It’s Time to Get Pretentious! Oscar Picks 2014

So Super Bowl Sunday is in two days, that means it’s time for Oscar Picks!!!! YAY!!!!

Okay Academy, here come the wildly uninformed musings of an undergraduate film student. Lets do this.

To start off the evening, I thought I might express my excitement over the fact that Ellen DeGenerous is hosting this year… I am extremely excited that Ellen is hosting this year!!! That means my boyfriend might actually watch. (He likes Ellen, don’t tell anybody)

I thought I’d just take a quick moment to point out the Ellen Oscar Trailer thing.

Mmmmm, nice. Catchy tune, I like all the people and the cinematoWHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING! Literally, it’s like they got a focus group together and they were all like…

Focus Group Person #1: You know what this distinguished award show really needs, an arbitrary dance number with a butt-load of people that come out of nowhere in tuxedoes that is mildly reminiscent of the music video ‘Nothing Suits Me Like a Suit’ from the 100th episode of How I Met Your Mother.

Focus Group Person #2: That’s a great idea. Lets Have Ellen look mildly unenthusiastic and confused walking in the front of the pack. Wait, shouldn’t we mention the oscars at some point?

Focus Group Person #1: Nay. They’ll be wearing Tuxedoes. Everyone knows the only place a person would ever wear a tux, is to the Oscars.

Focus Group Person #2: You should run for Congress, my friend.

All atrociously out of place trailers aside, I’m really excited that Ellen is hosting. I think she is fantastic, charismatic, and lovable and I am excited to tell everyone around me to shutup during her opening monologue because I actually care about dumb award show jokes.

Okay, on to the real picks. Here is the PDF document I got off the ABC Oscars site. I filled it out so ya’all could see my picks along with the other nominees (and of course all of the categories nobody cares about).

Before I jump into specifics I’d like to point out a few things about some of the listed categories.

Things I know absolutely nothing about:

• Documentary Anything
• Foreign Language Anything
• Live Action Short Film
• Visual Effects
• The Movie Philomena

Don’t ask me anything about these categories. I will undoubtably say something stupid. As far as visual effects go, I once thought I could tell good from bad. Then I got to film school. Turns out I know nothing. So don’t ask.

Things I Can Speculate About:

• Makeup and Hairstyling
• Costume
• Score
• Production Design

I can’t pick a winner with any confidence in these categories. I am almost consistantly wrong with my guesses. I don’t know any more or less about these subjects since I got to film school (well, maybe production design, but not really).

Things I Have a Working Knowledge Of:

• Direction
• Screenwriting
• Sound
• Cinematography
• Editing
• Acting

I understand what makes and breaks these subjects. This year I am supremely hindered the fact that I haven’t actually seen all the movies up for best picture.

Things I Am an Expert On:

• Ha
• Haha
• I’m an Undergraduate Freshman in Film School

Okay, so here’s the thing. I wasn’t that interested in going to see some of the top Oscar flicks this year. I don’t know weather it was laziness or not finding the movies appealing, but I haven’t seen all of them. I REALLY WANT TO SEE ‘HER’. But I haven’t gotten a free moment yet. It’s kinda killing me slowly.

Let the unintelligibly ramblings continue…

My vote for Best Picture is 12 Years a Slave. I cried my eyes out at this movie. I felt real solid emotion. I was engaged in the story the entire time, and the cast’s performance was impeccable. I really think the front runners for Best Picture are 12 Years and American Hustle, if you look at Golden Globe wins and other nominations. I picked 12 Years because (wait for it…) I didn’t like American Hustle. That’s right. I said it. I thought that the trailer was more interesting than the movie. The acting was great and the story was fine, but the stakes were too low and I checked my phone several times throughout the film. American Hustle was a paradigm to me. It’s easy to pick out performances and elements of the production that were laudable, but that didn’t stop me from being bored. I know many people who think I’m a lunatic for feeling this way about American Hustle (including my parents), but I also know people who agree with me. I don’t know anyone who left 12 years a slave, and was like “Meh, it was okay. I only cried my eyes out, and drafted a plan to kill Michael Fassbender. All in all it was decent.” No one said that. That is why 12 Years a Slave is my choice for Best Picture.

The next ones will be shorter, I promise.

My pick for Best Actor was Chiwetel Ejiofor. Mr. Kinky Boots made me cry my eyes out and feel his pain. If he doesn’t win, I’ll be sad. There are some amazing Actor’s nominated, (Let’s just be honest, DiCaprio and Dern got a nod) and I wouldn’t be shocked if he lost (I mean c’mon, Matthew McConaughey looked like he was on the edge of death). But, I’d be sad. I think Chiwetel deserves it.

My Pick for Best Supporting Actor is Jared Leto. He played his role beautifully.

My Pick for Best Actress is Amy Adams. However, everyone keeps telling me about Cate Blanchett’s performance in Blue Ivy, a movie I haven’t seen yet, and I think I could possibly change my vote. I love Cate Blanchett. I also only mildly enjoyed Amy Adams performance.

My vote goes to Jennifer Lawrence for best supporting actress. I love her. I love her so much.

As Far as Original and Adapted Screenplays go, I think 12 Years will win adapted, and I currently hold American Hustle as my vote for Original. However, I haven’t seen Her yet, and I might change my vote.

Now I will talk about Gravity. I am deathly afraid of Space. It freaks me out. I don’t even like talking about space. I don’t think any horror film ever made could terrify me the way that gravity did. For that, I think it’s grounds for some serious awards. First off, I think that Gravity should win for Visual Effects. I told you not to ask any further on the matter. More importantly, if Gravity doesn’t win for Sound Mixing, I will cry. I also think it should win for sound editing. All in all the sound MADE that movie and should be recognized for it. (Quick tidbit for those who don’t know, Sound Editing is the collection of sounds created and used in a film [gunshots, footsteps, chatter inside a restaurant, you name it], and Sound Mixing is the placement of those sounds in the world of the film. Basically, the editor collects the ingredients, and the mixer mixes them together. Simple.)

I don’t know what to do about cinematography. I have only seen Gravity from the lineup. So I vote Gravity by default. Bummer. I at least like to be informed when I lose.

I really did admire the editing in American Hustle. I voted as such.

I believe that Frozen should win for best Animated Feature. Frozen is the most progressive Disney princess film, and I think that counts for something. As far as the other nominees go, I haven’t seen two of them, sequels rarely win, and The Croods had Nick Cage in it. Frozen has my vote.

I’m tired now, so I am going to go to bed. No doubt, I will change my list before the awards. I will check in with everyone after the Oscars. I will probably be irrationally emotional. In other words, it should be a fun post. Maybe I’ll live tweet again. We’ll see.

Mr. Bananas and Standing Up for What You Want

This is going to be a shockingly short post for the amount of experience I gained over the last few weeks. I don’t know why I felt inspired to write this in the middle of the night, but hey, why not.

So this month is Interterm at Chapman University (otherwise known as January term which makes a lot more sense) and that means it’s time to cram in an entire semesters worth of learning into one month. Three credits, one course, three hours a day, four to five days a week. This period is a great time to kick those pesky GEs to the curb. I, unfortunately/fortunately, was unable to enroll in any of my preferred courses and ended up enrolling in a class I was actually interested in.

Here is the description provided for the class

Location Filmmaking: FTV-271-04/ FTV-371-04/ FTV-571-04

Instructor: Roy Finch

Course Meets:  Monday through Friday 10:00am to 2:00pm

We are happy to announce the 2014 Interterm Location Film Production.  As part of an ongoing effort to introduce our students to new and innovative film technologies and the particular aesthetics and practices these have spawned, we have designed the 2014 Location Film class to focus on the creative use of the Xsens Motion Capture technology or Green Screen technology. The objective of the course will therefore be to produce two or more short movies that effectively use these technologies to tell compelling and original stories.

The Motion Capture film(s) will include a character that has been digitally generated using the Inertial Motion Capture technology by Xsens<http://www.xsens.com/en/general/mvn>. This motion capture technology is a flexible system that is fully portable and can be used at both indoor as well as outdoors locations.

The course and accompanying productions will be team taught and supervised by Roy Finch (rfinch@chapman.edu)

The class will consist of a combination of lectures, demonstrations, and supervised productions.

The class will begin on Thursday January 6 and end on or about February 1, 2014. Enrollment in the class will be open to students of all disciplines.

I bolded the sentence at the end of the first paragraph to point out how little I understood the sentence. You see, I thought that the short movies we would be creating would be more along the lines of the visual storytelling projects we had been creating over the past semester. I was very wrong. The Professor, Roy Finch, wanted the projects to be Thesis Level. We were given a 5,000 dollar budget for each project, and we were told to arrive with an idea of what position we wanted to hold on a set.

Alright, here is where the lesson comes in. I know it may be the same moral from a past post, but it’s especially prevalent now. It even comes with my honest to goodness anecdote.

My friends and I sat down in class on the first day. Right off the bat two different creative teams pitched their short films to the rest of the class. (I found this confusing because I thought I would be hearing a lecture right about now on the history of green screen technology and it’s uses. I brought a notebook and everything. Apparently this class was going to be a lot more hands on than I thought.) Apparently we REALLY WERE splitting up into crews and hard core producing films. Anyway, I was immediately taken with the plot of the short Mr. Bananas, which is a comedic story about a little girl’s stuffed monkey who gets tortured by her evil older brother. Kind of a mix of Toy Story, Ted, and The Godfather, but I digress.

I knew I wanted to work on the set of Mr. Bananas, and I wanted to work as an Assistant Director. From this point I made one very right move, and one very wrong one.

As soon as we were released to shmooze with the directors and producers, I went straight for Trevor and Andrew, the team from Mr. Bananas, and stated my experience from working on a few sets. I told them I was very organized, confident, and good at multitasking. I’d like to think I stated my case rather well, if I do say so myself. HERE IS WHERE I MADE MY WRONG MOVE. Having worked on two film sets where the 1st AD was at least a Junior standing, I was aware that the 1st position was not one held by Freshmen. However, I was also unaware that the class was comprised of a shocking amount of Freshman, and that I has significantly more experience on set than a lot of my peers (that is ANY experience on set). So, I ASKED if I could hold the position of 2nd AD, a job that I was very familiar with from apprenticing a friend of mine, and working as a 2nd 2nd (if you recall from earlier posts).

The Bad news:

ASK AND YOU SHALL RECEIVE. I was given the position of 2nd AD. The 1st AD job was given to a friend of mine who had conveniently left out that he had never worked on a Dodge film set before, and was unaware of the duties and responsibilities of the 1st. He merely pointed out that he was interested in working as an Assistant Director.

I was so angry. So very very mad. But not at my friend. I was angry at myself for selling myself short of my goal. I assumed that I wasn’t ready for the 1st position. I was afraid that I would be looked down upon as a freshman who didn’t know what they were doing. I was a coward, and I had to deal with paying the price for that. Oops.

I had to stew in my bad decision for about 4 days.

The Good news:

My friend Rachel, who was working as the short’s script supervisor, let the information slip to Trevor, the director, that I had more experience. She also gave me a bit of a recommendation, as she knew about my past performance from being in my Visual Storytelling class. I did not prompt her into tattling. I hadn’t even expressed to her a feeling of dissatisfaction with my initial job.

It felt really good to be recognized by a peer for doing good work.

However…

The Lesson:

You won’t always have someone to vouch for you. If you want to get what you want, you have to reach out and take it. Don’t sell yourself short or let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game. I almost missed out on an invaluable experience because I was too nervous to speak my own worth.

This probably wasn’t one of my more fun blog posts. But it sincerely needed to be written.