Last Week's Marketing Plan

It has been a busy couple of weeks and I apologize for the lack of a blog post last week. Graduation is quickly approaching.

There is nothing to really report this week. Dave wanted to tweak the project on his own and we have still yet to hear from the sound guy. He has not delivered our sound yet. I spent this week working on a paper and a separate documentary. We really cannot do anything until that guy gives us our sound files.

Last week, Dave and I completed our marketing plan (or at least a rough outline of where the budget will go to). Dave choose the festivals to submit Centipede to as well as creating the website. My responsibilities included creating the Facebook page, the rough draft of the promotional postcard, and figuring-out printing costs for the budget. Since a lot of the services that I found charge a fee for printing, I thought that buying a printer and having control over the printing would be cheaper for us in the long run. I also assembled the Excel document for the budget, mostly by plugging-in what I knew and creating the functions for the cells.

The presentation in the class went well. Prof. Silva’s main suggestion would be that we highly consider Vistaprint or another professional service for printing our promotional pieces.

Fine Cut Progress

This week has been easier now that David and I have not been bombarded with papers and work. To give David a break and a chance to research more about Withoutabox, I worked on the fine cut of Centipede. I took notes in our last class period and I made some of the edits that people suggested.

First I went through the whole thing and tried to edit down the time. After a couple of times of watching it, there were several shots that stood out to me mostly because of the duration. By editing these particular shots down, the pacing felt better and the suspense did not feel dragged out as it had previously. The second thing that I did was insert shots. The class suggested that we add more shots of the salad and the centipede, and I tried to find those shots to fill those voids. There were other small edits here and there, but duration and shot changes were my priority.

The one thing that I put off was the sound. David says that someone is supposed to deliver the sound soon. Once we get ahold of those files, it will be easier for us to play around with the sound and perfect it. I hope that there is audio of the lawyer yelling when the centipede bites him.

The one suggestion that David and I will not take is the idea to make the film campy. We both feel like it is not the route that we want to take for this project.

Not Too Shabby

Hey everyone! I hope that your week has been great and not as busy as mine has.

I am still a bit lost on the color grading settings, but I understand them more. David has shown me how to work them and I feel like I can handle it without too much fear. I really like the RGB Curves and, after learning how not to give them too much of a curve, I think that it is easy to understand and manipulate. I am still having trouble on the Three-Way Color Wheel.

Anyways, our class will be reviewing the rough cuts that we didn’t get to last week. Other than the lighting and sound, I hope that our classmates and professor Silva can give us constructive feedback on how we can make Centipede better.

David and I are finally starting to focus more on our marketing plan now. The past couple of weeks have been insanely (almost unrealistically) busy for both of us and I had to work at the Southeastern Women’s Studies Association Conference (SEWSA) 2014. Now that all of my busy stuff has been wrapped-up and I have put in a lot of hours at my job, I am going to take Friday off to work on the marketing plan (and a separate project).

Finally, an update after much neglect.

Man, I have been neglecting this blog. For the past month, everything has been crazy busy. I have to work at a regional conference on campus this week and everything at my since last year has all been leading up to this week. And to top things off, a tree limb fell on my car and I have been dealing with the insurance company. Since, I apologize for not keeping you guys in the loop about Centipede.

We are now done with our rough cut and we are in the realms of picture locking and color grading. David and I plan to take a few days break from editing so that we can look at the rough cut with a refreshed perspective. This way, we can delegate on what shots might change and what section(s) need to be color graded. 

We are also trying to complete our marketing plans for the film. We are still looking at printing options in regards to posters, postcards, etc. We have also looked at several film festivals to submit the film to but there has not been some that we are crazy about. I think that the main concern there is that we want to make sure we submit it to the festival with the right audience. You know, the kind that enjoy the insidious notion of feeding deadly bugs to their spouse...(just kidding)

I hope that I can learn some more strategies for marketing while at my internship. They have yet to give me a project that specifically deals with marketing, but I have learned other cost-efficient ways to get the word out. The main one is to keep a touring or screening schedule that is up-to-date and has correct information in regards to time and place.

And so, it begins...

Hello everyone, and welcome to one of the two blogs for Centipede, a film by David Vance. My name is Rachel and I will be assisting Mr. Vance as editor as our blogs document our ongoing collaborative progress.

So far, things have been slow. As we are seniors, David and I have spent a majority of the time editing the film bit-by-bit. The plan is to first put together Centipede before any other editing can take place. This will allow us to switch and replace shots and make sure that the film is finalized in terms of duration. This will also help us focus on one step at a time and to minimize mistakes occurring.

After the rough assembly is when the real work begins. Knowing what shots will be used enables us to figure out where and when to edit in the timeline. Since David spent most of last semester filming Centipede and I was not in the FST495 class last semester, I will do a majority of the color correction and sound editing; 55-60% if you will.

I feel that the sound will not be a problem for me since I spent most of last semester in Introduction to Editing doing sound. I am mostly concerned about the color correction. I feel confident that I can learn the controls, though it will take me a week to two to nail-down.

That’s all for now. Tune-in next week for more Centipede updates. I’m Rachel and until next time, don’t touch anything unpleasant!