The diary of a film school student - Cinematography

"What'd you do this weekend?" she asked me.

"Well, I put rails on the ground then pushed a guy with a camera down the rails on a little wagon called a dolly."

"Why'd you do that?"  I can smell half a carton of Camels, or whatever they smoke here, on her breath. Its nice.

"Well, so we could get the shot we wanted."

"Why didn't your mate just carry the camera across?"

I'm feeling quite patient tonight...

"Well, cause your footsteps make the camera sort of bounce on your shoulder, so we make like, tracks sort of, and then it moves smoothly"

"Yeah well, maybe your camera guy should practice. Sounds like a waste of time to me."

I guess that's what you get for drinking at the local bar on a Sunday night. Not that I was out drinking on a Sunday night. I went out for a beer down the street to get out of the house for an hour after spending about 5 hours struggling with a POS computer that doesn't like it's new 3D program.

This weekend was actually pretty damn cool. Spent Saturday working indoors on a set setting up camera arrangements, and light readings. You ever notice those little numbers on an SLR camera lense. 1.4, 2, 2.8, 4, 5.6 and so on? Those control the aperature. Each number is a stop. That means that if you move from 2 to 2.8 you've gone 1 stop, and you've just cut the amount of light getting into the camera in half. You knew that though.

Here's something you might not know. Film only sees about 7 stops. So if you're looking at something kinda grey, you can go 3 stops in either direction before that grey thing looks pure white or pure black. Thats what those little light meters photographers use are for. To figure out if what you're taking a picture of is going to turn out.

The next day we went outside. Shooting with film outdoors can be a nightmare. A cloud can turn half your picture into shadows. Clouds come from no where. Clouds don't care what we're doing down here. Oh, and here's something else. The sun...it moves. So, that great reflection you got at 1, its no longer there by two. Which sucks because your focus puller needed to take measurements, so did your DOP, and the actor wasn't quite getting it, and for some reason the camera guy couldn't see through the eyepeice, turns out it was simply the shutter position, and  it took about 40 mins to get set up. Oh and the guy in the corner, now he's so far in the shade that he's completely dark in this aperature. Damn.

But the cool thing is learning from people that actually do this for a living. People that have seen the pitfalls, know what's going to go wrong, and think of things you haven't thought of. Even cooler, is they don't tell you, they let you flop, and figure out where you went wrong.

All in all a very good weekend.
Oh, the chick from the bar thinks I'm pretty stupid. I told her I'm American.

Diary of a Film School Student - Producing a Short film

I've been having brutal insomnia. I don't know why. Had a long day yesterday, went for a run with the girl next door, should have slept like a drunk baby. Ended up watching Mork and Mindy, the Dukes of Hazard and The Love Boat reruns till almost 5am.  Slept through 'an audition' which isn't a big deal because I'm not an actor and they had just asked if I wanted to try to fill in for a single scene in a student production. One of the guys is really pissed but to be honest I'm not here to make friends and I really don't care. Wow, thats callous! Ok I do care a little but really....

Had a meeting with my mentor today for my Producer's role. I thought I had everything together. Nope. Need to find a make up person, figure out catering and lock down my locations. I need to get my DoP to figure out our film stock, book the gear and get her crew together to practice. Need to get my Director and Production Designer talking. Need to get crew agreements signed. Need to decide on the cast so I have to book the applicants and then book a room and the film gear to do screen tests. It never ends. I don't think producing is for me. Maybe I should have gone to that audition. Hm.

So after the meeting I booked another meeting with my department heads for Friday and spent the next hour making notes about everything I need to do. Then I sat and chatted with a director from one of the other productions. I actually didn't think I'd like her (because I generally dislike everyone at first) but she turned out to be very cool and easy to get along with.

Fortunately I have a really good camera crew, for students anyway. They know their way around the camera and are excited about using it. My DoP is trying to figure stuff out already without being told so thats cool too. My Director and 1AD are a couple which is nice because they're both heavily invested.  My 1AD is also one of 2 people in the school who seems to want to actually do that when he's done.

Well, 19 days to go....we'll see what happens next.

Handling Swedish Bi-Curiousity at an Advanced age

When you go back to school in your mid 30s, things are definately different. I can't drink until 4 am and get up at 8 and go to class anymore. I didn't before but I COULD if I wanted to. But I slept in usually.

Another thing I've noticed is that I don't relate well to younger people. Right now I'm acting as producer for a short film. I'm the oldest person in my group by far. On other guy just turned 30 I think. My entire camera crew is 20 and under. One of them asked me the other day what I thought I'd do after film school. I said "Make movies". She said "Oh really? I thought I might go back to school and figure out what I want to do." Really.

Some of the people in my class were born after the first couple of seasons of Sienfeld. They never saw the Smurfs on Saturday mornings. Not even the later episodes when they were holding on for dear life and introduced smurflings and a stupid prince. Some of these kids were born AFTER Appetite for Destruction came out. Most were in the cradle when Smells like Teen Spirit hit the charts.

The other night I went out with these girls I know from school. Notorious party animals, but really good at the stuff we're learning. I get to the bar, which has $4 drinks all night,  and I can't find them because we're on 2 different levels. They finally find me and 2 of them are hammered. They go off to dance and I hit the bar with the 3rd. We get our drinks and look for the girls. They're on a couch making out next to the stage. I laugh and say, hey, your room mates are getting busy over there. So she just laughs and we head over. I figured they'd stop when we got there. Nope. The third one just joined right in.

So I'm sitting on a couch with three 20 year old swedish girls who are all making out. One ends up halfusitting on my lap for a while. Guys in the club are looking at me like I'm Hef. So they break it up for a while and this dude buys me a drink. He says, "I don't know which one's your girlfriend, but that's awsome mate!!" I just smiled. Later one of them would tell me I was the coolest 35 year old she knew. That made me feel good.... She then told me that if she was older, like 25 or something, she'd totally try to pick me up.

We get tired of the crazy loud techno/house/rap/dance/electronic 'music' we're being subjected to (to be honest I kinda liked it) and head to an Irish place called Scruffy Murphy's. I get wanded before I go in and have to pay cover. I hate paying cover. Most places don't charge here.

Now this place is weird, to get in you have to go through one door, up stairs, across the length of the bar, then back down stairs where there's another set of doors your only allowed to leave through. One of the girls decides she's too drunk about half way through. Right out of the blue. I go get her some water and she's just about comatose when I get back. Some dude was trying to pick her up. Then he acted like I'm an asshole when I told him to shove off. Oh, and her friends have ditched her. So I threw her in a cab. She invited me back to her place, but the shade of green she's turning tells me that that isn't a good idea. (Find out the next night she got kicked out of the cab for redecorating the back seat in a nice shade of sea food).

So, yeah, thats what I'm dealing with. How was your weekend?

Me And The Roaches BABY!!

Yeah so, Australians don't put screens on their windows. And they don't seem to give a shit that Canadians can't deal with the kind of heat they have here when it's still minus 30ish at home, so we have to keep the windows open. I was getting pummelled by mosquitos in the night. Awful.

Also, theres a gap under my door, which leads not out into the hall but directly outdoors, thats about an inch high. So anything that crawls hops or slithers has free reign to come on in, have a beer and make itself at home.Which, from time to time, they do. One night I came home and two crickets were hanging out in my bathroom. It was funny, they were sitting very close to one another at 90 degrees. If there were a little tiny table in front of them it would have looked like a date. A creepy little date. Anyway, they died a horrible death before anyone could make up an excuse about having to get up early and probably should go home and get some sleep.

Another day a cockroach wandered in. I saw him coming. Face full of bug spray for you my little brown friend. As I was spraying him a cricket, collateral damage from the spraying, came banging out from under my fridge like he was on fire. Poor little guys. But if they didn't want to get gassed they should be insects, am I right? Of course I am.

So, and here's where it gets nasty, I was going to a photo shoot one day. Very uncharacteristically, I was late. So I got dressed, threw on my hikers and ran up to the train station. So I'm sitting there and my foot is itchy. Oh well. Train shows up and I got my little ticket and got on. So I'm on the train, cranky cause you dont get wifi down in the tunnels, exactly where you'd need it if anything went wrong on a the train, and my foot is itchy again. So I ignore it. Then i felt the itchy spot move. So I yank my foot out of my shoe, and this cockroach pops his head out, climbs down the heel of my shoe and went to find another seat on the train. I never saw him again. I have no idea where he got off, but I was horrified. I had bugs in my clothes dammit! I'm not a dirty person. That doesn't happen to me!

Oh well. Off to buy more bug spray.

The guy who won the oscar

So the guy who produced "The King's Speech" won an Oscar for best producer. He's on the board of directors and was into the school the other day. He didn't bring the Oscar. Dumb ass...

Anway, I got my picture take with him. It's actually a group shot. I'm kind of behind him. I've never seen the picture actually. But I remember it being taken. Because I was there.

The next time I saw him was on TV. He was meeting the Prime Minister and showing her the Oscar. He remembered to bring it there. I wonder if he'll even vote for her at the next election that's coming up.

So, in honour of that here are some fun facts about the Oscars. I'll put the answers at the bottom. I have to give credit to a guy from school who was posting some of these on face book and inspired me to steal. Thanks Robert.

1.Guess who won the most Oscars.
2. First woman to win Best Director
3. Most awards won by a single film
4. First African to win an acting award
5. First black actress to win for acting in a lead role
6. Most nominated living person
7. First X-rated film to win for Best Picture


Ok, i'm getting tired of this. Go look at the answers then pop some popcorn.

Emile Sherman Showing His Oscar to The PM of Aus.

Answers to Luke's awsome Oscar quiz. If you used Google you cheated. Bastard.

1.Walt Disney won 26 Oscars (22 competitive, 4 honorary). He also won the most Oscars in one year, with four. But c'mon, the guy was puting out 4 or 5 movies a year towards the end.
2. Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker (2009)

3. Three films won 11 Academy Awards. They are:

• Ben-Hur (1959)
• Titanic (1997)
• The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

4.  Charlize Theron (from South Africa) won Best Actress for Monster (2003).
5.  Halle Berry won Best Actress for Monster's Ball (2001) 
      If some african had been in  Monsters Inc. they would have been a shoe in for best actress
6.  Film composer John Williams with 45 nominations. You can thank him for the Star Wars music   
     (somewhere a geek just got a chubby)
7.  Midnight Cowboy (1969). It was also the first X-rated film to be nominated for Best Picture.

Things I'm Learning At Film School

Well, the first thing I've learned is I'm almost always wrong. Which is a huge pain in the ass cause I'm used to being almost always right. Like clockwork. Hmmm.

Today I described music as ominous but the instructor said it was more unhappy. Damn
Then I said that I liked the way they used depth of field to create distance in their shots. He then explained that depth of field was how a camera's focus worked and that I was somehow mistaken on what I said. Hmmm.
I'm getting tired of being wrong, it doesn't sit well with me.

Also, film making is hard. We did a photo essay the other day. My partner and I, another Luke, did a spoof of a speghetti western called "Fist full of soda". Had to tell a story about 2 people in 10 shots with a 35 mm film camera using 100asa. We story boarded, scouted a location, bought props, and costumes, changed the aspect ratio of the shots to 9:16, downloaded sounds, recorded sounds, timed everything to go with the photos. HUGE pain in the ass the whole thing. But alot of fun. And it turned out pretty well. People apreciate hard work I think. Who knew?

Here's another thing I learned. Check your batteries. We went out to do a shoot the other day, I wasn't the director this time, just an actor filling in for some friends, and their batteries died on the 3rd shot. We have to go back out Wednesday.

Another thing to note. You're on your own. People will help you, but you gotta ask. No one reminds you of deadlines. There's no one to blame for anything but yourself if shit goes bad. You forget your film...no one cares, at the end of the day you don't have a picture. Next. You forget to check your lighting and your film doesn't develop right? That sucks, but hey, that guy has his shit together. Next.

However, people are willing to help. People are very enthusiastic actually. Everyone wants to be involved. There are tons of actors willing to be in a film for free just to have some experience. There are tons of people willing to help out on a slim to none budget in the hopes that, hey, one day you might make it and need a sound guy, or DOP or whatever. Its a pretty cool industry all together.

Anyway, pitching a documentary and producing a 2 min script tomorrow. Should go home and sleep. Good night world!

Australia

Everything here is a lot like home but just a little different. Here's an example; they drive on the wrong side of the road here.

In 1971 Burger King tried to move in here, but couldn't because the name was already taken. Well kids, you just can't keep a good franchise down. They made a deal with this guy jack Cowan to run all the franchises here and gave him a list if names he could use. Hungry Jack was a name Pilsbury, who owned BK at the time, already owned so jack picked that but changed it to Hungry Jack's. Vain I'd say.

Anyway, it's just not the same. They don't use strips of bacon, they use these slices of back bacon that are more like ham. They don't have a creepy king in their ads either. They do have a whopper, and a whopper jr though.

In Australia they have drunk driving laws like we do. The limit is lower, .05 instead if .08. Oh, and they call it drink driving. No idea what that means. Drunk driving means your driving drunk. Drink driving means that you sound silly when you're saying it.

Oh, and the standard beer size here seems to be the schooner. However, for my Calgary friends, it's not a big ass beer. It's more like 3/4 of a pint. But more expensive.

Australia is full of bugs, and some are quite venomous. They don't put screens on their windows in a lot of places. I don't have any. I get bitten in the night.

You can drink beer on the streets here. You can sit on a park bench on a busy street in front of a gay boutique and drink a box if wine (that may have come in contact with nuts, eggs and/or fish products) and scream at people as they walk by without much resistance. There are alcohol free zones here though. During a big street party I wandered through one of said zones unaware, passing a phalanx of cops, and not one said a word. In Moncton the local Mountie would have thrown his mountain bike on the ground, seized the contraband, poured it's contents onto the road and given the author a stern lecture.

Australia is not a very religious country. In fact, one in 5 say their not religious at all. If they were all illiterate the missionaries would be quite busy. Unfortunately they are all quite educated and have rejected the idea of religion instead of being ignorant of it. The Vatican will have to settle for keeping the sex lives of poorer populations in check for a while longer.

Public displays of affection are common here. It's not odd to see a couple in the grocery store kissing. Oh Margret, this summer sausage is turning me on...Me too Gary!
The other night while having a drink on a patio overlooking the opera house a couple close to us was having a full on makeout session. I think he got to second. (that means he got boob) No one paid them much attention.

Flip flops are called thongs here. That would make the Thong Song a lot less risqué.

The bouncers here are friendly, professional and trained. Dear Canada, the rest if the world doesn't let steroid raging cretins with authority issues loose on it's drunks. Take notes.

There seems to be no end to Turkish take out restaurants here.

Many bars here are called hotels. I dont know why.

There are some similarities however. It appears that the phone companies here are run by assholes, just like home. Speaking of which, Bell can go fuck themselves. I sincerely hope their board of directors get some sort of painful disease that slowly causes them to go deaf and disfigured them in some horrible way. I'm thinking elephant man here, or that movie Mask that Cher was in, or like Gary Busey or something. Something awful. I would really like to kick their CEO in the balls. I'm not talking a little ankle flick here either, I'm talking coming off the ground a foot or two, Rochambough kick. The kind that hurts so much he throws up. I think there is probably a special place in hell for phone company execs. If Robert Picton was picking up phone company execs instead of hookers, a jury would have let him go. Probation at best.

Other than that Australians seem to be a fun group of folks who take things in stride and seem to have fun. I think I'm going to like it here!