Week of March 31st

So, many of the plans for last week were not executed because of miscommunications and failures to read emails and complete tasks. I am obviously a little annoyed at the way things went down, but there is no use dwelling in the past and all we can do at this point is move forward.

The most important task last week was getting the application and DVD sent to the Academy of Motion Pictures and that was completed. I received the confirmation from them on Thursday and I am looking forward to the results of that submission.

Two of the other three festivals whose submission dates we missed were not that important to me and can be replaced with other festivals. One of them, The Blue Ocean Film Festival and Conservation Summit was the one I cared the most about and so I might consider submitting to it before the late deadline. I receive updates from Withoutabox once a week with new festivals, so I know we will be able to find additional festivals to add to our list. Our other four festivals don't have dates until the summer, so I know we will be able to make those deadlines without problem.

This week we are going to get back on track by finalizing the website, selecting definite film festivals and discussing the costs. Right now I have paid for everything by myself with the help of our indiegogo funds. I hope to discuss with my crew their personal responsibility to the film with the hopes they step up and volunteer to pay for some of our expenses.

Most of the other tasks for the Marketing and Distribution Plan have been finished except for the film's postcard. I am going to wait until after Visions before I even bring this up because I feel like Nico is totally overloaded and that is why mistakes are being made. We have 5 weeks remaining in the semester and I don't think it will be a big deal if this project is put on hold considering how much we have already completed and the amount of time we have put into the film.

Week of March 24

Yay! We are officially in picture lock and are making preparations for release. As of right now Nico has a good portion of our website complete and is finishing the paperwork for the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. I plan to mail it off to them tomorrow!

I am securing our UNCW premier with Sandra Jackson from Lumina Theatre and I think that we will be screening it this Wednesday, March 26th before the film, A River Changes Course. I am meeting with her to see if I might be able to introduce the films or be a part of the panel discussion after the film. I am very excited and even though it is very short notice I hope to have a decent turn out of people we know to see it. I emailed the people who participated in the film and I am going to speak to Pat tomorrow about sending our a departmental email about it as well. I also plan to contact friends and others who have showed interest in our film.

Our next step will be our submissions that need to be postmarked by March 28th, which I think we have 2 or 3. I am making the DVD's and Nico is completing the paperwork. Taylor did the majority of editing, so his work is dwindling while Nico's is really just beginning. I will be doing everything possible to promote this film and guide Nico in the direction I want this film to go. I do plan to work on possible screenings at local churches and Christian schools in the area too.

Week of March 17th

This week we plan to wrap up our editing for picture lock. We have to mail our entry to the Academy on Monday the 24th to make sure they have it by April 1st because it is not a "postmark" deadline, it is an "on-receipt" deadline. We are going to send it priority mail through the USPS, so they should receive it within 3 days at most, but I want to be sure to give ourselves a little bit of a cushion. I'm trying to be a bit economical since I am paying for all of this out of pocket. Once submitted, we can not make changes to the film according to the Academy rules, so this will be the same version we send to all other festivals.

Taylor is currently working on color correction and finalizing the sound design, Nico is working on all the paperwork for the Academy, getting the home page of the website up, and has also begun researching other festivals. This week I am doing a few reshoots, mainly Chancellor's walk and I also am going into the Bluethenthal Nature Preserve to possibly replace one of our current sequences with a walking shot through the natural surroundings. (We have been watching some direct cinema and cinema verite over the last two weeks in 371 and I am feeling a little inspired and I thought it might be a good link to the shot of Natalie walking for thematic purposes). I am also finalizing the credits.

We did make quite a few changes on Saturday based on the classes feedback, but we have decided to keep the flood animation as it is. We are all ok with the look of it, this was my direction to Whitney and I think it fits my vision. I know you do not agree, but I have to go with my gut on this. We did fix the analogy animation, correcting the timing of the doctors and smoothing out the beginning and end transitions into and out of the animation. We also worked on enhancing the graphs and the second translation of the Greek visual. The one other thing we are still going to work on this week as a complete crew is the vox pop section. In the past only Taylor and I worked on this, so we hope with Nico's help we can perfect the goal of this section, which is audience identification through pathos. This is what I intended, as well as the translation of the love of nature/the earth, so hopefully we will be able to execute that better this time.  

Week of March 10th

This week we screened our rough cut for the class and received a significant amount of feedback, some we are going to try to incorporate and some we are not. We will edit again on Saturday and I am going to contact Whitney to see if she might be available to come into the edit lab to work along side us, so we can describe the changes we are looking for her to make while we are right there over her shoulder with the hopes we don't have to scrap the flood animation completely. As far as the analogy animation goes, Taylor thinks there is a way for us to fix the timing on our own without the need for Whitney to work on it. Also, we are going to do some re-arranging and replacing of b-roll for the purposes of making it more artistic. We have a lot to work with, so we are going to try some new things out to try to introduce some visual metaphors. We also plan to re-cut the vox pop section because the intention was for audiences to identify with one of the types presented (older white male, middle aged white male, middle aged white woman, younger white woman, minority student, shopper, boater, runner, coffee drinker, etc) and we don't want them to seem un-relatable or scripted. They all made comments about why they loved the environment, so we are going to see if we can express that. We also discussed the feedback about making it "darker" and we all agreed that is not the direction we want to take this film. We are trying to break that stereotype of environmental films with a different approach.

I am taking a copy of the rough cut to Jamie Russell from the Office of Student Involvement and Engagement tomorrow, she is sharing with Sandra Jackson from Lumina to see if we can find a good fit for it to open with another film planned for sometime in April. This would be our first screening and a way to show it to fellow students.