First Time Short Film

Today I work on a movie set for the first time. It went nothing like I expected to go, however it was an awesome experience. After spending the entire weekend, battling a sick daughter, a wife with a torn rotator cuff, and my Full Sail homework deadline looming, I thought that I had time to do sound editing for an independent film. Boy was I shocked. I waited three hours outside of my school waiting on my principle to let me in the building so I can get the cameras and sound equipment. Just a little background info, I am the digital media instructor at mentorship Academy high school in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. With that being said, my principal was nice enough to open the school for me on a Sunday. Actors and prep time were not on schedule either, this is an extremely low budget film production. Nevertheless we had more fun then we would all like to admit.

The name of the movie is entitled Breathe, by Scott Sullivan. This is a short film and will more than likely be no longer than 30 minutes or so. My job is sound design and a film editor. I remember reading an article about editing film using Final Cut Pro, and recording a sound using GarageBand. I thought I would give this a try. After many technical difficulties, trial and error, I was able to capture pretty decent sound using a handheld Tascam sound recorder. Because everything was so I’ll schedule, we just decided that today would be a test run and that we would reconvene next week in order to finalize the production. I thought this is a great idea basically since we had already missed the golden hour to film our office scene, and we were doing me daytime scenes at night. I saw in Final Cut Pro where you can edit your movie that’s shot at night to make it look like it was in the daytime. However in my opinion, I believe there’s nothing better than the real thing.

I learned a lot from my first experience, prepare prepare, prepare. Do you have any stories about your first time on movie shoots?

References: http://www.indiewire.com/article/television/gillian-jacobs-jash-community-interview

What is Your Creative Process?

I often find myself thinking about the great endeavors that I want to encounter in the future.  Recently, I have discovered that one of my passions is writing. I have been a writer my entire life without realizing it. Being a musician, I have written songs, entire albums, soundtracks, and short stories as well. The creative process can sometimes be intimidating to the writer.

Enter Neil Strauss, 7 time New York Times Best Selling author is interviewed by Timothy Ferris, the author of the 4 Hour Workweek. In this interview, Strauss shares advice bout time management, his routines, and how he goes about his day-to-day process of writing. 

One of the principles discussed was the art of draft writing, and understanding that the first draft of anything is usually horrible. Strauss quoted Earnest Hemmingway in saying, “ The first draft of anything is usually s***. “  Strauss also covered how he handles his time management using apps like Freedom, and Net Nanny, These applications monitor and block his usage of the Internet on his computer. This keeps him on task and not easily distracted.

I learned a lot by just watching this video about the creative writing process. I learned the importance of using a new literary agent when trying to find a book deal. A literary agent will step in and negotiate with retailers and other companies on your behalf. They also usually have a built in network and working relationships with these companies. This takes a lot of the guesswork out of trying to shop your book for a publishing deal. Strauss and Ferris both said that it is sad but true; publishers are only interested in your platform. This means that publishers are interested in your ability to sell at least 10,000 copies of your book. If you can prove this, you will get a book deal. That is why many books have been birthed out of blogs and Twitter followers.

In closing, I find the entire book industry to be quite fascinating. Writing a book is definitely on my bucket list, and I hope to achieve this goal very soon after graduation. What tools do you use for your creative process? Are there any apps or websites that you would recommend to help people with their creative process?

References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Strauss

http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2013/06/14/tim-ferriss-interviews-neil-strauss-7x-new-york-times-bestselling-author-on-the-creative-process/