Production Day

This is a silly video about what we did on Saturday. Enjoy.

Kickstarter: http://kck.st/qJjCHG

We Reached Our Funding Goal!

Heyo, so we reached our Kickstarter goal. w00t! Thanks so much to everyone who donated! If you haven't donated yet, it's not too late. Check out our Kickstarter and contribute what you can. We could still use all the help we can get!

Also, we acquired a costume designer! She's super awesome, so that's cool.

Kickstarter: http://kck.st/qJjCHG

New Stuff

We got new stuff.

Radio Appearance

Hey all! Sorry that this isn't a video post, but we don't have our camera at the moment. We would like you all to know, however, that we will be on 89.9 WTHS with our cast tomorrow (Tuesday) at about 10:30 PM. Please listen in and tell your friends!!! Thanks for all your support!!

WTHS does stream on the web at:

http://www.hope.edu/student/life/wths/live_stream_wths.php

Cast and Kickstarter Update

We have finally cast our three leads! Here are some of our thoughts and an update on the Kickstarter.

Kickstarter: http://kck.st/qJjCHG

Call Backs

Callbacks happened! Check out our thoughts on the callbacks, and some of our plans for the near future.

Auditions Day 2

To donate follow the link below

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/odoylerulz/solomon-a-student-film-project

Auditions

So... We have our newest and very first video post up. We meant to get it to you guys last night, but final cut decided that rendering was no longer part of its job and adobe premiere allowed us to edit as long as we never had to playback our video. So after the hours of beating the programs into submission we finally finished our video post for you guys. Hope you like it.

Kickstarter update

Holy!!!!! Smokes!!!!! In six hours we were already a quarter of the way to our goal! This is so great. I just wanted to give a big thanks to all of you who are supporting us. When we called out for support we had no idea we would be met with such enthusiasm. So right now we have lots of conversations going on with our supporters on facebook and other mediums, so if you have any questions feel free to post them either on this blog, on facebook, or on our kickstarter page. We would love to hear from you. Also... expect an update on the blog tonight about our audition progress. Tonight is the first night of theater auditions for Hope college and almost every actor in the school will be there... and let me tell you... we have a lot of actors at this school. Thanks again!

Kickstarter Active and Casting

So it has been a while since my last post, but I am happy to say that quite a bit has been done since then. We have finally got our kickstarter up and active. Also we are scheduled to be casting this thursday and friday. After the auditions we should have a cast together by the end of the next week. Also we have put together a rough shooting/ preproduction schedule for the semester (so up until mid-December) and plan to have a 30 min rough cut by then. Of course like i said this is a rough schedule and it will change a bit after casting and when we lock down a crew. Also if you have not yet seen the kickstarter page, be sure to visit, and hey while you're at it maybe you could donate a buck or two. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/odoylerulz/solomon-a-student-film-project  Thanks for your support. 

Moving Forward

So things are moving forward. I have had several meetings with my assistant director and my script writer since my last post and am very happy to say things are moving along splendidly. We have several scenes written and have really made great progress in nialing down just who these characters are. Also I have recently written the script for the kickstarter and plan to have that up with a week or two. This part was a little later than I had hoped, but hopefully we can raise the money before we get to production. This means after casting, schedualing and obviously after we have a finished script. Things are looking up and I am excited to get started. There wasn't much to post this time, but I just wanted to let you guys know that things are moving forward and we are steps closer to making this film a reality.

Rough scenes

So three days ago I had received from my playwright some rough scenes that detailed main characters. Let me just say, I read it and I was amazed. When I asked Ben to write this script for me I knew I would get good work, but this blew my mind. If what I received was only a first draft of those scenes then I dare not dream of how amazing his final work will be. I could go on for a very long time about the many thoughts and feelings I have about this script, but because for now I dont feel like giving too much away, (especially so early in the stroy's production), I will leave it at the fact that the scenes were incredible. Soon I will be having another meeting with my playwright and assistant director to hash out character detail and I will fill you in as we hit those bench marks. Till then just know that things are looking up... way up.

Preproduction

So recently I have been putting together a budget plan for the film and working on the other areas of preproduction that need to be put together. My hopes are that by the end of next month I will have some sort of kickstarter page up and running. Kickstarter is a fund raising site for creative projects where people donate to different projects to help those with artistic vision who dont have all the means to see it through. As I had mentioned before much of our gear we will be using from the college and for that I am very grateful, but there are still odds and ends that we have to get on our own, so right now I am trying to predict what those will be and how much we will need to raise for that to happen. Also I had a conversation last week with my assistent director and script writer and we have put together a rough timeframe for the script and it looks like we will have it finished by early september. This means we will use the time in August to audition for actors, create rough schedules, and get our actors used to their characters, used to each other and used to the camera. This will also create time for nailing down locations and doing lighting and equipment tests. There are a lot of other things I am working on right now as well, but those are the major tasks that I am trying to get finished.

The Camera

So this last month I went to the NAB/BEA (National Association of Broadcasters/ Broadcast Education Association) conference in Las Vegas with my professors and a couple other students to go to seminars and for my professors to pick out new equipment. While there I looked at lots of different technology alongside my professors.  While my professors were looking into cameras, I had suggested that we might want to go with at least one DSLR. They liked the idea, looked into it, and allowed me to help them look through the different options available for DSLR cameras. The one that obviously caught our eye was the Canon 5D Mark II. This camera delivers such a pristine image with such a great ability for manipulation of the image that we had to get it. Ever since Hope College ordered the camera I have been reading and watching everything I can about it. This camera was not my first experience with DSLR’s but any insecurity I might have had with the technology has melted away with this new model Canon has produced. After a lot of consideration of the advantages and disadvantages of the camera I have decided that it will be what I shoot my film in. So far the school plans to have a least two lenses for the 5D by next semester, but may have a few more by then. These lenses would be the EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM and the EF 85mm f/1.8 USM. I am excited about these two lenses because the 24-105 will give a lot of flexibility in my shots and the 85 mm should give me beautiful portrait like dialogue shots. We may add a bit more to our lens options later, but for now I don’t really know and won’t really know until I put a budget together. If we do add lenses they would probably be some sort of wide angle (or maybe a tilt-shift if we’re lucky) and a good macro lens. I’ll keep you updated.

The Film

                So my senior year is starting in August and I feel like I really want to push my abilities as a filmmaker, so I have decided that I will be making an hour long fiction over the course of the next year. The story is one that I have had in my head for about three to four years now and have never had the opportunity to do anything with. I do not have a script written and don’t want to give too much away just yet, but the story is about a man tricked by death himself into immortality. So far the response on campus to my idea has been greater than I had expected. After discussing it with the media professors I had gotten the go ahead on the project and given four college credits to complete it. Also many of the media students who I have worked with on various other film projects were enthralled by the idea and have joined my film crew in the hopes of making this film a reality. After a short time of passing the idea around the different talented media students at the college, I had begun to write the script. After about 2 and a half scenes I realized that I am not a screen writer. So thus began my search for a playwright. I asked for and read many sample scripts trying to look for a script that was both done well and written in the sort of style my team and I were looking for. Eventually I had gotten a hold of one of our theater professors at the college who was the play writing professor. After talking to him for a short while he had told me that he had wanted to get both his actors and writers more film experience, but just had not had the opportunity. He was excited to hear about my film and the fact that I wanted to use both a writer and actors from the theater department for my film. He dropped several names of different writers that had thoroughly impressed him during the last few years and actually even invited our team to join them at the theater auditions so that we could choose our cast without having to call our own auditions. I was sure to accept the offer quick because we have a very well developed theater program and many actors attend their auditions. As far as writers, there was one name that he had dropped that I had heard before from other acting majors as well as my assistant director. His name was Ben Hertel, and I had been told that he was very good and had recently written a 45 minute one act. My assistant director had both seen the one act and read it by the time I got a copy of the script and advised me that it was exactly what we were looking for. I quickly set up a meeting with Ben and read the script before we met. After I explained my idea to him his exact response was “That is extremely writable,” with a large grin on his face. So now I have a film team and a playwright. I plan to get a script written before school starts in August as well as a shooting order. I am working out a lot of the rest of the preproduction stuff now and will keep you updated on its progress.