Film School

Film school is an intense experience. I am only a month in and I have already completed the filming of two short films. One of which is completely edited and received a grade of 100%. The other is in the final stages of post production. Not all film schools are like this, but mine is entirely hands on.

My first day of classes, I was wrenched awake by the lady across the hall blasting marriachi music. (See Neighbors). We received our first scripts and had to set up a shot list. Setting up a shot list is incredibly difficult when you have been awake since 5:00 am and don't get to go hame and sleep until 8:00 pm-ish. The technical aspects of film are incredibly detailed and are far to under appreciated. Most of them are actually done on minimal amounts of sleep. (Look at that. I'm getting a taste for the industry already.)

After our shot lists are approved we get shoot approval and rent equipment from the cage. The cage is basically the Holy Center for the entire school. I kid you not. It's where we rent all our equipment. It's where every person who needs technical help goes. If you piss off the cage you are a very screwed film student. It's like pissing off the Greek Gods! You may not be struck by a lightning bolt, but you're pissing off a cave full of nerds who have a lot of electrical equipment.

In order to avoid pissing off the cage you must:

a) Recharge your batteries before returning them. (Amazingly they're never actually charged when you rent them though.)

b) Pick everything up on time (They actually charge you when you eat into your own film time by not picking it up on time.)

c) Return equipment on time (This will bring about your demise if not done properly.)

d) DON'T DAMAGE THE EQUIPMENT! (You will forever being paying off a camera if you are not careful. There's a reason there is more padding in the camera case than there is equipment.)

Once you've managed to appease the Nerds of the Cage, you can use equipment.

On my first shoot, I managed to reserve my equipment in time to get a really nice camera. Since it decided to rain on shoot day, we shot in the rain (See Dry Feet). There were three umbrellas used on the shoot. Two of which were reserved for the camera the other of which sat on the ground because we needed our hands. Rain shoots our intense and you have to be damn right dedicated to them. Editing that shoot was pretty simple. Not a lot of sound issues and I was dry for this final process.

Our next short we got to write ourselves. I filmed it using my hand held Cannon Vixia HF R21. Not exactly professional grade, but works for this purpose. I  starred in it and a pal of mine worked as amateur cameraman for the price of chinese food.

There is so much needed for a film. While the audience thinks that there are multiple camera's set up, that's only done in  sitcoms. For actual films (unless it's an expensive stunt), there is one camera that you set up again and again. There is roughly two hours of filming for roughly a minute on screen. (Just think about that if you intend to work in the film industry.)

Since classes have started, I have been writing screenplays, filming, editing, writing essays, writing critiques, watching short and feature films, eating roughly once every eleven hours (I keep forgetting about food), and sleeping. I have also managed to complete the gameplay in The Journey Man Project Turbo (with the Ghandi bonus on all levels.)

I actually, at this moment am acting as an extra in another students short. (I figured I owed him after having him stand in the rain for an hour and a half on my film.) I'm portraying a student working on a computer. It works out wonderfully. I really suck at sitting still for long periods of time, so this gives me something to do.