Oy, the pain of filmmaking. It’s hard to believe all the problems that appear on film when you start editing. Camera angles are slightly off, actions aren’t the same from take to take, lighting changes as the shoot progresses, colors are funky, sound levels don’t match, helicopters and planes fly over, dialog deviates from the script at random, there’s no good alternate take, the boom mike dips in the frame, the lens is dirty, the characters now seem funny when I thought they were serious… on and on, all supposedly to be fixed in editing. I’ve now spent 4 or 5 sessions editing my film, Roadside Realizations, and I’m feeling like I should re-title this project ‘Film School Realizations’! The
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Happy 4th people! So, update: whoever couldn’t make it to Erica’s shoot totally missed out! It was awesome! For the first time at BDFI, I really felt the collaboration part of filmmaking on a shoot. Having started about 5 weeks ago, I felt like most of my time was spent adjusting to a new city, culture, people and film school in general.

Last night at Erica’s shoot, we did 10 set ups in about 7 hours. We had fantastic performances from the actors so we just ended up doing 2 takes per shot! I’m really happy from what I saw—I think Erica’s going to have fun in editing. Ryan DP’d and did a great job of lighting. My role was
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Today we spent class reviewing an outstanding variety of scenes that Sharif, our editing teacher, collected to demonstrate subtext. In the first and most blatant example, from Annie Hall, the characters’ meaningless chit chat about art and photography is contrasted with their real thoughts - Woody’s sexual interest in Annie and Annie’s self-consciousness - which is provided in subtitles to a very funny effect. In other scenes, the subtext was exposed in the characters faces or in the surrounding elements in the scene or even in odd blocking of the characters in the scene. Some of these scenes demonstrated the amazing ability of superb actors (well directed) to deliver subtext in unbelievably subtle facial expressions, often while barely muttering a
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Good stuff from Patrick this past Monday on directing and how important it is to be the leader, troubleshooter and decision maker. It’s a subtle art that requires juggling many things at once and being flexible yet decisive so that everyone on the set knows what’s happening and what’s expected. We reviewed some of the recent issues that we were encountering with our upcoming shoots and discussed how some tough situations were handled. Good learning experience for all.

I also started reviewing my footage from my shoot last week. The exposure and sound were good, as was the acting, but the position of the actors in the frame was not ideal and I learned a few good lessons about what to
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I want to express to you the unique and real experience that I had while sitting in on a class at the Berkeley Digital Film Institute this last monday 06/23/08. I’ve been a avid film fan for the last 20 years and want to take my home films to the next level with a goal of becoming a Producer/Director of quality films.

What I found was a caring and realistic approach to what is only offered at a post-graduate level for Directors and Producers that is distilled into a 16 month program. This particular class size consisted of 9 creative thinking people ranging in ages from their 20’s to 50’s. This was a remarkable group that not only cared
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Creating a film is really quite an amazing process. First you get this idea in your head for a movie, then you mess around for a while writing and rewriting scripts, casting, location hunting, pulling together a crew and developing a plan. At some point it all comes together and you get out and shoot. We’re also learning HOW to do all of this on the fly, which means, of course, that we barely know what we’re doing as we’re doing it. Somehow it all works out and, like riding a bike, you find your balance and suddenly there you are cruising along, camera, crew and actors in motion, shooting the actual film. What a trip!

I had only heard of
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This week I will be shooting my first project! I am very excited and I hope I can get it all done in time. Last week I finished casting and my actors are great! I really lucked out and got two amazing actors that are exactly what I was looking for. This next week is going to be a lot of rushing around and getting everything ready for rehearsals, location, costumes and all the other little details. We are also going to be pitching our ideas for our next project this week, so we are jumping right into the next one before we are finished shooting. It’s good that they keep us busy, I know it will make me better
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I’ve just finished casting, putting together a film crew, and finding
a location for my first short film. I am just so excited! Without
BDFI, I would be sitting in some film theory class, discussing what
film making is all about rather than having hands-on instruction from
day one. Just last week, 2 major events were happening at BDFI: 1)
private viewing of Randy Quaid and his wife’s project (Randy is so
tall !), 2) an open discussion with a local bay area producer,
Debbie Brewbaker who’s working on Banjanmin Bratt’s project. It’s so
awesome!!! You are not an outsider, but an insider of the film
industry.
Yesterday, I had my first rehearsal. It was incredible, working with
the actors to make the characters
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This week we were hit by the first big wave of auditions and the reality that our scripts might actually turn into films. Everyone jumped in and helped and it was fun to do all the different roles, from greeting the actors to reading scripts to directing and doing the camera work. It’s fascinating to see real people breathe life into the words that we wrote and how different the characters can be depicted by different actors. You also start to see where the script is working or not. I got lots of ideas and feedback from my auditions and it seems like I’m practically rewriting the whole script now.

The other really cool thing about this week was a couple
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This week at B.D.F.I. was very exciting for me. To begin, we started the
week learning about sound and how to operate a boom microphone. Opposed
to the strictly visual nature of the program thus far, this was a welcome
change of pace in addition to being immensely informative. Patrick cut
his teeth in the business as a sound tech, so having all that experience
relayed onto us was very cool. Antoher big event of that week the stands
out in my mind is the guest lecture with Debie Brubaker. Having one of
the most respected producer’s in the bay area come in is a testament to
the pull B.D.F.I. has in the bay, as well as the amazingly close-knit
relationship shared by entertainment
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