A Treatment

As a part of my work, sometimes I am asked to find stories.  If you've seen the videos on the Youth Mormon Message page you know that a lot of our videos are created based off real life stories and events.  When the Producer I work under goes to a location like Hawaii or Detroit for a cool story he's found he is often looking for other stories too.  It's more worth our budget if we film more than one story at one location.

When I find other stories, I have to create a treatment for them.  A treatment is a proposal for a story that has not yet been approved.  Once the treatment is approved we do further research and/or script, schedule, and budget the production.

Here is an example of a treatment I created a while ago.  This story was never actually followed through with.

Christmas Shoot

This is a great video! Lucas McGraw, the producer I work under, was the mastermind behind this piece.  He came up with the idea, wrote the script, casted, and then edited this project.  I loved helping out on this one.  My responsibilities included working the with the Motion Picture Studio in Provo where we filmed this at, working with casting division to pick our characters, and I had to find a set dresser and a make-up artist for this piece. We shot this in late October of this year.

I'm very impressed with the set.  It looks like we're in a real house, but we're really at a three wall set built in the Church's Movie Studio down in Provo.  The set dresser also did a great job to make this set look like a real living room.



I think this piece is beautiful, and I'm very glad I was fortunate enough to help out on this project!  It was a great piece.

Here are some pictures of what the set originally looked like.  Lucas had them change it a couple of times before he got to the look he wanted.

Editing

I love editing. In fact, in high school I did a lot of editing with Adobe Premiere.  Before I took any Multimedia or Digital Media classes in high school I had some experience with editing as well. Before Adobe I used Sony Vegas Pro.  Now at work, I get to use Apple's wonderful Final Cut Pro.  I have to admit, I think I like Adobe best, but Apple's Final Cut is pretty awesome as well.

I would like to consider my self a pretty skilled editor.  I think editing is one of my strong suits.

The producer I work under with the Church, Lucas McGraw, has given me the great opportunity to try my hand at editing my own Mormon Message for Youth.  Before now, I was doing little editing things for the "chief editors," actually I think their official title is "Media Specialist."  I was putting in subtitles, I would edit down interviews by getting rid of the interviewers voice and sorting the answers that the interviewee would give. Now I get to do the major stuff for my own video.  

I'm excited for this opportunity!  I hope I do a good job, and I'll post the video on this blog once it comes out! 

Casting Session

Today I was fortunate enough to be able to participate in a casting session for some online episodes the Church is producing.  I was assisting the producer, the casting specialist, and the women who is in charge of the website the video series will be posted to.

Staring next spring the Church is going to be launching a new website for Young Single Adults.  They are creating a video web series for this website.  Today we were casting the host for that video series.

I learned a lot about casting.  It's long, but at the same time it's fun and worth it.  There are a variety of people who showed up today.  People who were nervous, people who were too energetic, people who were over confident, people with a lot of acting experience, and some with no experience at all.

Things I've learned include:

Stage actors tend to be really big; lots of motion, bigger facial expressions.  For film, that isn't always really good.  Stage actors have to convey the emotion to a live audience; they have to make sure the guys way in the back of the theater get the same experience as the guys in the front seats.  Film actor aren't so big because they aren't acting in front of a live audience, they are acting in front of a camera and talking into a microphone that's straight above their head.  You don't yell to a friend standing next to you in real life, you don't use a lot of body language when talking to someone right next to you - film actors get that.  Stage actors seem to be more dramatic, and film actors seem to be more realistic.  Both acting styles are good and have their place.

Also, the term "slate" can be used as a verb.  I've previously known slate to mean the clapper board AKA marker board. However, in auditions actors "slate" to the camera.  Which means they introduce themselves.  They state their name, their talent agency, their age, and other important information.

I was grateful for this experience today and I hope to continue to learn new things everyday!  I love my job and I am excited for all the new learning opportunities!