。・゜♡゜・。☆゜CAP Hollywood Reflection #3

1. Our film is progressing much better than we might have thought.  We just filmed the last scene and we are going to reshot our first scene.  We have a lot of time during HSA's to edit, so we are hopeful that we can finish.  The filming on Saturday took a while but we got all of our footage and we even got a security guard to act as a cop.
2. Today I have edited a little of our film, and then on saturday I acted and helped direct.  Tomorrow I am going to act again.  I also helped Harper (although she did most of it) with the movie poster.  Mostly we were preparing for Saturday.
3. Since this is the last week, we have to re-film our first scene, and edit the rest of everything.  I am hopeful that we can get it done.  I think editing will be pretty quick since we already know what goes where.  It's not like the documentary where editing is the bulk of the project.

CAP Hollywood Weekly Reflection #1

Our film for CAP Hollywood is coming along pretty well for the beginning stages, but we may need to speed it up a bit to make our deadline.  We have shot the first scene and begun to edit it.  We have tried to shoot the second, but we ran out of time in the period.  My main concern is that we will not finish shooting in time to have a serious amount of time to edit.  Our main challenge has been deciding location, shot angles, and dialogue sequences for each scene.

This week we shot scene one and began on scene two.  We also editied the begginning of Scene one to a basic rough cut of the first 15 seconds.  We included a slug at the beginning, and a space for a title right after that. 

Our goal for this week is to get all the rest of our footage, import it into our project, and lay out a very basic rough cut.  This will be a tight squeeze, but I think between this weekend and Monday for filming, and Wednesday and Friday for editing, we could get it done. 

Documentary Reflection

Before starting this documentary, I knew very little about the DC statehood movement, how to schedule and conduct interviews, or how to structure and build a documentary.  Clearly, these are all crucial to making a documentary about DC statehood.  Considering this, it would seem that it would’ve been a long, painful learning process, and that the final product would’ve suffered accordingly.  However, looking back, nothing about it was painful, and it didn’t really even feel like school work.  Instead, I was able to learn all of these things while having fun, collaborating, and being creative.

            DC statehood is a grassroots movement, concentrated in the local political activists in DC.  It has a small base of support because many of the politically active in DC are focused on more national issues.  There is severe Republican opposition to statehood because DC is so liberal.  Also, the idea of 51 states scares some people.  However, those who believe in the cause are very devoted.  We talked to two activists, one of which had been involved in the cause for two years, and the other for about ten.  I felt a connection to this movement because these people believe so strongly in their cause, and despite many critics claiming it is impractical, they still have faith that it is a reality.

            The first step, and probably one of the hardest, in making our documentary was where to start.  We agreed on the issue pretty quickly.  I didn’t know much about it but I figured it would be interesting to learn and it would be fun to shoot because of our proximity to DC.  But after that, we had no idea what to do.  What I learned was in that situation, the best thing to do is to contact everyone you can think of, and hope some of it falls through.  After that, the rest was pretty fun.  We went to DC one morning, and did all of our shooting, conducting two interesting interviews and collecting valuable B-roll.  I think if I could do this part again, I would think a little more about what kinds of B-roll would be very useful, and try to focus on that.  After that came the other very difficult part in the process.  We had over an hour of footage, but we could only use about six minutes of it.  We had to watch everything, marking time codes of important parts.  Next came the most enjoyable part for me, which is building the rough cut and then slowly smoothing it out, polishing it, and giving it its real character.  Our biggest challenge of the whole documentary came during this stage, however.  That was our lack of time.  We did our best to overcome this challenge by putting in extra time, after school, on weekends, and on days we didn’t have exams.  We managed to get a pretty good version of the video in to C-SPAN in time.

            I think, overall, the environment and the resources in the classroom were very conducive to creating a good documentary.  The only thing I think we should’ve done differently is to start earlier, and really build our classes deadline around the C-SPAN deadline, that way it is more likely that more groups will try and submit their projects.  I think the dystopian trailer project could be compressed a little to make a little more room for the documentaries. 

            In conclusion, I think this project is very valuable because it allows students to fuse their political activism and interests with film.  For me, this project really got me interested and involved in editing and film-making.  I feel connected to this project because of all of the time I have put in, and because it is the first project for which I have done the majority of the editing.  Also, it is nice to have a project where all of the shots aren’t planned out, where we have to improvise and work with what we have.  Most importantly, it is good to have a project that gets us into society, learning things outside the classroom. 

MSHL

In Maryland, high school ice hockey is not an official school sport.  This makes some sense, because it is expensive and not that many people play.  Some people have tried to argue and make petitions that it should be a school sponsored sport.  I think that is impractical.  However, I think the school system should be involved somewhat in running the league.

Maryland high school hockey is currently run by the Maryland Scholastic Hockey League (MSHL.)  It is a very flawed organization, for the following reasons:

1. The commissioner, and the majority of the board members have an affiliation with one of the teams.  For example, the commisioner of the league blair is in was the Richard Montgomery Coach. 

2. The way that play-off eligibility is determined makes no sense.  They have created a complicated formula that compares teams from different leagues that play completely different teams, and they are supposed to race against eachother to get into the play-offs.  However, the leagues are not at all comparable, so it is stupid to have them compete for the same play-off spots.  The standings look like this: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B_iaVIlkq2dva2t3RDJ4Rms1Y0k/edit?pli=1

3. They are terrible at scheduling games. The time almost always changes from the original, and the games can be as late as 9:50 p.m.  Also, this year, we had a weeknight game in Hagerstown at 8:00 p.m., which got us home at midnight. 

4. Finally, we had a player suspended this year.  MSHL said the length of the suspension was pending a hearing, which would be given within 30 days.  This occured on December 21st, 2012.  They still haven't scheduled a hearing. 

Silver Spring Video

This is Seb's and my video about what it is like to live in Silver Spring. It was edited on Wevideo, which is why some of the audio levels/transitions are akward and un-even.  Welcome British kids!

The NHL is Back

Today the NHL announced that play will resume on January 18th.

It's good that the NHL didn't lock out the whole season because then they would be the only professional sport to have ever locked out an entire season, and they would've done it 3 times.  That's a hat trick's worth, the hockey player's SI unit for amount of things. 

However, the NHL didn't really dodge a bullet on this one because they still locked out half the season, and they still have some serious issues to deal with in the actual league.  They need to figure out how to control the violent adn dangerous hits that are endagering the league's stars.  In the last lockout they opened up the game and allowed skilled players to showcase their talents better, but I'm pretty sure no rule changes were made this year.

If the NHL is going to keep the interest of the nation that is has had for the last couple years, it needs to better protect it's stars.  Whatever way they choose to do it, the dangerous hits have to go.  But let's leave this issue for another time and for now just be happy.  After all, the NHL is back.