PROGRESS UPDATE!

Beth has questions.  I have answers.  Let's roll.

Beth: What concrete progress have you made on your capstone project since you submitted your proposal and timeline? Include specific examples; if possible post some examples to your blog.

Thomas: You wish I'd post them to my blog.  I'm not giving my super secret script away just yet. (laughs) Anyway, as far as concrete progress, I have written a rough draft for a script, along with five revisions.  I have cast the two main characters and am in the process of getting the primary location secured as well.

Beth: How many times have you been in contact with your mentor? Please list what you discussed.

Thomas: I met with IUPUI Lecturer Charles Thomas Lewis MFA Pretty much every other Monday.  We mostly discussed story, plot, diegesis, etc.  We also talked about the technical mechanics of some of the effects I have in mind in my short (for example, for a large portion of the film, the main character is sans glasses and therefore almost blind.  Getting the audience to "buy" it without just making the whole film ugly and blurry is an interesting challenge.)

Beth: How has your timeline changed thus far? Discuss what has changed and why you changed it.

Thomas: Actually, nothing has changed in the timeline so far.  Everything is playing out more or less as we planned for it to.  I guess we decided not to make a strict lighting plot, which was in the plan, but other than that, we're right on the same schedule we started with.

Beth: What do you still need to complete in preparation for the beginning of your N499 course? Identify key aspects of the project that need to be taken care of before your official capstone starts.

Thomas: Mostly just location scouting, but that was always intended to partially take place in early January, so I'm almost ahead of schedule, actually.

Beth: If there have been significant changes to your project since your proposal, please discuss them.

Thomas: There haven't been any.  None.  Zip.  Zilch.  I meant what I said and said what I meant.  An elephant's faithful, 100%

Timeline

Fortunately for me, the process of creating timelines for film projects is well established and well-documented.

The majority of the time before January is spent working on beating the script into shape, and after that is a short time for casting (I dont plan on holding an open casting call) before a lot of shooting crammed into a short time. This gives me time to make a quick edit before sending it off to the composer/orchestrator for a week or two and then finishing up the edit well before the presentation deadline. The reason to finish this far beforehand is for A) wiggle room, B) tweaking export settings, and C) making lots of copies of DVDs and Blu-Rays.

Problems

Problem 1: none of my group members showed up.
Solution: ditch group.

Problem 2: scripts are hard to write.
Solution: have creative wife bounce ideas with me.

Problem 3: script involves elementary school classroom and kids.
Solution: use contacts at heritage to procure classroom and kids.

Problem 4: casting
Solution: bug people

Todd shelton

Todd Shelton Profile
Todd is an audio professor at iupui. His expertiese is audio mixing and mastering, which i believe is a huge part of the filmmaking process.

He enjoys mentoring capstone students and his primary goal for them is to come out on the other side with a product they can be proud of.

Due to his relatively new status as a professor at iupui, he has no idea how available he will be next semester, but as he is already having to double up on classes he is unconvinced that he will have tons of time for capstone students.

Todd actually really liked the idea of secondary mentors; in fact, he thinks that for most video projects, he would be a better secondary mentor than primary.

I have never had todd as a professor before, but appreciate his hardworking and funloving spirit, and i think he would push his students to do well on their capstones.

Mentor Profile

My capstone idea in 100 words or less:

Here goes:  ...... MOVIE!  (1 word.  success! A+!)

But seriously, I would like to make a high quality narrative short film.

Because of this idea, I am looking for a mentor who has industry experience, understands audio, shares similar views on lighting, composition, workflow, pre-production, etc., and who has extremely high expectations for his/her capstone students' projects.

Options for Mentors include Thomas Lewis, Todd Shelton, and Joe Defazio.

The following three posts will be in-depth research articles on each possible mentor.

Capstone "Theme"

Narrative short film.

......... What else do I need here?

:P

Class discussion

I feel like class discussions are a mixed bag. I think they're very helpful for the beginning planning phases of a project, but after that initial phase, I think classroom discussion loses most of its usefulness. The majority of the class doesn't understand your own motivations, ideas, morals, history, and other factors that determine what you will eventually chose to do in your projects. This is why I believe that personal one-on-one mentor/student independent studies are essential to a well- made capstone.

What is a capstone?

In retrospect, this post probably should have come before the preceding post.

What is a capstone project?

A students capstone should be the defining work of his undergraduate career. It should show how the student has progressed, and it should show how well he can finish a huge, long-term project. It should be something the student is willing to pour his heart and soul into, because it will statistically be the last time he will be able to do so. After his final semester, he will begin working outside of the educational system, trying to find how to make his degree fit into his career.

For this reason, I will be creating a narrative short film. It's my dream, and it has to be for me to be able to do it justice for the next year.

~TomBob

Ideas

Capstones are tough. They should be.

A students capstone should be the defining work of his undergraduate career. It should show how the student has progressed, and it should show how well he can finish a huge, long-term project.

I decided to shoot a narrative short film, because my long-term career goal is to make narrative films.

Ideas for narrative short films:

An uptight man loses his glasses and discovers there is beauty in the world.

A self-obsessed pop star and her hired bodyguard find out that life is not about them after a terrorist bombing.

In a future where computers determine marriages between citizens, a fireman cannot afford to refuse his marriage to a famous celebrity. She has no such financial issues, and pays her refusal and leaves him to fend for himself.


Inspirations: I've always found it easiest to write while attending band/orchestra music concerts, which is where I came up with the glasses concept.
My wife told me to invent futuristic stories, not by planning out the story first, but by deciding on the environment first by taking modern culture and technology and extrapolating what the future would look like.
Another way of creating a story is to find at least two pieces of your potential film and fish around creatively without consciously considering the ramifications. Beth showed us this in our visual storytelling class (N110).

Capstone

Welcome.