Begin Final Term

It's the third week of my last term (if everything goes as planned) at UO.

A video I made last term about park acquisition for my internship with My Eugene is now online with a piece written by another intern, Erik Maurer.

Lately my life seems like an endless string of pre-production meetings, which I am totally loving.

For my Documentary Production class, taught by Jon Palfreman, I'm working with two other students on an 8-10 minute piece about nuclear power in Oregon, which we will attempt to get on OPB. We were having trouble getting in touch with our sources for the first couple weeks, but we finally did our first interview today, have another scheduled for Sunday, and are working on scheduling a third.

In UFO we are starting to plan a short film written by our treasurer, Brian Leonard. I will most likely be DP and Art Director on it, which will be a lot work, but also a lot of fun.

Brian and another UFO member, Jake Schamber, and I have also formed a team to participate in the first annual Adrenaline Film Project at UO. I'm really excited about it. I love working with Brian, and am looking forward to working with Jake for the first time.

Almost Spring

Finals week begins tomorrow. I, fortunately, only have one final left: my History of the Motion Picture Part 2 exam. I'm going to a study group with some other students from the class tomorrow night. The exam is Tuesday afternoon. I have a UFO meeting that night and we have a short shoot on Wednesday. Besides that, all I have to do is finish editing a video for my internship, and then I can head up to Portland for the break!

I'm really looking forward to spending time outside and being active after the ridiculous number of hours I've spent in the computer lab this term. Next term I'm taking a 10k training class. I think I'll feel a lot better with regular exercise scheduled in. I've been feeling really stressed out and lethargic for the last month or so. I'm going to need to run a lot over spring break to prepare!

I'm also taking History of the Motion Picture Part 3, TV Documentary Production, and 2 J408 workshops: Mobile Media Production and Lighting for Video.

In addition to classes, UFO, and WMTM, I'm also planning to participate in the Adrenaline Film Project in May. Brian and I are planning to work together, and are looking for a third person (hopefully someone with good Final Cut Pro skills). Someone is coming to talk to the UFO about it on Tuesday. I'm really excited about it.

I'll be really busy, but I don't think it could possibly be more stressful than this term has been.

J331 Shorts Well Underway

On Wednesday my J331 production group conducted three more interviews and shot a lot of B-roll footage for our short documentary.

I watched some footage with Jenica, one of my group members, and discovered that the first few minutes of one of our tapes is useless. Not sure what's wrong with it, but it's really jerky and the sound is distorted. The footage was from our interview with the University president and our establishing shots of Johnson Hall where we met with him. We shot the interview on two cameras, so as long as we got decent sound on the other one, we should be okay. If not, we'll only have half the interview to select sound bytes from. We will definitely have to reshoot the establishing shots, but that shouldn't take long. We are very fortunate that Johnson is right by Allen Hall, so we won't have to haul equipment all the way across campus.

I think we're going to try to get one more interview next week and then we can start editing this project and start shooting our dramatic short, which is due at the same time.

I've asked Rose and Tim from UFO to be our actors, but haven't figured out our shooting schedule. Tim sprained his ankle the other day, so I'll have to find out if he's still going to be able to do it. I also need to finish writing the last scene this weekend and get a storyboard together.

This class really takes up a lot of my time, but I think it's worth it. At this point I'm feeling much more comfortable with the equipment than I did at the beginning of the term. I feel pretty confident about my shooting abilities. I'm still not as comfortable with editing as I'd like to be, but maybe by the end of these projects that will change.

Busy, Busy, Busy....

@MYMHM on Twitter was nice enough to send me a Google Wave invitation in exchange for retweeting a link to their latest episode, which I was happy to do. It took a few days for the invitation to arrive in my inbox, which gave me a chance to read about it a bit, mostly on Twitter, which did little to clarify for me exactly what it does. I finally got to try it out today, but so few people have access to it yet that it's difficult to tell how functional or cool it is yet. I am intrigued, at the very least.

At tonight's University Film Organization we did a lot of planning, and should be pretty busy for the next few weeks.

Tomorrow we are shooting more of a short written by club member Rose Guess, which we started on a couple of weeks ago.

Thursday night a couple of club members and I are driving up to Portland for the weekend to attend What is Film?, which I am very excited about. If we have time, we may go check out the Northwest Film Center's 36th NW Film and Video Festival, though I fear we have too much else to do.

We have also broken into two small groups to make music videos for folk musician Will Hobbs of Portland and metal band Straitjacket Seduction of Columbus, Ohio. We will start pre-production next week in club.

In addition to all of that, I have plenty of classwork to keep me occupied right now. My third video assignment for J331 is due next Monday. I also have exams on Monday and Tuesday and a project for my Media Aesthetics class due Tuesday.

I really can't afford to slack at all, as I am trying to bring up my GPA in order to increase my chances of getting into a graduate program next year (not that I'm sure yet that that's what I want to do). I will also have to take the GRE very soon.

I hope I can make it through the rest of the term without getting swine flu!

Video Production

Last February, which you may note is when I stopped writing here, the University Film Organization began shooting a feature length film called In the Rain. I am director of photography for the project, and as it turns out, that's a big job.

It's been especially tough because the club has almost no funding, which means we have to use all our own equipment, which is far from professional. It can be really frustrating for me going from working on small class projects with really nice cameras, tripods, lights, etc. to working on a huge long-term project without such things. I often find that I'm unable to do what I would like to because what we have is inadequate. Even doing simple moving shots like tilts and pans is near impossible if your tripod doesn't allow for smooth movement.

We planned to finish production before the end of the school year, but that didn't happen, and then many members of our cast and crew left for the summer. We have just begun shooting again, and only have about 10 scenes left before the film goes into post-production. We've been keeping a production blog, which contains a lot of photos and updates about our progress.

I've been elected president of the club for the 2009/2010 school year, and that has been keeping me pretty busy. We have a lot of new members this year, some of whom bring a lot of skills to the table. I'm really excited about working with them, as well as our returning members from last year.

I have started looking for video production internships, and am not having much luck so far. I hope to start one this winter or spring. Chambers isn't offering any right now, but said they might in the spring, so I guess I'll have to keep checking back with them. I'd really like to get some hands-on experience using professional equipment in a professional environment.

Winter Term Begins

I am halfway into my second week of winter term. I think the combination of classes and extracurricular activities I'm participating in are going to keep me pretty busy, which makes me almost relieved that I am not working right now (the restaurant I was at since I moved here just went under). My hope is that I won't have time to spend money.

I am now taking Writing for the Media, the last of my pre-Journalism classes. I think it's going to be challenging, but I expect to learn a lot. I am glad that I took Intro to Media Writing at PCC before transferring. It is a definite bonus to be somewhat familiar with the basic concepts. I got back my first graded assignment today, which I did not edit it as carefully as I should have. I am relieved that we are given the opportunity to resubmit.

I have joined Duck U, for which I get 1 credit, but more importantly I get hands-on experience working with professional equipment. So far I have gotten to work with a pretty nice digital video camera, and have gotten some practice setting up lights.

I am also going to be shooting video for UFO's major project for the year, a feature-length (or close to it) romantic comedy about FBI agents working in Eugene. The film is untitled as of now, but the script was just finished, and we are planning to hold auditions in a couple of weeks. I think this is going to take up a lot of my time, but I think it will be a valuable experience and am looking forward to it.