Good News and Bad News

Good News: My team won the trivia night at the UC on Thursday (it was about movies... yeah)
Bad News: My team lost the softball championship on Thursday (by the mercy rule in the 5th inning)

Good News: My documentary filming went really well today.
Bad News: My auteur project did not go well on Wednesday.

Skip this part if you don't like whining, or you just don't like my whining.

(And now I will interrupt the my "good news/bad news formula" for a little bit of rationalization/ranting/explanation {their's probably a better way to describe it but I've only had about 12 hours of sleep in the past two days, which is normal to some people, but I need at least 8 hours per night to function, usually nine though, so anyway, I'm not firing on all cylinders}

The big project for film history class this semester is a short film done in the style of an auteur. I've been looking forward to this project all semester, because my group (heavily influenced by me) picked Edgar Wright. Against my better, but well meaning, judgment I let Robert and Rob have creative control (which basically means, I let them submit ideas to me until they had one I didn't hate, I am such a dick). I let Rob write the script, I let Robert direct (again, here, my language here is demonstrating how much of a dick I am, as if in this group project, where we all have equal parts, I have the power to grant people the privilege {it took me one minute to spell that word correctly} of doing things that they want to do), I just sat back and shot down their ideas until they had one I liked.
My reasoning for letting them have creative control was that I had already the chance to write and direct a short film this semester, I got to write and direct one of the class project films in MC 352. I figured they would want the chance to do it. So anyway, I was just going to be the camera operator for the shoot and help with finding shots and maybe some blocking or something. The script Rob wrote was funny, but it wasn't an Edgar Wright script. I figured that would be ok; if we just focused on Edgar Wright's camera technique, we could still make it in his style. Long story short (and in this case, I'm not just using a cliche', we spent about 3.5 hours of our lives trying to make this movie) we shot the movie on Wednesday, it did not go well, it was by far the worst experience I've had making a movie since I started this major (an incredible 8 months ago).
I said I was going to edit it on Thursday, but I couldn't. I just couldn't make what we filmed into an Edgar Wright movie. I certainly couldn't make it into something I would be proud to show to other people (let along my fellow film majors). So Thursday I wrote a new script, a pretty good script if I do say so myself, and I told my group members that I was going to make a new auteur project movie. They were surprisingly ok with it (we're still on friendly...I think) and I was going to shoot it Friday and Sunday (since I already signed up to have a camera for shooting the documentary this weekend). I didn't get the camera till 5 on Friday (instead of 1, which is a long, obscenity-ridden story), and since my whole movie is shot out side, I had lost a lot of my daylight (also it just started raining when I got my camera).
Fortunately I was able to get some filming done on Friday, but I still have more than have of it to shoot tomorrow. Which leads me to (and you thought I'd forgotten about I)

End of Whining. Just kidding, there's more after this, but it's in small bite-size chunks.

Bad News: It's supposed to rain all afternoon tomorrow
Bad News: Spants (one of the two stars) told me that he was feeling sick tonight, and might be sick tomorrow
Bad News: Most of the people I was counting on as extras can't help tomorrow (which is all my fault, not theirs. For some reason, recently, Sundays have become the worst day for getting people to do stuff. Everyone {but me, apparently} is very busy on Sunday and can't play frisbee, or stickball, or be in my movie)

I can rewrite the scene, and film it so the extras thing isn't as much of a problem. There's nothing I can do about the Spaeth thing. He was going to bed early. A good night sleep always does wonders for me. The rain thing though. That's problematic. I was going to shoot the whole thing outside, at Grandma Essner's. If it's raining, that can't happen. So I need to find somewhere I can shoot inside. There's one place I can think of, but it's a bit of a stretch. First I don't have permission to shoot there, I could get it, but there's no reason to think that I would. Second I would have to do a lot of set dressing. Set dressing that I wouldn't have had to do at all if it didn't rain. Set dressing that I'm not prepared in any way to do. Also there would probably have to be some lighting. I don't have lights. I was supposed to film everything outside, where I don't need lights. I suppose I could get lights... but yeah... permission to film there. That's the thing. This is probably the longest post I've ever written. Even the hardest of the hardcore Matt Essner blog readers (I know you're out there somewhere {It also has the most parantheticals I've ever used too}) will have trouble getting though it all in one sitting, so I guess I should probably end it now befor