacing anytime. But it will inevitably fade. And the idea you’ve been excitedly working on? Well, the excitement is gone and the work remains. It is at times like this that discipline comes in handy. Motivation and the energy that comes with it is fickle and unreliable. Discipline is not. It’s an “either you do it or you don’t” mentality. So even when things were hard, frustrating, intimidating or felt impossible, we both knew that nothing was going to happen unless we made it so. 

 

2. Unique doesn’t always mean original: In our research, we read through many volumes of folklore and fairytales. And though no two stories were the same, some were more similar than others. In Japanese folklore many stories can be summed up as such: A spirit causes trouble, so a monk prays a lot and the spirit goes away. In Latin American folklore, we found quite a few stories that bore a striking resemblance to Cinderella. The Japanese character Momotarō is similar to Tom Thumb and Thumbelina, all of whom in their respective stories are children born in odd ways to childless parents. Since our project’s focus is adaptation and folklore, we knew our film wouldn’t be something entirely new. But in our research, we realized that the most interesting thing about adaptation is not how similar things are. It is the differences between each story that make them interesting. For something to be interesting and unique, it doesn’t have to be completely original, it just has to take the material in a new direction. 

 

3. It’s all on you until it isn’t: As we’ve mentioned in previous posts, this is our first large scale collaborative project. We are used to relying on ourselves for everything, from the first draft of the script to the final cut of the film. The weird thing about this project is it felt very much like everything we’d done before until it wasn’t. We had to create the story, write the script. It was up to us to find a cast and crew. As stated before, we understood from the beginning that nothing would move forward on the project unless we made it happen. But now it feels like something is about to change. Now, we have to pass our vision on to our cast and crew, relying on them to make this thing a reality. And while it does relieve some pressure on us, it can be scary to hand off almost three years of work to others and trust them to make it good. We have to stay on top of things, making sure everything is in control and moving along nicely. But we also have to let go a bit, letting everyone do their work. Ultimately, we can’t do this by ourselves, as film by its very nature is collaborative.

 

4. Caution and anxiety are two different things: We have taken a lot of care in planning for production. Making sure everything is ready, our contingencies and backup plans, that is the result of caution. Caution is good in pre-production as it makes you take a step back, consider possible obstacles or issues. Anxiety, on the other hand, has no place in filmmaking. It makes you doubt everything, throwing you into a swirling storm of what-if’s. It’s a paralyzing force that narrows your focus to only the problems without considering any solutions. If left unchecked, that anxiety turns to self-doubt, which affects the entire production. Because if you don’t believe in the project (or yourself), why should anyone else? In my experience, the best remedy to anxieties (other than good preplanning and backup plans) is a simple question: “And?” It switches the focus from the problem back to the solution. Worried about what happens if something goes wrong? And? If it happens, you’re going to have to deal with it anyway, so it doesn’t help to get worried about it. It’s an attitude that’s gotten us through many stressful periods in all sorts of environments. No matter what happens, at the end of the day you’ll likely get through it unscathed. It may not be fun, and it may not be perfect. But it will be done. 

 

5. Never forget why you love it: A little while ago, I saw someone give a talk about being successful. They said that you shouldn’t do what you love because one day you’ll be working hard and realize you aren’t enjoying it. They argued it was better to figure out what you’re good at and learn to be passionate about it. Personally, I find that a rather depressing way to live. For all I know, I only have one shot at life. Seems like a waste to give up on pursuing my passion without at least trying to follow it first. And yes, there have been times on this project where everything feels wrong. Times where it feels like it’s too much to handle, where frustration and challenge overwhelm any positivity. But in those times, it’s good to remember why you started. Because if those young Nishimoto brothers, who were so fascinated with the behind the scenes features on DVDs, could see what we are doing here today… their excitement would be enough to power us through this project ten times over. 

 

That flame of childhood excitement, it is still burning inside us. Sure, it might not be as easily accessible as it was back then. But it’s light has been with us every step of the way on this project, and it will continue to light our way ahead.

^{Photos By Amy Nishimoto}

We have been Thomas and Curtis Nishimoto. We’re making something that, for lack of a better term, is really cool. And we cannot wait to show you. - TC

 

Nurikabe: Working With Others

It may be the last week of classes, but there’s still so much work to do! We spent the last week meeting with our production heads, trying to get everything in order for the shoot in June. There’s equipment to gather, costumes to make, shots to list, and schedules to make. We have more than a month to do it all, but that time is certainly going to fly by faster than we anticipate!

Thankfully, we’ve surrounded ourselves with talented people, who all seem to be just as enthusiastic about this project as we are. And that’s really exciting! It’s nice to have help, to know that we don’t need to figure everything out on our own. 

However, it is a little weird. Our style has always been ragtag and chaotic. Pretty much all of our previous films were shot in the span of a day or two, with limited equipment, and a nonexistent budget. We’re used to doing all the jobs ourselves, from lightning to camera to sound. There was no need to communicate our vision with others because we were responsible for everything from the get-go. 

^{Photo by Amy Nishimoto}

So it’s a little disorienting to be working with a bigger crew. It’s required us to put more thought into what exactly we want the finished product to look like. We’ve had to work on effectively communicating those thoughts to other members of our team. Planning has never really been our strong suit. Our previous works have been much more improvised. The process of making them was something along the lines of “this is what we have on hand. How can we make this fit into what we want?” For this film, it’s more like: “Here’s what we want. What do we need in order to get it?” We can’t show up on set, place down a camera, and hope for the best. 

Well, we can, but we probably shouldn’t. 

So there are some challenges to working with more people. However, there are also numerous advantages. As said previously, we’re used to doing everything ourselves. Having an actual crew helps lighten that burden, distributing responsibilities among multiple people. 

Additionally, each crewmember brings a new perspective to the set. This film has been stewing in our minds for years, so we’re a bit locked into a certain conception of it. Our crew is not so limited in their thinking, which allows them to suggest changes and ideas we’d never considered. Their input will hopefully make our film better than anything we could have made on our own. 

At the end of the day, it all comes down to trust. We trust in our crew's abilities, confident that they are the best people for the job. In turn, our crew trusts in us. They trust that we have a clear vision of what we want and a plan to enact that vision. Our job is to make sure that they can do their job. Once we do that, all that’s left is to place down a camera and hope for the best. - TC

 

Nurikabe: Keeping It All Organized

We rush ever faster towards production! The anxiety is creeping in a bit as we get closer to shooting, because there’s still a lot that needs to get done, and we have eight short weeks to get it all figured out.

In good news, we’ve almost got all our crew together. We have our cinematographer and production designer locked in, as well as a few production assistants. Additionally, we’ve applied for a shooting permit to film on the C&O canal, so once we have that, our location will be secured! 

I think the one thing that I appreciate now is all the time and effort it takes to plan a production like this. We’re filming at only one location, with a minimal cast and crew, making a twelve minute short. Our film is nowhere near the scale of a full feature, and it’s taken us months just to get everything in order! It has certainly been an educational experience, so we thought we’d share some of the lessons we learned from pre-production.

 

Lesson one: Time management is your friend. As it is with any large undertaking, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by all the things you need to get done. Sitting down and making a schedule can help make it all a bit less daunting. Make a list of everything you need to complete before you can move into production. Do you need actors? Crew? A location? Figure out the steps you need to take, and then set deadlines for each. Having a set due date for each task makes them less conceptual (“I need to cast sometime in the winter”) and more concrete (“I’ll post a casting call on November 10th”). 

 

Lesson two: Prudence and accountability. You have your deadlines, now stick to them! It is incredibly easy to procrastinate, especially when it comes to making big decisions. Putting things off will cause trouble for you down the line, so respond to those emails, check your to do list. Ask someone you know to hold you accountable. Having a friend that won’t let you get away with slacking off can ensure that you stay on task. 

Lesson three: You don’t know what you don’t know. There’s always something you miss, a question that you don’t know to ask. And there are so many questions you need to answer. How are people getting to set? What equipment do you need? How long is each scene going to take? And so on and so forth. Find the answers, make sure they’re thorough, and don’t assume anything. Things rarely work themselves out. You’re the one that has to make things happen. 

 

Lesson four: Resilience and Forgiveness. Making a movie is hard. Really, really hard. And even with all your planning, things won’t go according to script. So you need to be resilient. Take a deep breath and find a solution. Make peace with the fact that things aren’t always gonna go your way. You’ll miss an email. You’ll realize that you need something that you don’t have. Something will go wrong that is beyond your control. Mistakes will be made and accidents will happen. When these things occur (and they will) you need to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and keep moving forward. Because you still have a movie to make. 

 

And the only thing that can ever stop it from being made is you. - TC

 

A History on the River - Finding Our Location

Updates: these past few weeks we’ve been trying to secure the proper permission to film on location. It’s still a developing situation, but projections look good. It also gives us a chance to talk about location scouting for our film.

As we have written in previous posts, our film is a modern fairytale structured around elements and themes of folktale. But for our setting, we didn’t look to books for inspiration. Instead, we turned to our own childhoods.

We grew up in rural central Maryland, where Virginia and West Virginia meet. Our summers were spent outside in the woods, on hiking trails, and around campfires. And at the center of all of those memories is the Potomac River. 

We Nishimoto Brothers owe a lot to the Potomac. We would often hike or bike down the canal paths. Every Christmas, we would hike up to Jefferson Rock and watch the cars drive on the opposite bank. Our first job was creating promotional videos for River and Trail, a local rafting company. 

So, we figured the Potomac and the surrounding area would be a good location. More specifically, we came up with the idea of having our characters hike down the C&O Canal. If you’ve hiked down the canal, every now and then you’ll come across locks. Some of them are better preserved than others, but they are very interesting features on the trail. Accompanying some of these locks are lockhouses, lodging for caretakers of the lock back when the canal was operating. These houses are quite old, dating back to the 19th century. They are quaint, historic, and a little creepy. That makes them the perfect place for some mysterious happenings.

In preparation for production, we visited the lockhouse we were interested in last summer. It’s about a quarter mile hike from the nearest parking lot, making it a very isolated location. The first thing that struck me about the house is its simplicity. It’s very unassuming, a simple white house. It’s the kind of building that you won’t know what’s inside until you go in. 

Stepping inside, you feel like you have gone back in time. All the furniture is wood and the walls are adorned with black and white photographs of past inhabitants and the canal when it was in use. A steep narrow stairway leads up to two bedrooms separated by a thin wall. The house sleeps eight people, which seems like a large number for such a small building. With the shutters closed, the house is extremely dark. From a filmmaking standpoint, this is good. It will let us control the light better. 

^{Photo by Curtis Nishimoto}

The only major drawback to the house (other than its remoteness) is that there is no electricity. This is good for if you’re trying to live like it’s 1873, but rather inconvenient when you’re trying to shoot a film. We spent the night in the house, the summer heat painfully reminding us of the lack of air conditioning. I (Curtis) can’t be sure I slept at all that night, it was so hot. Nevertheless, we made it to dawn. And as we walked down the trail, the warm morning breeze in our faces, our heads were filled with questions on how we would pull off a film production in the house.

Almost a year later and we’re a few months away from the shoot. Challenges aside, we know that the lockhouse is a perfect location for our film, so we’ll take it, heat, bugs, and all. - TC

^{Photo By Curtis Nishimoto}

Nurikabe: Dealing with the Anxieties of Film Production

There’s this joke which posits that babies actually have the ability to teleport, and that’s how they manage to disappear even though you only looked away for a second. It’s only when they get older and realize that teleportation is impossible that they lose this ability. It’s starting to feel like people that make movies are the same way; they only are able to do it because they don’t realize it’s impossible yet.

That’s a very convoluted way of saying it’s been quite a week. We’re now starting to lock in our cast and crew. Or at least we’re trying to. Thing is, up to this point, the ball has been in our court. We’ve needed to come up with the idea, write the script, choose a shooting date, et cetera, et cetera. But now, we need a crew. The only thing we can do about that is spread the word and hope that people respond. And the waiting is the hardest part. 

Maybe it’s just that we’ve entered the part of the semester where all the big things are coming due. Things are getting stressful, and this project is no exception. There’s a bit in Wallace and Gromit where Gromit is riding a toy train, frantically laying down pieces of track as the locomotive barrels forward. That’s what this feels like. We’re barreling towards a destination and we need to get all the tracks laid in order to get there. And right now, we’re waiting for others to hand us the next piece of track. 

Right now, we’re at a tipping point. We have our cast assembled. We have dates picked out and reserved at the location. We just need hands to fill our crew. And it’s a bit scary. Because the last few years of our lives have been this film, this story. But now, we’re asking others “Is this something you want to be a part of?” As artists and creators, our work is an extension of ourselves. Part of our identities are put on the page, in the film. And it’s a difficult thing, to put yourself out there, to be vulnerable. Because when we ask “Is this something that interests you,” we’re also asking “are we someone who interests you?” Are our ideas worth your time? Are we worth your attention? Do you believe in this project, and by extension, do you believe in us? 

And it’s unclear what the answer to those questions are. We haven’t gotten as many responses as we’d like, although we hold out hope that we’ll get more. That’s the important thing, that we don’t lose hope. At the end of the day, all we need is a story, some actors, and a camera. At the base level, that’s all a film needs. And as long as we believe in our story, that it’s one worth telling, we’ll find a way to tell it. 

One way or another, we’ll make it to the end of the trail. 

-TC

Nurikabe: Updates and The Writing Process

Updates: I wish we had some tangible updates to share with you, but unfortunately, it’s all just emailing people. This week, we’re finalizing our cast and putting our crew together. We’re creeping ever closer to production, which is very exciting! 

Alright, we’ve covered the research process. Now, we get to my (Thomas’s) favorite part: writing! I think I’ve always wanted to be a storyteller. As a kid, I was reading all the time or making up my own stories. And while I don’t read as much as I used to, the second part is still going strong. But I never really got into screenwriting until my freshman year, when Studio North started their underclassmen writers room. For some reason, I always had this notion that I needed to fulfill certain requirements in order to be a writer. “I don’t really read much, so I can’t be a writer” and similar thoughts always held me back. And then I joined this writers room and was basically told “alright, you’ve got a week to write this episode. Go.” And that’s when I realized that there was only one real requirement of being a writer: you write. So I did, and I haven’t stopped since.

Process. Every writer has one, and I’m no exception. Everything I’ve ever written has started as a blank Google document. At the top, I put a general summary of what I want to do. For this project, that was some sort of modern fairytale. Next, I make a list of characters. Character is everything for me. Before I can start writing a story, I need to know who that story is happening to. I write out a short bio for each character, outlining their strengths, weaknesses, fears, and desires. And slowly, each one takes shape. 

I knew that there would be three characters, as that number often shows up in fairytales. They would be college-bound seniors, a state of being that was fresh in my mind. And they would all be anxious about something. Because fairytales often serve as ways to teach children, to help them confront and make sense of the world. Certainly, that transition to college, to adulthood is a time of learning. And as I thought about what anxieties that brought with it, my characters presented themselves.

Three friends, Amanda, Jenny, and Grant, each with their own unique hurdles. Grant is a homebody, lacking the drive and confidence to take hold of his life’s direction. Jenny is insecure, fearing that her decision to attend a community college makes her inferior to her peers. And Amanda doesn’t want things to change. She’s not ready to let go of the life she knows just yet. Now I just needed to figure out a plot that would force them to confront these fears. 

I can’t tell you too many details (can’t spoil the film before we’ve made it!) but I will talk about its creation in general. Once I have my characters down, I write down the typical story outline (hook, inciting incident, first act turning point, midpoint, second act turning point, climax) and write a sentence for each. It’s not much, but it gives me enough structure to start filling in the details. Sometimes I’ll write a treatment, but usually I just jump right into the script. I’m a slow writer. I can’t “just put something down on the page.” It can be painful, because often I’ll know what I want to do, just not how to do it. I tend to pace around my room, saying different lines until I find the right one. I usually make a vibes playlist, a collection of songs and scores that I think capture the feeling of the film, and play it in the background. I’m also directing and editing the film in my head. It’s not written explicitly on the page, but I’m thinking about how each scene is shot, how the lines are being delivered, and where the cuts are. Sometimes, it feels like I’m watching the movie in my head and just writing down what I see on screen. 

 

In short, writing can be overwhelming and exhausting. Every sentence feels like an hour, each page an eternity. But at some point, the script gets finished. Then I send it to some friends, get feedback, and start all over again. All this effort for about twelve pages. Will it all have been worth it? Will that work even show through in the finished product? Only time will tell I suppose.

^{Photo by Curtis Nishimoto}

Nurikabe - Films and Folklore

Not too many exciting updates for this post. We’re in the middle of sending and receiving emails for cast, crew, and location. We can’t wait to tell you all about those, but we want everything to be in place first. 

So instead, let’s talk about where our story left off. We had just decided on a topic: folklore and adaptation. That’s a very specific and not at all nebulous topic to research, right? Where do you even start for something like that?

Well, the answer was to talk to our faculty mentor. See, every recipient of the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship must find a faculty mentor, someone who can help guide the student through their research. And for a film project, it seemed pretty clear to us who our mentor should be: Professor Matthew Porterfield. 

Not only does he teach production in Johns Hopkins’ wonderful Film and Media Studies program, Matt Porterfield is an accomplished independent director! Some of his notable features include Putty Hill and Sollers Point, not to mention that he’s directed numerous short films. Experience with making movies in Baltimore and on a small budget? Sounds like our guy. 

Fortunately, he agreed to work with us and help make our film happen! His first job: to help us find materials to research. In the summer after our freshman year, he graciously provided us a list of movies and books for us to read, watch, and ponder about. Some of the books were simply collections of folktales from various cultures, such as Japanese, Native American, and Appalachian. Some, like The Uses of Enchantment by Bruno Bettelheim, were about fairy tales themselves.  And yet others discussed film, such as Andre Tarkovsky’s Sculpting in Time. Some of these books were harder to work through than others, but they helped us think about the function of story and film and put us in the correct mindset to begin working on our own artistic creation. 

I found the films to be more interesting and memorable. Whether that’s due to my tragically short attention span or general disposition to the medium, I do not know. But I will say, there’s nothing that ignites the imagination more than being handed a list of films that you’ve never heard of before. I’d like to share with you the highlights.

 

Arabian Nights, Volumes 1, 2 & 3. I think these were my favorite of the bunch, despite them being somewhat difficult to follow. Inspired by the original Arabian Nights, these films feature a myriad of tales centered in modern day Portugal. I couldn’t summarize them all, as that would take too long, but one included the ghost of a cow testifying at a trial! So that’s cool.

 

Kuroneko. Gotta love Japanese ghost stories. Set in historical Japan, this film follows two spirits as they take vengeance on a group samurai. It’s not all that scary, but it’s got a beautifully eerie atmosphere to it. Plus I’m a sucker for anything having to do with ancient Japan. 

 

A Ghost Story. Of all of the films we watched, I think that this is the one that I need to watch again. Because to be completely honest, I didn’t get it the first time (I mean, a seven minute single take of a woman eating a pie, what’s up with that?). But upon reflection, I think it’s a beautiful film about love, loss, and life. It’s simple, creative, and unique, and I’d be lucky to create something as thought provoking. 

 

I think that’s it for now. We’ve included a picture of the complete reading list, in case anyone’s interested in replicating our research experience (be warned Norte, The End of History is over 4 hours long!) Till next time! - TC

Nurikabe - The Story So Far

It all started with a question: “what do you want to do?”. That’s what Dr. Natalie Strobach, the Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Research, asked me two years ago in our first meeting. I was confused; I had applied for the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship Program with an idea for a documentary about the Maryland Wind Festival. Wasn’t that what I was going to do? She informed me that I wasn’t obligated to follow through with that project. The application determines if you’re selected for the program, but it doesn’t dictate what you do with the grant. “But surely I am making a documentary of some sort,” I thought. After all, it is a research grant. As it turns out, I had a very limited understanding of what research could be. As I walked out of that meeting, head swimming with thought, I was no closer to an answer. What do I want to do?

 

Spoiler alert: I figured it out. As it turns out, research as a film major is a little different than STEM research. Like STEM researchers, we research a topic and publish a work surrounding that topic. However, we aren’t writing essays or publishing to journals. We (as you can probably guess) are using our research to make a short film. Publishing our research means submitting to film festivals. This opens up our project to be about anything we want, as long as it’s approved. So, with that in mind, I considered what I wanted out of film, why I wanted to make them so badly. And after a lot of thought, I came to the conclusion that I’m here to tell a story. So I decided to focus the project on storytelling, specifically myths, fairytales, and folklore. It also gave me an opportunity to connect with my heritage. Despite being half Japanese, I didn’t grow up knowing much of Japanese culture. I don’t even speak the language. But as a child I did read stories and fairytales, either translated into English or illustrated in books. I thought that this was a good opportunity to dig a little deeper in those stories. - C

^{Photo by Thomas Nishimoto}

I was always an unofficial part of my brother’s project. I kept up with his progress, helped him brainstorm ideas, and it was a given that when it came time to film, I would be on set. I officially joined in the end of my freshman year, when I received a Wilson Fellowship of my own. In my first meeting with Dr. Strobach I was given a choice: pursue my own project or join my brother’s. I thought about it and came to the conclusion that when I graduate, that I want to have something to show for it. By combining our grants, my brother and I would have twice the budget than we would’ve had individually. But more importantly, working together meant twice the creativity, twice the potential. - T

^{Photo by Curtis Nishimoto}

We are Curtis and Thomas Nishimoto. For the past two and a half years, we have been working to create a short film based on our research. And as we approach the start of production, we’d like to show you where we are, how we got here, and where we’re hoping to go on this project. - TC

Note-able Design: Episodes 1 and 2 Update

Hi there again, friends!

With the semester very close to being over, I'm happy to say that the episodes are also on their way to being ready to showcase. Since I could not record narration for that part of the podcast at the Film Center, my supervisor Kyle Stine and I have been recording Skype calls to get that part of it. I must admit that part of the reason why I chose doing a podcast instead of a film production was that so that I could get over the fear of hearing my own voice. And, I think that this whole process has gotten me ever so slightly more used to it, though not completely of course. 

The screening has also been delayed to later this week.  It's pretty cool how they made little profile pages for each project, makes me kind of nostalgic to see my fellow film peeps again. This has been an interesting journey, and I'll be very happy to share with you all the podcast once things have been thoroughly finalized! 

 

Note-able Design: The Way From Here

Hi friends,

I'll be honest, not much has been happening save for some frustrating editing complications. It really is a process to figure out the real meat of the conversations I've had, but it's also been really nice re-listening to them. Made me a bit nostalgic, actually. I think that in the end I'll have two really neat episodes to show clips of in the virtual screening happening at the end of the month.

Speaking of, I wonder how that will all play out. Of course there's going to be some marginal dip in quality since it'll be online and my fellow colleagues' (or at least the majority of them) have some sort of visual component to their projects, but hopefully it won't be too difficult to have them show their projects and give them the spotlight they rightfully deserve. I do feel kind of gypped that we won't have an in-person screening, because the one last year was really great in my opinion. I really liked how in that event last year the seniors that presented talked a bit about their piece at the end of it, and in a sense I'm glad that the department is doing that by having us record videos about that. Sort of stupidly I also like how the film events that I've been to in the past had my FMS logo on it, because even though I am not the most active person in the FMS community as a whole, I feel that I've contributed something since they still use that.  

Tomorrow I'll have a meeting with my capstone advisor to catch him up on the project and how things are going in general, so that's nice too. He told me that the episodes have to be done by mid-May, which is actually really nice because I somehow had the idea that I had to have them ready by the end of classes, which is the end of this week. It's a relief that I have a lot of time to work on them for sure. 

Anyhow, I'll keep you guys posted on how the meeting goes tomorrow, I suppose. For now I don't have any groundbreaking updates or anything. Just wanted to voice my thoughts on some end of the school year matters, especially since this semester has proven to be an abnormal one in more than a couple of ways. Thanks for listening to me ramble on a bit. 

Note-able Design: logo!

The logo design for my podcast is now complete! I wanted to evoke certain aspects of the Maryland flag, being that the series is based in Baltimore. I don't know if this comes across well, but the top half is supposed to mimic the gold and black checkerboard pattern and the bottom half is a nod to the red and white portions of the flag. 

I wanted to make the logo legible from a very small scale, so I went with having the N and the D emphasized first and foremost. Since this is going to be published on the FMS podcast channel, clarity was a central concern of mine. Normally icons like these are very small, so I chose contrasting colors for the other parts of the title. 

Initially, I had more negative space on the bottom left. While I was in the process of designing this, (and having the stage play of The Phantom of the Opera in the background, that play is one of my absolute favorites) my boyfriend and my mom were arguing on whether having something to accent the white more was needed or not. My mother was staunchly for having the corner be left white, but my boyfriend was strongly advocating having that patch of grey. In the end, I went with the grey not to please my boyfriend or anything, but because the way I had made the grey patch actually made the yellow a bit darker as well, which I liked since it highlighted the rest of "Note-able" quite nicely. 

Usually I would design things like this in a vector program like Adobe Illustrator, but seeing as I could not find my drawing tablet pen for my laptop, I used a program called Adobe Draw for the iPad Pro. While the file size is adequately large, being originally 2100 x 2100 px, technically if something should need more of a flexible image in terms of sharpness for all pixel requirements, a vector would be better. But, seeing as this is not going to be on any large posters or anything, I figured that this would be more than suitable for my needs for sure. It was actually quite nice to take a break from editing audio to do this, being that I do find graphic design like this to be very enjoyable indeed. Picking up the Apple Pencil to do this put me in a really creative mindset, no doubt about it. 

Anyhow, hope that this design is eye-catching and fun! Be on the lookout for links for the completed episodes as I finish editing them. 

Note-able Design: COVID-19 complications

Well, it’s time to address the huge topic at hand here that has swept the globe lately, the coronavirus outbreak.

Truth be told, I did initially plan to do at least one more interview for this project, but that proved to be very difficult given the lack of responsiveness on the people that I had reached out to and now this. Nobody would agree to doing an in-person interview now of all times.

Moreover, I did count on utilizing the Film Center at least once to record some stuff over spring break, but given that it is now closed, that is also not doable. Because of this, I should consider whether I want to go with the format I had originally wanted, where I record my voice as transitions between topics, or have none of my voice at all. All that being said, I am leaning towards the latter since I am back in my childhood home in New York and there’s no really good place to record audio here anyway. A house in a fairly busy suburb with thinner walls is not exactly conducive to doing that. 

I also hope that the rest of my fellow seniors are doing ok in this time of uncertainty. It is not easy dealing with capstone and school, let alone doing all this during a worldwide pandemic where schools are closed and things are way more restrictive. Not having access to JHU resources may not be a deal breaker or a huge hindrance to my project as it stands, but I can't help but feel some concern over everything. Let's all hang in there my fellow capstone-producing seniors!

For the time being, I am in the process of designing the logo, and edits will be beginning shortly. I’m just glad I got those two interviews in before this whole thing turned into a global crisis.

Note-able Design Podcast: Stephanie Barber Interview

I had the extreme pleasure of getting to interview artist Stephanie Barber. She is a lovely person, and I had a lot of fun talking to her! 

Walking into the MICA Lazarus center for that morning’s interview was most certainly a bit surreal. It hadn’t been the first time I had gone there, but it is so clear that the overall vibe of MICA is distinctly different from that of JHU.

Instead of being adorned with research flyers and the like, the walls were decorated with oodles of student artwork, and I took it upon myself to peruse a bit before I met up with Ms. Barber. Seeing all the works on the walls reminded me of my arts high school in a way, but on a somewhat grander scale. It actually made me feel very nostalgic.

Then the time came to interview Ms. Barber, and the conversation went very well. The issue of coronavirus was at the time not as severe, but we did forgo the introductory handshake in light of that. 

We did the interview in an office that wasn’t hers per se, but it was thankfully very soundproof and didn’t have much echo, which made the audio file clearer than the last one. I actually found it to be very helpful when she gave me some last-minute tips on how to use the zoom mic, since I was fumbling with it at the start.

Overall, I really enjoyed getting the chance to speak with her, and although due to rising issues, I wasn’t able to get another interview in, I’m happy that it was with her.

I of course thank Ms. Barber for giving me the time to have this interview with me. 

 

Note-able Design: About Structure

While editing my first podcast episode, I came across an interesting problem. That being, the issue of how to structure things going forwards. 

How can I take a 33 minute interview/conversation and have that be an engaging, high concept piece? The conversation was a fairly normal, meaning it ebbed and flowed in a certain rhythm. I'm sure there are podcasts out there that are just this, chats to listen to in the background while doing something else. Some podcasts make you feel as if you are listening in on a random conversation between two or more entertaining people. I often listen to podcasts like that during a meal alone, to make me feel socially engaged without contributing directly to whatever is being discussed. But I digress. 

This past week I met up with my advisor on this project, Professor Kyle Stine, and he suggested that I take a more pointed and highly edited approach to this. We mused on various ways to edit and how to find the things to keep people interested in the episode as a whole. 

We came to a consensus that the best way to edit this first episode so that it can set the stage for the others to come is to have it still be a conversational piece, but one that is more guided. What I mean by that is the way that the topics are shifted and brought up will be intercut by separate recordings of me telling the listeners what Jimmy will be talking about next. This way, I can squeeze the best parts of the interview out to their fullest potential while not seeming unnatural in either flow or tone. 

This brings up another thing, and that is how I want the listeners to interact with this series. I want the listeners to stay engrossed in every episode, because raw, undiluted conversations can at times be at varying levels of intrigue within the various tangents and topic shifts that naturally occur. In that sense, I don't want the episode to seem like a conversation, I want it to be something that locks on the listener from start to finish. 

To go slightly off topic, it's fascinating how much something can be pared down to maintain viewer or listener interest. While at the meeting, he told me that one time when his wife was interviewed for a radio show, the initial talk was more than an hour, but then they condensed it to just a couple of minutes when the show was actually broadcast. When I had first heard that, I was shocked that they trimmed it to that extreme of a degree, losing essentially more than 90 percent of the actual conversation. Granted, my first episode will not encompass the full 33 minute interview, but it won't be truncated nearly as much in comparison. 

With that, I'm off to contact more people about interviews, because I have not heard back from some people that I emailed last week, quite regrettably. It's such a shame too, since I was hoping that the Baltimore Museum of Art  and the teachers I emailed from the Baltimore School for the Arts would like to talk with me, so I should follow up with them about that, perhaps! 

Note-able Design: Concept and Initial Struggles

"Note-able Design: Because Baltimore is anything but one note!" 

That was my tagline by the way. I think it's catchy at least!

My podcast series is an interview-based series in which I seek to discover Baltimore's independent art, design, and music scene. I want to get at the heart of what makes this city so uniquely different and quirky when it comes to the arts, and what better way to do that than to get out there and talk to the people that have colored Baltimore's culture. I want to have a conversation with independent artists; artists that are trying to voice themselves through what they make. 

In a nutshell, that is what I'm aiming to do. But so far, I have met a few roadblocks. 

Throughout intersession, I reached out to dozens of people with little answers or follow-ups. Granted, that time of year is a busy one, with the Holidays and New Years. Finding interview subjects is proving to be a task that is somewhat difficult, but I am up to the challenge of finding people that I can talk to! 

So far, I have a 33 minute conversation with none other than our very own Jimmy Joe Roche, and he said he might have a lead on some people, so I'm awaiting his connections as well. 

The conversation with him went surprisingly smoothly, for it being my first real interview for this series. In it, I found out a lot of interesting and downright inspiring anecdotes about his life and his history with art in general. I also got some nice information about some cool stuff he's been doing in Baltimore recently, so stay tuned for that! 

Initially I had thought that I would gather at least 8 interviews, each being no more than 5-10 minutes each, but talking to Professor Roche made me realize that these interviews are longer and more in depth than I could have expected, so if I can get at least 4 interviews of double the length of my initial plan, then I think that'll encapsulate more of the feeling I was going for.

That said, I need to actually interview more people, which has been my only roadblock thus far in the process. 

In the coming weeks, I'll share with you guys my logo design, and some sample audio clips, and maybe even some links to watch, I mean, hear the episodes on. I'm thinking that I'll post them on Spotify first, and see if I can also post them on Apple Podcasts or Youtube. 

So, come with me on this podcasting journey, one that'll be sure to have some twists, and possibly even a few turns along the way. I'm excited to see where this project takes me, and thank you for joining me! 

And, once again, if any of you reading this know of someone that'd like to have a chat with me and fit the bill, then please don't hesitate to shoot me an email at: [email protected]

-Katherine Paul 

Solving Design Troubles for Live-Action Adaptations (Katie)

Two live-action movies of beloved Nintendo franchises are hitting the big screens soon. But their receptions are extremely different—especially when it comes to the visual adaptation of everyone’s favorite characters to a cinematic universe. Fans have been so vehemently and vocally repulsed by Sonic’s live action design that the director for the live-action Sonic movie has promised to redesign Sonic before the full movie arrives in theatres…but everyone loves the cute and realistic designs of Pokémon in Detective Pikachu.

When it comes to unrealistic, cartoonish character designs and how they’re brought to VFX-life, what did Sonic do wrong that Detective Pikachu did right?

In short, the answer lies in how much the moviemakers decided to stay loyal to the original designs. It seems like a simple answer, but there’s more to it than meets the eye.

Both the Sonic and Pokémon franchises have cartoony, over-the-top, imaginative designs for their characters. Sonic himself is an unrealistically-proportioned, bright blue “hedgehog” with human-skin-colored belly and limbs: Sonic the Hedgehog. Pikachu, and other Pokémon, appear as wildly fantastic reinterpretations of Earth animals; Pikachu is a large, yellow-and-brown “mouse” with electric powers and plenty of cute to go around: Pikachu. Most importantly, both Sonic and Pikachu’s character designs—along with their in-game cohort—are based on real-life animals.

This is important because Sonic’s designers and Detective Pikachu’s designers took different paths after acknowledging that fact.

Sonic’s original design has its strengths in his big eyes, large head (especially the spikes on the back of his head), and sizeable extremities, even if the rest of him is small, thin, or otherwise unrealistic in being an actual hedgehog’s body. Where the Sonic live-action movie turns horrifying is in Sonic’s completely revamped features. Presumably, it is some desperate attempt to make him more realistic than he was ever intended to be, and the results have not favored the live-action movie.

The live-action Sonic has tiny eyes, a properly, proportionally-sized body, and small head spikes. He has the appearance of not quite a hedgehog—because he’s standing on two feet and human-kid-sized—but he also has a long way to go before being Sonic. The result is a hybrid that looks a tad horrifying, as live-action Sonic has none of the trademark Sonic traits, yet he’s not completely a hedgehog. It was so ugly that, after the trailer was released and the horrified reactions came flooding in, the director eventually had to release a statement that they would redesign Sonic entirely.

In Detective Pikachu’s case, the unrealistic traits of every Pokémon design were capitalized upon by designers. Instead of making Pikachu a compromise between a real mouse and the original Pikachu’s design, renders had Pikachu looking like a fluffy, real-life version of the original look for Pikachu—despite the fact that those proportions could never exist in any actual mouse. This resulted in some very ridiculous, fun looks for certain Pokémon, such as Ludicolo or and Psyduck, but these looks were never disloyal. Big, weird eyes? Huge duck bills and mouths? Who cares, so long as it still looks like the actual Pokémon? The characters on-screen genuinely look like live-action replicas of the cartoon or game designs themselves, and it’s worked in Detective Pikachu’s favor. After all, how can you say no to a creature as cute as Pikachu?

The (Sort of) Homestretch (Vanessa)

The last five weeks of my life have been amongst the most exhausting of my college career. However, today, the day that episode one of HOUSE will premiere alongside Studio North's two other 2018-2019 projects (which I HIGHLY recommend looking into, as they are both stellar projects) makes me realize that those five weeks are also amongst the most rewarding.

April for film majors (and from what I understand a lot of humanities majors...and other majors...let's just go with everyone) is brutal. If you are on the production track, like I am, you are either (1) helping on someone's set, (2) working on your own set, (3) editing a project, or (4) some combination of the previous three at the same time. In addition to studying for exams, writing papers, preparing for projects, balancing your other commitments, and trying to not completely self-destruct by eating and sleeping. Because I seem to like to make my life difficult, I found myself at 4 quite frequently the past few weeks. My priority, however, has been finishing up episode one (which takes viewers to the Chosen Few DJs Reunion Picnic in Chicago) for the premiere.

It has been a time of self-discovery, technical learning, pure frustration, and pure elation. And if the above words don't accurately describe editing, I don't know what does.

To start, I have learned a great deal about myself in this five-week span: from an ability to go through a whole pack of gum in two days just to give the rest of my body something to do while clicking away in Premiere, to an extreme sense of protectiveness over my project and its subjects, to the realization that to best avoid skipping meals while editing for 6 to 12+ hours at a time, one should always pack a couple of sandwiches just in case. This is all to say editing is physically and mentally draining. You are sitting, staring at a screen for hours at a time. Fun fact: the human body is not designed to sit and stare at a screen for hours at a time. I was confused the first few times I stayed at the JHU-MICA Film Center from noon to midnight as to why I would wake up and my back would tingle, my wrists would ache, and my eyes felt strained. Alas, I am not built for editing. But by day three of long editing sessions, I learned the key is really just having good posture. So I would count that as one of the things I learned as well.

As far as the protectiveness over my project goes, working on it for longer stretches of time gave me a deeper sense of attachment to it. Editing, for HOUSE, is an exercise in telling one story through many voices. I wanted to make those voices shine as best as they could. Which ties into the technical learning that occurred throughout the process of editing for a more intense amount of time than I had before.

When you first offload your footage from a camera after shooting, I think your immediate reaction, as a director, is probably "does it look good" and "does it sound ok". During editing, what looks "good" becomes "how do I make this look even better" and what sounds "ok" becomes "oh my god all the sound levels are different and anyone watching is going to know this IMMEDIATELY after the first cut between interviews." Every time I edit a project, I inevitably end up on a youtube page, internet forum, or at the mercy of my more skilled and knowledgeable film friends to figure out how to do something that ends up being incredibly easy. For the Chicago episode, this manifested in the form of three youtube videos on the "maintain power" audio transition tool in Premiere, several videos on color correction that I ended up learning a great deal from despite ultimately leaving the footage to be shown at the Studio North premiere ungraded (another fun fact: color grading images shrouded in smoke is not a simple task), and at least one forum on maintaining consistent audio levels throughout a video.

Overall, a good, albeit sometimes challenging process of absorbing and applying information, sometimes experiencing the joy in actually following the directions and ending up with a decent product, other times ending in looking up another video. Editing, like any skill, is larely about having the patience to continue learning and applying what you learn to practice. This holds true for the Chicago episode. At times it was incredibly frustrating not knowing how to do something you just KNOW can't be that hard to do. But the excitement in finding a solution, whether in terms of restructuring the sequence of your edits or by having an "ah ha!" moment when you finally DO find a solution is exciting.

Which leads me to the final two words: frustration and elation. One of my closest friends, who actually is pursuing a career as a professional editor and doing a spectacular job of doing so, once told me that with filmmaking, your lows are exceptionally low, but your highs are exceptionally low.

Editing is all about attention to detail. And not getting one detail to be as precise as you want can be incredibly frustrating. Along with the protectiveness over a project mentioned earlier comes the desire to achieve perfection. Which is at times, nearly impossible. But when a solution is found, or someone laughs at a joke you set up, or you finally just get something to WORK, it is immensely satisfying to craft a story out of raw material and see it succeed in its mission.

The Studio North premiere induces a weird mixture of excitement and anxiety for me. On one hand, I get to share this wonderful thing with people. On the other hand, this "thing" that I have been with since before it was even shot will soon be exposed to a world of opinions and grievances. Are people going to judge my work? Are people going to judge me because of my work? The long nights of adjusting audio levels, of trying to time a cut perfectly with a bit of music, of hoping and praying that I can convey how much fun house music is and how truly wonderful its fanbase is will be up to whoever is watching it. And hopefully, though an audience might not see those tiny adjustments and won't necessarily understand the long nights that went into creating, they'll feel the energy, unity, and spirituality that I hope the editing of the Chicago episode can appropriately convey.

We'll just have to see. 

Finding and Searching for Inspiration During Post-Production (Vanessa)

At the beginning of 2019 (which was also around the time I started to go through my footage for HOUSE), I was asked to consider two questions. The first: what movies have you enjoyed recently? The second: why did you enjoy them?

A significant amount of work goes into filmmaking of all kinds. From casting, to location scouting, pre-production, scheduling, and everything in between, the process of making a film, no matter the size, is consuming. However, in the midst of all the stress of figuring out the logistics of making and editing a film is the desire to make the darn thing in the first place. The two questions I was asked encouraged me to consider both where my own passion for filmmaking comes from and also what it is about the films of others that inspires me. In essence, I am trying to do more to think not only about where I want to go in terms of the vision of HOUSE but also where my interest in documentary filmmaking comes from.

For this post, I would like to take a step back from talking about editing itself and focus on two documentaries that I have looked to for guidance while editing HOUSE when in need of guidance for how editing works for documentary filmmaking.

The first of these three documentaries is John Heyn and Jeff Krulik’s 17-minute short Heavy Metal Parking Lot. Shot in the parking lot of a 1986 Judas Priest concert, Heyn and Krulik interview fans stimulated by raw excitement, a love of heavy metal, and, of course, alcohol and drugs. NPR did a review of Heavy Metal Parking Lot in 2016 during the week of the film’s 30^th anniversary. It features an interview from Laura Schnitker, an ethnomusicologist (basically someone who studies the intersection of music and culture) and an acting curator at University of Maryland who notes “for anyone who wants to understand what a heavy metal crowd looked like when heavy metal was at its peak popularity in the 1980s, this is a perfect document of that point in musical history…it’s just a great snapshot of fandom”.

Heavy Metal Parking Lot is striking to me because of how simple it is both in conception and in execution, but also so rich in terms of its honest depiction of a particular group of people simply existing in a particular cultural moment. The interviews are cut together so that different people ultimately end up answering the same questions, but in a way that depicts just how excited the fans are to be there. There are moments that are undeniably hilarious: teenagers screaming out random nonsense and proclaiming their love for Judas Priest, an event worker from the Caribbean who talks about how he’s never seen such craziness at home, and plenty of other metal-heads truly just enjoying the moment.

Heavy Metal Parking Lot, to me is an inspiration because it is honest. In the NPR interview, Krulik notes “neither one of us ever set out to do that [make fun of the fans]. I mean, there is manipulation involved: You’re editing it, you’re getting right to the most entertaining content. And that was our agenda, to make an entertaining 15-minute video”. Personally, I think that Heavy Metal Parking Lot lives up to this assertion. Yes, it is funny. But instead of focusing on the fact that, yes, the debauchery of the day makes it so fun to watch, it’s goal ultimately proves to be showing just how much fun it is to be a fan. This has been something I’ve grappled with while editing HOUSE: how do you create an honest depiction of something without necessarily making fun of it?

I look to Heavy Metal Parking Lot for the answer, which is ultimately to select footage the preserves the spirit of community and fun that is central to the house music community. One particular moment that I’ve enjoyed editing is a series of clips featuring interviewees responding to the prompt “describe house music in a few words”. The intrigued responses are just as fun and telling as the overly enthusiastic ones, and lives up to the idea of creating something that is both entertaining, and honest.  

The second documentary that has been on my mind a lot and a interesting point of reference for me as an editor has been this year’s Oscar winner Free Solo, which chronicles the journey of free solo rock climber Alex Honnold. I’ll admit, I was not entirely sure of my own feelings about Free Solo when I first saw it. It’s a spectacularly well shot documentary (the landscapes in particular are stunning) but the main point of curiosity for me while watching Free Solo is just how odd it is to explore the world of Alex Honnold. Alex is not passionate about much in his life. Even his girlfriend, who Is featured prominently throughout it, seems annoyed at just how little Alex seems to care about life. His friends constantly remind viewers of how absolutely terrible it feels to be filming something that ultimately could be Alex’s death, which is his scaling of Yosemite’s El Captain without harnesses or ropes. Alex is borderline unlikable.

However, what is interesting about Free Solo is how it chooses to depict just how deeply Alex loves free soloing. Rock climbing is more than his passion, but truly the crux of his existence. The editing takes care in depicting the complexities of its characters, cleverly juxtaposing images of Alex processing his mission with the beauty of the scenery, which doesn’t necessarily make you want to go climbing, but instead communicates the sense of inspiration one can derive from just how incredibly dedicated this man is to his task. Climbing is Alex’s life. He is less in love with the mountains as he is a part of them.

For me, Free Solo has been helpful with the process of editing house by encouraging me to think about boundaries. Free Solo is really two stories: Alex’s and Jimmy Chin’s (the director). Jimmy is a professional climber and mountaineer and at times Free Solo balances Alex’s narrative of climbing the mountain without equipment with Jimmy (and his crew’s) narrative of climbing the mountain with Alex and with film equipment. It works on two levels, depicting Alex’s grappling with undertaking a task that truly might kill him and Jimmy’s grappling with what it means to film something that is so blatantly stupid yet so fascinating. And what it would mean to film the death of his friend, in the case that Alex didn’t make it.

Editing is about decision-making, and both Heavy Metal Parking Lot and Free Solo make interesting choices that inform the overall narratives that both documentaries depict. At the heart of both documentaries is the notion of passion and of what it means to love a thing or an action as opposed to a physical person. They are vastly different, but accomplish their goals in choosing to sequence different events to construct a larger story as opposed to just sticking random images together. The footage in both is thoughtful, allowing the story of their subjects to emerge naturally. For me, this gets at the core of what I want HOUSE to be: a depiction of the excitement of experiencing something that you truly love. And hopefully, through careful and mindful editing, that feeling will emerge.

What Is Editing and How Do You Edit (10 Hours of Footage Edition) (Vanessa)

In my last post, I talked a lot about the difference between process and processing as it relates to editing. This week, I would like to circle back to that, but now with a focus on process and what editing is.

One of the earliest things I remember learning as a film major was about Sergei Eisenstein and the development of Soviet montage theory. Montage refers to the process of film editing in which a series of shots are edited into a sequence. Montage theory goes on to develop the idea that connecting a series of images has the power to convey different thematic and emotional messages about what an audience is seeing on screen depending on how the editor chooses to sequence them. The common example is that if you cut from an actors face to an image of a bowl of soup, the audience will perceive hunger as the emotion the sequence is trying convey. Which differs from if you cut from an actors face to an image of a woman lying down in a nightgown, conveying a different emotion or concept, such as lust.

What I find so fascinating about editing is just how underappreciated it is, yet how integral it is to how people understand the “language” of movies. Taking a film class was the first time that I really thought about the fact that movies are sculpted in every sense of the word: from how they are created on paper through screenwriting, to the choices made by the director and cast, to how a cinematographer decides to shoot a certain scene, to the decisions made by an editor when piecing everything together to form a movie.

Editing a documentary web series has challenged my own understanding and appreciation for editors because of how the process of building the story really comes from fragments of unscripted material. For HOUSE this is fun (and a bit daunting, if you couldn’t tell from my previous post) because there is a lot to work with. There are different ways to tell the story I want to tell from the footage I have in part because there IS so much footage to begin with. It’s exciting to come across a certain moment in an interview and think “this would be GREAT coupled alongside this other interview!” It’s similar to the feeling of putting together a large puzzle and the exhilaration of when you start to figure out which pieces go where. You have the side pieces and the corner pieces together (or in my case, interviews that you know can be used to frame the larger story you want the final product to convey) and then from there, it’s a long series of trying to push pieces into certain spots and figuring out what does and does not work.

Transcribing my interviews was akin to flipping all the pieces over to the correct side. It’s still a mess to look at, but at least you sort of have a sense of knowing what you are looking at.

Examples from my transcript and transcript "code" of how I categorized parts of interviews

The next part for me was figuring out how to organize the pieces into categories to make the “pushing pieces into certain spots and figuring out what does and does not work part” a little bit easier. I broke my footage into separate sequences in Premiere categorized by what “type” of footage it was and what type of content was within the footage. For the Chicago episode, were people talking about their memories of growing up and listening to house music? Or were they describing the feeling of house music in a certain part of the interview, but not in others? Was one clip particularly rich in footage that could be used as b-roll? Or sometimes, was the footage even usable at all?

The process of documentary filmmaking for me has been so much about asking questions and seeing how people respond to them. And the editing portion of the project has been no different. Another great advantage I have found in transcribing all of my interviews has been that it has allowed me to see what questions I can group together while editing different interviews together. I’ve done more work as a videographer prior to really trying to stick my hands in documentary and narrative filmmaking, which has benefited me as an editor in the sense that one thing I tried to keep in mind while Giovanna and I shot footage was how to incorporate a doctrine of “shoot for the edit” in the midst of shooting for the answers to questions I was asking of interviewees.

Shooting for the edit more or less means keeping in mind that at the end of the day, no matter how great something looks, you still have to give your editor material to work with that can allow your footage to connect seamlessly. In short, it means getting a lot of coverage on everything. It’s one thing to have a shot of someone on the phone and a shot of them hanging up after their conversation ends. It’s another thing to have a shot of a phone sitting on a table, getting the sound of the phone ringing, in addition to having shots of the person on the phone and the person hanging up. It gives you more room to work with in terms of transitioning from one shot with no phone at all to another shot entirely about a conversation on a phone, and it makes a world of a difference to edit.

HOUSE, as I’ve stated before, has been a great learning experience. Are there moments where I wish I had more coverage of an object or of a person? Most definitely.  But there are also moments in watching the footage where I can see my own growth; in the way I ask questions, the type of questions I ask, and in the understanding between Giovanna and me about what we needed to capture.  The later material is more manageable than the earlier material. It is rewarding to see my own development from the first day of the shoot to the last​.

Last semester I thought I could just jump in with editing by simply looking through my footage and working from there. This semester has been a lot about organizing and making my footage “readable” for myself as an editor. In addition to understanding how editing works for documentary versus how it works for narrative. I’m still moving along, but I think the difference is that now, I have a sense of where I want to go, in part because I’m getting better at understanding how to piece my footage together and because I have worked at figuring out how to read my own handwriting, or in the case of HOUSE, reading my own footage and piecing together the questions I asked in interviews to formulate answers about house music and the house music community.

Finding One's Voice in Cinematographic Practice: The Work and Style of Bradford Young (Mireille)

Although Bradford Young has been the cinematographer for many films, including Selma (2014), A Most Violent Year (2014), Pawn Sacrifice (2015), and Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018), his photographic style, albeit subtle at times, is recognizable in each of his works. Young gained much notoriety after being nominated for an Academy Award for Best Cinematography for his work on Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival (2016). In Arrival, but also notably in Pawn Sacrifice and arguably his other films, Young’s cinematographic practice is revealed through his choice of color palette and lighting, which include a variety of lighter greys and muted low contrast natural pastel colors that add a slightly somber, but pensive tone to his films. That being said, there are moments in the two films when Young introduces shades of fuchsia and lighter pinks especially during moments of heightened emotion or narrative climax. He uses this interchange of color contrast to take the viewer through a moment of impending change or realization. For example, at one point in Arrival one of the main characters suddenly realizes that her future may be about to change. At that moment of understanding, Young introduces the different color palette, but then quickly returns to the more subdued coloration that sets the undercurrent in the film. Even in Pariah (2011), in which Young uses a dramatically more vibrant color palette primarily saturated with neon reds and blues, he inserts subtle pinks in the walls and curtains of the bedroom of the two primary characters during their moments of intimacy and during their discussions that center on the nature of their respective sexualities.

Young uses not only color, but lighting to unveil emotion or give voice to the inner life of the characters on the screen. Young primarily incorporates natural light sources not only for lighting a scene, but also when highlighting and illuminating specific characters. The choice of natural light allows for shadowing in his films, as well as definition of silhouettes. The presence of obscured personas in a more darkened setting is especially evident in Selma and Ain’t Them Body Saints (2013). In these films, Young incorporates extreme close ups of the expressive visages of the characters after they have been previously masked in shadow. The natural lighting authentically captures the features of a person’s face, allowing the revelation of the raw emotion as it is played out on it.  

A major inspiration behind Young’s filmic composition is artist and photographer Roy DeCarava. DeCarava’s images also incorporate the use of shadow and silhouetting of personas, along with oppressive and strict geometry within the mise-en-scène of the frame. Young has additionally implemented these techniques and structured of geometry, most notably in the opening sequence of Arrival. The film begins in complete darkness and shadow, followed by the camera slowly tilting down to a large window divided by harsh vertical lines, tinted in muted blacks, greys, and blues. This shot then transitions to a tight close up shot of one of the main characters, filmed solely in natural light.

Young’s cinematographic language and choices are true to his family history, culture, and heritage. When discussing his work, he stresses that for him it is crucial to keep in mind the concept of visual grammar and visual language. Young gives equal if not greater import to visual language relative to the narrative arc of a film. By not paying close attention to the visual language, Young argues that one runs the risk of disregarding visual intricacies and details present within the filmic frame which contribute to a story. Furthermore, when conceptualizing a film, or any form of artwork, Young insists that maintaining one’s own personal language and developing a visual acumen and competency is not only pertinent but critical. In particular he emphasizes that optics, color science, and historical and personal content are key to the incorporation of visual language and grammar in cinematography and film work.

Bradford Young has stated and reminds us that “It is crucial to embed your DNA in your work. Don’t let imagination die, and represent yourself in cinematography.” Young stresses that regardless of the type of film, a cinematographer must be cognizant of their practice and style and these should be apparent in all of their films. Apart from establishing a style, it is more a question of freeing oneself from the notion of self and connecting your work to personal experiences.  As he puts it, “you [should] strive to become one with your body of work, and be able to divorce yourself from other [elements] that may distract you from your style.”

Over the week of February 18^th, Bradford Young visited the JHU Film and Media Studies Program and offered not only an artist talk hosted by the SNF Parkway Theater, but taught a three day workshop to a group of FMS students about his film practice and techniques in cinematography.

On Baking and Documentary Editing: A Lot of Dough (Vanessa)

In trying to prepare for this post, I looked up quotes from two editors who have produced numerous works I admire: Dede Allen (who edited Bonnie and Clyde, Dog Day Afternoon, The Breakfast Club, The Wiz, and more) and Thelma Schoonmaker (frequent collaborator with Martin Scorsese and known for her work on movies such as Raging Bull, Goodfellas and The King of Comedy). I came across two quotes from Thelma that I found particularly relevant in describing my own path while editing HOUSE and that I think are useful for understanding the two parts of this post: processing and process.

First, processing:

“It’s hard for people to understand editing, I think. It’s absolutely like sculpture. You get a big lump of clay and you have to form it – this raw, unedited, very long footage.”

The first few times I started truly analyzing the footage from Chicago, Detroit, and Baltimore, I was both amazed and overwhelmed. From Chicago alone, there is nearly five hours worth of footage. From Detroit, around two hours. And from Baltimore, an hour.

This, in many ways, is great. The interviews are fantastic, the footage looks great, the sound came out better than expected (especially in Chicago, given that we shot at what was essentially a picnic/family reunion/music festival), and overall, I like to think that the content of the interviews is insightful both about house music as a genre and as a community.

The flipside, however, is that I immediately realized that no matter how much great footage there is, I am aiming for three episodes (one for each city) lasting 5 to 7 minutes in length. The only analogy I can really think of to accurately illustrate how daunting doing so can be is inspired by the above quote, but applied to making a bunch of dough for bread. Imagine you prepare 100 pounds of dough for your favorite type of bread. This is your first time making this type of bread by scratch. You planned what you wanted to make, maybe even craved this one type of bread for a few months, got together a grocery list to make sure you had everything you needed, kneaded the dough for hours until your arms got sore, realized maybe you didn’t put in as much of one ingredient as you did another (or thought you put in too much of one ingredient versus another), finally got the dough to come out (maybe a bit lumpy in some parts, but salvageable), and then you realize…your oven does not fit all 100 pounds of dough. It doesn’t even fit 10 pounds of dough. Maybe, it fits five.

If you’re like me, you still like that you have a lot of bread dough. You are a little bit sad you cannot use all the dough at once but you can use different parts of the dough to make another loaf if the first one does not quite turn out as expected. However, you are now a little bit anxious about which bits of the dough to use to make the best possible loaf of (hopefully) delicious bread once the dough is cooked.

My first few attempts at trying to figure out what would make the best “loaf” were absolutely horrendous. Frankly, I was too attached to everything which made me fear that every single piece of footage that I thought would work in one place could easily be replaced with something better. I was frustrated with myself and with the feeling of uncertainty I got every time I even looked at the footage.

Disclaimer, if you have not already noticed: editing is hard for me. It takes me a while to get into the “flow”, so to speak, of what I am actually doing, which is sitting down and trying and retrying things while also keeping in mind a bigger goal of what the end product will look like, who the “characters” are and how to develop them, and also allowing yourself enough room to simply let yourself and your work breathe. And also remembering to trust yourself. I can honestly say that for the first few months of “editing” that I did (which was more or less me opening Premiere, staring at my footage, watching it, trying to write down what threads I could pull from interviews, and getting frustrated that I felt like I didn’t know what I was doing and that I didn’t even know what I wanted to do in terms of putting everything together) was difficult. I’m someone who studies in one spot for an hour and then has to move to a different room in order to make sure I don’t lose focus. And I could barely get myself to look at one minute portions of a larger, several hour project without worrying about all 100 pounds of “dough” instead of maybe an ounce.

But again, HOUSE has been and continues to be a learning process for me. Which is where the second quote comes in and how I started to understand process being just as crucial as processing:

“Editing is a lot about patience and discipline and just banging away at something, turning off the machine and going home at night because you’re frustrated and depressed, and then coming back in the morning to try again.”

I did not figure this out very quickly. But when I did, it helped me to understand that editing is as much about the process of editing as it is about processing what you are editing. And I only really figured this out once I stepped back for a moment from what I was doing and came up with a new way to work through editing as a process, in a way that would work for me without sacrificing the larger vision of HOUSE.

More or less, I worked through my footage as a writer, something I am more familiar with. I carefully transcribed every interview, making note of what was and was not working for me in a given interview and what information was gained from different interviews that could benefit the themes I think the footage as whole conveys. While also keeping in mind that HOUSE isn’t just a project that I want to convey my own feelings about a genre, but the feelings of a community about something that many folks think brings people together.

Forty-five pages of interviews for one city later, I felt relieved. I could physically see what I was doing and understand what things helped this story and what things did not. And so, I started to get to work editing and breathing again. The first lump of dough wasn’t ready for the oven, but at least I wasn’t just staring at it sitting on the counter-top anymore.

Lights, Camera, Logistics (Vanessa)

Filmmaking (or documentary web series-making in the case of HOUSE) is a lot about looking for answers. How do you get from point A to point B with all the equipment? Who do you cast? Who will be part of the crew?

As the reality for creating a documentary web series shot in three different cities set in, some of those answers became relatively simple. “However you can (within the means of the budget)” and “whoever is willing to do so” quickly became the answers to a lot of questions starting with “how” and “who”.

The Chicago and Detroit episodes of HOUSE were shot over the course of six days: four days in Chicago, two days in Detroit. The crew (for these two episodes) consisted of the following: me, my friend and fellow film major Giovanna (HOUSE's fantastic cinematographer), my brother, my dad, and my mom.  My dad and brother accompanied Giovanna and me to Chicago and my mom and brother accompanied us to Detroit. So, for the summer at least, the crew was truly “whoever is willing to do so”.

Figuring out who was going to do what roles was an adventure in and of itself. Giovanna graciously volunteered to be director of photography, which was fantastic. I told myself I could direct, produce, and do sound mixing, which by some miracle sort of worked out, at least for a few days. In short, having an actual (and excellent!) crew in Baltimore gave me a completely new sense of appreciation for actually having enough people to do everything—that way you can avoid simultaneously asking interviewees questions, mixing sound, holding a boom pole, nervously watching the battery levels on the sound recording device die, communicating with your DP, and telling the part of your brain that keeps asking “WHAT ARE YOU EVEN DOING?” to quiet down all at the same time.

My brother helping me with the slate.

Casting was also an adventure, seeing as I had no idea how casting for a documentary worked prior to starting to work on HOUSE. The same “whoever is willing to do so” philosophy applied: phone calls, emails, and Facebook messages were sent to friends, family friends, friends of family friends, and friends of friends of family friends. Thus, the cast (aside from the tons of friendly strangers willing to talk to Giovanna and me at the Chosen Few Picnic) was created. Honestly, one of my favorite things about HOUSE and about all of the experiences I have had with filmmaking, and especially documentary filmmaking is all the kind strangers you meet along the way.

Somehow, it all worked out. And looking back, I couldn’t be prouder (and slightly in awe) that it did. Pre-production was, without a doubt, hard. I know I must have given the production chair for Studio North (JHU’s student run production company from which I received the grant to make HOUSE) at least one near heart-attack when we we’re working through how we were going to stretch the budget enough to get through all three cities.

Car travel between cities: 2,540 miles. Not including driving within/around the cities and Giovanna’s flight to Chicago, which was about another 790 miles.

 

As you can probably tell, shooting the Baltimore episode in the fall was a completely different game altogether: substantially less driving (all of the equipment for Chicago and Detroit came from Baltimore because that's where the JHU-MICA Film Center is located, which provides access to equipment rentals for JHU students), larger crew (shout out once again!), and cooler temperatures. Overall, still a great time with great people.

In short: the logistics of HOUSE felt a little on the wild side at times, but I couldn't be happier with the experience. One of my favorite things about HOUSE is that it has been such a learning experience from the very beginning, and getting to see how it all has started to come together throughout post-production (post about post coming soon!) is ridiculously exciting. 

Some more house music until the next post:

Like This, Chip E. Feat. K. Joy

You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real), Byron Stingily

Deep Inside, Hardrive

 

What is HOUSE (and house music)? (Vanessa)

This web series would not be possible without my parents, who have always raised me and my siblings to love and respect music both as solace and as art.

My dad is a Navy man, which resulted in me living in eight states and attending a combined total of seven elementary, middle, and high schools before I attended college. The things that were stable in my childhood as a result: family road trips and discussions about music, a deep love for my parents and siblings, and a fascination with how people interact with the world around them.

HOUSE, in particular, comes from the stories of my dad. My parents attended undergrad and met at the University of Illinois at Chicago during the late 80s and early 90s. The Chicago house music scene has its roots in the early and mid-80s as radio personalities and club DJs mixed elements of disco, electro-pop, synthesizers and drum machines (such as the Roland TR-808, the Korg Poly-61 synthesizer, and the Roland TB-303 bass synthesizer) and eventually hip-hop to create new sounds that were danceable and innovative. Thus, came the emergence of house music. By the time my parents would arrive in Chicago, house music had expanded to an international audience, included several sub-genres, and became a unique community with a plethora of stories about who exactly made up various house music scenes.

Never one to shy from a good story, my dad would both play house music and tell me stories of what it was like to witness the house scene as a young person living in Chicago during the late-80s. And from that, the inspiration for HOUSE was born as I wondered “what must it have been like to be immersed in something that sounds so vibrant?” and “what must have it felt like to create something like house music?”

If you are a beginner to the world of house music or even to the realm of film production (especially documentary film production), there are three things that I think are important to know for a better grasp on both of these worlds: (1) house music and film production are all about community and being supported by a community, (2) house music and film production are all about passion (for others, music, movies, art, etc.), and (3) house music and film production are all about expression.

Film and house music are both blends of other mediums from which a certain “language” has emerged. At least in my experience, the language of video media (film especially) and of house music is reliant on emotion and experience. With this in mind, I like to think that a documentary web-series about house music, and documentary storytelling of all kinds, is some sort of weird blend of the subjective and objective. You capture someone’s truth while acknowledging that yes, “truth” itself is sometimes informed by emotion, experience, and expression. What is a good story, really, aside from someone communicating what it means to embody an identity, be part of a community, or simply exist as someone experiencing the strangeness that is life?

HOUSE at its simplest, is a story of community and connection within the house music fan bases in Chicago, Detroit, and Baltimore, told through the voices of fans and creators alike. It goes through all three cities and features interviews with those who consider themselves “house heads” or part of the house music community. HOUSE explores how a genre of music can be a sound and a feeling.

Just as importantly, HOUSE’s production is also a story of community and connection between people who love storytelling. Those people have ranged from my dad and my professors who have supported me and helped me create this project (shout outs especially to Meredith Ward, Matt Porterfield, and Lawrence Jackson!!!) to my friends and fellow students who have been a part of the production team, individuals who have been interviewed (and people who have offered tremendous amounts of help in pursuing people to interview), and everyone else who got roped into this ride. One of my friends (another film major) and I constantly joke about how any sort of film/tv/web-series/visual media effort is really just a massive group project. BECAUSE IT IS! And hopefully, to anyone reading this, you’ll get to see that through this blog!

Picture from Chosen Few Picnic and Festival, July 2018 (where we shot part of the Chicago episode!)

Next time: “Casting" a Documentary, Producing and Logistics, and Directing

Until then, some house music:

In The Beginning (There Was Jack)

Move Your Body

Hot Stuff (Ralphi Rosario And Erick Ibiza 2018 Rework)

 

What Do You Do When You Finish Filming? (Ceci)

That’s a wrap! Filming has officially concluded. To say that a weight was lifted off my shoulders is an understatement. Everything was finally over. It was time to rest easy. We’re done!

Well. Not exactly. We’re almost done.

A film isn’t over after shooting wraps. It seems kind of counter-intuitive, but there’s a lot of work that needs to get done after filming ends. The bulk of this? Editing.

Editing is an entirely different skill than filming. Directors, creative agencies, corporations, and organizations all hire editors to oversee videos, movies, shorts, and other creative content. I worked in editing over the summer and learned how to use specific editing software programs such as Premiere and After Effects. There’s a whole new world that lies in editing, and it’s an integral part to finishing a film.

(See above a screengrab from the editing process. Mireille has been doing an awesome job with color grading!)

In simplest forms, there’s two major aspects in editing: the picture and the sound. Mireille is overseeing the picture cut, which is an enormous undertaking. But sound?  Sound requires a unique specialization. When the sound in a film is good, you don’t notice it. On the flip side, when the sound in the film is bad, it’s the only thing you notice.  Knowing this, I wanted someone who knew sound well to help me with my project. I asked around to see if any professors could recommend someone to me. After searching around, I got put in touch with a sound engineer from MICA who will be overseeing the audio aspects of the project.

After the sound editing is over, the film will be completely done. That means we’re done! Well. Not exactly. We’re almost done. Okay, okay, what could I possibly need to do now?

After all of the editing is done, I’m going to want my film to be seen. After all, that’s the point of a film: to be seen. This means, film festivals! Applying to film festivals provides a great opportunity to get your work shown, see other projects, network, and make connections for future projects. Most importantly, it’s a great way to enter into a community of creators and get feedback on your work. It’s equal parts exciting and nerve-wracking, which is perhaps a great reflection on how this entire process has been.    

(Pictured above, the poster for the film)

After applying to film festivals, we’re done! Well. Not exactly. I’m kidding. This is actually the end! No tricks this time.

Seeing everything come together in these finals stages has been an incredible and rewarding journey. I am so proud of what I have done and am so grateful for the hard work and dedication of everyone involved. A warm thank you to everyone who’s helped or supported me. Film is truly a collaborative process and I wouldn’t be here without all the help I received from others.

And for the last time… cut! That’s a wrap on Unawakened.

As a post note, if you're interested in checking out the trailer, it's available at this link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NuHSLKAEeZLUVHheWK4C2gEWuw6yMoAD/view?usp=sharing

What You Do For Filming (Ceci)

I spent my weekend in the depths of a frat basement.

When planning for this project, I front-loaded a lot of the heavy lifting so that I had time for re-shoots. Luckily, none were needed, so for the second weekend there were only three scenes, totaling two pages. In filmic language: it was going to be an easy couple of days. However, I had left some challenges, namely, shooting in a bar.

(A shot taken from the first, successful (!!), weekend of shooting)

Bars, unfortunately, want you to pay them to use their space.  I called around to see if we could get in somewhere for free and offer screen credit, and was rejected by what felt like every establishment in Baltimore. It makes sense that they would want to be paid, but, unfortunately for me, it was too much for our budget. I sat down with Mireille to try to figure out what to do.

She grimaced and then said, “can we shoot it in a frat?”

I’ll admit, I wasn’t fond of the idea, but we didn’t have any better ones. I started contacting some of my friends in fraternities to see if I could use their basement for free. Success! The boys were going to let me convert their basement into a movie set for the morning. Wonderful news! Not so wonderful – converting the space into looking like a bar and not a frat.

Where to start? Cleaning. To my production assistants (hereby, PAs) – have I mentioned how much I appreciate you cleaning the frat for me? If I haven’t: thank you so, so, so, much. PAs have a rough job on set. They basically have to do whatever needs to get done and the work isn’t glamorous. I remember being a PA and having to run around and do laundry, get food, wrangle actors together, and the works. And, unfortunately, on my set, this meant the PAs had to gather beer cans off of the floor. Thanks guys!

PAs are incredibly important to a set and often underappreciated. They keep things running smoothly by doing the small tasks the rest of us don’t have time to do. I had wonderful PAs on set with me. They didn’t complain. They did their jobs. And we wrapped a couple of hours early. Seriously, that’s a big deal. So thank you PAs! Your presence has been noted and appreciated.

I’m not sure that I have any insightful lessons for the week, or any tips to carry home. However, I will say that filming takes dedication, it takes rearranging plans, and it takes some creativity. I never would have expected to be filming in a frat basement, but you make things work. In the end, it all looked great. So, thank you boys, for letting me use your basement. And thank you PAs, for converting the basement into a shootable location! That’s something we can all raise a glass of beer and toast to.

Life on Set (Ceci)

Unawakened is the first project that I have ever directed. Although I’m a first-time film director, I’ve been on several sets, both professional and student, and I’ve learned and grown with each one. Each one has a different environment and different way of operating, and each one is useful in different ways. On each set I learned a little more about what it meant to take on my role – whether it be a production assistant, a boom-operator, or a casting director. This set wasn’t any different. It may seem weird that you learn how to be a director when you are a director, but there’s really no other way. You often don’t know what something is like until you do it, and directing was no different. As much as I had prepared and anticipated the day that was to come, I still had no idea what I was getting myself in to.

(Seeing my name on the slate was thrilling - and made everything feel so much more real)

The first day on set was terrifying. I didn’t sleep well the night before. I was worried that my actors weren’t going to show up, that my crew wouldn’t show up, that I would be missing equipment, something would break, that all the footage would be lost - essentially that the set would fall apart under my watch. None of this happened. Thankfully. Nevertheless, the possibility of it happening kept me up at night. But even though I was terrified out of my mind, I was equal parts excited as well. This was my project, my vision, that was coming to life. And everyone on set was here to make it happen. It was given an incredible opportunity and it turned into an incredible experience.

That didn’t make the first few moments on set any less terrifying. The crew started to file in and my nerves and jitters started to wear away little by little. The actors started to file in about an hour in after that. I took a few deep breathes. I could do this, I just needed to find my footing. By the third take, I had started to find that footing. I started to get into the groove of calling “Action!” and “Cut!” at their appropriate times (there are some takes that have an awkward amount of time after the scene has ended because I forgot I had to say “Cut!” for the camera to stop rolling). But overall, I became more confident in what I was doing, and I was ready to lead this crew. After all, if I didn’t, no one else was. Talk about a pressure-free job.

(A fraction of the equipment that was stored in my apartment)

Despite it being a turbulent pre-production process, the filming process itself went quite smoothly. We finished filming early every day, and there were no major mishaps. The true testament of the weekend, though, would come when we played back the footage. There were a few tricky shots that were filmed. The most complicated? A forced super-imposed shot in which we had to time up two distinct shots. This meant: the camera couldn’t move. The lighting couldn’t change. And the actors had to time their dialogue so that the two scenes, when played over one another, lined up.

The stakes were high. We wouldn’t know if this fancy trick of a camera worked until we played back the footage. If the timing was wrong, we would have to re-film the same scene that had taken two hours to set up and film. My cameraman and DPs took the footage and played it back in Premiere, Adobe’s non-linear editing system. I waited, patiently, to see if I got the go ahead from DPs – that we could move on and that the shot had worked. I busied myself with other things – there’s always something to do on a film set. A few minutes later, Mireille walked over to me.

“It’s going to work.”

I sighed a big sigh of relief. The timing worked. The footage looked great. Everything had gone smoothly. With one weekend tackled and one to go, I felt good about where we were.

A State of Emergency (Ceci)

In my last post, I stated that the law of physics states that everything that can go wrong the week before a shoot, will go wrong. I was right, but not because I wanted to be. If I thought missing props were bad, it didn’t compare to the 44 hours beforehand.

44 hours before we were set to shoot, I got an email from my lead actress:

“This email is in regards to the Unawakened short film…. I will no longer be able to be apart of the film. I’m so so sorry for the inconvenience this has caused.”

My entire body froze. I took a shallow, panicked, breath. What could I do? What should I do? I wanted to scream. I did scream. My thoughts raced. I sat on the ground and cried for a brief moment. But I didn’t have time to wallow in self-despair. Not when I had film to film in 43 hours. I picked myself up. It was time to make a decision. The clock was ticking. I called my DPs.

“We have an emergency.”

The next twelve hours that ensued were complete and utter chaos. Out of respect for the schedule of my cast and crew, I set a 24 hour limit to figure out whether we were going to shoot that weekend or postpone the entire project. I weighed the pros and cons of both options for several hours.

Pros of delaying the shoot:

1. I’d have more time to sort this problem out
2. I could recast more thoroughly

Cons of delaying the shoot:

1. Locations have been set
2. Crew has been determined and scheduled
3. Talent (barring the lead) has been contacted and scheduled (the lead male coming from out of state)

There are a lot of moving parts that come together for a shoot, and they take a ton of planning to get them all to operate as one machine. As I started to talk through pushing the schedule back even just one week, the parts started to fall to the wayside. I would lose crew – most importantly one of my DPs. Locations would have to be re-determined. Casting and scheduling would have to be completely reorganized. I had to shoot this weekend.

I determined that I had to shoot this weekend, even though I wasn’t quite sure how that would work out. I started by going back through the people who had been interested in the project on Backstage and then started reaching out to groups within the Hopkins community.

“Hi, my name is Ceci. Due to an emergency I have to recast the lead role for my senior thesis and I think you’d be a great fit for the role. Can I talk to you about your availability for the upcoming weekends …” the cold calls started.

After three hours of sending emails, posting notices, and calling people, a text message popped up from one of my friends. “My friend reached out to me saying she was interested in your project. I think she’s a good fit. Can I give her your number?” Half an hour later I was on the phone with her. The next morning I met her for coffee.

I sat with her and explained the premise and the commitment. “Does that all sound good to you?” It wasn’t until she nodded and agreed that my whole body relaxed and I let out a sigh of relief.

I smiled. We had figured it out. The shoot would go on.

A Hectic Mess: The Final Days Before the Shoot (Ceci)

The week before shooting is, quite possibly, the most chaotic and trying span of time a director may ever undergo. It is Tuesday as I type this, four days before I start shooting, although you won’t be able to read this until after I have started (wish me luck! And for it not to rain during the scenes I have to shoot outside. The latter more important than the former).

If you had the unfortunate experience of encountering me during this time period, you probably saw me looking disheveled, lacking sleep, and probably holding an unreasonably large coffee cup in my hand (if you saw me after 2 pm, it was most definitely my second cup). If you sent me an email or a text message and you weren’t someone on the cast or crew, there’s a high chance I didn’t respond to you. Please accept my apologies. I promise I will return them.

(Pictured above is a photo of my sturdy reusable coffee cup. It has helped me through many hard times. This photo was taken at 4:30, so it is my second cup.)

There are a thousand and one things that need to be finalized before shooting can commence, and the laws of physics (as a film major, trust my expertise on this) state that absolutely everything that has been planned has to unravel within the 100 hours before shooting. My nice shooting schedule has had locations placed with “TBD????” and half the props I ordered are either not here or incorrect - see: police badge below that I ordered that came with no badge and only the clip.

On top of everything that needs to get done, there’s a much more personal anxiety: can I do this? As a director, I’m the one that people go to with questions. I’m the one that keeps the boat afloat. I’m the one that’s leading this. Although film is collaborative, this project is a reflection of me and my work, and I do very much take responsibility of its outcome – good or bad. The fear of things not working out in the way that I had planned or hoped weighs around me much stronger than any logistical fears. Sometimes it feels like just yesterday when I was a freshman and a production assistant on my first set. I don’t feel completely different from that young woman. How much have I really changed? It feels like not at all. It’s that fear that’s more immediate and pertinent: the fear that I’m not qualified enough to pull this off and it will all come crumbling down around me. As much as it may seem irrational, it’s not until you’re in the eye of the storm and navigating the boat that you truly let go of this and focus on making it through. In the week before shooting, you're not in the center. You're awaiting the impending damages, and trying to calculate exactly what to do to minimize them.  

People only really tend to notice big changes, and that’s probably why I don’t feel much different from the girl I was when I started college. Each semester I’ve become a slightly more capable, slightly more qualified person to tackle this. Each small change eventually led to a larger change, but it didn’t happen overnight and certainly did not happen without hours of training and shadowing and observing. And I’m still learning and still growing. At 21, I’ve not yet learned everything I could possibly know about film production, who knew! Yet I’m very different from the woman I was a few years ago, even if I sometimes feel as nervous as she would. But I’m removed enough that I’ve been trusted to do this. And I know I'm ready to tackle the storm. 

Spotlight: Crew (Ceci)

A wrap on casting is always a relief, but it's not anywhere close to the end of the game. With shooting now less than a month away, there's a lot that needs to get done. 

Where to start? Crew. The crew is going to be the foundation of shooting and can or break your final product. A few of my crew members have been with me from the beginning. My two Directors of Photography (hereby, DPs), and I mean this in no light terms, are the reason this project will be made. They signed on to the project at the same time I did. Actually, they helped convince me that I should make the film, so I guess you could say that they signed on earlier than I did. Finding a good DP, or in this case two, is never an easy task. With this film, I was able to not only find two competent, but also dedicated, DPs. I am extremely lucky and extremely grateful for them and the work they have put into this project. At any moment's notice I can reach them and ask them questions. We have a group chat where we schedule meetings, ask questions, and exchange pertinent information. These staple members of my crew help with the grunt of planning, especially technical planning. For example, recently, we've been trying to finalize equipment rentals. After some confusion and stress about renting out cameras, we were able to get camera equipment we need: 

DPs are known for their work behind the camera during the shooting process. However, in a smaller, independent project like this, in-person DP pre-production meetings are incredibly important. Since we are within a month of shooting, I meet with them 3-4 times a week for around an hour and a half. Lately, during these meetings we've been going over shot lists. Shot lists are possibly the most important aspects of shooting. Essentially, what happens during a shot list meeting is that I give my DPs my vision for what each scene, shot by shot, should look like. The DPs then break down the technical aspects that would go into that - what camera do we need? What's our angle going to look like? How many cameras do we want to run? What lighting do we need? We then come up with a full list of what needs to get shot and how many shots that is. This gives us a better breakdown of how long we can expect our shooting day to last. As we know, time is money in film. So an accurate and up-to-date shot list is crucial. 

Although the DPs and Director handle a fair amount of the work, they aren't the entire crew. After the Director and DP(s) have been determined, the rest of the crew needs to be filled out. A standard crew could include gaffers, for lighting, assistant camera operatives, boom and sound operators, producers, assistant directors, and production assistants. Depending on the needs of the script, the crew can range from a few people to many. For my project, I'm looking to have an intimate crew of around seven people because we're dealing with confined spaces and sensitive material. To start this process, I started asking around in my classes and asking the people already signed on to my project to give me recommendations. I then started sending a lot of emails and asking around to figure out who's available for the given shooting schedule and who has the credentials to get the shots I need. From here, I started to build a solid crew foundation. As we get closer to the shooting dates, it's exciting to see how everything fits together and is progressing.  

Each project has a different way of going about assembling crew, however it's just one step of many. In the coming weeks I'll talk about some of these other steps.  

Casting Call (Ceci)

“I accept the role! Thank you.” I let out a sigh of relief. Casting? Exhausting. Getting the final confirmation email? Priceless. Let’s back up though – casting? How did we get here? Where did this process start?

The short answer is: it depends. I wrote my own script, so this process, for me, started nearly two years ago. However, the casting process started a few months ago.  The first thing I did when I wanted to start the casting process was I created an account on the largest casting site available: Backstage. I posted casting descriptions for the two principal roles that I was looking for and then waited. And waited. And waited. I watched as people started applying for the roles (which was equal parts thrilling and terrifying). I was constantly monitoring my email and inviting people to come audition for me. On Backstage I ended up having 118 people submit for the two roles. What a decision I had in front of me!

After posting the casting descriptions and inviting people to come audition for me, I then had to set up the actual auditions. I started booking rooms and setting up times, and then deciding who was going to be in the room with me to make these decisions. I knew I needed at least one other person to run auditions with me. I had scheduled my auditions to be at the Film Centre, which is a swipe-access building. If I needed to be in the audition room, I needed someone to be downstairs to let in the people auditioning. I also wanted my Directors of Photography to have a say in the casting process. I had one of them set up the camera so that we could record the auditions and then had a casting assistant swipe people into the building and send them upstairs.

I scheduled two audition days, from 9 am – 4:30 pm. Auditions can often lend themselves to be frustrating and exhausting – people cancel their audition slots, they’re running late, they don’t show up, or they get lost. The list goes on and on. It seems like the process is pretty much doomed to not run smoothly. But you stay for the end result; at the end of the day, you’re getting your cast. And this is the reason we go through all of this.

 

By the end of the second day of casting, I looked at my crew: “we can cast this.” We had found talent. We had made final decisions. What a relief.

The process wasn’t quite over though. Now we had to send out acceptances! Less exciting - we also had to send out rejections. It’s hard to write a rejection letter to someone regardless, but it’s especially hard to write it when you know someone was excited about the opportunity. Luckily, I was still looking for extras for the shoot, so I was able to offer the ability to be on set, even if it wasn’t for a principal role.

Within 48 hours I had received confirmation from the two principal roles and the one smaller role that I was casting. After a process that lasted nearly 3 months – from posting the first casting description to receiving the last confirmation email – it was incredible to finally have a basis to start shooting.

Next up: scheduling, scheduling, scheduling.

 

Choose a Song. Choose Life. (Jaeyoung)

 Spoiler Alert: Ending of Trainspotting discussed

 In my Digital Productions class, I had very little difficulty choosing songs for my first two projects. For some strange reason, there is an ocean of very unsettling, experimental music that are available as public domain. For each film, I have spent an hour (or less) in determining my soundtrack. Since my chief goal was to unnerve and frighten my fellow classmates, I simply had to choose the song that best unnerved and frightened me.

 For my latest class project, I decided to script and shoot a short comedy. It is currently in the editing stage, and I have had some difficulty with song selection. The rules of the (song choosing) game have been more complicated for comedy than they were for my horror shorts. For instance, it is not a matter of choosing the funniest song (I can’t simply jam in my favorite Weird Al Yankovic songs and expect my film to be tonally coherent).  The song(s) I choose need to 1) not distract from the story, 2) be light-hearted, and 3) be sensitive to the feelings of the characters. As I scrolled through the edgy-music-filled library, I could not find a song satisfying all three categories.

 I may be thinking about soundtracks in the wrong way (Of course I am! I am a novice). Perhaps I should be more concerned about how the music adds to the movie, rather than how it can be inoffensively inserted. Imagine, for example, Marion’s driving scene in Psycho; without the chilling, intense orchestral piece, it would only be a minutes-long sequence of a woman staring forward and turning the wheels left and right. The music provides an urgency that the images, by themselves, might not fully provide.

 Although the soundtrack to Psycho is a classic, I think that the songs in Trainspotting engage the audience in a more complex way (also, Trainspotting would be more helpful to my current situation because I’m working in the realm of comedy). From the very beginning, with Iggy Pop’s upbeat “Lust for Life,” the audience is introduced to the happy-go-lucky lives of heroin addicts. The enthusiastic drum beats and the reckless, raspy voice of Iggy Pop already complicates the idea that “all drugs are bad, bad, bad.” The seemingly happy, carefree music is in harmony with the thesis of the “Choose life” soliloquy: “I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin’ else. The reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reason when you’ve got heroin?”

 Shortly after, when Renton tries to quit heroin using the “Lazy Boy Method,” the music hints to Renton’s eventual failure. Although “Habanera” from Carmen is, for some reason, an omnipresent piece in film, it serves a specific purpose in this film. It pokes fun at Renton’s attempt to overcome addiction, even though he appears hard-set on becoming free.

 My favorite song selection of this movie may be Underworld’s “Dark and Long (Dark Train),” which is played during Renton’s withdrawal hallucinations. The techno trance, sustained by syncopated percussions and a forward-driving, hypnotic motif, is extremely unsettling for a song that is not horror. It is as though the song is teasing Renton. The emotionless song contradicts the horrors that Renton experiences, most notably being a dead baby climbing his ceiling. The song is disorienting in its inhumanity and (if I may indulge in some bad poetry) elucidates the idea that drugs do not care about the people who abuse them. What makes the song even more thematically important is that it continues beyond the hallucination scene. It serves as the undercurrent when he goes to the hospital, plays bingo with elderly people, and visits a friend. The effects of heroin linger, even after the worst parts.

 Underworld’s “Born Slippy” may be the most popular song on the track list, and for good reason. Played during the last scenes of the movie, it is the only song in the soundtrack that communicates any semblance of sadness. The melody that undergirds the singer’s (seemingly) nonsensical lyrics carries a sense of longing and finality that later bleeds into a catchy drum beat when Renton steals the drug deal money from Begbie. It isn’t until the very end that the music resolves to its more emotional melody. Perhaps it is the sparseness of emotion in this song, as well as the sparseness of the emotion in the overall soundtrack that displaces the audience’s own emotional expectation. It seems as though the music doesn’t allow the audience to feel sad, at least in the traditional sense. Instead, it forces the audience to make sense of any perceived sadness while also making sense of the world of drug addicts.

 So.

 How can I apply these lessons learned from this highly nuanced movie soundtrack to my own film? I’m not sure. But a lot of Trainspotting has to do with subverting the audience’s expectation (in both sounds and images), so I may borrow that attribute to forge some sort of new creative avenue. This might mean perusing through more edgy, experimental music.

Last Production Diary (Hee Won)

         I received an email from John on Thursday saying that our film was here. I stared into the word “came back” for a while and shut my laptop and went to sleep. The next morning, I checked my email to see if its still there and (un)fortunately it was.

         I was waiting for John at the center, and when he entered the room I squeaked “NO!!!!!!” I don’t remember exactly why I said no but that was the only thing that popped into my mind. I was so excited to see it, but at the same time so terrified that I wished I didn’t have to see it. The box came with the film negatives and a hard drive.

    My heart was actually pounding when I opened the box. I had no idea what I was going to see. My only hope was to at least I could see something when I opened the files. Although I had experience from freaking out excessively over film during my classes last semester, I still was freaking out. Very nervous and paranoid, I messaged Sue saying that our film was here, sending her a photo of the box and its contents so that she would freak out with me.

         Sue and I weren’t ready to watch it. The whole day, I walked around campus hugging the box that contained our film. We met up in the library after her class and decided that we shouldn’t watch the film because we are not mentally prepared. Sue was tired and caught up in work and I wasn’t mentally strong enough to see it by myself. So, we promised we would see it on Sunday.

         Sunday came and we were at the DMC with the orange Lacie hard drive connected to a Mac. We opened the 45Gigabyte file labeled “JHU Hee Won Han” and stared at it for a minute. We took a deep breath, looked at each other nervously, and hit the play button.

         After 5 seconds of darkness, an image appeared on screen and we screamed “yay,” the fact that there was something on the file at all was a huge relief to us. We watched our clip with some hushed commentary for 36 minutes. When we finished, we hugged and agreed that we were really proud of what we were able to do. Some of the shots of the cherry blossoms were beautiful. All the chaos we went through to get the footage was so worth it. We watched the scenes on repeat, admiring how beautiful the cherry blossoms were. There were definitely some shots that we were not happy with because of the low light inside the house, but it wasn’t horrible. We could definitely fix some of them in post.

         After looking at our 16mm footage, we looked at the footage that we shot on digital. The train scenes, which I was most worried about were pretty decent. I was worried about the color temperature throughout the entire shoot on the train, but it looked fine. Some of the shots were really nicely lit and overall we were happy with what we had.  We went back to the clips and exclaim things like ‘hell yeah, that lighting was on point” “I love this framing so much!!” “What a great line!!” We were having so much fun seeing what we had made.

         It was a really good moment for us. Although we are far from being done since we have SO much work to do in post, we are starting the next phase of our film with good material and happy mindset. Sue and I went out for a drink to celebrate and talked about everything that went wrong during our shoot. It was nice because we could actually laugh about it now.

         I came back to my house and sat in front of my computer and thought about everything that Sue and I went through to create this film. It started off as a conversation, then became a script and now its actually a film. Because Sue and I were the only ones really invested in making this happen, we had to put so much work into it. From pre-production to production and even looking forward to post, we’ve done so much and have a lot to do. To be very honest, most of the process was difficult and stressful. So many things fell through and went wrong that I can’t even count them all. However, there were some really breathtaking moments. There were moments so great that I forgot about all of the difficulties.

         Overall, I’m just proud of myself and Sue, and I feel very fortunate that I had so much support from people around me. My crew—especially Jack Cullinane and Lydia Milano—were so amazing and I can’t thank them enough for everything they have done. John was helpful in every way possible, and my actor was simply marvelous. But most of all, I thank my co-director Sue who was with me every step along the way and kept me sane at the most insane times. I would not have the started project if were not for her, and I would not have been able to complete it without her at my side all times. I feel blessed to have been able to come this far with the help of so many great people.

         Although it sounds like I’m done, I’m really not. I have so much more to do. Our goal is to finish the film before I graduate and screen it sometime next semester. I had a lot of fun writing this production diary, it really helped me organize my thoughts, about what happened and where to go next. I hope this was interesting to read, or at least fun to read about my painful stories! This will be my last production diary, and lastly I want to thank Helena Chung for reading all of my posts before I submit and giving me the most helpful feedback. 

Production Diary #6 (Hee Won)

         I am writing this post on April 20th, two days after we finished shooting. From the 15th to 18th I experienced every spectrum emotion possible, ranging from exuberance to devastation. Although I cannot feel my shoulders from carrying so much equipment over the weekend, and I have 15 bruises across my four limbs from my carelessness in navigating the set, I still have not fully realized that I am done shooting the film. With no exaggeration, these three days were some of the most panic-inducing, stressful, hectic days of my Hopkins life. It was hard. There is no other way to put it, but I think I enjoyed it. I think.

         The chaos started on Friday, picking up equipment from three different locations: the DMC, Gilman 35, and the Film Center. Because not everything could fit in our small four seat car that we borrowed from a friend, we had to make multiple trips just to have everything in one location. After getting all the equipment sorted out, we rushed to Giant and bought all the food that we need for the three-day shoot. Then, I picked up the actors while Sue unloaded everything and delivered the car back to her friend. I ran around all of Charles Village collecting props that I reserved from various people. I walked a total of 13000 steps from 5pm to 11:59 pm. When we were done with everything, it was 12:30 am and we had to wake up at 5am to transport all the equipment to the location and start production design. 

        The first morning was the busiest time of the whole day. Sue had to  drive from Homewood to our location in Hamden many times to transport the crew and extras. I had to bring all the equipment to the set and start production design. In the midst of all that, actors started to arrive and and I had to greet them and give them instructions and answer their questions. We started shooting at 9:30am and ended at about 6pm which was 30 minutes over our planned schedule. I did not think that so many things could happen in the 9 hours of time that we had. There wasn’t anything that was extremely horrifying but there were some very stressful situations. The cat scene was almost impossible to shoot, because the cat got annoyed at everyone on set, lighting was tricky with very little daylight coming into the house, and we had some trouble with equipment and props. Because there was such low light, we ended up having to shoot some of our scenes in digital with the Canon C300. After the shoot, we sent everyone home and we stayed behind at the location until 9pm to return the house to its original state. When we prepared everything for our Sunday shoot, it was 11pm.

         Our Sunday shoot began in Penn Station at 10am. We were worried because we really hadn’t gotten the permission we needed to shoot inside the station. Because we did not want to be noticed by the Amtrak police, we went into the station with minimum crew, and acted as if we were just a student group. We managed to get the scene of our character getting in to the ticket line without being noticed but we definitely got attention from the Penn station employees when we were shooting a scene of her sitting on one of the benches inside: one of the guys at the front desk stood up with his arms crossed and gave us a stern look. We all left the station hurriedly before getting caught and finished our Penn station scene in exactly 20 minutes. After this scene, we relocated and shot multiple tracking shots of the grandmother. Because  it was almost impossible to load the dolly, we ended up using a wheel chair. It was scorching hot and the wheel chair was very jerky so it was difficult to get a good shot. We wrapped after shooting two more indoor scenes. We managed to finish around 5:30 pm and when we sent everyone home it was about 6pm. After transporting our actors, we returned the equipment and props that we didn’t need,  and planned our shoot for the final day.

         I woke up at 6am before my alarm went off because I was very nervous. We had to shoot inside Union Station and inside the MARC train which were both locations we did not get a full permission from. I was very worried also because we had to shoot all the train scenes in an hour without getting caught by the ticketing agent. I was also worried because our actor, the grandmother, told me that she was not able to get enough sleep last night. We were shooting in 4 locations from 9am to 4pm so it was going to be a tiring day for everyone but it was especially going to be tiring for her. It was indeed a very stressful day. As soon as we got off at Union Station, we started setting up the camera to film a scene of her exiting the station. 2 minutes into shooting, the security officers came to stop us. We thought that they are going to kick us out and makes us format our card, but Sue showed them an email that she exchanged with the Union Station authorities and they just told us to wait for a little. While they made us wait, I spoke to my actor in Korean and secretly kept rolling the camera. After couple of minutes, they came back to us and told us that we had to leave. Because we got what we wanted, we just packed up and left. They came back to us when we were shooting the exterior of the station but we begged them to give us 5 minutes and they did. Because everything was so rushed, I don’t know how everything looks but we did get all the shots that we planned on getting.

         After we shot the conversation scenes near the station and the non-cherry blossom scenes in the tidal basin area, we came back to the station to get on the train. We were extremely exhausted by then, because we shot everything in an hour. Our extras for the scene arrived and we got on the train. Everything felt chaotic inside the train. In the beginning, we panicked because the train car that we wanted to film in was packed with people. After 5 minutes of terror, Sue politely asked if they would willingly move to other parts of the train. Everyone was very nice and gave us the place that we wanted to shoot in. It was a busy hour of me trying to get as many takes as possible without getting caught by anyone. As I was shooting, Jack and other crew members would cue me whenever someone was coming towards me, and I would just drop the camera to a seat next to me and act as if nothing was going on. We got the last shot got 3 minutes before it was time for us to get off at Penn station. After the final shot, I high fived Sue and shouted that it was a wrap.

         We let everyone go, dropped off all of our props and equipment, sent our actors away, and we were actually done. When we were walking back to Sue’s place after everything was over, we talked about how we couldn’t believe that we are done with shooting. We had planned this film for a year and now we are done shooting it. We do have to edit it at some point but I don’t want to think about that right now.

Production Diary #5 (Hee Won)

Production diary 5

         In my last post, I talked about the disasters that surrounded our miscalculation of the cherry blossoms’ peak bloom. We needed the cherry blossoms but cherry blossoms were blooming earlier than planned. We were not ready to shoot but we went down to DC anyways thinking that we are going to figure something out when we got there. We did, but it wasn’t easy.

         Deciding whether or not we should go to DC to film cherry blossoms was not easy. We did not have any of our actors with us. In our script, Ghunja looks at the cherry blossoms, and in  our storyboard, we have a back shot of her looking at the fully bloomed cherry blossoms. As I mentioned in the previous post, we called our actor to ask if she would be available, but she could not come down on such short notice. We brainstormed what we could possibly to do to make this work. One solution we thought of was to get a body-double. We knew it was not the best idea, since the a body double would be very noticeable to the audience, with the numerous tracking shots of our actor’s back that throughout the film. However, we decided to look for someone anyway, a 5’6 female who wears size 8 shoes. After sending hundreds of Facebook messages we managed to find one person who could match. However, she was only available from 11am to 3pm which was a very narrow time window, considering we had to drive to DC, park our car, get the equipment out, film everything, and drive back.

Another big problem was that we didn’t have anyone to help us shoot. We needed at least one or two people to help us carry equipment but everyone was busy or had class. If we were to go to DC, it would be just Sue and me and we would have to be back by 4pm because we both had classes that we could not miss. Also, we could not get the digital back up camera that we wanted. Although our we are shooting on 16mm, we wanted to get some shots on digital just in case. We were thinking about using either the Black Magic or Canon C300 for the back up camera but neither of them were available for that date. We were able reserve a Canon 5D Mark II in the end, but we weren’t ecstatic because we wanted a camera that could shoot 4K.

         We could not make a decision right away because there were so many complications. We only had five hours to do everything and it seemed almost impossible. On Wednesday night, after exchanging a couple of serious texts we decided to go to DC by ourselves. We knew that things would not go smoothly but we thought that it would still be worth it. Because we could not guarantee that we would be back before 3pm, we told our body double not to come. We decided to get a lot of POV shots and B roll of the cherry blossoms. Before I went to sleep, I packed everything that I needed for the shoot in my living room and wrote down all the shots that I needed. I was tossing and turning all night and get much sleep because I was terrified.  

         As soon as I woke up the next morning, I headed to Gilman 35 to check all the equipment that I needed. I checked the cameras, batteries, tripods and anything that could possibly go wrong. Just looking at all the equipment Sue and I would have to carry made me want to cry, but I took out all the equipment one by one thinking that everything was going to be okay. We had all the equipment loaded in the car by 11:30 am and headed for DC.

         By 12pm we were very happy with the situation. The weather was great, we were on schedule and nothing was wrong with the equipment. Because everything was going so well, I started to feel uneasy. Sue told me to shut up when I told her that something would go wrong during the shoot.

         When we got to the National Mall, we realized that I was right after all. We thought that the location would not be crowded because it was 3pm on a Thursday, but we could not have been more wrong. The streets were filled with tourists and none of the parking lots had spaces. This was a huge problem because we did not have PAs to control pedestrians as we were filming and we needed couple of wide shots that looked pretty empty. On top of that, the traffic was horrible because there were so many cars and people walking on the roads. We lost about an hour just looking for parking and we were getting nervous because it was already almost 2pm when we miraculously found a place to park. We needed to shoot everything in an hour with all the equipment that we had.

  

       In the end, we got some B-roll of the cherry blossoms and got some footage from near the tidal basin area. It was very challenging and time-consuming with so many people trying to take selfies and group photos near us. It was also exhausting because we had a very heavy camera, a tripod, and equipment. It was a hassle, but we managed to get the most important scenes on film. We wanted to shoot more but we had to get back to Homewood as soon as possible and we were already late. During the shoot, we had some issues with the gate; we saw dust particles in the frame when we were shooting towards the end and could not figure out exactly where it was. We won’t find out how everything turned out until late April when we get our film is processed, so it is very frightening and thrilling at the same time.

         We left the parking lot at about 3:15pm, thinking that we will probably be 20 minutes late for class. We were wrong again. The traffic was so bad that it was 5pm when we got back to Homewood campus. We were an hour late for class.

         One most important takeaway from this hectic shoot was that you just have to be prepared for the worst situations. I have three more shooting days left, in less than 10 days, and one of them requires scenes that take place on a moving train. How exciting. (but actually not).

Production Diary #4 (Hee Won)

Production Diary #4

         One thing I’ve learned from trying to make this film is that nothing really goes according to plans.  This last couple of weeks have been one hell of a roller coaster ride for me; full of ups and downs but mostly full of downs.

         One major accomplishment for us was the successful launch of our kickstarter campaign. The week I posted my latest production diary, Sue and I, with our AC, Will, filmed a short video of us introducing our film and asking people to donate. Our goal was to get $1500. We imagined our budget to be a little over $2000 but we decided to aim low because we didn’t think we would be able to get even $1500. However, we were wrong! In three days we achieved half of our goal, $750, and in less than 2 weeks we reached our fundraising goal. Now, we have about $1600 in our account! While, of course we were happy to get money from our supporters, the best feeling came from the individual messages of support from friends and donors. One of my friends sent me a very heartfelt message (below) saying that she really supported the message of our film. We also had people we didn’t even know donate. Knowing that some people share my concern for the immigrant narratives that I am very passionate about, felt very special. It was amazing to see how much people cared about us and our project. 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1687979953/ghun-ja?ref=nav_search

         Meanwhile, we were also able to revise our storyboard and get props and ideas for production design. Over the course of the past three weeks, we workshopped our story board with our advisor, John Mann. I think this may be the final version storyboard, since our shoot is right around the corner. Sue and I also met with our production designer, Seola Lee, and brainstormed on how decorate the row house we rented for our shoot. In order to plan for this meeting, I looked up Korean dramas and movies to get an idea of what we wanted our house to look like. We made a list of props that we might need and divided it amongst ourselves so that we could start looking for and buying materials. After the meeting I went to thrift stores to look for the outfit for our grandmother when she goes out to see the cherry blossoms. After looking around about seven thrift stores, I was able find a great jacket and a pair of shoes. We still have to get clothes for our interior shoots, and we are planning to figure that out in the next week or so.

         We did get some important things done, but there were also many downs that followed. Gaffing is important because we are shooting on film, and we had a gaffer until recently he texted us saying that he can’t help because he got booked for a shoot in April.  Now, we have three weeks until our shoot and no one I know is proficient with gaffing. I messaged everyone who could possibly gaff and they were all occupied. As of now, I either have to use a part of my budget to hire an actual gaffer from a company in Baltimore, or gaff myself.

         When I was working on Andrea’s set, someone told me that everything that can go wrong, will go wrong on a film set. I’ve heard many horror stories from friends, and really hoped that nothing horrible would happen on our film. But something went terribly wrong. In, the most important scene, the grandma looks up at the cherry blossoms and mumbles her line. In order for this scene to work, the cherry blossoms have to be breathtakingly beautiful. So, we planned our shoot exactly according to the cherry blossom festival dates from last year: April 16^th, 17^th, and 18^th. However, this year, the weather is exceptionally warm and the cherry blossoms are blooming A LOT earlier this year. The moment I that the peak cherry blossom dates will be March 22^nd, I wanted to throw my laptop to the ground, drop dead, and never regain my consciousness. This really is a big problem, even as I’m writing this, I am not sure what to do.

http://cherryblossomwatch.com/peak-bloom-forecast/

         At first, I planned on changing our shooting plans entirely. I checked AirBnB, hoping the location would be available but of course, it is not available for the whole of March. I called the actor who is playing our grandmother and she told me that she couldn’t make it if we shot in March. As of now, Sue and I have a VERY BIG problem and the cherry blossom peak is this week. We might have to go to DC to at the very least get B roll of the cherry blossoms, but the weather forecast states that there will be a huge storm Friday so I’ll have to see what happens.

Production Diary 3 (Hee Won)

    Just when everything was falling apart and I was on the verge of quitting school and going back to Korea, things started to come together. Right after I published my second blog post, I heard back from all the locations that were giving me trouble. The Union station authorities emailed said that we could shoot there as long as we did not have a tripod and set things up such as lights and flags inside the station. Penn station authorities initially said no, but then told we could work something out with as long as we didn’t disrupt the convenience of their passengers. The house that we really wanted to get through AirBnB was suddenly unavailable, but we were able to rent our second best option for two days at a relatively low cost.

  However, the biggest accomplishment of the week was our success in finding our grandmother. We posted on five different websites and contacted the senior center repeatedly to cast our grandmother but did not hear back from any of them. After asking around for weeks, we finally found one person who was willing to act for our film. She is not an experienced actor but she likes the idea behind our project and is excited to film with us. It will definitely be a challenge to work with someone who is not a professional actor, but it is important that we have an actual Korean grandmother play the part.

         We still have to lock down more locations, such as the ticketing booth, the entrance of a row house. We also have to scout for outdoor locations, but we now have secured the two most important locations for our film. In terms of casting, we also have 5 more people to cast which includes two boys, a father, a mother, and someone to sit across the grandmother on the train, but we are just very happy right now at the fact that we have a grandmother.

      

         I was ecstatic for exactly three days. Then, I realized that there are still plenty of other things that I should be doing and worrying about. First and foremost, now that I had a story, a location, and an actor, I needed to put together a team that could help me realize the film. Because I am not a very experienced filmmaker, I needed to ask for help, a lot of help. One of the most important lessons that I have learned from taking classes at Hopkins and watching a lot of student films is that sound can make or break a film. From the very beginning, Sue and I knew that sound would play an integral part in capturing the empty, lonely world in which our grandmother lives. Although we are on a tight budget, we still decided to allocate money to hire a sound person because we felt that it would be worth the money.

         Another area that we needed help on was production design, someone who could realize the atmosphere of a Korean row-house. After a long discussion, Sue and I decided to contact a recent JHU graduate who is very acknowledgeable about both Baltimore and Korean culture. The three of us will meet and plan the minute details regarding the props for the house and the clothes for the family members. We also managed to find a costume and make-up artist, and grip. We are still in the process of finding a gaffer, which is essential as we are shooting on film.

         Lastly, we’ve been working on launching a kickstarter campaign. The biggest drawback to shooting on film is that it is very expensive to buy and develop since it is a dying medium. The biggest chunk of money that we are spending is coming from costs due to film, sound, location and transportation. We are now in the process of writing up blurbs about our project and planning a short introduction video so that we can inform people about our film. We are hoping to launch our project sometime during the middle of the next week at the latest. One significant drawback to using kickstarter is that it is an all or nothing campaign. I hope that the issue of isolation resonates with a lot of people and they find the idea of shooting on film interesting and endearing.

         I wasn’t able to check any of the big boxes off my production notebook, but I am proud that I am getting somewhere. Less than a year ago, I didn’t even have second thoughts about realizing this film because I knew that I wasn’t experienced to make it. Two months ago, we had nothing but a script. Now as I am writing this, I still have a lot of work to do, but I can definitely say that I’ve made progress. I was talking to my friend Helena Chung, who is the assistant director, about what we’ve done so far and she told me that she was surprised and proud of what Sue and I were able to do over the past couple of weeks. Hearing that really made my day. I have 5 more weeks until our first shooting day, and as always, I am more worried than excited, but I too am proud of us for what we have achieved so far.

Production Diary 2 (Hee Won)

         Just when I committed to making this film, realistic questions slapped me in the face. Specifically questions about: casting, location scouting, and story boarding.

         At first, when I thought I would not be able to make this film and decided to forget about it, one of the big questions that discouraged me was casting. How am I ever going to find a grandmother, in her 70s, who is Korean, who would be willing to act for a college student’s film with no monetary compensation whatsoever?

         Sue and I searched all over the internet hoping to find some kind of Korean acting community in DC/Baltimore Area but we weren’t successful. Then, we decided to broaden our search and look for grandmothers living in the Baltimore Area. We made a visit to the Greenmount Korean Senior Center hoping we would be able to recruit a member of the community to act in our film. We met with the director of the senior center and emailed her about the project two days later,  but have yet to get a response. We plan to continue with out efforts to find the perfect grandmother, or any grandmother for that matter.

         After the yet unresolved issue of casting, our next immediate problem is location scouting; we need to shoot in a row house, at Penn Station, Union Station and the National Mall. We anticipated that getting permission to shoot inside the train stations would be difficult as it would raise safety concerns with the respective authorities. We contacted both the MTA Baltimore Office and the DC Union Station Office, but still haven’t received a reply. We plan to send another email , or give them a call, or even ask in person, if necessary to get permission to shoot inside the train station and inside the train.

         One other location that is giving us a hard time is the house. We assumed it would be easy to find a house for our shoot because we have friends who live in row houses. However, we could not have been more wrong. None of the five places we went to see seemed suitable for our film. They were either too big or too small, too fraternity-esque or too collegiate. Realizing that we may never be able to find a house that is appropriate for our film within our friend group, we looked for a house on the internet, on AirBnB. Although it sounds crazy, we were able to find couple of houses that matched our vision of the house in our story. Now, we are narrowing down our choices for the house. The tasks of contacting the owners, persuading them to let us use the house for little compensation, convincing them know that this is not a pornography but a student short film remain.

         To be very honest, the past two weeks have been very stressful because it felt like everything was falling apart. We did not hear back from potential casting opportunities and the locations that we hoped for just didn’t seem to fit.  I dreamed multiple times about finding the right grandma and finding the perfect house for the film, only to wake up devastated that they were only dreams. Despite this, one thing that motivated me to work harder was our storyboard.

         One major decision that we had to make after we decided to move forward with this project, was the format we were going to shoot in. I sent my advisor, John Mann, our rough draft of the script last Fall and he suggested that we shoot on film. However, I was hesitant because I had many bad memories with film. I saw everything that could possibly go wrong with shooting on film in two intermediate film courses last spring: there was a piece of hair in one person’s project the whole time and another had to be re-shot in its entirety because it was shot at the wrong frame rate. At times, the camera would suddenly stop after working fine for hours, and the lighting would completely ruin some parts of the film. However, at the same time, I was really enticed by the idea of shooting my project on 16mm.  

(Picture of my Introduction to Film Production Final Project)

         Although I knew it would be painful to deal with all the problems caused by shooting on film, I also love how it looks. There is something amazing about how sunlight looks on film, and the grainy look of the film itself is beautiful. I brought this up with Sue and we talked about the pros and cons of shooting on 16mm. We came up with fifteen cons one pro of shooting on 16mm. The cons were that everything that could go wrong and the single pro was that it might look incredible and go really well with the feel of the project. After lying on the floor for ten minutes thinking about what to do, we made the decision to shoot on film. Partly because we knew that we would never be able to shoot on 16mm after we graduate, and mostly because we envisioned cherry blossoms on film with sunlight lingering in between the branches and we were sold.

 

         Because we decided to shoot on film, we really need plan what and how  we are going to shoot, and creating the perfect storyboard became crucial. We started storyboarding two weeks ago and it hasn’t been easy since neither of us are experienced artists. We met everyday last week to finish our storyboard and just finished it. The only thing that kept us going was the excitement that came with storyboarding. We couldn’t exactly translate what we have in mind on the page, but the process of coming up with compositions arguing over what kind of shot it should be and deciding how to transition from one scene to another was a lot of fun. At times, we got stuck on one shot for more than 30 minutes and got tired and frustrated, but there were also moments where we were ecstatic because we came up with a brilliant framing.  

         The fact that we still do not have the cast and the locations locked down is stressful, but I think Sue and I will figure it out some how. I still jokingly tell Sue that we should just give up every time something is not working with our film. Then Sue slaps my back and gives me mean looks and we start working again. I knew going in that it was going to be difficult and it hasn’t proven me wrong, but I find a delightful little joy in the process and this keeps me going and gets me excited to work again.