The Measly Sophomore

This was my first year in film and I couldn’t have asked to be a part of a better crew:) I started off the year a little intimidated being in a class with all upperclassmen. Once our crews were formed, I didn’t know what to expect. The amount of effort everyone puts in during their time in this class sets an awesome example for how hard work really pays off. As an assistant director, I had the opportunity to watch every aspect of movie making come together which was a great thing for me because I came into this class wanting to learn. Mike and Hannah taught me so much throughout the year by stopping what they were doing just to give me advice. Even though I was less then a help for music trivs, the rest of the crew made up for it and we finished 2nd in the end. The night of the red carpet was probably one of the most exciting nights. Waiting for the limo to take us to the high school resulted in dozens of pictures including our own Oscar selfie. As soon as we got out of the limo we were greeted with applause and a crew picture. I was more than surprised when I was asked a question about my first year and I bet it showed by the look on my face. After the interview we walked two by two (I was next to Frankie) to the journalism students for more questions. Walking the red carpet was a new experience and was a lot of fun. The only regret I have from the whole year is not being a part of a film last year.

 

 

-Lisa R

It’s Over

Well my film career is over.  It is a sad day in my life.  I am so lucky to be on such a good crew this year with Mike, Hannah, Maddy, Pat, Brian and Lisa (even though she is quite mean to me).  This years crew taught me a lot about how a functional crew should work, and be organized.  My last two crews (Miss Superlative, and The Wombat), were both very disorganized and in return the movies did not come out as good as they should have.  Looking back Film was one of the best decisions that i made in high school.  In film I met many people that I may not have had the chance to meet, if I did not take it.  Mike and Hannah were also awesome in being able to put up with me, over the course of the movie and for showing me a great website. OMFGDOGS.COM, (Check it Out).  This year the movie I was in also was in contention for many awards which was both exciting and nerve racking.  We did not win anything unfortunately, but Brian won best Music!!  I would recommend taking this class to anyone because you make amazing friends in this class.

This year my position was a unique one to say the least.  Not only was I star supporting actor in about 25 seconds of the movie, I carried props and things for the crew, like Arnold “I lift things up and put them down”.

I am going to put what each member of my crew means to me:

Mike: He is amazing and really dedicated to the movie and the film festival, and is going to be great in what ever he decides he wants to do in life.

Hannah:  Moose is alright, she can get a little moody at times but she’s manageable.

Maddy:  Maddy was awesome in the movie and made sure everything would come out as good as it possibly could!

Pat: He was a great JJ Wells and I honestly can’t think of a better student in the school to fit that role.

Brian: He made music, he did amazing, he is perfect, I do not know what else he could of done better

Lisa:  Lisa as much as it pains for me to say, she made the movie as good as it was.  She was the best assistant director that any crew could have had and i have no doubt in my mind that she will make great movies in the next two years.

ALSO I WILL PUT IN MIKES FUTURE PLAN: Mike will own a studio and be making great movies, I will be working the door and making sure common peasants like Spielberg, do not come in.  Lisa will be the lady with a blue tooth and Hannah will be the event organizer, while Pat and Maddy act and Brian makes kick ass music for his movies!!

Its been real peeps,

Frankie

Wrap Plarty Extravaganza

First off we can say we dominated the wrap party. The whole crew arrived (besides Frankie) with the addition of Kiran and Lauren. The ice cream we brought in was definitely a big hit at the dessert table; however, the purple pudding was one of the most disgusting foods I have ever tasted. I would like to add we were the best looking crew with our matching aubergine shirts. Although Adam was not a huge part of our crew he took up 99% of our blooper reel.

…………..TRIVS TIME……………

First year that plum has ever come in 2nd place, and I can it was a total crew effort. Although Alan and Bakale decided to have selective hearing for some of the songs we pulled through. KATY TIZ is not a real artist by the way. when it came to movie trivs all of the credit goes to Hannah and Mike for being amazing.  Fun Fact: during trivs Lisa put the stars from the table all over my pizza.  With the alliance of jackfruit, quince, and us, we were able to answer the most difficult film festival questions of all. With Hannah’s knowledge of music and Mike’s knowledge of past film festival we clearly dominated the rest of the crews besides rambutan.

I could not have asked for a better crew to end my film festival career with, and I am so incredibly proud of everything this crew has accomplished. Thank you Mike, Hannah, Lisa, Pat, Brian, and Frankie for and incredible senior year in Film Festival.

#peaceloveplum

-Maddy

True Detective(s)

With only a few scenes left to shoot and a deadline of April 14th, the case is coming to a close and seems to be wrapping up. When people speak of a True Detective, who risked it all for the case, they usually include the likes of Rust Cohle and Marty Hart, maybe even Sherlock Holmes. Yet, could it be that J.J. Wells is exceeding these ranks. With the complexity of J.J.’s case, one can only think back to Robert W. Chamber’s The King in Yellow, a collection of short stories that focuses in on a forbidden play that induces a madness to those who read into the Second Act. From the looks of it J.J.’s cases reaches this complexity, as the number of small clues and hints that mean so much have the ability to send anyone into a madness they simply cannot escape. The question is, can J.J. decipher these clues before the case overwhelms him?

The crew has been working day and night to get this film done and with the earliest due date of April 14th, we will only have to work even faster. Every day we could film we have, which has given us the opportunity to try and perfect our movie with reshoots. Most of what we can film during class has been filmed, so a lot of out of school work will have to be done to get this film into post-production, but it is a challenge that Plum as no problem accepting.

With the most difficult case J.J. has ever opted into, we can only wait and see whether he is prepared to do whatever it takes, whether it be entering into Carcosa or risking his own life. One thing is for certain J.J. won’t let his eyes avert him. J.J., Rust, Marty, or Sherlock: Who is the TRUE DETECTIVE?

– Baker

The Great Plog.

Alright. Vacation. It was the best of times, it was the worst times.  I guess I’ll cover the best of times first.  Plum Crew basically dominated this vacation with filming.  We filmed approximately 18 scenes.  To put that into perspective thats more than a quarter of our movie.  We finally achieved filming Erker, which was a momentous event.  Not only did he perfect his lines, he brought his own prop: a jelly doughnut. His infamous quote for the day “The good thing about bringing your props – you can eat them afterwards”.  I will live by this quote for the rest of my life. Also, we got to film the renowned Michael McKeon as Dylan Gotewski.  We got to build a new office, something we’ve become very good at, and although Maddy and I are weaklings and couldn’t move the furniture, Rey* saved the day. Mr. Salmans office, formerly the Pub Room, was transformed into a technology wizard’s lair, complete with PCs, laptops, and phones ranging from iPhone 5 to the indestructible Nokia.  My counterparts were able to film the remaining JJ’s office scenes which was pretty great.  But our greatest achievement by far is the augmentation of our music trivs points.  In a measly two days, we racked up 30 points with the aid of everyone in the crew INCLUDING REY FOR THE FIRST TIME!!!!!!!!! <333333  All in all, it was a very tiring week, but we killed it.

HOWEVER. I have yet to cover the worst of times.  First of our problems was the fact that our mic hates us.  No matter what we did to tighten it, the mic would automatically just start flopping around like a dead fish.  We had to resort to dire circumstances: Creating a boom mic operator.  The butt of jokes in many film festival movies, the boom mic operator has now become a reality in the form of Rey.  And for the record, she has already gotten in the shot on multiple occasions.  An obvious con to filming over vacation is the fact that it no longer feels like a vacation.  Our crew was here all day everyday from 8:30 to 3 cranking out our masterpiece.  But both of these problems pale in comparison to the WORST. MOMENT. EVER.  Even though Maddy had sacrificed an hour of her time searching all over the school for crews to take food orders the prior day, on Friday a CERTAIN CREW that rhymes with BLEMENTINE did NOT take the time to find our hard working crew DOWN THE HALLWAY to take chipotle orders.  So, as their crew feasted on burritos and soda, our crew survived only on crackers, water, and our tears.  This means war. Must be a plum thing.

 

peace.love.frogs. ❤

Hannah & Rey (along with the assistance of everyone but Pat because he has quit our movie at least five times in the last 20 minutes)

 

 

 

 

 

 

On a sidenote, Lisa is officially named Rey due to Mr. Alan’s mumbling.

 

Productive Plums

So I’m sitting here thinking about our next shoot when it occurs to me: when was the last time we wrote a blog?  Sincerest apologies, fans.  It’s been far too long.  That being said, we have been VERY busy for the past few weeks and we have gotten SO MUCH done.  Now that I think about it, I think I end up writing a blog like this at least once a year.  Make movies or make excuses.

We’ve finished the majority of scenes taking place in JJ’s Office.  We’re pretty much masters of setting that thing up now.  We can turn this room from nothing into a noir style office in 5 minutes flat.  We also finished filming all the scenes in Miranda’s Office, which is huge.  The first time we set up that office it took us at least 45 minutes.   I think we’re all pretty happy to have that block of scenes all set.  We’ve also almost finished all of our scenes with Tom.  Even though he doesn’t have a big office to set up every time we film, we’re still pretty happy about this progress.  So what’s next?  Vacation.

Plum will be hard at work this vacation, as will most crews.  Tuesday we will be filming with Mr. Erker, which we’re obviously excited about.  Who doesn’t love working with this guy?  Maybe if we’re lucky he’ll even teach us about some of his stretching expertise.  Anyway, we also plan on filming everything in Dylan’s Office in the next week.  With the school empty, we will be able to leave our set up without being in anyone’s way; hopefully that will save us some time.  We also have one of our most difficult scenes scheduled for the Friday after vacation: the Dance Co scene.  I think we all know what we want the scene to look like, the problem will come in the execution.  So we’ll let you know how that goes.

I think this is the part where I get to ramble about whatever I want, so get ready because I’m about to tell you about my recent trip to the dentist.  Just kidding.  But I will tell you about our new tool of organization (which is so much more important than you might think when making a detective film).  a while back, a made a copy of my marked up screenplay, which has all the shots we plan on getting for each scene.  I went through page and wrote everything we need to know.  What tie is JJ wearing?  Which pair of suspenders? Does he have his black eye?*  Then after we finish filming for the day, we go through and highlight everything we did.  When we look back we can see exactly which shots we need to get, if any, and so far we have found things are running much more smoothly.  It’s because of this that we dubbed this screenplay the “god copy”.  Well I think that just about wraps this blog up.  Stay tuned.  Stay classy.   Must be a plum thing.

*for the last half of the movie, JJ needs a black eye.  The girls decided to bestow the privilege of making it on me (Mike).  So everyday, I sit down with pat and do his makeup.  We call it guy time.

-McKeon

A Baker’s Dozen of Plums

I am happy to inform the readers that we are into production. We have shot a multitude of scenes, even venturing out to the Walpole Public Library for a scene. As I write this blog, my fellow crew members are deciding on pictures and props to use for scenes in the movie. They failed to inform me, I am not in any of the picture they need to take and therefore dressed up for nothing. At least it will get me into the mood to blog.

Xavier Grades is my first experience with acting and I have enjoyed every second of it so far. Obviously, I was a bit nervous to start and filming hasn’t gone without a couple mistakes on my part, yet nothing has truly slowed our filming process. In one of our first filmed scenes, twice in a row I ended up looking directly at the camera when turning the corner and realized it immediately. For one of these instances, I probably stared right into the lens for a good 5 seconds. During this same scene, I think Andrew Hazerjian got a kick out of being able to push me up against a wall seeing he is always trying to argue and start thing with me. We all know how that would of turned out if it wasn’t a scene.

Overall, the filming process has gone very smooth so far, expect for the fact that Art is drawing just about every hallway in the school. Despite this setback, Plum and the other crews have powered through. Oscars nominations have just been announced and all I can say is that those actors are lucky that Xavier Grades did not comes out during Oscar season.

-Baker

Plumping Up The Party

Hi Readers! Filming is underway as we have filmed our first scene. We have finally entered the production stage, and it’s exciting. As I’m writing this, the crew is in the library filming Pat (JJ). From looking at our first scene on the computer, I think production is off to a good start. Mike and Hannah work really well together as directors, and Maddy’s killing the art direction. How lucky I am to be on such a stacked crew. My job is to compose the music for the movie. As a modern noir movie, I’ve been writing some jazz tunes and contemporary. Even though we’re only in the beginning of production, a bulk of the score is written already and I can’t wait to see how it complements the rest of the movie. I haven’t heard too much of the other composers’ music, but from what I’ve heard, music is going to be huge this year. Music is that extra aspect that adds the charm to a movie. Tomorrow, my twin and I will be filmed for the first time together. I will be playing Andrew Bolsen and Andrew Hazerjian will be playing Brian Bolsen. Believe me, it confuses me as much as it does you. Anyways, Xavier Grades will rock your world so excited and be ready to think. Have a nice day! -Hazerjian

M.P.P.

Today is a momentous day.  It is the day of the first ever M.P.P. -Most Prized Plum being awarded to our very own underclassmen Lisa Regan! Here are the criteria that she fulfilled to receive such a prestigious award.

-Printed out the Plum

-Finished her storyboards before all our actors

-Blogged this with me (Hannah Mullen) right now

-Braved snow in clogs to digitally storyboard

-Never complains unlike all my actors

-Overall a very plummy person

So, in conclusion, she deserves this award. If you think otherwise, you are not truly a plum at heart.

Adios Amigos-Hannah (+Lisa)

THE PLUM BIRD HAS LEFT THE NEST

 

A week later and pre-production is absolutely flying by with each one of us contributing something crucial. In the last week we completed the vision, prop list, mood map, spreadsheet, shot lists, scene list, printed a plum, and have participated in anger squats. Also, our script meeting with Alan was very successful as we discussed how we should film some of our difficult scene, and made a few minor changes to our script.  As of right now we are finishing up story boards and finalizing costume decisions, hoping we will be able to start filming soon.

I (Maddy) created the prop list and figured out what props we already have and what props we will need to go out and get. Also, I created the scene list and split up each set of scenes into days and how many costumes each character needs according to how many days the character is in the movie.

MUSIC TRIVS. From 0-7 in one class. At first we were tied for last place with two other crews and then suddenly we were tied for 3rd in one class. As of right now we are at 20 points and are going strong. Also we have a new addition to a crew as you can see, the most precious plum bird. Upon finding her we knew she had to be our background representation of our crew. Now the bell has rang so I should probably wrap up, Plum  out.

-Maddy Waple