Final Editing

Oh my God, I can not believe that it's happenning :) my movie finally looks like a one piece of production art ;) well, maybe it is too exaggerated, however, I am so happy that I finished editing. It took me another sleepless night and half of the day to put all of the shots together with a music for the beginning and the end. I still need to do the voiceover but I do not expect it to be hard...
I used lots of dissolve effects but this is pretty much it. I did not want it to be overloaded with special effects, I wanted everything to look real. Of course, I wish I could make my bunnies mouth moving but...
I really hope that the audience will like my short funy movie as much as I do.

Oh my, I feel so relieved and proud of myself when I start playing it. The feeling that I am experiencing looking at my creation is impossible to express...

The Movie

So I finally captured all my footage to the computer...it looks ok, but not great yet...I already see where I have made mistakes, mostly with lighting. Today I went to shoot the final scene at my mom's house, and oh my God, she has so much light in her appartment...why didn't I shoot the whole movie at her appartment, it would look so much better...just today I realized that the beginning of the movie will have darker colors than the end of it...well, at least I'm honest and realize where my wicknesses are, lighting is the biggest one of them!
I am also very stressed about voiceover which I will have to do tonight. I have never done it before (I probably should've but of course I left everything to the last moment) and I am afraid that it won't work...I hope it will.
However, I am done with my website :) and even though I wasn't able to upload my trailer right on the website, I finally managed to learn how to do links. It took me half of the night and a whole day but I am satisfied with my work :)
Oh, and White Rabbit is not completely seen in a work section, wasn't able to correct it...well, we are learnign from our mistakes, I hope I will learn later how to correct it...

The website

Oh my God! It is so exciting and so frightening at the same time....
Personally I never planned to learn anything about websites, I simply avoided any knowledge about it since it always seemed to be so hard to understand. And then I realized that I am just a paranoic who loves to panic before there is real time to panic.
Thank God, I have a very good notes from my class. They can be confusing sometimes but if I try to concentrate and remember what goes where, it actually works!!!Thank God, there are books out there which basically tell you step by step how to do what in Dreamweaver.
Today I already have my home page and a few pages which are linked to each other. I am trying to make my website as simple as possible, simply because that is the only way I can do it, LOL.
I wish I had more time for everything I do for this project...

The poster for the short movie

I am very proud to present my poster for the movie! It is probably not very good to be proud about yourself, however, I think I've done a great job considering the fact that I am not that good with Photoshop yet.

First time with professional equipment

So, past weekend were very productive to my production process. I borrowed a professional camera, lighting kit, microfone from our school. I was shooting during Saturday and Sunday. It was a huge difference from the camera I had when I was shooting for the trailer. The quality is amazing so I was very satisfied with the equipment. However, I had a hard time with lighting. I was shooting in the evening the dialog of two characters in the room. I tried every angle possible with a few lights surrounding the set but I still didn't manage to get rid of big shadows. It made me very upset and my inspiration was gone in a few minutes. I realized how hard it is to be a few people in one, what I mean is - a screen writer, a cameraman, a producer, an editor and so on. I wish we didn't have to do everything by ourselves, I wish we had a chance to do it in group. I understant that in group work people probably miss lots of stuff just because somebody else does it for everybody else. However, it would be less stressful and probably even more productive.

I am thinking about the poster I have to do for my movies and I feel even more anxious because Photoshop just does not want to be understood by me. I know that it is all practice time but it does not make me feel any better. I am a perfectionist and I want my projects to be excellent, unfortunately it does not always work that way. ANyway, today and tomorrow I will think about the way I want my poster to look. Thursday I will try to make it a reality. Wish me luck!

Busy time of the semester

It's just today that I realized - I still didn't post anything about the critique day of our trailers. I worked so hard to get it done, and it came out not bad but not exactly what I or everybody else in class expected. I got some comments on included pictures in the trailer which didn't make much sense. I kind of agree with that but not completely. I think that pictures probably would look better if I found more picture where my bunny is "really bad" (since my soundtrack for the movie is Michael Jackson's "I'm bad"). I also screwed up my lighting and my camera work...And I actually knew that the lighting throughout the trailer was not good because it was dark and jumped around at some point but I was so excited to be done with my first creation in Final Cut that I didn't even notice any issues with the video itself.

Anyway, I went to the TV center last week to ask for the professional camera, nice microfone and a set of lighting. I'm planning to shoot this weekend if I get approval for all of the equipment. I have several ideas how to make my bunny look "really bad" in the movie, however, I still cannot decide which one to pick. I know that is not good, I was supposed to come up with the script long time ago, but I feel like it's in my head. As soon as I start writing it down on a paper, I'm going to get stuck and won't be able to write anything....

Soon we are going to make our posters. It is exciting but even more stressful to me, because I don't think that Photoshop is my kind of program. As much as I love Final Cut Pro, as much as I want to create things with it, Photoshop is not that easy and not that exciting....Well, keep working!!!

First mistake and the following failure

So, I finally have the whole day to myself and my new passion - Final Cut Pro. The trailer is due tomorrow and I decided that I'm going to spend all day working on my trailer. However, I admit my first big failure in my production. I transfered all my videos to mac and they just don't play...All of the videos play on my Windows PC but they don't play on Mac, only the sound. I should've checked earlier if they are playing or not...So now I'm sitting with two computers in front of me, searching for some kind of converter or anything that would help me to start playing my videos on Mac. I feel like my head is going to blow up from all of the technical stuff I learned since the beginning of the semester. I am positive about learning Final Cut, Photoshop and other necessary in modern life programs, but I don't want to deal with converters, different players and the following issues.

Well, anyway, I have a whole day and a whole night ahead of me, so I am just going to keep looking for some kind of converter to my AVI videos, so that I finally would be able to start working on my trailer.

Second day of shooting my movie

I am so excited, it was a second day of my shooting days and it was amazing :) At first I had some doubts about the lighting for the set and some props, but it worked out just great. We managed to shot some close ups as well as long shots.
However, I still have lots of things to be shot, and dialogs, and voiceovers....And I didn't even start making my trailer...I understand that I always do everything at the last moment, but I'm trying...I know that if my trailer won't be cool and more or less professional, it will be entirely my fault. I understand that I should've done everything earlier but there is nothing I can change right now, except try harder.

First day of shooting is almost over!

So, here I am, sitting by the computer and watching my videos which I shot today. To say that I am disappointed and scared at the same time is to say nothing....The lighting is just awful, my bunny follows me throughout the whole shooting process, and I can't figure out how to start shooting him more productive...But I am not going to give up on my idea of the movie, I want Puffy (the bunny) to be in it, and I am going to do my best!So far, equipment that I am using is Samsung SC-MX10 Digital Cam. It is a very light and small camera, it's very comfortable to work with. The only problem is, my memory card is only 2GB, so I have to import my videos after an hour or two of shooting. I hope everything that I've got today will work for my trailer, however, I need to work on my equipment, on the particular scenes I would want to shoot, and definitely on my attitude. I have to be more confident about my project.

There are still so many things I need to do:
1.Final script of the movie
2.Words for voiceovers which will portray the bunny
3.Figure out the etter lighting
4.Look for the track for the trailer, as well as for the movie itself

First (official) day of shooting

Today I started shooting my bunny to make a movie. I didn't think it would be so hard...First of all he sees me laying on the floor with my camera and he just wants to sit by my side, which is why I don't get enough good shots. I am trying to push him away, so that I could make some long shots ut he keeps coming back to me...
I think I am going to spend all day long shooting him while he is doing all kind of activities he usually does. I don't want my movie to be boring, so I would rather shoot more footage and throw it away later, than nothing at all or boring stuff.
Well, I wish myself luck, and going back to work.

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