Thursday, July 24

OK, today is the second to last day of the program. I’m pretty sure you people have been wondering what has been up with the blogs? Well, the real Devon is back. I had an assistant (Jill) helping me type whatever I said, with her input. Ok, well, let’s see, I just finished editing my trailer, I have to convert it into a QuickTime file so they can add into the DVD. Man I felt so sorry for Malachi, not! Karma played back on him, he lost all his information for the DVD on the Mac. And now his “blue prints” for the DVD are missing too. He can’t find his note pad with all his stuff on it. I think he got what he deserved. Ok now I’m getting criticism from Jasmine & Lofton about my previous blogs. I knew this was going happen. Just to justify, I was talking to Jill and she typed all of that,. So now I’m going to type my own, and yes XBOX sucks, but Microsoft makes better computers. So if you have a problem with what I put on the blog, it is my own opinion, blogs are free for me to write off the top of my head and I can say almost what I want. They weren’t in my taste but I had to post something up, so like 'whatever' - haters of my art! I also had to go into the studio and record a Q&A with the writer LaTonya Sampson. There was a pesky fly flying in & out of the shot. Durrell, Jasmine, me & Jamal had to edit the interview. Durrell didn’t want to do anything with it and Jamal was just all around the room. I couldn’t get into the groove today with the editing, so I saved my work so I can work on it tomorrow. So that’s all. Get ready 2 see what I’m about to say tomorrow on the last day! - Devon

On-time blog for Wednesday 7-23

July 23, 2008 Today moved a little bit faster than it has been for the past couple of days. I finished my trailer, but Malachai lost the DVD information. After I finished, Badesch made me and Durrell wrap up cables. A lot of people went over to the studio to make a fake talk show to use as background for a scene in the movie. They had a lot of fun. John and Lizzy came in today to see the rough cut of the movie. I have been up this morning since 2:41AM because I got hot in my room and I needed to charge my mp3 player and didn’t go back to bed. I was using the computer checking all of my birthday comments on tagged. I received about 60 comments and 100 messages. I did not have a birthday party, but yet my mom and grandmother cooked a lot of food for me. We had turkey, macaroni and cheese, greens, sweet potatoes, dressing, and ham. I ate two full plates of food, and then I was so full I practically couldn’t get up from the table. I also had a birthday cake! It was vanilla and I had one slice and two scoops of chocolate vanilla swirl ice cream. This morning for breakfast I had another slice of cake and some hot tamales, which Jill stole from me all day. Everyone else did too! All in all, being 16 feels pretty sweet, but yet the same. It was also a letdown because I didn’t get a play station 3… but hopefully I’ll buy it next week. I have to pay my mom half the cost of the play station 3 and she’ll pay the other half. I could really go for playing some basketball right now, but the gym is closed and my basketball is going flat. It looks like I’ll have to go shopping with the birthday money I got (and work money, too)! Xbox sucks. PS: Sony for life!!!

Blog done on time but Mr. B put it up late

Today is a glorious day, besides it being Tuesday. Today is my birthday! I’m not doing anything, though, except sitting here at work. The work lately is still going rather slowly because all that’s really left to do is edit the doc and the film and soundtrack. So, there’s not too much to say. Uh oh, something bad happened to Durrell today. He was making fliers in a complicated format that Mr. Badesch had to set up when he accidentally exited the program without saving! Now he has to start all over. There isn’t enough time left today, though, so he has to do the whole thing tomorrow. That’s too bad for him. K, I’m out. Will update tomorrow. – Devon

Another late blog from Devon for 7-21

Greetings and grand salutations! Today at the "Hush" production site everything moved very slowly. In fact, it’s going to be slow for some of us until the end of the week. I started off making a trailer for the movie until Badesch kicked me off the computer. Since then, I’ve been updating the blog. Tomorrow is my birthday! I will be 16. So old! I’m not going to have a party, though. I may go to Wisconsin this weekend. Hopefully I’ll get a car, or a PS3. Everybody has been on the computers working hard, except me. I will be expecting to eat something after work. Did you see WWE last night? Adam Copeland sucks, Paul Michael Levesque is better. Jill played Xbox for 5 hours last night with her friend who looks like John Belushi. UFC kicked butt last night. Jill’s friend says that “[my] mastery of memoir is rare in post-modernist blog entries.” Hopefully I do not miss the E3 expo because I need to see all of the latest games that are coming out in 2008. NBA season is coming up, and I can’t wait to see Derek Rose in action. I played against him once, and he brutalized my team (in the video game). But, that gave me the courage to continue playing basketball and work on my craft.

A late blog from the wrap party on Friday - by Devon

Ok, I’m going to skip the whole work day and go to the wrap party. There was a problem with communication on my part. I was supposed to bring Jauvonnie with me to the wrap party in Hyde Park at Pizza Capri. Once I found a ride I was supposed to go and pick her up. My mom wasn’t being so easy though. I asked her countless times to pick up Jauvonnie because I was supposed to bring her, the director, with me. Yet my mom wouldn’t go pick her up because she didn’t talk to her mom. I was going to get chewed out if I show up to the party without the director, but my mom didn’t care. So when she dropped me off I went inside the restaurant and they set me at a table. I was explaining what I was there for but I guess they didn’t know what I was talking about. So when I saw Jarvon and Joe I walked outside to be with them and we talked a bit. Then we saw Jill across the street at a Starbucks. So we were all over there talking and then we thought we saw Brandon walking across the street, but come to find out it wasn’t him. So we went inside and Kit Woods was sitting down on the other side of the wall I was at and we sat down and were waiting for everyone else to come. There were kids from the same program at another school there with us. Their movie is also a drama and John Mossman is helping them as well. So when everyone came in, they brought in the pizza and everyone began to talk amongst themselves. Soon after, we introduced ourselves and stated our positions in our projects, and then Lizzy and John talked. A couple of actors had come in, and that was mainly it. After the cheesecake, the party was over. I needed to find a Currency Exchange so I could buy myself a 1-day bus pass, so Albert, Joe, Jarvon, Jill and I were walking around Hyde Park. After I got my 1-day, we went into Dunkin Donuts and after she bought us donuts, Jill went home. The rest of us went into Game Crazy. There was a boy on a bike trying to be on some sly stuff and tried to run over Joe. Albert was looking like it was a problem waiting so he could swing. We were up in Game Crazy about 50 minutes. When we were on the bus, Joe was tweaking… I think it was the colitis from the pizza and smoothie he had. He was talking and laughing loud on the bus about really nothing, and people were running off the bus shaking their heads.

Waiting For More Blogs

Well, here I am again - writing another blog 'cause our regular blogger must have more important things to do (I'm kidding - but he sure isn't writing as much this year.) Anyway, here goes . . .

One week to go!! Everyone seems busy (for the most part). Some students are still having a problem staying focused on their responsibilities and finishing them on time and to the best of their ability - but for some, this is still a learning process.

The doc people have the biggest job - they have a ton of video to process and to figure out how they want their documentary to look. The bloopers were never assigned so Byron volunteered to learn the editing program and put a blooper reel together. I think he's either all done already of nearly done - that's quick!

The soundtrack team is hard at work rearranging their music (most of it) now that they can actually see the shots and get a sense of the pacing of the video. We have a revised list of video-film festivals to which we'll be submitting the video. DVD labels, designed by Malachai, are being printed (a slow process).

Some of the students still don't have anything to do in post production so they are going to have to put together movie trailers for the video. Malachai did one on Friday and it's AWESOME! You'll be able to see all the work done by the students on the final DVD (just a mere $10 to help support the RTV major :)

The editors have done a lot in the last couple of days since shooting wrapped. The rough cut is more than 50 percent done and it's looking REAL GOOD! I saw one of the shots from the house that I hadn't seen them shoot (too many people in too small a space, so I waited outside the house when it was shot) - let me tell ya, that shot? - WOW! It'll send shivers down your spine!!!

The students joined with students from the other IFP production from the U of C for a wrap party last Friday at a pizza place in Hyde Park - some students were able to make it (I had to get ready for my Friday night job so I missed it too :(((

Okay, rest up crew because this is the last week - it'll go by fast so get your work done quickly! We'll let ya know when the premiere will be so keep checking the web site (http://www.geocities.com/hush_thevideo). Bye for now.

Mr. B

Devon finally posts a log for Tuesday

Ok, on this day, it was our last shooting day outside of the school. I thought this was going to be a very slow shot and it was because Mrs. Stackhouse's group came out to be extras since there weren't any there. Most of the crew who weren't being used behind the camera had to be extras , and that was most because of the jib that the camera was on (it lifts the camera up into the air). I was an extra but I had to stand in that hot sun for like 10 minutes until they were ready. We were in a tight time schedule, so we were rushing. After we shot it, it was a wrap, and we carried equipment back up to the room.

After a couple of minutes of catching our breath, all who were in the room had to sit at the table because Badesch had something he wanted to tell us. He was in the middle of a long story and he was starting to feel the mood (when he gets into this mode, it’s like he is preaching), when Byron pulled out his phone and was turning the volume down in front of Badesch and he went off on him. He took his phone and told him to go home. It was so reckless how it all happened; I was trying so hard to not laugh. So Byron asked Badesch to call his mother but no one answered so he left a message. Byron asked if his granddad could come get the phone but Badesch said no. When he was leaving, he yelled out peace and left. hehad no emotions and someone laughed when the door was closing.

From Jill on 7-17-08

Since Devon is too busy working on the closing credits to catch up with the blog right now, I’ll take over for today. The crew finished up its last day of shooting on Tuesday, which was a weight lifted off of our shoulders (especially since the weather has been so hot as of late). It also marked our entry into the third phase of film-making: post-production. Right now, Jauvonnie and Joe are working on editing. It looks like a slow, tiring project— they sift through every clip and figure out which ones stay and which ones don’t. The doc crew is going through a similar process as well, except with more informal footage. It’ll be really funny to see what makes it into the bloopers, though I have a suspicion that I’ll be made fun of quite a bit. All in all, though, things here are a bit more relaxed than they have been in past weeks. Hopefully, we won’t get too lazy and have to scramble at the last minute to put the finishing touches on the film! -- Jill

July 10th

(This blog was submitted on July 14th) Ok on this day we begin shooting in our crew member Cash's house. We thought everything was going to go smooth but I ran into a little hold up. I don’t want to talk about the situation, but once we got there, people were getting ready to go. Someone left my boom pole at the school, but they said I didn’t need it because the rooms were small and didn’t need the pole. I was partially glad until I saw the bathroom we had to shoot in. It was small and we were going to have to cram into the shower (camera, sound, & a light). Fortunately we were going to be short one person, the sound mixer. So that meant not only did I have to hold the mic but I had to have the mixer around my neck. It made my spine hurt after a while. But Joe and I were cracking so many jokes before and after takes.

We were on the pregnancy test scene for awhile then we moved onto Cash’s room which was right down the hall in the next room to shoot on 1 half of the room. That scene didn’t take long, about 15 minutes, but yet I still had the mixer round my neck. Then we had to pack up, but leave the equipment at her house for the night only because we had to come back and shoot the next day. On the next day it was so crowded everyone was walking around eating up the food. But what was so scary was when Joe knocked one of the pictures off the wall and I had the doc Camera. Cash said that her mom was going to snap, and the way everyone put her on during the school year, I didn’t want to see her in action. I and a couple people had left early while everyone else went on to the next scene. (portions of this blog are being checked for validity) . . . to be continued.

July 9th

(Note: This blog was submitted July 14th) Ok, this is going to be short and to the point with this day of shoot. It was the second day and we were falling behind schedule at the beginning of the day, how I don’t know really. We had packed up and moved to the Café area of the school on Chappel side. I can’t lie, we had so many problems down there because many people left equipment up in the “office” and 1 person had to run up to the room, get what was needed & come back down with it. Well, I felt that person was being lazy with it and he wasn’t getting the right things. The longer we had waited, the more things were needed for our equipment. Like batteries, they were running out quick while we were practicing and they just left things running. So after we were down at the Café door for like 2 hours my arms were so tired; we had to pack everything up and move into the gym on the second floor.

It was going smooth, but it was like the audio was extra loud & the echo was louder. We weren’t in the gym long, it was like too funny in the gym. They started playing basketball after we shot in the gym. I wanted to play so bad, but I couldn’t because I was part of the crew. So then we went into the hallway. We were in crunch time and didn’t have time to waste, but the equipment was going dead fast and it was past 1pm. Everyone was getting lazy, tired, and aggravated. Me? I was just cracking a bunch of jokes but I was getting hungry though. After we finished I rushed back to the room to sign out with all the equipment and wanted Burger King so bad.

What I did on my holiday weekend - and, oh yeah, about the movie

Ok, my 4th weekend was long and boring. On Friday when I found out I got paid, I left the window open on the computer and little brother told my mom how much money I had. I was so mad, I wanted to punch him, because she wanted to borrow $100. I told her I'm not going grocery shopping, so I bought lunch. We went to Popeyes on 75th & Lafayette but they didn’t take cards. So then we went to KFC right next to it. They didn’t have anything I wanted, so I got a double crunch chicken sandwich. I thought it was a big sandwich. I spent $10 on me and my mom but they didn’t take cards if they didn’t have the MasterCard logo. When I got home and took my food out of the bag, I saw that they gave an extra small snacker with two small chicken strips. I was so mad, but I was hungry and I ate it. The buns were hard and dry. It was horrible but I needed to eat something. So later on that day we went to a party at my cousin’s house. I was enjoying myself for a little time. I was in the room playing on Fight Night Round 3 by myself just laughing at all the knockouts I was getting in career mode, until the little kids came in screaming and rushing me to get off the PS2 so they can play Ben 10. My cousin came in. Since he is special needs I have to tend to him a lot. I had to keep leaving to get him food and the little kids were screaming, jumping and hanging on the bunk bed getting on our nerves. His big brother came in talking trash like he was going to beat me, so I had to put him in his place with a 3rd round knockout (the video game, I mean). I got tired of playing that, so I put in my NBA 2K8 and after I put that in everyone wanted to play. After 1 game, they wanted to play Fight Night against me because I was playing on it the whole time they were outside. I was the last one to play; it was like I was the best in the room. But one person had an unorthodox fighting style; I couldn’t figure it out when I was watching them play. He beat everyone, but this boy I know lost in the 1st round because he didn’t know the controls (he kept talking trash, he got put in his place). So when I was playing, I didn’t want to use Roy Jones Jr. because every one was losing with him against Ali, so I picked B Hop & he picked Sugar Ray. I held up my own against him until the 3rd round when I got knocked down for the 1st time and 2nd time. I didn’t really care because I was working on the cut I gave him in the 1st round and we went up til the 6th round and that’s when I lost horribly & got knocked out. I was so mad. That was the 1st time I lost in about a month, and I had so much momentum to enter this Fight Night tournament. Now I have to regain it. I also found out that someone threw a M80 at their dog. Luckily she is ok, but it really made the dog angry and she was on a rampage from then on that night. So on the next day, my mom and I went to the bank so I could take some money off my card, and the only Charter One bank that I knew that takes money off that card was on 1357 W. 103rd Street. The line in the bank was to the door. When I took out my money, I gave my mom $100, and we went to the store. I bought a lot of cereal & junk food. I didn’t really do anything else this day, but ate Maxwell Street polish's. I should have been out of town at my family reunion with my grandma but she left me at home. On Sunday, we had to go pick her up from the rent a car place, and went shopping again. I didn’t spend any money because I have something I really want to save for this year. But my mom did bring me an application for Value City on I think on 87th & Cicero. Later that day I got bored so I watched Hancock. It was ok, not like I thought it was going to be, but ok. Good thing I didn’t waste money on it. Fortunately I had connections I’m not going to speak about yet. So that’s mostly everything that happened on my weekend.

OK now for today. I didn’t think I was going to do anything because they went on locations again today, so I had to stay and catch up on blogs I didn’t do and I’ve been doing this long blog most of the time after I helped with DVD Design & with a teaser. Well, a couple of actors came in so they can rehearse on location. We begin the shoot tomorrow, which means I have to work out when I get home because my arms are getting loose, and that’s not good because I have to hold up the boom & help with lights. Every one is coming in right now. Now the room is getting loud while I’m typing. So, I have to listen to music while I type which is making me type faster but I have more typos (but that's okay because Mr. B will fix it for the blogger). So sorry for some of my typos because someone has to go through this and look at my punctuation and grammar on every blog entry (that would be Mr. B). So have fun fixing this up! (I did!) I’m out for now, peace!

Late blog for June 30th

Ok, today (Monday, June 30) was our day for auditions for the movie “Hush” (http://www.geocities.com/hush_thevideo) in the CVCA lunchroom. It was very confusing from the previous week on how we were going to set up in the lunchroom because there was a new program for elementary kids coming in. But once we got it situated we got into our positions, set up paper work, and were ready and waiting for actors to come in. It was pretty smooth getting paper work out, but some people weren't on task with their responsibilities. But what was a trip was my partner; we were supposed to change positions periodically between helping Jasmine & the food. Around 11:40am, the summer school kids were coming in for lunch and were extra thirsty for doughnuts. I felt as if I was going to fight someone from taking one. But they were people I knew, and they were just playing. Someone almost took one but Badesch caught him. Well, that’s all for this day. I have to catch up on a couple of blogs. Someone has been eating me out about them (hmmm, I wonder who that could be?). So farewell, I’ll try to post whatever I didn’t over the next couple of days with more recent ones.

Happy 4th

I couldn't resist. I just had to write a blog (also, a certain blogger has been falling down on the job getting his blogs in on time).

We're taking the 4th off from doing stuff. We held auditions Monday. Had lots of people tryout. The decisions were hard but we think we have another great cast. The cool thing is that Larry Johnson, who's going to be a sophomore in Radio-TV in September and is on crew this summer with us, was reading the sides of Jordan with the actors trying out - and our casting director and regular director both thought he was great - so he got the part. It's the first time one of our students was cast in one of the top roles. Very cool.

So, everyone's been running around with the actors all week rehearsing in the different locations we're going to use in the school. Monday, we'll be out on location with the last group of actors for final rehearsals. Tuesday we'll start filming.

As Devon mentioned in his last blog, I took him and Joe and Malachai down to Fletcher Chicago to get a run through on the digital Panasonic camera using P2 memory cards instead of video tape. I love technology! We met up with another group of film makers from the University of Chicago - actually they are students from other Chicago Public Schools who are doing a similar program as we are but working through UofC.

Albert, Cassh and Larry are nearly done with the soundtrack. It sounds fantastic! Malachai finished the DVD pages - he did a great job!! And the pages work perfectly with one of the songs.

The art department is moving along great (Jasmine and Jamal) and have nearly everything needed. The last hurdle was jumped over today - we found a good location to show as the abortion clinic - it's not a real clinic but the building looks perfect and the people who own it were real happy to have us use it.

The school administration has been real helpful this year as we are filming half the film in the school as opposed to past years when most of the films were shot outside on location. Thanks!

Let's see - what else? Oh yeah, no offense to our previous interns and IFP people (Lizzy and John ARE the greatest) but Brandon and Jill are powerhouses. What a staff!!! And we have another one of our national award winners back (yes, he graduated AND he's going to MY alma mater - SIU-Carbondale, so he's WAY cool) - Jamal is mentoring all the young'uns.

When I'm not making sure everyone is filling out their time sheets correctly and dealing with all my administrative duties, i'm mentoring Malachai with the DVD and the web site, giving technical training on Final Cut and Soundtrack Pro and keeping everyone on task - which brings me to my 'grumblings'
- clean up after yourselves
- properly mark your tapes and put them in their cases
- don't make messes (and clean them up right away if you do)
- do you own work
- don't waste time doing nothing (always something to do)

See, I get to grumble - that's why I get paid the big bucks - LOL

Okay, everyone have a GREAT 4th weekend - be safe. See ya next week.

Mr B

7/2/2008

OK. Today is Wednesday the 2nd of July, today moved slowly. Well, after we had our morning meeting with the actors that came in, some people went out for a practice shot with the actors and haven’t been back most of the day. Me personally, I stayed in the room and did a teaser for the movie. I didn’t finish it but I made it, it got really weird crazy in the room around 11:30 am. Ok I’m on the computer doing some other work assigned to me, I turn around and take off my headphones and see something so…out there, Jarvon, Malachai, and Jerry are like clowning extra hard. They are recording them running around the room dancing and joking. They made our intern helper Jill listen to Lollipop. I think they was trying to make a joke out of it; they put all of it on doc too. But me, Joe, and Malachi have to stay late, go downtown and help get the equipment for production (camera, boom, lights, etc.), and we won’t be back till like around 4 pm, so I’m all good with it. I’m through with my blog for today, hopefully I will get my previous days up soon, had to finish early so peace! Devon.

June 24th

Ok, here is an overall synopsis for what has happened today. We had to break into our mini individual groups (lighting, locations, art department, etc.) and work amongst each other so we can get teamwork together before the shoot. I had to work with lighting & camera. We also did a mock shoot (practice shoot with sound, lighting, and camera). I had an issue with holding up the boom. Everybody knew what they had to do, knew how to do it, and went straight to work. A couple people, including me, might do teasers for the movie over the next couple of days. I don’t really remember how to use Final Cut Pro anymore. Anyways, I found out that we have two separate blogs that were posted up on the same website for the movie. But that’s basically all that happened today. Come back for the next day blog by yours truly Devon aka D-Rob. Later!

Monday, June 23, 2008

Ok, I'm a day late for this blog. I'm going to try and remember everything that happened the previous day. Ok, so we had to finish editing our mini movies and watched them in the class, and we had to add to the list of things not to film about in our mini movies (not making fun of any mental illness). We had a special guest that came in who was a professional DP who showed us some of his professional work. We also got an intern from IFP, Jill. In pre-production tensions began to flair, people were getting restless with each other. Our documentarians aren't really catching all the good things that are happening, like when Jamal told me to show them that my glasses were flexible - when I went to bend them, they broke. I was mad for the whole day up in there. I couldn't see and it was just embarassing becasue I had to put tape on them to keep them together. Well, that's all I have. Come back and hopefully I'll have the next day up. Later!

First Week

Welcome new & fellow fans of the IFP Chicago CVCA Radio/TV summer movie program, I am the returning blogger from last year’s program, Devon Robinson. This year I’m going to be a junior, and for the program I see familiar faces for the crew and new ones as well. We are down one week already, so I’m going to catch you up on what has happened so far. This year we start off with a female director (since last year Angelica Allen became director after an unfortunate confrontation). This will be my second time in this program and I basically have the same jobs again except lights, DVD, or website.
And early into the program, we have already lost someone because of a confrontation with a staff member of the school. So, we are now down to 14 for the crew and we have to pick up the slack. We finished our mini-movies also so we are making good progress. And we have to help the new members with their jobs because we might have had that position last year. But the classmates that are in my grade doing this now know that this will give the others a head start on video before everyone else in their class during the school year, and it gives them an edge just for everything in junior & senior year.
Well, that’s about all the info I can muster for the 1st week. Be sure to come back because I may begin doing blogs for individual days. So, until the next blog, this is Devon. I’m out!