cucalorus paper excerpt.

"I moved to Wilmington a little over a year ago now. I made the transition to a new city, a new state even, because of the things I had heard about Wilmington's film industry. I knew only one person when I first moved here and it was the first time I had ever moved somewhere so isolated from people I knew. I took advantage of being friendless (having no social life/distractions) to focus on jumping into anything that had to do with film. I figured that I could get my feet wet in this film community and make friends involved with film as well. It was through a group I joined on campus, Flicker Film Society, that I first learned about the Cucalorus Film Festival, the kids in the group described it as some magical event that took place here in my new town every year, I was overwhelmed with excitement from the first time I heard about it. With no hesitation, I immediately asked around everywhere on how to get involved with the festival or even how to get a pass to it. I ultimately found out that you could volunteer to work at the festival and in return you would get passes to most everything involved. This was perfect for me, I wanted to get involved, I wanted to see the films, and I wanted to meet people. I can honestly say it was everything I could have hoped for and more. Cucalorus helped me find my identity in Wilmington."

Cucalorus

CUCALORUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I made a lot of plans for the wonderful time of the year! I took off the entire week mainly because I am a part of the staff.. i wanted to see as much as i could, but only ended up seeing a group of shorts and 2 features. I definitely wanted to see Chip's premiere and even made arrangements so that I could go but being the procrastinator I am i waited till right before the screening to get my ticket and it was sold out. other than that i was planning to spend most of the festival checking, distributing, and monitoring passes! Fun right? but awesome. I love Cucalorus and I'm sure you'll be able to see that in my paper.

Shooting for project three.

Shooting our music video was so much fun, we had planned a lot so it was easy. It also didn't hurt that our actors were my two best friends! They were so awesome too! In the middle of October (usually nice weather) when we went to shoot our first day it was freeeeeeeeeeeeeeezing and raining and we were on the beach. Laura our actress was wearing a tiny mini-dress and i swear it must have been 50 degrees. we all took turns huddling in Courtney's jeep when we weren't needed filming. Her and Nick our actor, were so cooperative, I thought it was awesome they didn't even complain except when we were all shivering our asses off together. It was no secret we were all miserable, but we got through it and that particular footage actually ended up being our best. The next day was much much better, the weather was nicer and we found an awesome alley to do our shooting in near Carolina beach.. the colors were perfect. evan even got a little risky and climbed on top of one of the buildings to get an overhead shot of them dancing in the alley, we were all really excited about that shot. Then we moved to the middle of the woods where designed a lot of shots and tried a lot of new things with the exposure and frame rates and such. Over all the experience was awesome, everyone was so cooperative and excited. Our actors looked awesome and we had a great time throughout it all.

Installation idea.

I'm a little late on this blog, but the installation idea i HAD before I got put into Evan's group was to do a piece on mass media and personalities. LIke using a projection of facebook or myspace and putting the subject in front of their page and have them make a statement that would be on their main page, then add someone else, and then someone else, and giving information like their favorite song or music video at the moment so it just ends up getting noisier and noisier until its almost unbearable to hear.. and the pages are flashing like strobe lights and the people are talking and talking and their songs are playing and their voices are just overbearing and then all of a sudden all black and a spotlight on one person asking a simple question like 'what am i' or something like that to illustrate the confusion youth has today on their individuality because their surrounded by so much technological clutter that persuades them and guides them among adolescence.

MiCrocinemA

The idea about screening experimental films that are out of the public limelight has been an issue going on for forever (obviously) so it says in the article.. but i think that the opportunity to see these films in a unique space outside of your average cinema can be a lot of fun, for instance jengo's here in wilmington, holding cucalorus.. cucalorus is awesome.. its got this atmosphere of energy where you can just feel everyone's enthusiasm for underground cinema around you.. it makes the experience so much more different than just your average going to sit down in the theater and then leaving, like when you see mainstream films.

I think whats cool is that Carolyn and I were talking in the hall one day before class about the article, specifically where they explain the kind of "portable drive in theater" like thing where people find out the information of where the films will be projected and you tune into the station to hear it.. i think that sounds like a lot of fun.. and so creative.. carolyn and i were saying we want to do this around wilmington some time.

music video.

For the music video project I'm the director, which is awesome it's definitely what I wanted to be. My group and i have already had 2 meetings... we came up with some awesome ideas and i'm confident that this music video is going to be awesome looking. it's kind of scary that we only have 9 minutes of film to shoot with but we have put in a lot ofplanning to what we are going to use each roll for and how we are going to use it. We started out with this really abstract concept of a guy wearing a full suit and top hat reading a newspaper on the beach sitting parrallel to the ocean. A girl walks toward him wearing a tutu or some kind of strange party dress and boots, she sits down back to back with him and neither of them make contact, the guy sees something shiny in the sand and goes to dig it out and he finds its a ring attatched to a finger, surrounded by other fingers. the most interesting aspect of it all is that both remain emotionless and almost melancholic.. this little scene ends with the guy standing up and feeding the fingers to the birds, we are hoping that buy using bread or something we can get an awesome shot of birds hovering the two of them eating the fingers (bread).

That was the core of our idea, then we wanted to come up with other shots that form a montage like effect of this guy and girl in other parts of their world. we came up with the girl smashing items like a mirror and glass vases in the woods with a baseball bat, and the guy opening a door thats taken out of a door frame in the woods, in an alley, and on a beach, so he's basically just carrying around the door. we have other oddshots that we think will look cool like some stop animation of the girl crying pennies, or of the guy dancing alone in the alley, juxtaposed with shots of the guy AND the girl's feet dancing, giving the feel that she's there dancing with him when she's really not.

I'm really excited to shoot this, which i think we are going to start and finish this weekend, and i'm even more excited to see how it all looks when we get the film back. I'm even more thankful that I have such an awesome group with great ideas and dedication..

My self protrait..

For my self portrait i have a lot of pretty cool ideas that i want to use.. one being a theme throughout, the color red and cats. I want both to be interspersed throughout.. i feel like both are concepts that explain me well...the color red has always been my favorite color and i still appreciate its warmth and beauty so much.. i fell in love with brakhage's cat's cradle because of its red imagery..i just felt warm watching it...and i love cats in general... so im sure ill be using a lot of red filters on images and i'm going to film my cat a lot throughout his daily routine..

another idea i had was that i have a box of love letters throughout my life from different boyfriends and admirers.. i think they're funny.. and landmark a lot of my love life..i think im going to get different shots of each letter and record different male voices reading them..i kind of got the idea from the film we watched the other day.. 'talk to me'? i think it was called...

Also....last year i took all of my home videos and transferred them to video files so that i could edit them into a film for my family for christmas.. so i still have all those files of me and my sisters when we were kids.. so im definitely going to put some of that... when i was editing the film i found tiny brief moments in the footage that just really made me melt.. those are probably going to be the parts that i use

i know in class you said you didn't want a lot of voiceovers, but i think im going to use fragmented parts of some of my writing from past experiences that correlate with what is shown.. it won't run together though.. and i'll try to make it all brief so that the voiceovers don't overpower the whole film. ..

i do plan on using a LITTLE music.. just because that's a huge factor in my life.. my best friend and roommate produces music and djs a lot of what we do revolves around music and all different kinds.. i want to incorporate him in the film so some of his original music might be shown over his shots...

for my opening shot i invision myself holding my handheld minidv camera pointed at the mirror where i want to write my name across is with marker.. i think that would look neat and really set the tone..

im sure along the way of making this film i will come up with many more ideas.. but i also think what i've come up with so far is going to make for some good shit!