Get Animated

Cool stuff happening. The pre-production of our movie is gaining some serious momentum. When I mentioned it to our movie it slapped me and called me an insensitive pig.

We have one of our two locations, an apartment, on lock. Whoopee! Now all that's left is finding the hospital, and since apparently it's near impossible for a film student to find a hospital around here that's willing to let us run amuck with video cameras, we've had to get extra resourceful. My teammate Dan and I spent a good chunk of today sneaking around clinics trying to see what places could reasonably pass as a hospital hallway.

Er... I mean--

WE RECEIVED PERMISSION FROM AUTHORIZED OFFICIALS TO EXPLORE SEVERAL MEDICAL FACILITIES FOR THE SCHOLARLY PURPOSES OF ADVANCING OUR EDUCATION.

There may be a fairly promising gynecology clinic in our midst... though what I really would love to shoot in is this medical facility we sort of stumbled into. It's hella old, and kinda creepy looking... the perfect place for our story to resolve, since it is somewhat of a creepy story.

And on Friday I visited a Czech elementary school to see about finding a child to act in our movie. My acting professor over here teaches English to these children at a nearby school, so I tagged along to help out in class and see if any of them might have that special Hollywood glow. Well, I have this to say: THEY'RE... SO... CUTE! Hyper-active, but so cute. We sang Raffi. Raffi. You know what I'm talking about.

I also read them "The Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything," and we played a game where you had to guess whose feet belonged to who. It was great. I want to post pictures of them, but I'm afraid that might be creepy.

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Sorry, had to. LOOK AT THOSE FACES.

Anyway, that was my Friday. Oh! Also my Friday: going to an underground bar/club called "Bunker." It was literally underground, because it was literally a bunker. Well, it used to be, anyway... before they turned it into a local hotspot. It was really cool, I wish I had brought my camera.

And then there's Saturday-- photos abound! Some other people from my program and I spent the whole day in HAFAN Studio, making our very own animation! This place is crazy. It's just floor-to-ceiling with (somewhat creepy) dolls and toys and posters. Kind of like my room back home.

Anyway, this has got to be one of the coolest things CIEE has lined up for us. It was a lot of work; stop-animation is an incredibly time-consuming process. Just to give you an idea, we were there for 7 hours and produced a 15-second animation... and we were pretty efficient sons of biscuits! Can you imagine how much time goes into a feature-length animation? Such as Jedné Noci Jednom Město, the award-winning stop-motion animation that was produced at HAFAN Studio? I MUST see it, it looks incredible.

Isn't that adorable?

As with any activity involving puppets, there was much frivolity and merriment. I had a lot of fun spending the day making our little animation. Photos, yeah?

Interchangeable heads, anyone?

On the set.

A part of the studio being used to create a children's television show.

I animated this guy in our film. We're... like... besties.

The gang's all here!

These are everywhere.

OOGA BOOGA BOOGA

Want to see the final product?!? You do. You totes do. It's only 30 seconds with credits, which is about the maximum you can do in the time we were given. You see that dude bobbing his head by the doorway? I animated him. I also drew the miniature Biggie Smalls concert poster... not sure which is a bigger point of pride for me. Ultimately, however, the entire animation was a big collaboration, and I was fortunate enough to work with an awesome group of friends.

Filmapalooza!

Lock and load. Film stuff is gettin' REAL.
This is the last week that we have our film classes (except for my three elective courses, whatevs). So basically, what this means is that my Mondays (class from 10:40-7:45) just got a whole lot easier.

...Right?

WELL not quite. I'll admit I'm sort of basking in the calm before the storm-- at this juncture we have the final draft of the literary screenplay, a draft of the technical screenplay, and the shot list.

SPEEDY FILM VOCAB SESH

Literary screenplay: The script with all the dialogue, character description, and action.
Technical screenplay: A mangled version of the literary screenplay filled with information on the shots, locations, sounds, props, costumes, and any special camera stuff.
Shot list: A list of all the different shots that will be in the movie, as in what each shot will be. We've got close-ups out the ying yang.

OMG CLOSE-UP

...Sorry, I just wrote an essay on this movie. If you haven't, you MUST see Carl Dreyer's La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc. It's a silent movie, but holy moly is it good. Emotionally exhausting, but good.

We now return to our regularly scheduled shenanigans.

Now that all our script stuff is done, the tedious part of the filmmaking process is about to go full-swing. We need to find the locations of where we're going to shoot; meet with casting agencies to find our actors; draw storyboards (little cartoon panels of what each shot will look like); draw blueprints of the blocking, lighting and camera placement... a lot of stuff. All I can say is, thank goodness we've got production managers to help fanagle all the permits and paperwork and junk.

OH and did I mention that we're making our movie in Czech? Yup. English subtitles. So I've got to rassle up some Czech friends to help translate the script. As director, one of my biggest worries is the potential language barrier that may arise when I'm working with the actors. It's likely that we can find Czech actors in their 30-somethings who speak at least a little English (enough, anyway), but there's a little kid in our movie, and it's going to be very difficult to find a 6-year-old boy who speaks English. I suppose we'll have a translator of some kind on set, but... still. Madness. If one year ago someone came up to me and said, "Hey Jessica, you're going to make a film in Czech," I would probably have responded, "What's Czech?"

MADNESS! I love it.

Speaking of things that I love, my fellow Whittier College friend Chelsea is studying abroad in Copenhagen this semester and she is visiting Praha! She gets here tomorrow and I am quite excited.

OH! And before I go-- I'll leave you with this bit of depressing information. Halloween is not a big deal in the Czech Republic. Had I not known yesterday was October 31st I wouldn't even have been able to tell it was the Halloween season. Someone placing a little bare, uncarved pumpkin on their doorstep is going "all-out" with Halloween decorations. Since Halloween is hands down my favorite holiday, this all made me very

My American FS cohorts and I dressed up and had a little Halloween party of our own, so at least I got to celebrate in some way. But still... I only ate one piece of candy last night. ONE. Upsetting? I'd say so. Sigh... I suppose the vast quantity of trick-or-shots is a small consolation.

YOU know.