CLASS SCHEDULE

You! Be at Ha's house at these times! 

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 6pm to 10pm. 

Friday 3-10 with a break for dinner/SOCA

Saturday 2-10, with a break for dinner

Sunday 11-3 or 4 or 5?


Remember that these set times shouldn't preclude individual work time on the "sets 'n props" to-do list if we have time to spare. Hopefully our legions of volunteers should help us burn through that quickly though!!


Also remember that our goal is to have filming of the Tower Interior scenes and all the Doodleland props/set done by SUNDAY so that we can start filming Doodleland!




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New York International Children's Film Festival

In order to get the into the NYICFF, we need to get cracking!
This year, the deadline for Student Short Films (that's us) is OCTOBER 15TH.
That's roughly four months.

Requirements:
Film on DVD (PAL or NTSC) -- I don't know what this means.
$25 entry fee
Entry form -- http://gkids.com/images_submit/NYICFF2012EntryFormShort.pdf

Optional:
Promotional material (high res jpgs, reviews, bios, etc)

For more information: http://www.gkids.com/?section=submit

ROVING CHOICES?

Here is what Jonathan and I picked out for colors. We thought it would be best to get one of each color and then try and mix them when we need more specific hues. These 9 skeins(?) cost approx. $144.

We need to put in this order today before 5

 but won't do it until we hear from you guys that these are okay. If there is a color that you need that you don't think we can make from the colors here, say so. Keep in mind that mixing colors is not like paint, and they will look more like the natural 'brown' color with different colored strands than a solid dye color.

Homework for Friday 2/18

On Sunday before we left, Ha, Jonathan, Kirsten and I decided on 2:30 at Cabell for our Friday meeting, where we would begin felting our puppets and discuss the Design and TV/Video/Animation episodes (alternatively, we could begin actually storyboarding the literature episode?). (Allie does that time work for you?)

SO! To accomplish this, our group homework is:

- Decide on the colors your puppet will require and what he/she will wear. We thought it would be pretty excellent to dress the same as our puppets, so pick clothes that you own and that can be easily simplified into puppet form (We will probs be making tiny clothes for them.)
---Kirsten - bring your huge box of barbie doll clothes plz!
WE WILL NEED TO HAVE THIS INFO TOGETHER BEFORE FRIDAY. Since we need to order the roving before Friday, we need to know what colors to order. Also, if we need to arrange a roving shopping trip, it will probably need to be either before Friday or on Friday morning before the meeting.


- Do some background research on Design and or TV/Video/Animation (look over old blog posts to refresh your memory about what we've already worked out) so that we can start throwing around world ideas and main messages.


Other notes from the Sunday meeting:
- The puppets will probably have no wire frame - they will be solid felt, since they are not big enough to merit hollow interiors to save materials.
- We'll probably use the stick-and-wire method of controlling the puppets from below, but that needs more work. For now, we'll work on making the puppet bodies so that our control experiments will be more informative.
- The puppets will be about Barbie height, but normal human proportions, not stick-bug proportions.
- Our self-puppets' defining features will be something like:
          -Allie: long blonde hair, blue eyes
          -Emily: blue eyes, brown hair in little buns
          -Ha: asian, long dark brown hair
          -Kirsten: long dark brown hair, side part, brown eyes
          -Jonathan: beard, glasses, short hair.
Of course we'll do what we can to make them look as much like us as possible, but if they all come out looking like this, at least we will know who is who. (Although this is our goal, of course)

Roving for Roving

Okay, so from what I can see here is the lay of the land re: felting wool.

The Fiber Warehouse (aka mystery phone number guy):
Undyed is 13.50/lb, Dyed is 15.70/lb
He doesn't ship till Friday, so he said we'd probably get it by Monday or Tuesday.
POTENTIAL PROBLEM: do we have to buy 1lb at a time? Can we buy less than a lb. of any one color?  A pound is a LOT, right?

Harrisville Designs (aka the other place VCU orders from)
$16/ half lb. bag.
Would probably ship 3-5 days after we order, plus delivery time.

Holly Spring Homespun - I called the Yarn Lounge in Carytown and they said the closest place they knew of to buy roving is this place. It's about a 45 minute drive from here.
They don't have a wide selection, but their site lists a pack of rainbow colors (see link) for $24. I THINK it's 6 oz. total, and the lady kept going on about how it was sooo much more than we needed, but she doesn't really know what we're doing.... anyway, it's an option we could get immediately and use as a stopgap while we waited for another order to ship, since time is of the essence.

We also have the option of buying little starter bags from places like Ben Franklin or Kmart I think - they sell little assortment packs of 1.76 oz. with 8 colors for something like $11, or individual color .22 oz. packets for $3/ea. Couldn't confirm the availability at Kmart but Ben Franklin said they have it. Hobby Lobby out in Short Pump sells .25 oz packets of 2 colors for $2.


The Fiber Warehouse is by far the cheapest, and it's actually the fastest shipper compared VCU's other place. The places we can drive to seem to be marked way up in price and we'd have to drive quite a little bit. I suggest we order from the Fiber Warehouse asap, and in the meantime get some of the little packs to tide us over and get us started working.

Notes from 2/6

 In hindsight this is pretty obvious, but it turns out we definitely need to storyboard these episodes and add more detail before Kirsten can start a script. We started doing that a little with the Literature episode, but it need much more work, and some thumbnails wouldn't hurt.

We also need to do more research about these authors/characters/artists before we can teach anyone about them - most of the subjects we're including are things we know enough about for the general outline, but we need to research more on each subject before we can write it out.

Literature: 

Don Quixote – [Background: The novel is a parody of the chivalric code of honor – Cervantes points out that it’s ridiculous in the real world to be so idealistic by applying that code to a 'real' person (based off of himself). At the same time he creates a new code of honor that’s more applicable in the real world. He bases the real world off of his own experiences. Another important separation from other concurrent works is that he wrote it in the common language.]

Walking through the woods to find don quixote – come across several knight who each acts typical, talks about questing, and maybe says something chivalrous to Lucy. They are Suspiciously Identical. Oscar keeps thinking that each new one is the great knight that Lucy’s talking about and leading them to, but then they walk out into the field and see Don Quixote, who says something similar to the other knights, but is obviously very different. We only talk to him for a second before he goes off into the background to do something (fighting windmills etc). We talk to Sancho Panza about him, and he mentions that he likes Don Quixote because he’s more real, down to earth, speaks normally. Oscar is not convinced that Don Quixote’s so great, and Lucy explains – segway to shadow puppet explanation of Cervantes' process. 

 ~~~

Explanation winds down, S.P. and D.Q. take us to the LitCity. 

{we are considering replacing Poe with Mark Twain because he is more pertinent to our problem - storytelling.}

Mark twain – tavern wigwam with other storytellers. OR crazy steamboat with passengers going up the river (sans litcity)

Walk into the room and someone finishes their story. Mark Twain clears his throat and everyone listens. We hear him tell one of his stories, then we talk to him about how he did it.

Story style– flat and simple like Lucy’s history lesson, but more colorful.

The Deal

I talked to Nancy (with invaluable assistance from emily), and this is how our budget is going to be handled.

We'll be getting our money through the Communication Arts Dept, more specifically from Deborah van Buren in the Comm Arts Office, and even more specifically from the credit card they will be giving Deborah van Buren in the Comm Arts office.

We will get the money as needed during the project. If we want to buy some lumber , we can A) have Deborah phone in her credit card number at the register or B) buy it online and send Deborah the order with the credit card bit empty or C) use our own money and save the receipts to be reimbursed in the future.

If we have Deborah phone in the card, we'll need to phone her before we go shopping, just to say, "Hey Deb, we're going to head to Lowes in a bit, be ready for the call around 3:30 thanks super muchly you know."

Unfortunately, we cannot just take the credit card. Oh well.

The good news is that they will be pretty flexible about how we spend the money. Nancy said that if our materials cost ends up cutting into our travel costs that would be a-ok. They'll be watching the amount of money we spend, not really what we spend it on.

So let's figure out what materials we need and get shopping!

Show Composition

Each Show

- Composed of 8 or 9 basic parts:

- Theme/Intro

- Introduction of client character and problem

- Off to help! World 1

- World 2

- Check-up on client character

- World 3

- Return and Inspire!/Resolution

- Closing theme/credits

- Optional: craft/quote of the day!

- Composed of 8 or 9 work elements:

- Choose and research a topic

- Choose specific artists/subject matter to deal with in the show

- Determine specific necessary works of art

- Cite those pieces

- Write the script

- Make the necessary new characters and set

- Shoot video/animate

- Record sounds and voiceovers

- Edit

- Publish/produce

- Burn to a dvd

- Eventually release on online accounts

1/17 Questions

-       Where are the copyright lines drawn? How much of an image can we use/how much do we have to disguise it? Are our repoductions of actual images infringement?

-       Can we get a video camera plz?

-       Public Access channels? Can we use tv studio equip??

Notes on permissions:

My source in government says:

For art work, they need to see if it's in the collections of any museums and get permissions from the museums registrars office. I'd avoid anything that's not in collections because then you have to mess with estates and stuff. If they're talking about contemporary living artists, they may be able to approach the artist or their gallery also. For example, to use a Chuck Close, I would go through Pace in NY. Since they're looking for digital rights, it may be tricky as there are issues of downloading and perpetuity and stuff. But since this is for school, maybe they'll catch a break.

Also, check out:
http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter0/index.html
http://www.vlany.org/resources/index.php

And also:
http://creativecommons.org/

Once you read all about the issue, and then have a lis of artists/artwors you are considering using, then maybe call Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts to discuss your plan. Make sure they know its a school project.
http://www.vlany.org/legalservices/artlawline.php