Diamonds and Beer

Today was an interesting day. I followed my normal daily plans, getting ready, going swimming etc. However, my girlfriend has free lessons right when I finished swimming so we spent her frees together. By the time I had come home, I decided to go into town to buy her birthday present. Of course I'm not going to write what it is but the title kinda gives it away.

Eitherway, while I was there I met up with a friend of mine, Alessandro. It was meant to be just a quick meeting. Go for some coffee and then I'd make my way back home to continue working on my job applications. Things, however did not go by plan. After the coffee he wanted to go to the Finnish shop to get some great chocolate and wanted me to come along to translate. Before I could make my way to the train, he told me of a store where they sold knock-off Moleskins so I thought, "what the heck... can't take too long." But while we were at the store, he had this great idea about going to a local Irish pub for a round.

Me, being very light in cash after buying the very expensive present, rejected the offer. Then he said he'd pay.

It is now 9:20pm. Okay, my deadline isn't until Monday, so I have enough time. However, I like to keep to my schedule, so it'll be a very late night for me.


Some of you might not be too interested in my personal life, so here's some stuff that I'm currently up to.

I'm working on a website that will be up probably on Sunday. I'll make a post specifically for that then.

Also, while I was editing my reel, I watched my first student film and found that of all the films I've made since becoming a student this is my favourite... and probably my best. Which is kind of sad.

When I showed the film to the class they said the only major problem was the two main actors, which I can completely understand. They were just friends of mine and since it was "just" my first project I thought, what the hell? But now, I'm thinking maybe I should re-boot it, so to speak. Write a feature film based on the character of Lucio Germano and maybe even this murder. I'll keep you updated. If you want to watch it, here it is.

11pm

Let's get all of the backstory out of the way first. In my school we are required to do a project at the end of our bachelor year. After some discussion I was named director and writer, which I was very happy about. However I was unaware of the problems that would arrise. 

We were told to not do anyone else's job and to only focus on yourself, since this was to prepare us for when we work as part of a very large team. Therefore, one was not allowed to do any work for another person for the sole reason of getting it done. This meant a lot of waiting around for other people to get their work done.

After a very long pre-production period, we finally went into production that involved its own set of problems. For one, we were never completely prepared for the filming. We thought about filming at night, but when we were actually there it started raining and was far too dark to work efficiently – so we changed to filming during the day, meaning we had to use "day for night" which is its own problem. Basically, we weren't very happy with the current situation.

The film was finished a couple of months later and I received a film that I had agreed with. It wasn't perfect, but it was good enough to present to the school. We got some feedback and decided to alter the film accordingly. I told the project leaders that I would like to come in and look at the changes before they are finalized, however I was never contacted.

A month ago, I was told casually that not only did the project leaders authorize many changes, they also did a complete re-shoot of the greenscreen scenes and the dog scene. This made my absolutely furious. I had no problem with the fact that they wanted the changes made. The problem was that they didn't tell me. Just a call saying "Hey, we want to re-shoot the greenscreen and the dog scene. But you don't have to come, we can take care of it" would have been fine. But that they went behind my back and made changes that I did not approve of is plain rude.

What makes the situation even worse, is that most of the changes aren't even good. For example, the greenscreen was never really good, but it was passable. You had to actually have a still shot and nitpick to find problems with the greenscreen. However, the new version has completely visible black dots where the greenscreen didn't work correctly. Let me give you some examples from the films.

Original

New Version

This is not a big change, but still something I believe shouldn't have been done. The intro was really, really interesting. A pan over an animated forest, leading through a graveyard, coming up to the moon with a zombie face inside it which fades to the two characters walking towards the screen, and the rest of the logo fading in. The new version is just boring.

Original

New Version

Now, if you look at the original you can see some problems with the greenscreen effect. However, in the new version there are actual black marks not only in the left part of the glasses but also in the beard an on the face. The color however does look better in the new version for this scene, but not in the rest.

Original

New Version

Okay, here the new version doesn't look too bad, but then again there wasn't much to change. I was told however that the flashlight was meant to get a light beam. I guess they decided it wasn't necessary, I don't know... I wasn't there.

Original

New Version

This annoyed me the most. The idea was that a dog runs in front of the car, to indicate that the sound they heard was just a dog. It was all one very long shot, ending with the dog running across the front of the car, cut to a reaction of the two friends and off they go. In the new version, not only were the colors completely off, but it just doesn't fit into the editing of it... It just looks way too forced.

Well, now it's your turn to watch it. Tell me what you think. Be as honest as possible, I don't want you to hold back. We already got an e-mail from one of the actors telling us not to add his name to any internet tags relating to this video because he thinks the effects ruin the complete experience of the film. 

Here's the script of the film in English if you want to understand what they're yelling about. Remember, some dialoge might have been cut during translation and production.

Popularity of Superhero Films [Article]

At the beginning of the Bachelors year we had to write three blog posts and an article. The three blog posts were of no significance and were very shot. Around 500 words. I believe one of them was a review of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and the others I can't remember. Probably something that I spewed out in the last minute.

Now we come to the article I had to write. I decided to write about Superhero films. Because... well... I'm a Superhero film nerd. Big nerd.

I don't remember exactly what grade I got on it, but it couldn't have been anything really good. Apparently they weren't happy with the layout, which I don't understand, because I love it. It looks very professional.

Well – here it is. Enjoy.

The History of Star Trek [Video]

Well, here it is. The History of Star Trek.

First, let me bore you with a story.

We had a week of classes in film history as part of my Bachelors program at my school that shall not be named. At the end of this week, we were supposed to be able to identify certain events in film history that are interesting and make our own "documentary" about something.

I first thought about making the documentary about my favourite style of film – Film Noir. However, I don't own anywhere close to enough DVDs to make a 15 minute documentary about it. In the end, I decided to do the original series of Star Trek. It had enough topics to be discussed. Off the top of my head was the first interracial kiss on television, the view of women and the internationality of the bridge.

Making the documentary wasn't easy. My school lies a good hour and a half away from where I live. If I wanted to use the professional sound recording facilities, I'd have to get an audio person to help and extra someone to read. Since I didn't think much about it, and didn't want to go through the extra stress of finding someone here who spoke English, I did it myself. At home. With my brothers microphone.

My brother has a pretty good microphone, since he is an amateur "recording artist" so the quality wasn't that bad.

I'm not too pleased with the result, but then again I hardly ever am. However, something must have been good since I got 99%. But that might say more about my school than about my documentary.

Well, here it is. Feel free to leave a comment. If you want.

Introduction

First, let me introduce myself.


I have tried three time already to write a blog and have failed three times. This is now my fourth try and hopefully I will continue longer than before.


My main problem with Blogger was that it didn't have an iPhone app. For example when I was filming 11pm, I wanted to do a day by day journal. However when I came home, I was so tired I went straight to bed and never had the chance to write a blog post. That, however is no longer the case! I found the app today, and immediately decided to start a new blog. So now with the iPhone app, I can post from where ever I am!


The other, smaller problem was that I had nothing to write about or to present. A friend of mine makes his blog a portfolio. But since making films is very slow and I wasn't really doing much anyway I felt I had nothing interesting to show.


Now, what will this site be for, you may be asking? Well, it's very simple, Jeffery. This blog will be for everything that I've done. All of my films, papers, scripts, whatever! I am hoping to be able to post something new every week. Also, because of this deadline, I might be more inclined to actually do some more work and get some feedback from people on the internet. It'll probably be a Friday update with actually some work, like a script, film, story or website. Then, of course there will be updates during the week if something interesting happened to me, or I finished something small that I'd like to show off (like a brainstorm or an idea.)


I have a couple of things I've already finished, that I'd like to show, but they will have their own posts. These include an article I wrote, my diplom paper, a Star Trek: Original Series documentary and 11pm. The first one will be out later tonight.


Oh, and if you're wondering about the name of the blog; it comes from one of my favourite directors, Aki Kaurismäki.

"Coffee? I don't want coffee. To talk about my lousy films I need more than coffee."

Well, let's see how this goes! I have high hopes.