Alexa Barrett - Senior Project

Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?

For my senior project, I am creating a narrative film based on an important literary work that was inspired by my interests in both film and literature. I am doing a short narrative based on a work of literature in my AP Literature textbook calledWhere Are You Going? Where Have You Been? Undertaking the filming of a known work of literature and creating a visual narrative has been a challenge but it will be very rewarding when I have the finished product. The chilling work was based on a true story of a serial murderer in Tuscon, Arizona. It is a cautionary tale that tells of a teenager who when acting provocatively attracts the attention of a sociopath who then proceeds to psychologically terrorize his victim. I hope that the film will introduce students to the work of Ms. Oates and that the project will give other authors confidence in me to allow me to adapt their literary works to film. I began my summer by writing a screenplay adapted from the short story and then workshopped it in a class at Stony Brook University with Craig Lucas (many of his plays are on broadway). I then went to NYU for 4 weeks during July and August and earned 6 credits through two film classes. Through August, I continued doing pre-production for the shoot and completed shooting during thursday of labor day weekend through sunday night, all day (and in most cases all night as well). I am now focusing on furthering my knowledge of final cut pro and trying to edit my footage into a short film.

Snowed in and working on my film!

Theme song

Today after school I am meeting with my mentor, Kenny, who also played the male lead, Arnold, and we will record the song that will be playing at the end of the film. Kenny will be singing the song, which is previously played in the film by another male, and it will come across as extremely creepy. I am going to use on of the Sony PD 170s to record with the shot gun mic in the TV Studio at Ross so there is no ambient noise. I am using the camera so that I can get the best sound, but will be extracting the sound from the video once I upload it. I have two weeks to finish the film now, I will be working on fine tweaking the edit but the majority of my time will now be focused on producing a high quality and fluid sound throughout the film. My last step will be adding the end credits and the introduction credits. I am also going to watch Smooth Talk finally, which was made in 1968 I believe, and is a professional adaptation of the same Joyce Carol Oates story Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been? I did not want to watch it before I finished my edit because I did not want to be influenced by it when doing my own work. 

Time for Feedback

The film is going well. People are starting to ask me about it which is a little scary. Frankel told me today he was looking forward to coming to screening night and now that the date (Jan 12!) is only around the corner, the pressure is really on!! Its been really stressful, as with any creative project, and I just can't wait to see the final product. This weekend I will probably go into the city on Saturday to show my current cut to my boss from when I interned at a small film company last February and get feedback from her so that I can move forward and have more advice. I also want to try to make a DVD of it so I can watch it on a big screen and write notes, from a viewers perspective, (as opposed to the editing tools at my fingertips as I'm watching it and constantly stopping it) about what parts to change, as well as where I'm at with sound. I also plan on showing it to the crew that worked on it with me over the summer and get any feedback from them since they're so well versed with the sript and the footage. I think that will be really valuable input, especially since they have their own film company and are experienced in editing and films. These are additional outside consultants from my official outside consultant, Bob Reeves. I am being very selective with who I am showing the footage to, at Ross I have only shown Kenny. And other than the two of us, my mom is the only other person who has seen it. But now that I have a well defined rough cut, I am at the point where I have these next four weeks to show and get advice, tweak, and finalize. Over Holiday break, I will learn how to work and change the sound so that it is seemless and will most likely be in the city learning from Mayur or one of the other crew members. (Mayur was the sound engineer).

Music

This week I've been continuing to work on my 4th version of the rough cut. I met with Kenny to review my product so far and he was happy with where I am and thinks I should focus my efforts now on figuring out where to extend some shots and make the tension higher by creating hesitations during the dialogue. I also am now in touch with the lawyer for Matt and Kim, who turns out is also the lawyer for major artists such as John Mayer, Fall Out Boy, Lady GaGa, and more. I've asked him if any of his other clients are open to students legally using portions of their songs in student films. 

Permission to use song in film

I'm on my way to getting the license for use of the song Daylight by Matt and Kim in my film! 

After several emails back and forth, I cleared with one of their producer that I would not be using the film only for a school viewing but would also be submitting the film to festivals. I just received this email back. 

!!

"If the film is used beyond your school activities, you will need to license the song properly.  Once films go into the festivals, they clearly become more than a school project if picked up in any way.  l will have our lawyer send you a form to sign on Monday."

2nd rough cut finished

This is hard. Now the total length is at 27 minutes. I am done with my second rough cut. I went back and trimmed down all of the shots, where I had Arnold's lines followed by Connie's response, I cut and intertwined them. For the most part. During my third rough cut, I will go back and be more precise about where exactly I'll choose which shots to go where, and trim even more. I do not want to work on sound until I get back because it is going to be so difficult, so right now it is hard to gage whether the space between cuts is too long or too short. It may be confusing to explain but it is not hard to understand.

-- when you record someones lines, the other actor is reciting their lines as well even though the camera/mics are not on them

--cutting between the shots, I can still hear the other actor speaking in the background

--because I am editing and this is not live-action (live TV), sometimes I mix different clips in scenes so you might see Connie's reaction to what Arnold is saying however during filming, she was reacting to a different part of the script, its just the emotions played out right for a different scene, so I use it somewhere else in the edit

--because I am doing that (because the footage works better in several cases such as that), I hear the background of Kenny's voice saying the lines, but they are DIFFERENT lines than what I am editing, so since I can't just cut them out because I am not working on sound yet, it is hard to hear/see the natural space I should be putting between their lines. 

If thats confusing its okay, I'm just putting down the challenges I'm experiencing.

Third rough cut starting tomorrow!

Celebration!

FINISHED MY ROUGH CUT!!!! WORKED ON IT FOR ABOUT 10 HOURS TODAY AND SO MANY HOURS YESTERDAY!! IT FEELS GREAT!!!! Now I have to go back to the beginning and trim down the shots and intercutting them. At this point the film is 36 minutes and 51 seconds! Twice as long as it will be because it has both the lines being said and the reaction of the listener, so once those are intercut it should be roughly 20 minutes long. 

Airplane work

Got a solid 5 hours worth of work done on the airplane and bus today, it was incredible. I was really inspired by how happy I am with my trailer and I definitely want to work on making my film as good as possible so I just stuck through it and got really into editing and I'm almost done with my rough cut. I also was missing footage, FULL LINES of the script- I'm assuming because of hard drive failure of some sort- and I had been really worried those lines of the script were just never filmed or something but I FOUND ALL OF THE MISSING FOOTAGE, sorted through it and reorganized it. I am going to finish my rough cut tomorrow and then work on going through it and making it better. By the end of the week hopefully I'll have a great body of the story and have it all out on the time line so I can just focus on different shots to incorporate, b-roll, music, etc. Another thing that is going to be very hard for me and a huge learning process/undertaking is how to blend the sound. Sound is just as important as visuals, although most people don't really think about it, but without quality sound, a film cannot be good. I want to have my sound run so smoothly that the audience won't pick up on anything and will just consider it was easy to do. The hard thing is that filming anywhere that is not a studio, will bring somewhat chaos with sound. In my case, it was labor day weekend and the next door neighbors had a family reunion, there are college kids screaming and playing football, kids running around. The next day my other next door neighbor diligently worked on re-renovating his house with the drills. There were also lawn mowers going off every afternoon. Since the takes of scenes are filmed in sections and not all at the same time, I have to edit together clips of Connie talking to Arnold when there are kids playing in the backround when Connie speaks and lawn mowers in the backround when Arnold speaks. But I think it can be accomplished! More on this when the problem is right in my face, right now that's not my main concern. 

January 12th 2010 release

LAST 4 SECONDS OF TRAILER

FINISHED TRAILER!!

Worked for the last.. 6 hours or so (although it does not seem like that long) on completing this trailer that I've been working on for the film. I am VERY happy with it! The reason that I made it was because I am not done editing the film together and I needed something to send with my application to film schools that reflected the theme and style of this major project I'm working on. I've decided not to show it to the Ross community because I feel they'll enjoy the movie more if absolutely nothing from the plot is spoiled by watching the trailer (even though it doesn't give away the end). The trailer is one minute and 16 seconds long. I've cut the last 3 seconds from it to upload here which shows "Connie" for a second (literally) and the opening date of the film! I'm very excited!! 

Here is a picture of the Final Cut compilation of edits that make up my trailer