Frequency and Insomnia

The film you...hopefully...just watched [if not, stop reading now and watch the film!] is the final product of my insane Saturday. It's a long and happy story, with a very sad ending. So keep reading....

Well...I'm about to go to bed...finally. A good night's sleep will do me good. I've only slept 4 hours in the past 48. Why may you ask? It's because I'm an insomniac! No...I don't have a sleeping disorder, I was working on a 24 hour film festival called Insomnia. The competition was sponsored by Apple and required that teams write, produce, edit, and submit a film in 24 hours. I was, greatly against my better judgement, recruited for a production team last Thrusday for what turned out to be the most exciting project I've ever worked on. So on Saturday morning I met with Kendall (our producer and cinematographer), Blake (our director), and Bryant at 5:45 to begin on pre-production. At 6am Apple revealed the elements that we had to incorporate into our film [they give us certain locations and production techniques that we have to incorporate creatively into the film] and we began writing. By the time the cafeteria opened for brunch at 10:30 we already had a story written and planned out [Also, our final team member Felicia had joined us by that point]. At brunch, I got a call from my friend Grace who is a music composition major who offered to score some of the music for us!!!! So she ended up spending the day scoring the two songs for the dance scenes. At 2 we started filming :D

Filming went SO well for the first few hours. The lighting was perfect, the actors were brilliant, our crew was working together perfectly and the entire experience was so exciting and totally surreal. And then we hit a hitch. The next location we were going to shoot at was completely locked. And we had eleven extras coming in three minutes. I ran out to try to gain access into the building and spent an hour going from campus safety office to campus safety office until i finally found someone working in one of the halls [i must take the opportunity to say how very safe i feel knowing that every safety office is closed over the weekend]. After finally getting in touch with a security officer and being throughly interrogated about who i was and what I was doing...I was denied access to the building. So now an hour behind in our production schedule we set out to set up at another location.

The filming however did go on, and somehow or another our crew managed to make up most of the lost hour. At six we took a break for dinner and then went on to shoot the dance sequences. I choreographed the two dances with Chelsea and Josh (with some invaluable help from Chelsea N. on style) while Blake and Kendall and some other crew members set up the lighting. I'll admit it was so much fun to finally be able to dance again!! [For those of you who don't know, Biola does not allow dancing on campus. grrrr. however, there is an exception for choreographed dance sequences :D ] It was here that things started to become probematic, since we were not able to get the lighting right and ran into snags concerning candles for the Waltz (Felicia had to run back to Wal-Mart to buy some more). So between those two scenes we got a good two hours behind schedule.

Timing aside though, the sequences were so beautiful to watch! Chelsea and Josh picked up the dances so quickly and were able catch the knack of acting while they danced. The set for the Waltz was beautiful! I wanted to lie down on the ground and just soak in the moment of white tables, candles, and dancing while gazing up at the blue and red and yellow lights reflecting off the sweeping white fabric set against the sky.

It was just after midnight when we finally wrapped produciton and we then went literally running to the Production Center to start editing. Alyssa (chelsea's roommate) had just gotten off work and agreed to come and edit for us since she knew how to use the program better than all of us and made the process go so much more smoothly. The next five hours went faster than any I can remember as we frantically made decisions about editing, re-recording audio, and overlaying dialogue (quick note of interest...the dialogue for the Horror Film is Blake and I ...yes I got to scream at the top of my lungs at 3am!!! Fortunately there were no dorms filled with sleeping people nearby). Other insomnia teams were also editing and it was so much fun to see everyone working together to get their projects finished. By 4am the deadline was just two hours away. Everyone was exhausted, frantic, and ready to snap at any moment. We were able to hold it together and at 5:20 our film was done. All that was left was to compress and upload the film. We had given ourselves 40 minutes for what we supposed to be a 20 or 30 minute process. The film started compressing. Twenty minutes later...and much pacing....the film was only about 40% done. At this rate we were gong to miss the deadline. Kendall sent everyone out of the room. We sat nervously in the adjoining room and tried to make small talk about how the filming had gone. At 5:50, ten minutes before the deadline, Kendall walks through the door and tells us that the film is still only about 60% uploaded. There was no way we were going to make it.

The crew took it well. Nobody cast blame. We all accepted it knowing that we had done the best we could. But it was disappointing. There was no denying that. We had worked so hard, and then not to be able to enter due to a computer problem was beyond disheartening.

However, because we never submitted it to Apple, we still own the rights to the film so we're considering fixing up some glitches in the film and making the audio better and then submitting it to the Biola film festival. And, even though the film isn't in the competion, I learned so much from the experience and had one of the best days of my entire life. So I hope you enjoyed watching the move and reading about my day. I miss you all [except of course for those of you who i go to school with who are reading this...but for everyone back home]

~Karyn

PS. And also, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE go to apple and vote for one of the other Biola made films in the competition. Our school is gaining a reputation among other more well known film schools and a win in this competition would be awesome!! So tell everyone you know to vote!