First Test Shoot is Finished!

This entry was originally published at Toastmaster K - The Blog!

Today was a lot of fun, but a lot of work. We ran the first test shoot of a couple scenes.

Things I’ve learned today:

- Budget plenty of time for location set-up (furniture moving, camera set-up, etc.)
- Have a stage manager handy for line and blocking notes (Brendan would do this fine)
- Any line problems in the script will become very apparent.
- Having a tv monitor on hand is awesome for figuring out framing of shots.
- It’s very easy to forget about small details such as hair placement and character positioning.
- If a take is good on the first time, don’t shoot a second!
- The actors will get tired fairly quickly. We should take a break every 2 hours.
- We have plenty of people who are willing to be crew. Let’s figure out something for each of them to be doing so that Tom and I don’t forget anything.
- It’s fun to be calling the shots. (And…Action!)
- I should make sure my suitemates actually know what’s going on if we’re shooting in the room.
- 24 fps looks gorgeous!
- Having a behind-the-scenes cameraman makes filming even better.
- We’re making a f—ing movie!!!

Next test shoot will probably be happening next Saturday, either a day or night scene, but most likely an outdoor one.

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Test-shoot

This entry was originally published at Toastmaster K - The Blog!

Posted by Tom

Today was our first test-shoot, and it was a blast. It was exhausting, but it was a blast. After about four months of writing and planning, we finally got on location to actually begin shooting. This was the first of three test shoots, and we chose to shoot two of the scenes from the first Friday night in the film. We are using these test shoots to learn about the logistics of lighting, sound, and stage management.

The day began with an acting workshop for the actors, as well as interviews of the actors for the purpose of a “video diary” that will later be used in a “behind-the-scenes” making-of documentary. All four lead actors were involved, and filming was done on location in East Hall at Olin College. We filmed in the common area of Kevin’s suite, and in the room of Kori Haymore and Amy Lee, friends of ours.

We had a good turnout in terms of crew. We had our two PAs on hand, as well as a boom operator from a local high school who heard about us through New England Film. We also had our cameraman, and a behind-the-scenes videographer. Our still photographer showed up to take some photos while we were on set, which we intend to use for publicity purposes.

It was really neat to be on the set with all these different people running around focused on their part of this huge job. We finished a draft of what is intended to be a 4 minute scene in around 3 hours, so I’m expecting about an hour of filming per minute of final film – this would leave us with about 100 hours of actual filming time – this excludes outside work on the project (scripting, storyboarding, location management, and other organizational/administrative tasks). It is now even more evident how much work will go into this project.

But at the end of the day, I’m extremely optimistic about this film. We all had a great time today, and we got some serious work done – and the footage looked great. We have a long road ahead of us, but I think it will be a lot of fun.

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Read-through

This entry was originally published at Toastmaster K - The Blog!

Posted by Tom.

We just finished our first full read-through with the cast, and it was extremely cool. The actors got to meet each other, and there was a lot of energy and laughter. We realized a lot of problems with the script, but we also realized a lot of ways to fix them. The message of the film is becoming a lot closer, and the detailed schedule is also becoming a lot clearer.

We now have a release date! The film is scheduled to premiere May 19th. Here are some other milestone dates:

10.15.05 - Test shoots
11.12.05 - Principal Photography
03.27.06 - Post Production
05.19.06 - Premiere

Stay tuned!

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Status Report for AHS Capstone

This entry was originally published at Toastmaster K - The Blog!

AHS Capstone
Kevin Tostado
9/29 Status Report

Since the start of this project, we have redirected the focus of this project to be the screenplay instead of the general process involved with producing the movie (screenplay and first few test shots). As such, we have redefined our plan of work to reflect this change. We also selected Gillian Epstein as our mentor for this project; we will still need to find an external reader later in the semester to evaluate our final screenplay and annotation.

In our original plan of work, right now we’d be finishing up our screenplay soon so that we could begin filming soon. However, we decided that in the best interest of the movie, we would spend more time developing the story and screenplay and shifted the setting of the movie to take place at the beginning of the spring semester instead of the fall semester. This setting shift allows us more time to prep since we want it to actually be winter outside for our shots. We feel that the following plan of work is very doable by the end of the semester and will help us stay on track to finish our movie.

Plan of Work
September 1 – First Draft of Screenplay finished, submitted to Gillian Epstein
September 8 – Feedback from Gillian
September 14 – New proposal submitted to first mentor (Rob)
September 16 – Second draft of screenplay finished
September 22 – Gillian selected as mentor
September 27 – Casting completed for film
September 28 – Final proposal feedback on solicited from Gillian,
September 29 – Status Report 1
October 1 – Full-cast read-through
October 3 – Actor feedback on script begins
October 20 – Outline for Annotation and Third full revision of script
October 27 – Get feedback on third draft
November 3 – Status Report 2
November 5 – Final (fourth) Revision of Screenplay Turned In (so we can start filming)
November 12 – Final feedback from anyone we show the script to
November 17 – Annotations Turned In

We have continued writing on the screenplay to improve it since the last section meeting. We met with Gillian Epstein for a hour and a half to get feedback on the feel of the characters, flow of the story, consistency, etc. In general, this meeting was very helpful and provided us with the outside perspective that we’ve been missing for a while on this project.

Additionally, Tom and I have involved Brendan Doms and Sean McBride as Assistant Directors on the movie. As such, we had them read the script as well and give us feedback, which we’ve then integrated into the script. They also sat in with us on the auditions that we held on September 17th and 25th. Over the course of the two auditions, we auditioned more than 35 people for roles in the movie. Because of varying acting experiences and backgrounds, we saw many different readings of the characters. This has in effect really helped us define the roles better in our minds and will help us with continuing rewrites of the script.

Since the auditions, we’ve cast our main roles for the movie and will be having our first full read-through with the cast this Saturday (October 1st). After the read-through, we will meet with the cast again to get feedback on how they see their characters, and discuss how the script coincides with their vision. Tom and I think that this method of script revision does not usually happen in Hollywood, but as we do more research, we may find that this happens more than we thought.

From the feedback we get from the read-through, we will produce the next draft of the script, which we will again submit to Gillian (as well as Rob and Lynn) for feedback to get our screenplay to a final state.

We are extremely excited about the fact that right now we have a cast for our movie and that as we start this next phase of the script revision, we are going to work with the cast to make the characters feel even more realistic. Also, we’ve given the script a little bit of time and space so that when we come back to it next, we’ll have more of an “outside” perspective on it and be more critical on how we can continually improve it.

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We Have A Cast!

This entry was originally published at Toastmaster K - The Blog!

After two auditions and lots of deliberations, we have a cast! Congratulations to the following:

Brian Wilkins - Bennett Chabot
June Hartman - Amanda Hurley
Chris Myers - Andrew Tsang
Alex Daniels - Aja Munsell

We are having our first readthrough of the script as a cast this Saturday night. Hopefully we’ll get some good feedback through how the cast interprets their roles. Tom and I will then work their suggestions into the script in order to continually improve it.

This is actually happening!

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