Friday, January 22, 2010

Whatever can go wrong...

Yeah, you know that saying. I've been pretty much preparing myself from the beginning for a lot of dumb little things to take place throughout the completion of this project, and I'm trying my best to be as prepared as I possibly can for whatever might happen. When I opened my Macbook Pro up earlier this week and it refused to come out of sleep mode, I knew this was just the first in probably a series of frustrating events. Thankfully, since I'm getting college credit for this whole thing, I was bumped into full-time territory and will therefore be getting more loan money. With said extra loan money I went ahead and purchased a shiny new Frost White Toshiba netbook. This thing is totally beautiful and I wish I'd gotten one a long time ago. I've already Linux'd it up with Ubuntu, which is something I've been wanting to play around with for a while, so aside from minor keyboard annoyances, the wait time for my MBP getting repaired will be a heck of a lot less painful. I'm thinking I should have it back by the end of next week.

It's been a while, so certainly I must have a few updates. First of all, the project has been unanimously approved by all parties and is now completely official. Before it was just "assumed" it would be approved, but we all know things are better when official. Which they are now. Awesome.

I have finally met face to face with Adele, the owner of the foundation, and her husband and children. They all seem like wonderful people, and it's a big relief to have finally met them. I felt bad that it took so long to happen, but now that it has everything seems to be falling into place.

At the meeting with Adele I was given the footage of her son's life/funeral on Hi-8 tape, which I thought wouldn't be too big of a problem since I have my own camera... Which I then obviously could not find the charger to, rendering my camera useless. Thankfully, Dr. Carlin had one he was willing to let me borrow, so I've got that covered. I also picked up the camera I would be using to film the project with, as well as a clip-on LAV mic, so I've got pretty much all the technology I need to get this show on the road. Once my laptop is out of the shop.

It seemed like I had more to mention, but I guess this is good enough for an update. The first filming date is solidified for February 6th, in which I will be travelling to Chambersburg to film the grave site, as well as the interview with Adele at her house. I should be able to take care of it all in one day. Fingers crossed.

Saturday, January 9, 2010

(500) Days of Winter

Just got done watching (500) Days of Summer. I wasn't really too thrilled with it, there were definitely some parts though. The presentation of the movie was fairly interesting though, and man Zooey Deschanel is gorgeous. I've still got Downfall to watch from Netflix, but I don't know if I should start watching that at 2 a.m. or not.. I'm really looking forward to watching it though.

Oh wait, this isn't a personal blog? Whatever, I'll use it to talk about whatever I damn well please. There hasn't been too many developments although I've finished the Syllabus for the class next semester that will get me credit for doing this project. Basically I had to write out a plan that says what I'm going to be doing, why I'm doing it, and what I will be gaining from it from a "scholarly" perspective. I've mapped out my semester, broken up into weeks, but we all know how useful schedules are when it comes to projects like this. I've just got to find one more book about working with a small non-profit client, add that to my Supplemental Texts section and send it on back to Dr. E. According to him with the changes I've made it appears that it will be ready to pass administrative inspection. It will be very awesome to have this project officially approved. Did I mention it wasn't officially approved yet? No worries.

Music negotiations with Temporary Residence have reached a standstill. See how I made that sound like a baseball contract negotiation? Anyways, they put me in touch with some broad from some other company, who sent me some form I had to fill out which I did and sent back to them. Their response was basically, "We need to see the video first before we can grant approval." While I guess this is understandable, I clearly described how I would be using the track in the form. Do people really go into film projects not knowing whether they will have licenses for the music they want to use? Oh well. Eff 'em. I'll just use entirely Caspian for the whole running time of the film. I realize Explosions in the Sky are a much more well established band, but do things really need to get that much more asinine when you hit it big as a band? The Mylene Sheath has been nothing but gracious during the whole licensing process.

I'm meeting with Adele, the owner of the foundation, next Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. I'm pretty nervous, as I often am when I meet people, but I'm sure it will go really well. Up until now my only communication has been through email, so it will be good to put a face to the name. I'll basically just be going over my plan so far, finding out what her concerns are, and scheduling times to film. I've only got through the month of January to film her segment(s), as she is also an accountant and the months of February through April are very busy for her. Hopefully I'll be meeting with Dr. Ellerbach sometime next week as well.

Anyways, that's it for now. More updates as stuff happens.

Friday, January 1, 2010

happy new year

Hello everybody. Welcome to the blog for the documentary film entitled in memory of connor kirby. While most people are out partying, ringing in the new year, here I sit watching game 1 of the 2005 World Series on DVD, frantically preparing things for this documentary. Well, maybe not so frantically, but I no longer have the excuse of "the holidays" to put things off any longer, and I'm going to be on a tight schedule. I think I'm up for the task.

My plan for in memory of connor kirby. is for it to be a 30 minute documentary-style film about the locally owned and operated Connor Kirby Infant Memorial Foundation. What this foundation does is give money to those who can't afford funeral services, burial sites, grave stones, even counseling for the parents of deceased infants. It's pretty amazing to think that there is a foundation like this based in such a small town, but as soon as I heard about what these people do I knew I wanted to work with them.

So right now my main priority is to finish the "syllabus" for the class that will give me credit for this project next semester. Thankfully I have a copy of one done by a former student who also did a documentary for his professional project, so I have something to model mine after. This should be a relatively simple task, however as soon as I reached the part where I talk about how I'm going to do a blog, I got sidetracked and actually created the blog. Oh well, it needed to be done eventually.

After the syllabus is done, I'll be going in to talk to Dr. Ellerbach (the project's Supervisor) to get some pointers on script-writing and planning. While the documentary will be largely comprised of interviews with people, I will go in with a general plan for the interviews and what I'm going to be asking, but plan for a lot of ad-libbing. There will also be voice-overs which will have to be completely scripted. I am aware that this will be an in-depth process, however I am hoping there will be quite a few moments throughout the film that I don't plan on at all. While my entire experience in the documentary genre is a 5-minute "mockumentary" for a class back in Community College, it has always been the unplanned things that I have enjoyed most about video creation. I think there will probably be many cool unplanned moments during the filming of this project.

I have gotten in contact with a couple labels about licensing music for the documentary. From the beginning I have envisioned the video opening to the track "Memorial" by Explosions in the Sky. After contacting Temporary Residence I was told it would most likely cost $100 a track to license. I am still debating on whether or not I want to use it. I also got in touch with The Mylene Sheath, which is an absolutely wonderful label ran by wonderful people. They have put out releases for bands such as Junius, Constants, Caspian, If These Trees Could Talk, Giants, Gifts From Enola, as well as many other awesome bands. They are a pretty new label and already have some of the best, if not THE best lineup of post-rock bands. All of the music by these bands fit the mood I will be trying to set with this documentary perfectly, and I've been told they will license me tracks for a "next to nothing deal" because they are just that awesome. I'll have more on that once they draw up contracts and everything is signed (I really don't want to get sued by one of my favorite labels!)

That's about it for right now. I'm going to be picking up the camera and everything to start filming next week. I'm really looking forward to things picking up with this project, I've been going over and over ideas in my head the past couple months and I'm really looking forward to making them a reality.