Our ONE TAKE DAY

I think I have been reticent to post a blog on the One Take day because I have such mixed feelings about last Saturday! On one hand it was the best day ever. I love dancing. I love men. I love costumes. So when we decided that I would be dancing with multiple men wearing costumes, obviously I was thrilled. Unfortunately, our director got some "misinformation" about the length of shooting time. We only got to shoot for 35 seconds when we should have shot for 56. Plus, our footage was a little underexposed.

It was pretty scary when we were developing the film and it should have taken seconds to see exposed images. It was minutes before any recognizable image appeared. Blah! But when we finally projected the footage, I was pleasantly surprised. The dance sequence was awesome! Everyone really pulled together to make a fun Busby Berkley dance sequence. If we had minutes to shoot rather than seconds, I think it could have been mind-blowing. Actually, that would have been bad to have minds exploding all over the place. I guess Andre really does know what he's doing. But yeah, if everyone hadn't jumped right into putting on costumes and rehearsing, we couldn't have pulled it off.

I really liked how creative this project forced everyone to be. Also, the weather conditions spiced it up a bit. I already felt like I was developing Hypothermia from the first One Take, so when the Second One Take came around I was a little bit cooky. I think it shows in Daniel's team's footage. I "tiger strike" Landon and break a board on his bake. Thus fulfilling every female's dream of attacking a man viciously with a wooden object. Landon represented every man that has wronged me in my life. That is quite a load to bear. He handled it well.

I'm quite excited to see how people edit these and add music to them. Dustin and Charlie have taken on the responsibility of adding music to our One Take. I'm interested to see where they are going to take it. It would be awesome with a music montage, but I leave all creative decisions to them. Emily and I will most certainly help them at any point, if need be. She and I are brainstorming about soundtrack choices for our stop-motion animation. I love the footage. I really do. I think it turned out really really well. If I could afford to shoot completely on 8mm film, I would do it in a heartbeat. Its the most unique and beautiful film. What a shame people don't use it more. Actually, I probably wouldn't like it as much if more people did.

Overall, I must say that it was a treat to film with the Bolex. I don't know much about that camera except what the resulting footage looks like. I wish I could go back in time and extend our shooting time, but I did learn from my mistakes. I need to verify assignment information and realize that film can be unpredictable at times.
jozx