I recently watched the film called The Tree of Life. It left me utterly speechless. I nearly cried several times. It's the most beautiful and moving thing I've ever seen on screen. And that's a true statement. I'm not gushing.
The film is not really a movie; it's a visual poem. It's an experience. The dialogue is minimal, but incredible poignant. The images are more about the movement and feeling of what's on screen, not about composition. The editing is about essence, not about proper cuts, coverage or axis of action.
The story is about humanity and God, about the soul, about Grace vs. Nature. It's motivated by God's conversation with Job. In my opinion, it touches on the most profound questions the soul can ever ask.
I'm not going to say more, except that if you do watch it, there are three requirements:
1) Watch it on the biggest screen you can, in the darkest room you can, with surround sound. Remember, it's about the experience of the film. You can't afford to miss anything.
2) Either watch it by yourself or with people who don't talk during films. Absolute silence is imperative. I'm not kidding.
3) Watch it at least twice.
Then contact me on facebook and let me know what you think.
I spent this past week working on Regent's fall endowed film. It's the semester project that Regent pays for, and students work on it for a practicum credit. We had a fantastic crew! The whole experience was really great. You can check out crew videos and blogs about it on our website: L90regentendowedfilm.com.
I worked on the camera team with the awesome people pictured above (L to R: my close friend and fellow 2nd assistant camera, Heidi Allen; 1st assistant camera, Will Allen; director of photography, Shannah Phillips; camera operator, Ian Miller).
Shannah is the only other female DP I know at Regent, besides my aspiring self. There might be some in the grad program that I just haven't met yet. But I don't know any others in undergrad. It's such a boys' club haha!
Speaking of Shannah, she's also the DP for Will's senior project next weekend. I'm 1st AC for that one, and I'm REALLY excited to get more experience with the Panasonic AF100 cameras we used on the Fall film. And I'm trying to get on the camera crew for a grad shoot in mid-November that is also using the AF-100.
It's funny because at the start of the semester I had a list of experienced DPs I wanted to work with at some point this semester. I was hoping to gain some lighting and camera wisdom to apply to my own senior project in the spring. However, all but one of those connections fell through. But God has been offering me completely different opportunities instead, and I guess He knows what He's doing.
I was the DP for my good friend Jamie's 3-minute short called "Chains." It's a darker project about a girl's addiction to pornography. The piece involves a surreal dream sequence so we got to experiment with different lighting, but we didn't get to do everything we wanted because we ran out of time. I feel like this was the first time I got to push myself to be really creative. The footage doesn't look as nice as I thought it would and there are a million things I would do differently if I had the chance, but I'm still proud of us for what we tried to do and for the things that worked. And I did learn a heck of a lot! Hopefully Jamie can make up for my mistakes with gorgeous editing :-)
I carved my first jack-o-lantern last night! (I made a pretty vine, inspired by Martha Stewart.) The Moka family got together at the store (Sunday, so the store is closed) to watch football, eat food and carve pumpkins. It was fun. More pics on facebook.
By the way, Cafe Moka needs a new website...and I'm supposed to be working on it. I once thought web design would be fun to learn. Now I know better. It's too much detail work for me. Ick. I did find a nice template, though, so now I just need to get some pictures from our media person and start working on those coffee brewing instructional videos! Now that part will be fun! (And I'll get to practice my DP lighting skills again!) I want to do something cool. I need to sit down and think about it.
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