Week 15/ 16

We are finally coming to the very end of the semester and working hard to finish our marketing and distribution plan for our final presentation on Thursday, May 4th.  Kaelin and I have been talking about what we want for our website and what kind of design we're looking for.  I went ahead and opened a wix account and created a background picture on the site from Walton's distillery and make sure our color theme went with our film's yellow and brown tones to have unity between them.  Kaelin is coming over on Wednesday to put all of our content onto the website and create a facebook page.  Overall, this class has been a positive experience and I've been very lucky with the group members I was assigned.  We've learned together and created a film that we can be proud of for our senior seminar.

Week 14

This week we've been entirely focused on getting our final cut completed as well as beginning our marketing and distribution plan.  We met this week to discuss our marketing and distribution project and to divide the responsibilities equally for everybody.  Kaelin and I are in charge of the website and facebook page, Michaela is working on the festival roll out and budget, and Hannah is going to do the poster and post card.  Kaelin and I decided to create our website on wix for free.  I have experience using wix before and it's a very easy website platform for people who don't have a ton of experience creating sites (us!).  We plan to include different pages on our website to include crew bios, behind the scenes photos (using frame grabs from the film), a contact option, and film synopsis.  After we complete all the assignments for our presentation for our final in FST 495, we'll be done with the class and have the option to continue working with this film.

Week 12-13

The last two weeks we've been trying to stay organized and get everything done in time. This past week we've been focusing on getting our animations finished as well as editing some more.  We're trying to get our edit more concise and have more of a narrative flow. Hannah especially has been working diligently on our edit.  Our animator has sent us two animations to include so far and we're expecting a couple more from him soon.  Our edit is getting closer to what we're hoping for our final cut.  We don't plan on shooting anymore footage because there's not enough time but we think it'll be solid enough once we add the animations. We're going to have a meeting soon to discuss our final steps of our project. Our film is getting closer to being finished and we're excited to see what it is like as the final cut.

Week 11

This past week we had another shooting day and filmed a selected group of people taking different shots (illegal and legal) of moonshine to get their reactions.  It went really well and we had a variety of different people with interesting reactions.  We set it up in the backyard of Hannah's house and just had our participants come at different times.  Our friends loved getting free shots of alcohol and we loved getting their reactions taking them.  It was sometimes surprising who could handle a strong shot of moonshine versus who couldn't!  Hannah took the footage and edited it together with our interview footage and were trying to figure out where to organize each part of the film to make it cohesive.  This week we also spoke more to our animator and discussed with him what we envision for our film and showed him examples of animations from other films that we like to give him more of an idea of what we want.  This week I won't be in class because I'll be on another set shooting a commercial.

Week 10

This past week we focused on planning our next shoot in order to meet this week’s goal.  Hannah edited together our rough cut and made sure it will be ready to play in our next class. I’ve continued researching songs and whether or not they’re available for public use.  Our rough cut doesn’t include any of the song choices I have been considering just yet.  This past week we didn’t shoot anything else because our next shoot date is tomorrow (Friday) morning.  We’re having about six to seven friends that we’ve selected to come to Hannah’s house and take two different shots of moonshine (legal and illegal).  We want to film their facial expressions after they take the two shots and then ask them questions to see if any of them have had any past experience of moonshine, their general impressions, and any knowledge about moonshine. In order to take our film to the next level we also searched for an animator to create animations for us.  We actually had a few applicants but Hannah and Michaela went with the person they knew because they’ve seen his work in the past and think he’ll be able to give us the look we want.

Week 9

This past week we focused on figuring out what direction we want the film to take.  Hannah decided that she would like it to be focused on moonshiners and people who live/lived in a moonshining environment and what kind of effect it has had on their lives.  We will still be focusing on the friendly and warm culture that goes along with moonshining.  She also made a decision for what our title will be; Shiners.  For the past week we also discussed who we would like our next interview subjects to be.  We have a few friends in mind that Hannah and Michaela were supposed to get in touch with to plan interviews with.  Michaela reached out to her two friends who grew up in a moonshining household, Hannah contacted her friend who makes moonshine, and Hannah will also be asking my friend Alex if he would discuss growing up making moonshine.  We have also been planning for our film festival research and marketing assignment.  The local film festivals are on the top of our list since our topic has regional importance but there are a few in other states that could work that definitely have moonshining in their southern culture.  Our rough cut is due tomorrow and we have edited together clips to make sense on a timeline to get more of a narrative sense.

Week 8

It has been a while since we have had any new footage since this past week was spring break and we were all out of town and working so we were unable to plan any shooting.  Instead we split up work among ourselves to do at home.  Hannah and Michaela both worked on finding more potential experts and reached out to a few of them.  Michaela emailed the man who failed at opening a distillery in Wilmington and has yet to hear back from him.  Hopefully he responds so we can discuss with him why his distillery didn't open.  I researched a little more about the process of moonshine to learn more about how it’s made and compared it to what our expert showed us in person.  I also looked into the rights of some songs I’d like to use in our film. This past week I saw my friend Alex and he said his dad spoke with a friend at a distillery nearby Dunn, NC that agreed to speak with us.  It's a little further of a drive for us but if Hannah wants to we could interview him.  Alex's dad has been trying to help us find more people to speak to and has been super awesome!