SLUG ON A RUG Production Blog

Monday evening’s meeting was productive and fun as usual, with Chandra, Sean, Sorrelle, and Hammer in attendance. After showing the rough cut to Hammer and getting his feedback on a few of the questionable spots, we went through one last time and Chandra compiled a scene-by-scene list of all revisions we needed to make for the final cut, incorporating notes from Sally, Eli, McKayla, Alex, Freddy, and Jan Krawitz. She then divvied up the notes between her and Sean, and published them for you to see here:

http://academic.evergreen.edu/curricular/mediaartiststudio/studentwork/chandrafarnsworth/img1.png

http://academic.evergreen.edu/curricular/mediaartiststudio/studentwork/chandrafarnsworth/img2.png

http://academic.evergreen.edu/curricular/mediaartiststudio/studentwork/chandrafarnsworth/img3.png

http://academic.evergreen.edu/curricular/mediaartiststudio/studentwork/chandrafarnsworth/img4.png

(The bold indicates Sean’s notes, the italicized is Chandra’s stuff, and the bold / italicized is what they will be mutually attacking)

There were certainly some areas in the rough cut that demanded a little more discussion, too. For one, the moment when Zee launches into her rant about Jacob’s female lead in his new project originally played really long. To remedy that, we sped that portion up in Final Cut, which got some laughs from most everyone who saw it — we decided to keep it this way, since the monologue is still audible thru the sped up-edness. To follow Ruth Hayes’ “once is a mistake, twice is a motif” theory, we will do something similar with the reflexive VCR sped up / slow down effect at another point in the episode.

We also decided that in the interest of keeping things over the top, we would side with a fiery explosion for the projector mishap involving Marla. We consulted a lot of people at length about this, but came to this decision based on the feeling that it would provide a much needed contrast and cartoony boost to all of the dry, motionless talking throughout. Whenever we have the chance to lean towards the silly, we want to exploit it to the fullest.

Another source of confusion at this point is the introduction to the episode. It is widely agreed upon that the current start, kicking off with Dottie’s cat movie, is too disorienting, so we are kicking around some ideas as to how we can segue from an intro into Sc. 1a. We grabbed a V.O. from Eli while he was visiting, where he says, “Dottie, show us your film”. We also thought we might incorporate an exterior shot of the school, with a plaque that reads “Film School University, Created By…”, etc. , and thought about including a clapboard transition of some kind…? How do we kick it off in an interesting way, clearly enough to establish it’s a film school (or at least the name of the series and its creators) but without being too informative or complex? It needs to have a hook-quality to it, something that makes people want to see more. We would like to appeal to you all for any suggestions as to how we approach the intro: we want it short, sweet, and to segue nicely into a movie-in-progress in Sc. 1a. Any ideas you have that we take we will gladly give you credit for. At this point, we’re spending the next two weeks just putting the final touches on everything. Sean and Chandra are working through the rough cut notes, and Sorrelle is working on Hourglass (the sand rotoscoped piece). We will be meeting tomorrow to review the changes we have made so far, which include the completion of Sc. 7, a tentative demo introduction, and changes from Sc. 1a – Sc. 4b. We will also likely draft up some pamphlet-style pitch designs to finalize how we want to supplement the DVD demo with written content for Adult Swim.

Onward and upward!

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 10th, 2009 at 3:01 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.