That's a Wrap!

For those of you who are new followers of my film blog, let me first say welcome to the Reel World! Furthermore I feel that I should get everyone up to date on what is happening so that we're all on the same page. On December 27th, 2009 I found out about the Cedar Rapids Film Festival. It was allowing student submissions and I saw this as an opportunity to send in a short film of my own so I can possibly gain a bit of attention. The only problem was that there were no films that I've made which I saw fit for the festival. So I came up with what was a fun idea. I would make a movie before the film festival's entry deadline, January 30th! It hasn't been such a fun idea. It sort of reminds me of that time I went on an all day bike ride across central Iowa - A horrible experience full of frustration, pain and stress, but after it is over I'm glad that I can say I did it.

First, I had to write the screenplay. I went through a hundred original ideas before concluding that I'd be making another scifi alien epic. It is almost exactly like 'Probed' (an alien film I made for a digital graphics project in high school) so the idea isn't really original... at all. However, I saw many advantages to making another alien movie instead of trying for something a little more serious. I knew I would be able to make it because I've made one before. If I had more than a month to write, shoot, edit and distribute this film then I would easily come up with something a little more original. The problem was that there wasn't time for experimenting. The other advantage was I'd have an opportunity to use more special effects. I can write a good screenplay, but not when I have a week to do so. Having the threat of a poor plot ruining my film, the best thing to do was to pull a Lucas and cover it all up with special effects. Yes, they are cheesy! But give me a break, it has been a long month. I spent a few nights staying up till 4am working on the screenplay before scrapping everything I'd written to write something more simple the night before shooting. The original drafts of the screenplay involved too many flashbacks and I was afraid that the audience wouldn't be able to follow along. I also found out that my boyfriend, Stephen Hueholt, would be coming to the shoot so I'd have an extra actor.

The shoot was even more tedious than the screenwriting. We had one day to film the entire thing. It was so freezing cold out that we had to shoot the twenty second outdoor scene in three segments so that we could go inside to warm up. I'm usually very cranky when I'm directing, but I was especially testy because I hadn't eaten and I probably yelled at Matt James after every take, even if he hadn't done anything wrong. You'll have the opportunity to see some behind the scenes stuff on the EPK when/if it is released.

Finally, editing. I just finished editing about an hour ago and it is rendering now. Editing is never a challenge for me, even though this time I had time restraints and a lot of special effects that I've never done before. Little did I know, Adobe Premiere Elements 7 - which I've always loved working with - would decide that on this particular movie it would completely f*** me over. I'm not one who enjoys cursing (if you consider that a curse) but really... come on... really? Adobe Premiere, you have been so loyal to me and now you decide to make my life so hard. Here are the issues I've had this month and just this month: It has frozen on me four times which forced me to shut down and do all my unsaved work over. It unsynced the sound and video in a portion of the raw footage. The footage does not look like it is in HD even though I shot the film with an HD camera. It alleged that half of my already edited media was "offline" and the only way to fix this was by going to each and every cut, moving the media in the viewfinder and pressing Undo... none of which made sense. If the media was actually offline, it would have meant that the original file was missing or corrupted. Also, when I played certain scenes back, it went really slow or would skip the scene entirely. In other words, playback is a b****. The best thing about the editing was the music. Thanks to Rob Rodgers, who I describe more in depth in the previous blog post, I had an original track which he composed and recorded in under a week while he was on vacation. Amazing!

So with another hour of rendering to go, the movie will be finished unless I see some mistake that must be changed immediately. I just sent in my application and payment to the Cedar Rapids Film Festival. If nothing else, I'll at least get a t-shirt out of this deal. As soon as I'm able to share 'Xenophobic' and the EPK online, I'll have it up on my blog first thing! Hope you check it out. Peace.