Ninja vs Penguin

Penguin July 18th, 2009

We finished our first week of production on The Intern Project and dang has it been stressful. We’ve been shooting 2 hour days after a full day’s of work. So we’re tired and hungry but everyone’s been bringing a lot of energy and a can do attitude.

It wouldn’t be production if it didn’t have its problems. We started shooting on Wednesday, but we were waiting for a crucial prop and ended up starting 30 min late. Considering we only had 2 hours, that means we lost a quarter of our day. Needless to say, we didn’t make our day. Then on Thursday, one of the leads told me that they wouldn’t be able to make it to the shoot on Friday. Nor would they be able to do anything next week. Of course, I had to go and reschedule Thursday and Friday.

It was a stretch, but I managed to schedule everything properly. But it meant that we had to cut certain scenes, some rather important. We went so far as to cut an entire role, though it was small.

We had been asked if we could perform something at the “Talent Show”. We opted to give everyone a sneak peek behind the filmmaking process. So we shot “live” in front of an audience. Of course, we didn’t actually shoot it because I didn’t want to stress out my actors. I didn’t even have a battery in the camera.

The “Talent show” ran into our day, but everyone was really gracious and was willing to put in an extra hour. Thanks so much!

On Friday, we were undermanned, so I would set up the camera on some sticks and man the boom mic. There were a few times where we had to prop up the boom because we just didn’t have anyone to help. Everyone’s been serving double duty and getting a crash course on camerawork and directing. Fun stuff.

So, after a week, I can start seeing the episodes in my head. Being so close to the material for so long has made it difficult to tell if I’m putting enough on screen. If the dialogue is saying enough without saying too much, and if the cuts are going to match.

Going into the next few weeks of production, we’re still behind schedule and a lot of people can’t make it. We’ve made the difficult decision of cutting an episode and possibly condensing 2 others. I have a lot to do over the weekend.

It’s a wonder anything gets made.

-Penguin

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Penguin July 14th, 2009

The Intern Project has quickly moved through pre-production. We spent a short afternoon location scouting and taking reference pictures which I had intended to use for storyboarding. But with this quick time table, I haven’t really been able to do that. Instead, I’ve moved straight into making my shot list.

I’ve been watching Hollywood Camera Works and I wish I took notes. There’s so many things with blocking, shot composition, and camera placement that I know I learned, but just can’t recall. One of the lessons I learned was to think in terms of camera placement and not necessarily in shots, per se. I’m also trying to stay away from “artistic” angles. Since we’re doing something along the lines of “The Office”, we’re going to be shooting a lot of handheld. That’s going to be interesting.

We did have a scare last week where one of our leads dropped out of the project. Her schedule just didn’t allow her to make our shoots. So we scrambled to find someone to take her place. Her character was too important to just cut out completely. Luckily, we secured another actress and was able to get back on track.

From this point on, all the phases of production are going to get mashed together.

We have first drafts for episodes 6 and 7, but they need to be edited and rewritten. I still have episodes 4 and 5 to edit too. Then preproduction on all those. And once we have some scenes in the can, we’re going to start editing them.

It’s going to be crazy, but fun.

-Penguin

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Penguin June 29th, 2009

We just finished the first draft of the scene breakdown for The Intern Project. A scene breakdown is just a outline of every scene in the script focusing on who’s in it and what the central action is.

We had come up with the major story beats first, so we wrote up the breakdown for that. There was still a lot more stuff that we need to write to fill in all the gaps leading from beat to beat. So we just brainstormed for each episode, seeing what would be interesting or funny.

Then we started plugging the scenes that didn’t necessarily have to do with the overall plot into the scene breakdown. We were working over GoogleDocs, which made the process really hard. It was tough to see where the story was front heavy, back heavy, or just had holes.

Even though it took some time, we printed out the whole breakdown, cut it up into strips so we could move everything around physically. This was a great way to visually see how the story was progressing and what areas needed addressing.

We took notes and went back to the GoogleDoc and manually synced it to the strips. Then we went through and addressed all the notes we came up with.

This was the first time I’ve done a scene breakdown before and thought it was a great way to think through the entire script. Invariably, we started moving into some expanded scene breakdown territory with some of the more complicated scenes.

Now we’re going to go through and work on the expanded scene breakdown. This should take a few days, then we can finally get started on the script. We gave ourselves a deadline of July 7th, but I’m not sure if we’re going to be able to make it. It’s a lot of work between here and there.

I’ll keep you posted.

- Penguin

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Penguin June 22nd, 2009

It’s been 3 weeks since I started this internship in Wisconsin and I’ve been learning a lot. One of the things I’ve been learning is how to occupy my time and keep myself from getting bored. I’m interning with 4 others who are interested in film/media/broadcasting, so I figured it’d be a good idea to get a project going.

So started ‘The Intern Project‘. The story is going to follow 5 interns at a fictional production company, all vying for the single fulltime position at the end of the stick.

Yesterday, Valaree and I spent a lot of time finishing the initial drafts of the characters and started looking at the high level plot. There’s still a lot that we have to do, but I’m really excited with what we have so far.

We only have 9 weeks left to write, shoot, and hopefully edit the planned 7 episode series. It’s a lot to do, but I think we can do it. Most of the other interns don’t have much experience, so this is as much a learning process as it is about producing something really fun.

Stay tuned.

-Penguin

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