Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanks day, guys! Are either of ya'll up for the weekend?

Green Screens, Mean Teens, & Lean Means

Howdy,

Thanks Dave. I'm glad you liked it. It was quite possibly the most fun I've had making something since high-school. When we were getting ready to shoot, I started thinking, "why do I do this? Isn't this supposed to be fun? Why am I willingly going to edit like a crazy-man for something that probably will not benefit me or Renée in any way." But once we started shooting, it was so refreshingly creative (without being bogged down with needing to be "good" or "meaningful").

It was written and storyboarded a couple days before Halloween, shot on the Thursday and Monday after, and it was done by Friday. We shot almost entirely on green-screen, or in and just outside our apartment. I started editing in-between shoot days which helped make it more manageable, but there were definitely some all-nighter's pulled. The last day was mostly spent making the music, which was probably my favorite part. Here's some random screen-shots which show how we did a scene with all three actors even though we never had them all together at the same time.

The main point of all of this is not really the movie, but how awesome and patient Renée is. Not only was she patient with all of my crazy hours on this project, but she was really encouraging about it.

Actually, I don't devote enough space in these blogs to Renée, which leads me to "mean teens." Renée teaches music to 6-8th graders at a school here in Brooklyn. It's a relatively good school for these parts, but there's a lot of pressure, and it's resulting in anxiety. We thought that a lot of the problems would get better once the kids got used to her, but it's now November and while many classes have improved, a few seem to have actually gotten worse. We're hoping that a few report cards, and the holiday concert can still help. The older students give her an especially hard time, because she's not the teacher they had last year, whom they apparently loved. That teacher had to leave to go to grad-school, because you have to get a masters in order to keep your teaching certificate; which leads me to "lean means."

It's not really the best title, but it rhymed. Renée has started looking at grad-school, and we think she's found a good option. It would allow her to do most of the course work from home, and it offers the degree she wants. Unfortunately at this point, she's going to have to take courses while teaching, which isn't helping the whole anxiety thing we were talking about earlier. And paying for it will be a strain, but I think with God's help, we can make our lean means mean green.

okay... I really need to stop.

Hey Adam

Nice work on that movie! Did you say you only shot it last week? So all that post-production only took you a few days? Crazy. Anyway, I'm showing it to all my friends. When do you expect to hear from Sundance again?

BTW, I will be working full time with Soldier Design starting January. I'm pretty excited about that. If you want to see my latest website, its at maveriklacrosse.com.

Ian, hope you are doing well. maybe we can skype sometime soon.