Filming the Teddy Bear Movie-Day 2

Hello Everyone! Today, we finished up filming The Teddy Bear Movie. We shot some much needed coverage and captured wonderful takes for all of our scenes! We finished out the day of shooting with a fun photo shoot with our two teddy bear stars. The pair was incredibly photogenic and an adorable couple to boot!

Here they are amidst the grass enjoying a sunny day.

Karl and Everett help the bears pose together.

The bears enjoy a lovely day in the sun!

Karl inspects a piece of petrified wood during snack break.

Georgia smiles in the sun during snack break.

Another great day of shooting!

Filming the Teddy Bear Movie-Day 1

So, as of right now, our second film is lacking an official title, which will soon be remedied, but for right now I will just refer to it using our working title, The Teddy Bear Movie. Below are pictures chronicling our shoot courtesy of Georgia who was acting as our Production Assistant for the majority of the film. 

Below, we see Ben framing up a shot, while Karl assists. Karl is playing our protagonist Billy, while Ben is trying his hand at cinematography.

This picture beautifully captures the ordered chaos of a film shoot. Everything is happening simultaneously, and yet it always turns out in the end!

Ben is looking very impressive here as our intrepid cinematographer shot against a beautiful and dramatic sky! (In film making, we would call this a low angle shot.)

Here Karl (or Billy) is acting quite the fugitive, running for the door of the building he must "break into."

Ben watches in the background while Everett and I work together to find out the best place to put the boom so that we capture the best sound of Karl running to the door.

Here, Georgia takes on the role of paparazzo, taking a fun action shot through a bush of Everett, looking very much like an official cinematographer.

All in all, it was a very successful day of shooting. We shot more than 50 individual clips! Everyone was working wonderfully together. We've become quite the professional team. While we worked tirelessly, we still needed to capture a few more shots during day 2 of shooting...
More on that in the next post!

Day 6: Development of the 2nd Movie

Today we finished up Dances with Werewolves and even added a little bonus blooper reel! We also developed our second movie, which will be shot tomorrow... working title: The Teddy Bear Movie...

Very excited to begin work on it!

Day 5: Editing Dances with Werewolves

Day 5 marked the creation of Dances with Werewolves  in its polished form. using Final Cut Pro everyone had their own go at the computer to help craft a movie that they were all satisfied with.

Below, Georgia is working hard at the computer... perhaps turning the film black and white?

Karl and Everett offer their opinions on the movie so far

All that remains to be finished on Dances with Werewolves is the blooper reel! And come Monday, production will begin on the second movie!

Day 4: An Introduction to Final Cut Pro and the Editor's Tools

Today involved large amounts of brain work... but lots of fun too. Everyone learned the basic operation of Final Cut Pro, a film industry standard editing software! Using a short video I filmed earlier they were able to experiment with all manners of post-production fun. They added lots of cool effects and had fun experimenting with sound design.

Here's a little example of some of the short cuts they learned on Final Cut Pro!

Day 5 marks the beginning of editing their own movie!

Day 3: Lights, Camera, Action- The Shooting of Dances with Werewolves

 Day 3 was the day of our shoot. Everyone was preparing for his or her role. Georgia was to be cinematographer, Karl boom operator, Everett Fred-George Bob-Gerard, and Ben the Prisoner/Werewolf. Below, Ben prepares himself for the role while Karl searches for the boom, and I review the script.

Below, Karl helps me put up our jail cell bars. We are standing in front of our awesome set piece!

Everett, or should I say Fred-George Bob-Gerard, is looking very much the policeman with his badge and handcuffs at the ready!

Georgia sits in our makeshift dolly, a wheeled office chair. She is framing up the shot for the film!

Ben, sitting in his "cell" gives the thumbs-up sign that he is ready to go! Soon he will transform from an innocent prisoner into a werewolf!

and.... ACTION! Fred-George Bob-Gerard rounds the bend, Karl is ready to go, Georgia sits on our dolly, and I get ready to pull her backwards to achieve a tracking shot of Everett as he walks down the hallway. Everyone looks like a member of a professional film crew!

As much fun as filming is, it is still lots of hard work!
Karl takes a breather to rest his arms.

The crew spends a moment to rest and play around. Keeping it fun is always the most important part of a movie shoot!

That's a wrap! Day 4 however brings with it editing... learning how to use Final Cut Pro to transform our raw footage into a movie!

Day 2: The Film-making Journey Continues

Today we were joined by the final member of our crew- Georgia. Yay!

While Day 1 was very important for teaching more theoretical aspects of the film-making process, Day 2 was devoted to a more hands-on type of studying. We broke out the camera and sound equipment and really got to play around with to learn how all of the settings worked.

Everyone had the opportunity to try his or her hand at the various film equipment. In the picture above, we can see Ben acting as our Boom operator (while Everett looks on), which is an essential job on any film set. At first glance it may seem like all the boom operator does is to hold up a microphone attached to a pole, but in reality, it is a much more complex job. Since a shot-gun microphone (the type that we were using) is directional, it is very important that the boom operator points it towards the source of the sound, all while trying to stay out of the shot! It is a very complex, but rewarding job.

Here we are all learning the basics of camera operation. A lot more goes on during the filming process than one might think at first! Everyone learned all about zoom, focus, white balance, and aperture! This was to ensure that our movie had the best picture possible!

Georgia behind the lens!

The boys are looking quite studious!

Here we examine the tri-pod, a piece of equipment integral to the film-making process!

While we learned many different things today, one thing remained the same from Day 1: all of the fun we had!!

Day 1: Learning the Basics

Hey all! Sorry about the delay, but pictures are finally here that chronicle the first week of 2 Films, 2 Weeks! It's been very busy, but also very productive and I am so proud of all of the progress my intrepid participants are making!

 

Day 1 was all about the pre-production stage of movie making, so we learned about the tools that filmmakers use to develop their ideas. We used the program Celtx to draft our screenplay, and practiced making storyboards (pictures that depict the action in a scene) for the Lion King before we created storyboards for our own movie Dances with Werewolves. The picture above shows Karl, Ben, and Everett creating AMAZING storyboards for their movie!

But film making is a lot of hard work, and so after a long but learning-filled day... we had a fun photo-shoot outside!

But alas, today we were also missing our fourth wonderful film maker Georgia... but she joined us Day 2, and with plenty of ideas too!

Update!

So we just finished day 2 of the studio. Unfortunately we are going to have a bit of delay for pictures, but they should be up by the end of the week. For now, I will leave you all with some wonderful pictures of our set that we are using tomorrow for the filming of Dances with Werewolves!

View one of the jail cell wall

The window for the wall

Rosie (my cat) investigates the wall

View two of the wall

This movie is going to look great!!

Only One Day Left!

Well that's it folks! Tomorrow it begins! Hope everyone is ready and as pumped as I am!

2 More days... Lets get the ideas rolling!

Only 3 days left!

Only 4 days left!

Only 5 Days left until session 1 begins! I'm getting excited, are you?

The Countdown Continues!

Only 6 more days until the first session begins!

Day 10

Tasks Accomplished:

Informational hand outs
Lesson plans
Example Clips

Ideas for movies


And, I even created my first stop-motion animation movie today! Success!

The Countdown Begins!

The countdown to the first session of 2 Films, 2 Weeks begins today! There is officially one week until the first session begins!

Day 9

Well, we finally have all of the t-shirt orders in and are going to drop them off today. I can't wait! Things are progressing quite well for  camp. Our final accessory purchases will be arriving in the mail within a week or so; it is all coming together quickly.

Today, I am working on the power point presentation for the introductory session for camp at the Intersector this coming Monday. I am also putting some finishing touches on some of the supplemental material that the students will be using in class.

It is also finally a sunny day (although the sun just disappeared behind some clouds)! Maybe I can go outside and shoot a little footage with the camera. The rain this past week has been interminable, although the gray skies do bring out the green everywhere in the beautiful Oregon countryside. The fields and trees look so lush and make me want to capture their exquisite beauty on camera! I will admit however that this cloud cover has a great benefit. It provides uniform light quality, which any filmmaker knows is essential for continuity when he or she must shoot a single scene for a long period of time.

Today is going to be a very productive day!

Day 8

Things certainly are progressing rapidly along! I am gearing up for an introductory session for the camp this coming Monday; there is an awesome power point presentation in the works! My mom and I have shopped around for the t-shirts and think we have found the place to get them printed! How exciting. They are really going to look great.

There is still lots to do, and many film clips and examples to shoot, but I am drawing inspiration for these films from many fun sources!

The camera is lots of fun to use and most importantly, the footage that it shoots looks FANTASTIC! I can't wait to see the movies that my participants are going to make! I know they are going to be AWESOME!!!

I've got to get to work on those film clips soon though, maybe I'll post a fun preview later!

Fun Fact

Yesterday I found out that the makers of the film Avatar used Adobe Creative Suite to edit and create visual effects for it. We will be using Adobe during camp, which made me think that we could very well create our own Avatar (if we had more time of course)!

Technology certainly is advanced now!

Day 7

Claire came over today and we designed the t-shirts for 2films2weeks!
They are going to look great! Here is what the front of the shirt is going to look like.

And here is what the back is going to look like.





Now all we have to do is find a printer and we are good to go!

Day 6

Today was the third weekly meeting with Victoria and Claire. We planned an upcoming introductory session for the camp as well as the t-shirt design and delegated our tasks for the coming week.

Since the video camera came earlier this week, Claire and I also discussed possible movies to film for fun as well as for examples for camp!

Its going to be a wonderfully productive week!

Day 5

I can't believe it is already June! It seems as though I just returned from the East Coast, but it's been close to 3 weeks now. The first session of camp is rapidly approaching, and while there are still many things to be done, I feel like we are in very good shape and have already accomplished so much. Today, I bounced some ideas off of my Mom, teacher extraordinaire, (She's been a master teacher for 16 years!) while we began to develop the lesson plans for camp. There is certainly lots of information to teach!

My next task is to come up with appropriate examples of screenplays and film clips that help illustrate the concepts. We are also getting ready for an upcoming event in the community. On June 14th I will be hosting two introductory sessions to the camp to give both parents and participants a chance to get to know me and ask some preliminary questions about camp. I'll post more information about exact times and locations later!