Close To Locking

For the last few weeks I've been showing my movie to friends, family, and faculty. I've gotten plenty of feedback, mostly good. I showed a cut of the movie to the class I'm a teachers assistant for. This enabled me to get responses from a group of people that had no idea what the movie was about. Showing it to this fresh audience was really helpful. There were things that people enjoyed and laughed at, and there were parts that were meant to be meaningful or funny and totally did not come across that way.

So my schedule says I should be picture locked my December 5th. This means I stop editing and start working on sound, music, titles, etc. I think this is a doable thing. I have to show the movie to about 3 faculty members at USC. This is a requirement. I think it's a good idea because these people have seen hundreds of short films so they know how to make a short story work in a short amount of time.

So the movie is going well. I'm really happy with how it's looking. I am nervous about starting to work on Music because all of the temporary music I've tried to put in hasn't really fit. But my mentor at school says I have to keep looking and trying new stuff. So I will.

Temp Music

I've begun testing out music in different spots of the film. I'm doing this for a few reasons. 1) I want to find out where score will go and 2) I want some form of music to be in the film when I start screening it for faculty and friends to give me feedback.

It's a fun yet annoying process. Some songs work and some don't. I really try to make a song work by fidgeting with where it comes in and where it goes out. But most of the time it ends up not working so I do all that work for nothing. But when I find the song that fits it feels great. But it takes so many tries! I'm testing mostly a variety of jazz music because you can find pretty much anything for any mood. Also, there are typically no words in jazz tunes.

I am hoping to be picture locked by the end of November so I can give the picture to my composer and my (soon to be found) sound editor. I'm looking forward to the screenings as well. Those should start in about a week.

Sam Lem