Hand Processing a Film or Back to the Drawing Board

So yesterday was the hand processing class for my Winnipeg Film Group course on 16mm filmmaking. Faithful readers will remember that a little over a month ago, I shot a film with some friends. The interesting thing with film is that you have no idea if anything worked until you actually process the stuff. I had hope for most of the shoot, since we were careful metering shots and had good lighting, for the most part.
Hand processing is fairly easy, simply an extension on photo processing, with the major difference being that you must be in COMPLETE darkness (thus turning you into a blindly groping touch machine). A couple of people went before me and their stuff looked great, you could clearly see the images and whatnot. Then it came to me... the first go was awful. The film was almost all black, with a few images of Jay running... bummer... Then I remembered that the first roll was the one where I wasn't sure how much was left, so we ended it early. Hope!
Everyone else was leaving after doing their little section, as we had booked times during the week to finish. One of the profs was staying till the scheduled time of 6pm (we began at 10am) and said that I could stay and work more if I wanted. I'm glad I did, because I was able to use the extra time to finish processing all my footage, learn to use the Steinbeck machine, and go through all my stuff to determine what was going to go into the final project.
Here's the thing though... NOTHING TURNED OUT. Everything we filmed was underexposed. I had maybe 20 seconds tops of properly exposed footage and it all was somehow solarized. It turns out that when using a bolex camera, you have to open the f-stop a half a stop for what you meter. I guess I missed that memo, because no one else really had the same problems that I did... So I have 3 rolls of film that included massive blackness, a few brief scenes of Jay running, and solarized faces and body outlines (which actually look kinda cool). My movie is gone to the ether! Basically all that is left for me to do is try to scratch animate something. My prof suggested that I take all the solarized footage and, using the optical printer, make more of it. The only problem is that we do not have any teaching on that particular machine (it's for a different class), so I'll have to save that task for another day.
If there is one thing that I love about DV, it's how you are able to tell RIGHT AWAY if you are doing something right. With the proper PC, you can start editing within hours. You can playback what you were filming on the spot, so know if you fucked up or not. There is a real sense of immediacy. While film has that certain "look" to it that's yet to be duplicated digitally, it is definitely a more unforgiving medium. Anyway, back to the drawing board!

Lost in Civilization 3 or Board Game Mania!

What the hell have I been doing the past week?!?!?!?!
Well, for the most part, I've been playing Civilization 3 for the PC, which I finally got working. The game is insanely addictive, although I've been sucking my way through it for the most part. I was super good at Civilization 1 and 2 but they've changed a ton in 3. You actually have to focus a lot on trade, which took some getting used to, but now I'm sort of in the zone.
Other than that, not much has gone on besides work, food, and sleep. I happened to get some more board games in the mail that I'd ordered from ebay, they are: Diplomacy and Twilight Imperium 3rd Edition. Both are super in depth and complex games that should be fun, once I figure the rules out. While on the subject, I tried out the Civilization board game and it was fairly fun. You really have to download the new rules, because the ones from out of the box blow. (This is the newest Civ game, not the one from the 80's).
Oh yeah, I also rented some classic blacksploitation movies from Movie Village. They are: Sweet Sweetback's Baadassss Song (the first BS movie ever!), Dolemite (about a kung fu nightclub owning pimp!), and Hell Up in Harlem (the sequel to Black Caesar). So far, because of my time devoted to Civ 3, I've only watched Sweet Sweetback. It was somewhat unintelligible, had far too much running and full frontal male nudity, and not enough beating of whitey, but for the movie that started a genre, was pretty ok I guess.
Well that's my sad life right now... back to the game!

Episode 3 or Midnight Movie

So last night I checked out a midnight showing of Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith at Grant Park with Erin, Lee, and Zee. The theatre was full, luckily without any cosplay nerds in attendance, although there were some vocal fans who cheered at certain scenes and applauded at the end (maybe 20 or 30). With hype up the ass and anticipation moderately stoked, I was interested in seeing how this one was going to turn out. Seeing as how I HATED the last two with a passion, I had low expectations. To me, the Star Wars movies are ONLY the original version trilogy (no special edition). After seeing this new one, that thought is still in my mind.
While not the worst of the new movies, this one was not excellent either. It was a solid ok. It had horrid dialogue and acting, especially by Mr. and Mrs. Anti Charisma, Hayden Christenson and Natalie Portman. Every time I was about to get sick of the thing though, they would toss in a super impressive action scene (whether relevant to the plot or not).
Taken as a whole though, the new movies do not accomplish what was needed. There is no real sense of a good man falling to evil. He's just a whiny kid. It's not particularly tragic like it should be, nor is it really all that justified. He just kinda goes bad on a whim. There should have been a whole movie with him battling those feelings, then in another one, have him finally succumb. Essentially, Episode 3 should have spanned 2 films with an earlier one establishing how great of a hero Anakin was. THEN you would've had a tragedy... instead of an annoying jerk killing kids because some dude told him jedi's were bad.
There were tiny continuity errors, large logic gaps, and stupid attempts at comedy (R2 and the battle droids) balanced with super awesome battles (the volcano planet fight). On the whole, the movie fluctuated between unwatchably bad (episode 2) and pretty cool (1/5 of episode 1). I'd say maybe 2.5 to 3 out of 5. Although seeing it in the theatre is a must, as the special effects are nuts.

E3 or Just When I Think I'm Out, They PULL Me Back IN!

So it's E3 right now, as I type. So far, there's been a crazy amount of debuts, including the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and Nintendo Revolution systems. I had seriously considered stopping gaming, as I have less and less time to devote to it and need to start to try to go all career on my ass, but seeing what the near future holds has me reconsidering... The CG cinemas of yore are the graphics of today.
I'd have to say that the most interesting thing I've seen so far is Elektroplankton for the DS. Not so much a game as an art piece and creative tool, the thing looks killer. They even had a DJ make a song live on stage using the thing... It was super rad! Stuff like Castlevania, Advance Wars, Mario Kart, Metroid, and Viewtiful Joe all look promising as well. I'd have to be so bold as to say that at least the DS is going to have something original to play, rather than just ports of PS2 games like the PSP.
This past week has been uneventful. I've been playing Civilization for the SNES quite a bit, got the Civilization board game off Ebay (and had to remove 750 pieces from plastic sprews... that took FAR too long...), finally watched Rashomon (which ruled hardcore), worked, had some wings at 30 cent wing night at the Pony Corall (my cut off point for not feeling sick from eating wings is around 16 or so...), played a kickin' game of Samurai Swords with Dave, Ryan, Tina, and Erin (which Dave won through villany!), picked up Seinfeld Season 4, started and stopped reading a 1970's self help type book ("The Road Less Travelled")... then again, I guess I've done a fair amount of stuff after all.

Making a Picture or Kingdom of Heaven

So I made a picture this weekend... at least I hope I did. You never really know until you process the actual film if it all turned out. (definitely an advantage that digital has over film.) What I was filming though, was GOLD! Assuming that I can edit it all together properly it should be decent. I couldn't have done it without the help of my good buddies Lee, Jay, Dave, and Caley. Nor could I have accomplished anything without the help of Erin, Meghan, Allan, or the Perrett family. Lets hope all the work wasn't for naught!
Last night I saw "Kingdom of Heaven" and was fairly impressed. While still containing the standard epic movie cliches, it did manage to avoid the deification or demonization of any particular faith. It did a good job of making the story more about the lust for power of fundamentalists than about a clash of cultures. I especially liked the guy who played Saladin... he was perfect! Despite being too pretty, Orlando Bloom did a very good job as well, although it was odd to see such pearly whites sticking through all the grime. If you like the historical epic at all, then by all means check out "Kingdom of Heaven"... if only to wash out the horrid taste that "Troy" and "Alexander" left in your mouth.

A Tale of Two Movies or Filming Weekend

Erin and I rented some movies on 99 cent rental day and of the two we have watched, there couldn't have been a bigger difference in quality. The first one "Primer" was a heady quasi sci-fi drama about some young IT guys that make a time machine. It was very complicated and was hard to follow at times, but interesting and worth watching. The other one, "The Delicate Art of Parking" was a mocumentary about parking patrol and was terrible. We had to stop it halfway to avoid our untimely suicides. It was painfully unfunny and fundamentally flawed. It was far too clean and had WAY too many cuts and camera angles to be a "real" documentary. The acting was atrocious and the characters not well thought out at all. It seemed like something you'd come up with in a split second late at night...only most people would realize later that it needed more work and wasn't all that funny to begin with. I can't even begin to tell you how shitty it was in mere words...
I'm filming this weekend! Hey, it's raining outside.... ARGH!

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy or More Board Games!

So I checked out "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" with Erin, Dave, Brad, and Ashleigh last night and was moderately impressed. I knew that it was going to be different then the book, both because movies always are and because apparently that's the way Douglas Adams wanted it to be, so I wasn't angry at the changes or anything. For what they left in, and what they added, the movie was fine. It kept enough of the spirit of the books to still be funny, even if it never ventured into the totally hilarious level. I was still entertained for the majority of the time I was there, so it was worthwhile to see.
Today, before being called into work, I was surfing the net looking for cool new board games to try. I stumbled across a site called Board Game Geek that seems to be a great resource for the type of searching I was doing. You can find pretty much anything on there in some form or another. Who knew that they made a Warcraft and Doom board game? Anyway, I think that I'm going to track down the "Civilization" board games and "Diplomacy." They both sound super cool and apparently have insane levels of strategy and complexity involved. Although finding a 10 hour chunk of time (which is apparently the average playing session) to devote to the Civilization game might be a challenge in and of itself...
This weekend is my film shoot! I sure as hell hope that I know what I'm doing!!!!!