Russell Stafford

We are moving into Finals Week.  All of our major projects have been submitted.  I’m very happy with how our video turned out.  Also, my Final Four went better than I was expecting.  Even my Environmental portrait was good.  Thankful it’s all done.  Can’t wait for next semester.

It’s coming down to the wire.  I feel like our editing might be falling a little behind.  Our final projects for our other classes has forced us to rethink haw we are editing.  We a no longer going to be able to edit the videos as a group.  We are going to divide the editing tasks.  So that one group member can focus on video editing while the other two focus on their other projects.  Then we will be able to continue to rotate the responsibilities so that we can finish all our projects.

Week two of filming complete, some editing has been completed.  Our actors have done a wonderful job.  They far exceeded my expectations.  I think we are well ahead of the curve for completing our project ahead of schedule.  We had a few hiccups causing us to need to reimport files, and learning the editing software has not been too difficult.  Thankfully there is YouTube.  If there is anything I want to know how to do I just do a quick search.  I found a video that showed me in less than 10 minutes how to be an “expert” at Final Cut X.

I was looking forward to the Color Infrared assignment, but it did not work out quite like I had hoped.  I first attempted to make an infrared filter from two processed unexposed pieces of 4x5 film.  They were actually not fully opaque when the processing was complete.  I tried them anyway.  I mounted them on a spare filter holder and began test shots.  The images all appeared to be visible light, so I moved on.  I then ordered an Wratten Filter.  This filter was also not opaque, but I tried it anyway.  The images appeared to be closer to the infrared spectrum, but all my long exposures had a white haze or streak across the center of the image.  I know my model camera uses some internal infrared light for various processes, but I don’t think that would cause this kind of problem.  I am thinking my lens may have a very small light leak.  I will need to do some testing to see if I can narrow down the cause of my problem.  Ultimately I settled on Faux Color Infrared.  It’s not how I intended to finish this project, but at least the assignment is complete.

This week was our first week of filming our short film.  Sarah has done a terrific job working out the logistics and coordinating the schedules of our actors and crew.  I’m also very thankful Natalie is allowing us to shoot at her home.  We are a lot of foot traffic coming into her personal space, but it saves us from having to workout another location.  All their handwork has allowed me to focus on working through the film in my mind.  I have concentrated a great deal of thought into pre visualizing our end product.

I’m excited about our upcoming short film.  We have been reviewing the equipment and covering the on-set lingo.  We have discussed some of the intricacies of filmmaking but I am coming to the conclusion that there is far more to movie making than these 32 weeks will allow.