Film Festivals

im actually a little nervous to start sending my films to festivals, excited but nervous. i dont know about my self portrait being sent quite yet....id like to change it up a little but at least try and send it to a few. id like to change the end a little...maybe build it up faster before the sounds cuts out and it ends with me standing in the water. cut is faster with all the scenes of wandering and still black and white photos and then clean up the beginning a little. well not clean it up just maybe add some different sounds besides the ocean and drips. i love what it is now but before i send it out id just like to tweak it a little. my only concern is which festivals to send it to, that and which ones to send future films to. ive looked at a few of the handouts we did in class and ann arbor would be cool to send one to in the future but now i am thinking next film festival but i would love to maybe go to boston underground some day. chicago underground seems really cool too. it would be amazing to have a film in any of these...im planning on shooting a short film over the summer and i just finished the script...working on the story boards now so hopefully that will be one i can try and get into some festivals next year!

Cucalorus Excerpt

My favorite part of the festival is probably just wandering around the venues seeing people and listening to the Q and A’s with the filmmakers. I love watching the films as well but it isn’t everyday one gets to have a firsthand account of the filmmaker’s thoughts while shooting certain scenes or the reason one scene was chosen instead of another. My least favorite would have to be the seats. They are not particularly comfortable but other than that I think the whole experience is amazing and I cannot wait until next year’s festival. My advice is to see as many films as you can but more than that just be downtown, because you never know who you’ll bump into. Those running the festival do a great job, I can’t imagine the amount of pressure they are under come November every year so my advice to them is relax, have fun because you’ve created a fantastic festival.
Cucalorus is one of the neatest things about Wilmington. It brings our downtown even more to life than it already is and has become such a treat for the people in this town.

Cucalorus

i absolutely love cucalorus and ive been to several screenings every year since moving to wilmington but this year i will miss every day of the festival but wednesday. my cousin is getting married and i am one of the bridesmaides so i will be in high point untill sunday evening. im super pumped for the wedding though so it makes missing this years festival not bad but next year ill definitely be there. sunday night is dancealorus so hopefully i can get a ticket for that...ive never been to that but i hear its awesome so that will be fun. on wednesday night the short film "Future Islands-The Happiness of Being Twice" sounds interesting so i want to go to that during the shorts block at the soapbox...."psychedelic collage of fantastic color" caught my eye when i was reading what the films were about so im going to have to see what all thats about for sure. if i get back in time sunday im going to try and see "Port City" since some friends of mine are either in it or worked on it

Music Video Shoot

the film shoot for our music video was great, my group worked really well together which made it much easier. will was nice enough to let us do our video on him...we went for a nature/electronic kind of thing. it was basically just him with his turn tables in the middle of different areas surrounded by nature. some spaces were filled with trees some where just wide open spaces...one of my favorite scenes is when the camera just follows the cord and it turns out its plugged into the tree. being the producer of the video, i had to get in contact with the parks and recreation lady for wilmington to get permits since we shot at wallace park. it was actually a good experience having to contact them and hopefully i formed a good relationship with them so they will be generous about permits in the future. there was also some really neat shots of will just laying in the empty field with one of his turntables just sitting beside him...em and sheledy had great ideas on how to get cool shots and where to put the camera while darion and i walked around the park and found places to shoot...they're a great group and i think our final product will be awesome

Installation

i had no clue what to do an installation on. this is the first time i have ever even seen an installation project let alone try and do one. the bill viola pieces we saw in class were amazing...i think what he does with the water falling from the sky in unbelievable. sometimes i feel like i would never come up with something like that but the more i think about, and after seeing a real installation piece, some ideas stared to form but then it ended up being almost like one of the examples we saw in class. i thought it would be kind of cool to have a piece of paper on the wall and project random lines at different times that someone would draw on the paper almost like tracing the projected lines and since its at random you wont know what is being drawn but when its finished there will be a picture of something on the paper. i dont know if that makes sense at all the way im saying it but i didnt have it formulated enough to say it in class anyway so maybe someday it will be seen but not now. im actually looking forward to working with abz again on his idea

Art House Reading

i thought the art house reading was actually pretty interesting. i think its great how art cinema is pushing into theaters around the world and all kinds of people are getting exposed to it...with more and more people being exposed to it, more and more people become interested which is expanding the art form as a whole. only thing is that with the expansion it does push out the rather risky films for the more "friendly" ones in some places. i didn't know that was even going on but it definitely makes sense now....i had no clue Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" was considered an independent movie either. the reading calls the term art house "slippery" and i see why... if a movie is non conventional its called art house. yay. just because its controversial doesn't mean its an art house film. i think microcinemas are fantastic...i wish there were more of them so everyone who thinks art films are "weird" could be exposed to their beauty. these mircocinemas allow those of us not in new york or los angeles to enjoy the non mainstream films which is great....i wish i could pay for my movie tickets with a basket of day old bread and muffins

Music Video

i am the producer of our music video so im in charge of logistics and stuff....since its a 4 person crew it'll be fairly easy to keep track of everything but my main job is to get the location, filming permits and pretty much make sure everything goes to plan as far as timing when we shoot. its a pretty cool concept we are working with....putting some electronicy techno beats in nature. we are shooting at wallace park and will is going to dj in the middle of the trees...we have some cool ideas for other features of the video but thats the main idea of what we are doing. oh and i totally changed my self portrait idea..its all about the sea