A Series of Unfortunate Events

So I'm gonna tell a story about 5 park kids trying to shoot a movie and all of the unfortunate events they run into when trying to complete their movie. Last week, we were suppose to finish our movie shoot on Sunday, leaving that night and and the rest of the week to edit our final product. Sunday morning came rolling around but we couldn't get in touch with our man actor. Steve kinslow (myself) went to his apartment to find that he was not their and without his phone. His roommates had no clue where he was. We also found out that another actor of ours forgot a sweatshirt at home over fall break that he was wearing in our shoot, which would have killed our continuity. With all of that said and done, we cancelled the shoot and decided to shoot for the week and the weekend to comeThe next problem we came in counter with was scheduling conflicts. It was literally impossible to get all the actors together for more than an hour on any weekday from the hours of 12 to 4 (where we would have proper sunlight). This then meant that we had to shoot on the weekend once again.

At about 9pm on Thursday night, I got a phone call from our main actor Nate that the uniform we were using for our shoot wouldn't be available for the weekend because his roommate was going away on an ROTC trip from Thursday to Sunday night. Not a problem, we will just get another uniform from someone else. But then he mentioned that every school in our region will be attending this trip, so a similar uniform won't be available for the next couple of miles. JUST GREAT.
So Alex and I decided to try and find a surplus store where we could buy a similar uniform to use. We found one place within 50 miles, Joe's Surplus in Cortland. Not to bad. I call on Friday to make sure they have what we need in our size, just to get a voicemail in return telling me their store is closed for the weekend due to a gun show their employees will be attending. WTF. Like really.
So this Sunday (today), we had to shoot without a uniform, only showing the waist up on our main character. Not exactly what we wanted, but int he real world, you have to deal with what is given to you. I don't believe there is anything else we could have done. It is most likely our final product will not be done Tuesday. I hope all of the other groups had a smoother time than us.

God Bless

A friend in need

Steve kinslow

Super 8 & Optical Flares

This past summer was one of the biggest blockbuster movies that I can remember. It was one of my favorite from the summer and made me feel like a kid again.

It's the story of a group of young boys who witness a train accident and all these strange events begin to occur. Granted a lot this seemed far beyond realistic since it was about aliens but I truly appreciated the story because it truly captured a kid. All kids want to do is play and explore. In the movie, all they wanted to do was explore and create their own movie based around what was happening



Another thing to point out were all the lens flares. For a few years, lens flares have become a very stylistic attribute to the image. These were seen in the 2009 Star Trek, which was also directed by Super 8's J.J. Abrams. Since learning After Effects, videocopilot.net has a package called Pro Presets, which contains Optical Flares. The person created Optical Flares, Andrew Kramer, worked on both of Abrams' movies to create these futuristic flares seen on screen.

I very much felt like I was watching ET since it was produced by Spielberg. These kids had some sort of a connection with this alien creature since they are sheltered as children like alien in previous time. All in all it was one of my favorite movies from the summer.