My senior year of college was spent doing more writing, studying and researching than filming. I wasn't too happy with that. But I did manage to make three short films during that time, one of which I submitted for my senior capstone.
First, there was The Auteur at Work. I teamed up with Morgan, my Michigan-based partner-in-crime, to make a mockery of Auteur Theory, which we'd been learning about in our hard-as-hell film theory class, for our final project. Rounding out our team we had Ian (who is a fairly good actor, and don't let him tell you otherwise), Morgan's brother Collin, and her BFF Cody. Morgan, Ian and I nailed down the concept, I wrote us a script, Morgan took the helm as director, and we convinced Cody and Collin to act for us. Let the games begin!
Since most of us had worked together on Morgan's final project for production class, Death Lets it Go, we were pretty well gelled as a team already. The trick was pulling off a short film in less than three weeks, which as I mentioned when talking about Auto-Incorrect is no small task. The script was completed in two drafts. We didn't have time for storyboards or a beat breakdown. Casting came down to "wanna be in it? cool." Ian and I had to round out the cast, since we only had two real actors and the script called for at least four characters. To top it all off, we had technical difficulties as well: the day-of, we had to call in our production teacher to help with an audio issue, intermittent sunlight made setting up a shot nearly impossible, and we had to location scout on the fly. Then, once we had the damn thing shot, Ian had to work through a cold the last week of class to get it edited, and I was left to help choose the music and take care of post-production effects. Sleep? What's that?
But we pulled it off, and The Auteur at Work turned out to be the most fun I'd had on a film set in a long time. Watch it HERE.
I like making narrative films. I love to watch documentaries, but I don't consider making them to be my strong suit...so how the hell is it that I've ended up making so many of them?!? I've made three for various classes, two for good-cause events at my school, and two just because I felt like it. Huh. That's...a lot, now that I think about it.
Had I stayed at McDaniel, my first college, my senior-year project would have been a narrative. But I transferred to Oakland University, where I had to take a film-exhibition class for my capstone credits, and he wouldn't let me make a narrative film. So I made a documentary on the changing film exhibition industry, with special focus on why Blockbuster went out of business and the ways that theater and other video-store owners are staying in business despite the rise of Netflix and other on-demand services. If that sounds like a lot to pack into a five-minute capstone video, believe me, it was. But the end result was worth it.
The interviews were the easy part...but even the "easy" part involved traveling to Ann Arbor and Bloomfield Hills, coordinating with my mother when and where I could take the car, borrowing equipment from my production teacher, and printing and filing a handful of release forms for all the interviewees to sign. The hard part was finding B-roll and archive footage, as I didn't have any old photos or videos from Blockbuster that I could conveniently slip into the final cut. I ended up taking to the Internet for archive photos, hunting YouTube for old Blockbuster commercials, and asking Ian if I could film inside Disc Replay. And the hardest part of all was editing several hours' worth of material into a five-minute video that told a story without presenting too much of a bias. But all the work paid off when I saw the final cut--and when I saw my grade.
I never pictured myself making a documentary for my last-ever college project--but I'm so glad I did. Check it out HERE.
After all the hard work of my last semester of college, it almost felt like a relief to make another comedy short with Morgan. We were a "production team" for OU's end-of-year showcase, and our task was simple: create content. Make it OU-related. And above all make it good. This is for the school, after all.
Faced with this task, Morgan and I started out making a documentary, which turned into a loosely-scripted mockumentary about our favorite professors. For each of the four teachers we profiled we chose a well-known quirk and blew it way, way out of proportion. Our theory teacher, for example, was known for choosing a wide, often disjointed selection of films for his various classes. We filmed him choosing movies out of a hat and putting them into his class syllabus.
How Well Do You Know Your Professors was probably one of the easiest films I've ever made. The difficult part was finding the time to finish it; at the time that we were making the film, Morgan was writing a 90-page script for her class and I was shooting Moving Along for my capstone assignment. But we were lucky, because our professors cooperated every step of the way. And the reaction we got when we premiered it at the OU end-of-year cinema department showcase? Priceless.
Watch our dorky mockumentary HERE.
Monday, August 3, 2015
Avery Tries to be a Critic: 'Inside Out'
I saw Inside Out yesterday and all I have to say is: wow. Just. Wow. That movie. In the immortal words of white girls everywhere, I can’t even. Once again, Pete Docter does his absolute best to reduce the entire audience to tears. Grown men included. I move that from here on out, every Pixar movie should be screened for an audience entirely comprised of the most macho pro wrestlers, marines, and bikers they can find. If they all cry, your movie is TOO FREAKING SAD and needs to be modified before wide release. No, really. This is a safeguard that needs to happen, because I swear there wasn’t a dry eye in the theater yesterday.
Let me back up here and admit that, yes, I am a member of the Pixar Generation. As in, the kids who were born in the early 90s, around the time of the first Jurassic Park movie, for instance, and never had any idea what a world without CGI would look like. The kids who got first crack at falling in love with Buzz and Woody, never feared monsters in the closet again after meeting Mike and Sulley, squealed in delight when they found the light-up Squirt toy in their happy meals, and crawled around their living rooms pretending they were ants for days after seeing A Bug's Life. I’m one of those kids.
I actually don’t remember seeing Toy Story for the first time, but I know I did because I remember how thrilled I was when Dad picked up the VHS for Toy Story 2 on his way home from work one day. I remember eating a peanut-butter-and-cereal sandwich as I watched Rex trying to take down Zurg. I remember laughing hysterically at the “outtakes” at the end. I remember telling my dad that I wanted to be Jessie the Cowgirl. But above all I remember just plain loving every minute of it. There wasn’t one part of that movie that made me reach for the fast-forward button. As a kid growing up afraid of my own shadow, those kinds of movies were rare for me.
Over the years there have been Pixar movies that I loved (Wall-E, A Bug's Life, Up) and movies that I didn’t like (Cars, The Incredibles, Monsters University) and ones that I just plain never got tired of (Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo and, of course, the Toy Story series). Throughout it all, I never missed a chance to see a Pixar movie, even if I didn’t like the concept or the first trailers. When I got older and actually started going to theaters, I’d make Pixar movies my priority.
Okay, I’ve convinced you that I’m a complete sucker for a good Pixar film. So of course I went to see Inside Out and of course that movie made me cry like a small child. I don’t think there are enough words in the English language to express my love for Pete Docter. The guy gets it. He knows--not just tries hard enough, he knows--what it’s like to be a kid. He knows how it feels to be afraid of a monster in your closet. He understands the power that a persistent, innocent child can have over a grown-up. And after seeing Inside Out I am convinced that he knows better than any other grown-up on the face of the earth what it feels like for a kid to be uprooted and moved to a new place just as their childhood is winding down.
I think the reason that Inside Out hit me so hard was because I had a very similar childhood to Riley’s: I grew up an only child, very close to my parents, in a house in a neighborhood that I absolutely loved. But when I was about Riley’s age, my parents moved into a new house about an hour’s drive from our old one, in a very different area, and I absolutely hated it. I never ran away from home, or tried to, but there were days that I seriously considered it. And of course this completely baffled my parents, who assumed that because I’d liked making the drive from our old house to check on the progress of the new one I would like living in the new one. I couldn’t understand it either. I understand now that what I liked was having the time in the backseat to listen to music, getting to record and play with the camera while we were on-site, and getting to spend time with my parents. Whereas when we actually moved into the new house, there was a sense of finality. I hated it. I wanted to go home. Some days, I still do.
Recently I went back to St. Clair Shores, my childhood hometown, and saw everything through the eyes of a grown-up. (Or, okay, as close to grown-up as a 22-year-old can really be.) It’s a little run-down there now. The movie theater where I first saw The Santa Clause 2 and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets has long since closed down. There are cigarette butts all over my favorite park. A lot of businesses have changed hands or simply closed due to lack of income. In my old backyard, the tree that once held my swing has been cut down. But for all the changes, it is still my hometown, and I still love it. I always will.
So, yes, Inside Out really hit home, pun not intended. I was watching with my dad and I kept promising myself, no, I will not cry, I will not cry dammit, I’m a grown woman here and I will keep it together, Dad doesn’t need to see me cry (my dad hates it when I cry, even if it’s just over a movie), so I’m not going to cry--only to look over and discover that my dad had tears in his eyes too. That, my friends, is the power of Pixar. All the way back to the car he raved about what a great movie it was, and I have to agree.
What I love most about Inside Out is that it so perfectly captures how it feels to grow up. Just like Toy Story 3, which also reduced me to tears as I watched it right before going into my senior year of high school (can you say right in the feels?) and still had all of my American Girl Dolls and stuffed animals right there in my bedroom when I got back from the theater. I love the way Pixar can do that. I love that a team of animators, most of them grown men and women with kids of their own, can look around them and find inspiration for a film that hits kids and their parents alike right where it hurts in the best way possible. I love watching a film that makes me turn around and hug my mom and dad as soon as it’s over. I love that I can pop Toy Story 2 into the DVD player and still love it just as much as I did when I saw it back in 2002. I love that someday, I will show these movies to my kids, and see the looks on their faces when they reach the outtake reels at the end of the films. I love that.
So thank you, Pixar, for giving me something to love, something to look forward to, and something to aspire to. Because you can bet that as soon as I got home from the movie theater yesterday, I started working on my own script (more about that later) and contacting as many filmmaking friends as I could about getting this thing into pre-production. Oh…didn’t I mention my favorite thing about a Pixar film? No? Oops.
Well, here it is, then: every time I watch a Pixar movie, it makes me love cinema as a whole all the more. And every time I turn off the TV or walk out of the theater after watching a Pixar film, all I want to do is go and make something that makes someone else feel the way my favorite Pixar movie makes me feel.
Let me back up here and admit that, yes, I am a member of the Pixar Generation. As in, the kids who were born in the early 90s, around the time of the first Jurassic Park movie, for instance, and never had any idea what a world without CGI would look like. The kids who got first crack at falling in love with Buzz and Woody, never feared monsters in the closet again after meeting Mike and Sulley, squealed in delight when they found the light-up Squirt toy in their happy meals, and crawled around their living rooms pretending they were ants for days after seeing A Bug's Life. I’m one of those kids.
I actually don’t remember seeing Toy Story for the first time, but I know I did because I remember how thrilled I was when Dad picked up the VHS for Toy Story 2 on his way home from work one day. I remember eating a peanut-butter-and-cereal sandwich as I watched Rex trying to take down Zurg. I remember laughing hysterically at the “outtakes” at the end. I remember telling my dad that I wanted to be Jessie the Cowgirl. But above all I remember just plain loving every minute of it. There wasn’t one part of that movie that made me reach for the fast-forward button. As a kid growing up afraid of my own shadow, those kinds of movies were rare for me.
Over the years there have been Pixar movies that I loved (Wall-E, A Bug's Life, Up) and movies that I didn’t like (Cars, The Incredibles, Monsters University) and ones that I just plain never got tired of (Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo and, of course, the Toy Story series). Throughout it all, I never missed a chance to see a Pixar movie, even if I didn’t like the concept or the first trailers. When I got older and actually started going to theaters, I’d make Pixar movies my priority.
Okay, I’ve convinced you that I’m a complete sucker for a good Pixar film. So of course I went to see Inside Out and of course that movie made me cry like a small child. I don’t think there are enough words in the English language to express my love for Pete Docter. The guy gets it. He knows--not just tries hard enough, he knows--what it’s like to be a kid. He knows how it feels to be afraid of a monster in your closet. He understands the power that a persistent, innocent child can have over a grown-up. And after seeing Inside Out I am convinced that he knows better than any other grown-up on the face of the earth what it feels like for a kid to be uprooted and moved to a new place just as their childhood is winding down.
I think the reason that Inside Out hit me so hard was because I had a very similar childhood to Riley’s: I grew up an only child, very close to my parents, in a house in a neighborhood that I absolutely loved. But when I was about Riley’s age, my parents moved into a new house about an hour’s drive from our old one, in a very different area, and I absolutely hated it. I never ran away from home, or tried to, but there were days that I seriously considered it. And of course this completely baffled my parents, who assumed that because I’d liked making the drive from our old house to check on the progress of the new one I would like living in the new one. I couldn’t understand it either. I understand now that what I liked was having the time in the backseat to listen to music, getting to record and play with the camera while we were on-site, and getting to spend time with my parents. Whereas when we actually moved into the new house, there was a sense of finality. I hated it. I wanted to go home. Some days, I still do.
Recently I went back to St. Clair Shores, my childhood hometown, and saw everything through the eyes of a grown-up. (Or, okay, as close to grown-up as a 22-year-old can really be.) It’s a little run-down there now. The movie theater where I first saw The Santa Clause 2 and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets has long since closed down. There are cigarette butts all over my favorite park. A lot of businesses have changed hands or simply closed due to lack of income. In my old backyard, the tree that once held my swing has been cut down. But for all the changes, it is still my hometown, and I still love it. I always will.
So, yes, Inside Out really hit home, pun not intended. I was watching with my dad and I kept promising myself, no, I will not cry, I will not cry dammit, I’m a grown woman here and I will keep it together, Dad doesn’t need to see me cry (my dad hates it when I cry, even if it’s just over a movie), so I’m not going to cry--only to look over and discover that my dad had tears in his eyes too. That, my friends, is the power of Pixar. All the way back to the car he raved about what a great movie it was, and I have to agree.
What I love most about Inside Out is that it so perfectly captures how it feels to grow up. Just like Toy Story 3, which also reduced me to tears as I watched it right before going into my senior year of high school (can you say right in the feels?) and still had all of my American Girl Dolls and stuffed animals right there in my bedroom when I got back from the theater. I love the way Pixar can do that. I love that a team of animators, most of them grown men and women with kids of their own, can look around them and find inspiration for a film that hits kids and their parents alike right where it hurts in the best way possible. I love watching a film that makes me turn around and hug my mom and dad as soon as it’s over. I love that I can pop Toy Story 2 into the DVD player and still love it just as much as I did when I saw it back in 2002. I love that someday, I will show these movies to my kids, and see the looks on their faces when they reach the outtake reels at the end of the films. I love that.
So thank you, Pixar, for giving me something to love, something to look forward to, and something to aspire to. Because you can bet that as soon as I got home from the movie theater yesterday, I started working on my own script (more about that later) and contacting as many filmmaking friends as I could about getting this thing into pre-production. Oh…didn’t I mention my favorite thing about a Pixar film? No? Oops.
Well, here it is, then: every time I watch a Pixar movie, it makes me love cinema as a whole all the more. And every time I turn off the TV or walk out of the theater after watching a Pixar film, all I want to do is go and make something that makes someone else feel the way my favorite Pixar movie makes me feel.
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