This week’s REAL blog.

“LETS ALL LOOK AT THE CAMERA!  IT WILL BE HILARIOUS!”

So we gave you a quick update, but, as promised, here’s this week’s real blog.  Chris Nee is scheduled to blog, but he’s a little busy.  Music is the last thing we need to finish for this movie and its full speed ahead.  Filming is done.  Editing is done.  And as of 30 seconds ago, our trailer is done.  Due dates have been moved to allow for crews to make up for the time lost during snow days, so our date was moved to May 9th.  With only music to finish, we’re pretty confident that we have enough time to make something special out of this movie.  To be honest, I really have nothing else to say in terms of production… We finished.

Nee is really stepping up right about now.  He has a lot of work to do and he’s really pulling through.  Being a silent movie, there’s a lot of music.  A lot.  Elias has suggested that we use some of his music.  Not that he has made any music, he means the music he listens to.  No, Elias.

Well, this is going to be pretty bittersweet, but its almost time for plum to part ways until next year.  Soon, Mr. Alan will be splitting us up to help out other crews as they finish up.  Even after the film festival, however, none of us will ever be able to forget the trials and tribulations of Plum 4.0.  McKeon is excited to carry on the plum torch next year and break the record (we think) of the longest-running-fruit-tree-lineage-words.

Kicking butt and taking names.  Must be a plum thing.

Just a quick update…

(Just a quick little update, not necessarily a full blog)
THATS A WRAP.

That. is. right.  We finished filming today.  We were throwing the last few clips in when we realized that our text blocks had something to be desired.  A border.  SO, were adding in borders, one by one.  We truly have something great on our hands. We’ll post a full blog soon.

P.S. Mike and Rory grew out their beards in anticipation of the end.  And by that I mean neither of us have shaved in a day or two.
P.S.S. Mikes hair is gray/he has wrinkles for the last scene we just shot.

Must be a Plum thing.
-McKeon

Rounding The End!

The Hall Monitor is officially (silently) deep within post production! We only have about four more shots to take care of, and they are all at least 4 seconds long. Maybe. As Mike and I (R.T.) sit here and edit, we have finally realized how difficult editing a silent film can be. There are many effects that we have to create by hand, one at a time. It takes us hours to get our film that hazy, classic look that old films used to naturally have.Black and white is the absolute LEAST of our problems. The music is coming along steadily, and we are loving it. It is truly capturing the essence of silent films in the golden era. Or it’s just pleasing to the ear because it’s so damn good. Either way, we love it. We can’t wait to throw our film together.

I am the co-director and writer of this project, in case I haven’t made this point yet. Mike and I are working overtime to get this special old fashioned look. I shoot the footage when Mike is busy acting or is elsewhere editing. This year is nice because 1. we are using a camera I bought, so we don’t have to share or worry about others taking ours and 2. we don’t have to worry about microphones. THAT is a relief. Next year, we are going to be so used to no microphones that we are going to forget how to turn one on. And we’ve also forgotten what color is. It’s an actual issue.

Ms. Padis (or Mrs. Kerr to some of the young folk) was astonishingly good as an faculty performer. When we asked her to be in our film because of a last minute fallout, she had her reservations. She was scared she would ruin our movie. But, as seen by our footage, we found her to be SPECTACULAR. The faces and expressions she does are hysterical if you look for them, and she really went out of her comfort zone character-wise. We are so glad we picked her because she really pulled through for us and made the scenes with her worth watching.

Well, we are signing off now. GOODBYE.

Must be a plum thing.

R.T. Hardiman

PS Evan makes beautiful faces.

Plogging. (Did I use this title already…?)

PLUM.  BLOGGING.
So things are going quite well over here in the plum world.  We should be finishing filming on a few days, which is nuts.  It feels like just yesterday I was talking to Mr. Alan about the possibility of being on this movie.  After talking to Mr. Alan

its become apparent that we will have one of the first two due dates.  Does this scare us a little? Kind of.  Are we confident that we have enough tome to not only make this movie, but make it amazing? ABSOLUTELY.  Our biggest fear right now is how the music and video are going to blend.  Don’t get me wrong, were beyond confident in our music man, Chris Nee.  Were just kind of beating ourselves up because we didn’t polish off these scenes and give them to him earlier.

Yesterday we shot a particularly funny scene.  This scene takes place in daybreak and was originally a funny one to begin with.  Elias is unhappy about the lack of jelly in his donuts so he takes out a jelly packet to add more.  Much to our surprise, we were unable to get jelly packets.  In a pinch, I bought 2 jelly donuts.  We emptied the jelly from one into a container and began filming.  That when we realized that we had no silverware… Therefore, we Elias had to scoop up the jelly with his fingers and smear is all over the donut himself.  Hilarious.  What a trooper.  This blog goes out to Elias for doing anything we ask him to.  You go Elias.

We got a bigger scene today, which were all excited about.  We’re going over to Plimpton for our big finish.  Mr. Connor, Elias, Ethan, and a surplus of Cronies.  This is the third time we’ve tried to schedule, each time we’ve run into some sort of issue.  And by “some sort of issue” I mean Elias was absent or forgot to show up… So we’re plaining to chin him down until its time to film.  He’s not going anywhere.  We’re off to film.  Must be a Plum thing.

-McKeon

The Lone Plum.

Let me start off by saying that this is Cassidy, Plum crew’s amazing art director, so I’m taking my artistic liberties to the format of this blog. Plum is a lonely crew today, as our directors have decided they’d rather spend their time directing their way to the cold side of the pillow than filming the next scene. Also, Elias is missing. I don’t understand how such a big man disappears so often… Anyway Littlefoot (a.k.a Erin) is off pretending to be important and Eric and I are sitting here plotting our next pranks on other fruits. >:] Pretty productive day if I do say so myself! But on a serious note, Plum is still ahead of schedule despite the setbacks having to do with a certain haircut fiasco, and for the most part we’re keeping a steady pace. Although I am a little concerned about how  Mike and Rory reacted when they discovered Littlefoot and I wearing something other than sweatpants and sweatshirts, even if we were rewarded with cameos. Maybe it’d be different if we received the cookies we were promised. Speaking of which, it’s food time and I’m starving.. So i hope you enjoyed this post and you’ll be hearing from us soon!

Must be a Plum thing!

Sincerely, Cass:]

Moving Forward

Plum+Progress=Plogress?  We’ll work on that one.
The bad news? I realized we haven’t written a blog in a while, so here goes.

The good news? Plum is WAY ahead of schedule.
Our lack of blogs may actually be due to the fact that we are way ahead of where we thought we would be, in terms of filming.  Right now we have 21 scenes done out of our 38, and we have ALL the text done.  Thats huge.  We’re also able to really bang out some editing since we don’t have to worry about audio, which is easily the most painstaking part of the editing process.  If things keep going at this pace, we’ll have enough time at the end to really perfect our movie.  

Chris Nee is working hard on music and we just gave him his first official assignment a few days ago.  By the end of class he was done and the result was perfect.  This kid is good, and we need that in a movie where music carries the plot more then dialogue.

Unfortunately, we hit a bit of a roadblock last week as Elias walked in to class with a nice little haircut.  Never fear, we quickly reshot everything we had filmed with him and now we’re back on track.  Just today Ifinished editing in all the reshoots and we’re good to go.

Well I’ll leave you with that and continue on this productive little path we have going.
Must be a Plum thing.

-McKeon

WANTED

Elias has showed up to a grand total of ZERO days of filming.

Adobe is Coming!

Okay, so as you all know we are not a normal crew. We are a silent film and we do not even use Final Cut Pro. we are using Adobe Premiere. AHHHH! We received our site license, which means the program itself will soon be on our (new) computers! We are truly the black sheep crew this year, as we stand apart from everyone else. We can’t wait to get our new program so we can finally start to learn how to use this completely foreign program. It may take a bit, but rest assured Plum will pull through! Mike is currently at Wal-Mart buying necessary props and costume pieces while we are here scheduling our second day of shooting! Well, we must be off. Goodbye, ardent Plum followers!

Must be a Plum thing.

Day One!!

Hello Plum followers!! Very exciting news!!!! Like HUGE news. We started filming today. Woohoo! Day one of filming. The process has begun. The new computers should be coming in today. Also we are not a traditional crew, we are using Adobe Premiere. WOAH! Today an idea sparked in Director RT’s mind that he can make as much noise as he wants to on set because as you know we are a silent movie. For all those who celebrate Christmas have a merry one, and for those who celebrate a different holiday have a great one. Also have a happy new year as we are looking forward to more shooting in 2013.Must be a Plum thing!

-Erin

p.s My blogging skills are getting better. At least that’s what i think.

ERMAHGERD

Hello avid Plum followers!

We are hard at work over here at the Plum station, storyboarding and whatnot. Also, RT got distracted and made this:

Mike is very hard at work with the storyboards, and RT just needed to feel productive. So we gave him this menial task. Good work RT. We don’t want to be a bore, so we will keep this short! We are starting filming on Wednesday, jumping right into our film! We hope you all have a merry (insert holiday of choice), and a happy New Year!

Must be a Plum thing.

-Plum Crew