Week 11 Update (3/30/16)

Unfortunately, we could not get anything done as a group for our film this past week. Because of Easter Break, in which some of us headed out of Wilmington, we were unable to get together and film. As soon as the break was over, I informed Simone and Makayla of what they missed during last Wednesday’s class. I told them about the Marketing and Distribution project due in a few weeks. I will work with Makayla to make sure that gets done. As far as I know, we do not have any film shoots coming up soon. I am unsure if Makayla wants to go ahead and work with the footage we have right now and use that as our film, or if we still want to film the group numbers. It would be great if we could fit in a film shoot sometime soon to get this group number, but since we are a bit pressed for time, and I will soon be working on a show for the Theatre Department for 2 full weeks, there is the possibility that this group shoot could not happen. We shall see once the four of us meet again and decide on what needs to be done.

Week 10 Update (3/23/16)

We had our second film shoot on Saturday. We originally were scheduled to film at Jengo’s on Sunday, but some things did not work out. So instead we filmed some more solos for part 2 of our film. The drummers we filmed two jazz drummers. One was a music professor here at UNCW, the other was one of his students. They were both very talented. It is interesting seeing two different types of drummers play. The rock band style drummers had more of a hardcore, fast rhythm, and sporadic style of drumming. The jazz drumming was quieter and not as hard hitting as the other. That is not to say that either one of these styles is better than the other. I actually think both styles are good. I just find it fascinating that you can use the same instrument and play it in completely different styles.

The filming went very well. We all got there on time, and spent roughly 30 minutes setting up. We luckily did not run into any issues while setting up or while filming. We were concerned about the lighting, because we filmed inside and it was daylight, so the sun was shinning through the window. We were not able to get that dark and dramatic lighting that we have been hoping, because the sunlight was coming through the windows and did not have a sheet to cover it up. Despite that, I think we can still make that footage look really cool and make it fit with what Makayla wants through color correction. Our 2 drummers each did 3 or 4 takes at drumming. They timed each other because they did not want to go over a minute per take. This was very different from our first film shoot with the band drummers who we let “jam” out as long as they wanted for each take. The average take for that shoot was roughly 7 minutes, though there was one drummer who did a 21 minute take. Because our jazz drummers were so organized and kept the filming very short, we finished within 2 hours. We were able to pack up really quickly and left before the sun had set. 

The drummers we filmed on Saturday were very nice. The drumming professor even said he would help us reserve the classroom we filmed at for when we film our group numbers. I was very satisfied with what we accomplished this weekend. Hopefully this means our group shooting for parts 1 and 3 will not be crazy.

Week 9 Update

Last week for Spring Break, our group did not do a whole lot together for this project. We knew ahead of time that the majority of us were going out of town for the week, so we could not do anything for this project. As far as I know, Eli still has all of our footage from our film shoot from two Wednesdays ago. I am not sure why the footage has not been uploaded to our dailies folder. Maybe because there was so much footage, the file sizes were too big to upload into Google Drive. I have had that happen before with large video files. I am hoping Makayla has or will get a copy of the footage. It is always good to have multiple copies of files in case one copy gets lost of corrupted. 

Our plan for the next couple of days is to film our next section of the video, one of the group drumming sessions, on Sunday the 20th. We have contacted Jengo’s Playhouse, and they have graciously let us film there that day. I am a little bit nervous about what Sunday will be like, because we are going to be filming multiple drummers at once. I can imagine that it will be a crazy filming day. It is also supposedly going to rain that Sunday, so hopefully that will not interfere with our shooting. Jengo’s has been very kind and professional to us. Near the end of the spring break, they emailed us asking if we still planned to film there, and also informed us about a 50% downpayment before we start filming. At the time I am writing this, we have not payed the down payment, but I will make sure we do. At least Jengo’s is not being too pushy about this. Again, I am very nervous, but also excited about our shoot on Sunday. I am going to stay very optimistic about it, but I do know that something is bound to go wrong. Hopefully we all can fix it and keep control of the filming.

Week 8 Blog (3/2/16)

I wanted to wait to do this week’s blog until after our film shoot Wednesday evening.

Well everything is going very well. We finally have a few locations to film at. Last night we filmed at one of the drummer’s house. And we even got permission from Jengo’s to film there later this month. It took a while for the ball to start rolling, but now we are excited to continue working on this film.

As for Wednesday, we got there and started setting up around 4pm. It took us an hour to set up everything. We had a tone of equipment that Eli had brought. We had at least two of everything, which I thought was a bit excessive. We ended up using most of the equipment. We used five cameras, and used two LSD lights. I helped with sound recording since Simone stayed in class yesterday. I had set up one H4N recorder, and luckily I have taken the sound recording class, so I know how to use the equipment. The batteries in the H4N were low when I first started them up, but luckily we had a 2nd H4N with batteries in them, so I was able to swap them out. For filming, we let each drummer come onto the set and start drumming/jamming. We let them do what ever they wanted, because this was a part of the drum solos section in our film. In this section, we want to highlight the talent of these drummers. We filmed four drummers last night, and we gave each one three takes to show off their skills. Each take was roughly 3-7 minutes, except one take which was 21 minutes because the drummer was “feeling the vibe” and we did not want to interrupt him. They all were incredible! They are all very talented and I am really happy they can be a part of our video. After everyone was done, we wrapped up and left just before 9pm.

It was great to finally be able to film something. We had such a long gab in between pre-production and production, that our group was getting a bit worried. It was smart that we filmed the solos first, because it allowed both the drummers and ourselves to ease into filming this project. If we had started filming with a group of drummers, there would have been a whole lot of chaos.