I've decided to stop using "M. M. Rempen" as my pen/screen name. It's such a mouthful. And people don't know what to call me. Em Em? Mmmm? Eminem?
So now I'm just going to go by most of my full name - Michael Malachi Rempen. That way, those who know me as Michael or Mikey can call me that, and those that know me as Malachi can call me that too. End of story.
No movie news! But I did meet Sean Penn the other day.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Back to Booming
I've decided that this part of my site should be more than just a plug for myself. I was watching an interview with Jason Reitman, director of Juno and Thank You For Smoking, two of my favorite movies, and he said that when he was at film school, he would have like to know about what other big filmmakers were thinking and doing in film school to get to where they were. Other stories that might motivate him to keep going.
That led me to think that maybe it would be interesting if I talked in a little more detail about what day-to-day life is like for me at film school. Not that I expect to be some big director some day, and that these blog posts will be feverishly pored over by film students clamoring to follow in my cavernous footsteps, but at the very least, I'll be able to look back on this later in life and remember what was going on senior year. Dear diary...
This last weekend I was the all-important boom operator on my classmate Scott Sullivan's senior thesis shoot, The Gory Details. Though I was doing it for class credit, I felt like it would be fun to be back on set. I like being on set, and the boom operator is a great position. You get to be right there in the middle of the action, but you're not responsible for all the heavy lighting and grippage. You can chat with the actors and you get to do a lot of sitting down. When it is time to hold the boom pole, you build arm muscle. I remember reading somewhere that boom operators make a lot of money. I can see why.
I'm working on the script for a feature film, and it's incredibly difficult. After having spent so much time working on short films, I feel comfortable with short form storytelling. There's a clear beginning, middle, and end, with little room for tangents. But the feature is a whole other beast. I have characters and a basic plot, but I know that if I start writing, I'll crap out at page ten, out of ideas. I need to have it totally outlined on note cards or something similar before I can really buckle down and start writing. That's difficult to do.
The other hard part is that you can't force ideas. Ideas come to me when and where they feel like it, and not before. It's usually before falling asleep at night, when my mind is shutting down. So that means that writing a feature takes as long as it takes my ideas to settle into coherent forms that fit with what I've currently got. It'll happen, I'm sure.
And now for the plug. The Awards page has been updated to look shnazzier. I think it's pretty sweet.
That led me to think that maybe it would be interesting if I talked in a little more detail about what day-to-day life is like for me at film school. Not that I expect to be some big director some day, and that these blog posts will be feverishly pored over by film students clamoring to follow in my cavernous footsteps, but at the very least, I'll be able to look back on this later in life and remember what was going on senior year. Dear diary...
This last weekend I was the all-important boom operator on my classmate Scott Sullivan's senior thesis shoot, The Gory Details. Though I was doing it for class credit, I felt like it would be fun to be back on set. I like being on set, and the boom operator is a great position. You get to be right there in the middle of the action, but you're not responsible for all the heavy lighting and grippage. You can chat with the actors and you get to do a lot of sitting down. When it is time to hold the boom pole, you build arm muscle. I remember reading somewhere that boom operators make a lot of money. I can see why.
I'm working on the script for a feature film, and it's incredibly difficult. After having spent so much time working on short films, I feel comfortable with short form storytelling. There's a clear beginning, middle, and end, with little room for tangents. But the feature is a whole other beast. I have characters and a basic plot, but I know that if I start writing, I'll crap out at page ten, out of ideas. I need to have it totally outlined on note cards or something similar before I can really buckle down and start writing. That's difficult to do.
The other hard part is that you can't force ideas. Ideas come to me when and where they feel like it, and not before. It's usually before falling asleep at night, when my mind is shutting down. So that means that writing a feature takes as long as it takes my ideas to settle into coherent forms that fit with what I've currently got. It'll happen, I'm sure.
And now for the plug. The Awards page has been updated to look shnazzier. I think it's pretty sweet.
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