Home stretch

 

Hey everyone! Rachel here after school with Gabby editing and waiting for our fearless leader, you know who, to get out of her NHS meeting. Things are really winding down here at Dragon studios. Casey has been multitasking, shooting a short film for Haley Groden about her morning routine as well as working hard on the music, along with Patrick Maloney who composed the main theme. It sounds really, really good so far! I’ve been working on the breakfast commercial, in which Drew is the star, and is supposed to be here right now but has yet to show up. That’s ok, we’ll get it done tomorrow… hopefully. Bri has been working away at the title page, its gonna be mad cool. Nicky has been… helping Bri I think? I honestly am not sure. Becca and Gabby are, as ever, editing. These two are really the lifeblood of this movie, which is going to be so great. We saw the final product for our poster- words cannot describe the awesomeness (is that even a word? I can’t tell, my mind is jelly) of this poster.

We’ve done the rough cut and Mr. Alan is looking at it right now. Soon, we’ll all be splitting up and shipping off to other crews! I’m really excited to be soon working with the Cranberry crew on A Serious Student. From what I’ve seen while looking over Batchy’s shoulder looks freaking amazing! Who knows, maybe while I’m there I’ll discover their secret to music trivs. Couldn’t hurt, we’re right on their heals.

Alright, kids, thanks for listening.

Rachel

Dragonfruit here!

 

Long time no blog, I can’t even remember when our last blog was or what it was even about. So I guess I’ll talk about  the last scene we did with Cashman. It was good, I personally like the unconventional ending to the movie. Also with Cashman we reshot scene one making it much less awkward and a lot more funny. Cashman is a natural at the art of ad libbing which makes scenes with him always interesting and funny.

Well in other news, our rough cut has been assembled and watched. Mr. Alan fixed our many audio troubles and says we “got the goods” there has been a few minor changes and three scenes have been added, all of which include Gabby. According to  Alan, Gabby is the key to this movie. I’m happy to put her in more considering she’s proven to be a real crowd pleaser. So now instead of her one scene now has four solid scenes to showcase her talent. So now dragonfruit is getting back into the swing of a demanding film schedule filming tuesday, Wednesday and thursday this week. If things go as planned,  we could have a rough cut finished next week and maybe this time we will get the green light. It’s a bitter sweet thing because, yeah it would be awesome to be done, but Alan said he’ll be splitting our little Dragon Fruit family up amongst the other crews. If I have a say in it I call being a plum fairy! But yeah when I relayed the message of the dragon fruit split up to the crew it was met with hard feelings. Clearly dragon fruit blood runs deep. So much love<3

-Becca

ps I saw Hunger Games this weekend, unreal. Everyone see it.

Fruit Nest Once Again

 

ATTENTION: Dragon Fruit has again found its way into the fruits nest! And with these five music trivs points there is now only one point that separates us from horned melon and ten points from cranberry. So yes a mere 10 points separates first from third place, needless to say its been a close race this year, and right now its anyones game. Well not really anyones, cause pomello certainly doesn’t have a chance…sorry. Anyways how did we get into the fruits nest again, well lets see our movie is almost done ( four scenes left) and we keep up with our blogs (which I think we are actually the only crew to blog weekly without fail)  our schedule is up-to-date (which Mr. Alan keeps stressing for the other crews) and we are never just sitting around doing nothing. So yes if you ask me we certainly deserved our place in the fruits nest. Anyways the last couple weeks have seemed unusually slow for us, not because we’ve lost momentum but simply because there actually isn’t much left to do. Today we are filming a modified scene 28 (the last scene in our movie) with Cashman, friday we are again taking another field trip to Nicky’s house where we will be taking pre-prom pictures. We’ve even finally scheduled our scene with Mrs. Earabino which will be taking place next friday first block. Everythings really coming together and we plan to finish up our movie with ample time left over to go back and reshoot and fix all of our little issues. Like mentioned in our previous blog the last week has pretty much been devoted to editing and the documentary montage thing is actually coming together really nicely, and with our shooting friday it should be done. We’ve also focused a lot on the interviews, trying to cut them down somewhat- but a lot of the stories are just so funny that we don’t want to get rid of them!

Welp I think that’s it.

Until next time,

Pce ❤ Dragon Fruit

Jersey Girl interview

 

Hi.

This week was a little different than the past weeks have been. Since we don’t have many more scenes left to film, a lot of editing has been done. We also filmed quite a complicated scene. The whole crew took a trip to Nicky’s house. Let’s just say, only Nicky, Becca and Gabby stayed. Oh, and then we found Bri. But yea, so we weren’t expecting the red prom dress we are using to have a zipper on the side, we were hoping for in the back. But we made up for it. We had a little “side boob” issue, so that’s why we suggested that the boys just head back to school. We managed to film around the issue, luckily. Gabby stepped up and was our camera-woman for the day. I’d say she did a very good job! We also got a couple of the “documentary shots” involving Nicky to stuff her face with a ton of food. We’ve realized, that so far for this movie, she has eaten the following: 7 yodels, 3 cookies, a muffin, a twinkie, 2 donuts, a hostess cupcake, a Hershey’s bar, 2 snickers, 5 brownies, and a granola bar. Talk about chocolate overload!! The other documentary shots involve her hair being curled, her nails being painted, and putting on some mascara. We still need to get a few more. Yesterday, we started taking our pictures for the movie poster. Gabby and Becca and Jill both took theirs and had quite the ”attitude” looks. Also, we re-shot Jill’s jersey girl interview. It’s even better this time. She was dressed in a black dress with the poof in her hair and some heels! Currently, Becca and Gabby are putting together pieces of the documentary part. I think that’s all for now.

Bye.

Buzz

 

Every year there is one movie that jumps out of the gate and never looks back. This year it’s Promzilla. These guys have been shooting pretty much every day since late December. I keep expecting to walk into the computer lab one morning and for them to say, “We’re done. What next?” This crew is lead by director Rebecca Goula. I wish I could bottle whatever it was that turned Rebecca from a diffident, gun-shy film student last year to an unstoppable, do-it-all director this year. I give loads of credit to Emily Quinlan and her wonderful crew that did Hair Salon last year; they taught Goula well. Goula is helped out by co-director Casey McGuill. Casey does three things very well for the crew: shoot the scenes, play Temple Run, and look pretty. Becca is also helped out by Bri Doherty (art director), Drew Matherson (boom operator), Rachel St. Germain (asst. director), and Gabby Dirino (editor)—all of whom seem willing to do whatever it takes for the film.  The movie itself is a mockumentary in the vein of Glue and Cranberry’s Crusade; it follows a girl’s journey to the prom where everything goes wrong. Goula thought of the idea and did a great job executing the script. As with any mockumentary a lot depends on the acting. Which brings us the biggest surprise of the crew: Nikki Browne. We finally have a great role for a girl in the film festival and Nikki is nailing it. It really is a pleasure to watch this crew work. Thanks to McGuill, this crew has some teeth in regards to holding their own with other crews—talking smack, starting wars, hiding Penelope Plum in the ceiling, etc. Being a mockumentary, however, has its drawbacks. It’s a simple story without any huge set pieces or big faculty performances, and as a result this movie is flying under a lot of people’s radar. I actually think a low profile might help it with the academy, whose reaction to mocks in the past has been hard to gauge (Glue got snubbed; Cranberry got a best pic nom). You never know.

Buzz: A Venti Iced White Chocolate Mocha

MUSIC TRIVS:

The crew is lead by Casey McGuill. Casey is a formidable Trivs player—no one is doubting that. However, he lacks the quickness of his older brother, Ryan, to make him a dominant player (in fact, I don’t think the adjective quick has ever been used to describe Casey before in his life, regardless of the task). As a result, Casey is often beaten to the punch by his music-trivs arch-rival, Pat Maloney. Becca and the girls will pick up some of the girly songs (T. Swift, etc.) with Bri Doherty and Gabby sniping an occasional 80s song. They’ll probably end up near the top of the heap fighting for a top spot.

February Break

 

Hello Dragon Fruit Followers,

Well I blogged at the beginning of this week and now by the end of the week there’s a lot to talk about. We ended up filming a solid eight scenes over vacation. Five of which were on Thursday alone. Tuesday we filmed part of scene 20. We filmed with Justin and its great, we still need to film the beginning part of that scene with Kellie Jo, but that should take us a solid three minutes to do so we aren’t concerned. Wednesday we filmed scene 16 in the Daybreak and thats actually one of my favorite scenes because Nicky is great in it and it involves eating donuts. Thursday was a huge day for us we filmed five scenes. We did our longest scene to date which involves me being tossed up against the locker. That was really fun and again Nicky was great, but not only was this perhaps Nicky’s best scene it was also Casey’s. We then traveled to Nicky’s house to film scenes 17, 18, 19 and 25 all these scenes are edited and look great. Today, Friday, was my day devoted to editing. Now that vacation is over Dragon fruit has a total of  6 scenes left to film which is insane! Three of these scenes are incredibly easy and should be taken care of within the next two weeks.

In other news we’ve handed in our Oscar picks and Dragon fruit is looking to get some big music triv points! I know this wont win but The Help- best movie ever. Also Bridesmaids sucked and shouldn’t have been nominated for anything.

But perhaps the most important thing is that I have had an unbelievable success rate in music trivs. and my unbelievable success consists of getting about five right answers, thats HUGE for me. Certainly my favorite part of vacation, I don’t think anyone understands how excited I got when Story of a Girl, Old Time Rock and Roll, and Fergalicious came on…

TTFN

Tata for now.

-Becca

SUP DRAG READAHZ…

 

so0Oo0ooO0, we were supposed to be filming at Kim’s house today, but there was a slight bit of miscommunication and we are still at the school and there’s not much time left. Anyways, so today we have followed the “THINGS TO DO WHEN THERE SEEMS LIKE THERE IS NOTHING TO DO IN FILM:” checklist. We started by cleaning out our workstation.. and let me tell you, Dan Adorn loooves to keep his clothes under our station. Dan, if you’re reading this, please come claim your tee-shirt. Also, Bri finally cleaned up her mess of orange makeup off of our props. Although she managed to get more of it on the table, at least she got it off of the tapes and our passes.. kinda? We’ve updated our schedule and vacation week looks very very packed. We are going to be filming ALLLLLLL of the scenes where Nicky is going to be wearing that orange makeup- yummy!! We’re also going to be finishing up the rest of our scenes the following week. We’re flying!! When we get back from vacation, we’re only going to have about four scenes left to shoot so there will be plenty of time to edit and re-shoot if we have to. I’m guessing we’ll have to re-do a couple of them. Today we are sitting here with Dan and Hayley. Unfortunately Kiki couldn’t be here today, we miss her. Dan brings a lot of excitement to the crew. I think that’s all we have for today though. Adios amigos.

LUV DA DRAGZ THEMSELVEZ.

The Casey McGuill Log 2/17/12 Period 7 Film Class:

7:20 — Playing Temple Run

7:30 — Shuffling around aimlessly

7:40 — Arguing about books he read in English

7:52 — Helping Becca film

7:55 — Imitating/making fun of Dan Meyers

8:00 — Staring into space

8:05 — Complaining about how unorganized the Cherry crew is

8:17 — Helping interview teachers for his movie

8:25 — Chatting with Pat Maloney

8:29 — Annoying the other students in the computer lab who are typing papers.

Faculty Interviews

 

This week we’ve been busy like always. Monday we didn’t have class but that didn’t stop us from filming. Thats the day Becca made a new friend with the Spanish teacher Ms. Lea. We interviewed Ms. Lea, making her our first teacher interview so far! She had great prom gone wrong stories, and she didn’t have just one but three… needless to say she’s had rough prom experiences.No worries she’s not bitter at all about it and is willing to laugh at her self. Mrs. Lea is only one of our many planned teacher interviews we are planning to talk to Ms. Padis, Ms. Culliton, Mr. Mullaney, Ms. Quann,  Ms. Cannon,St. Martin and Jean all about their prom gone wrong stories.  Thursday Becca will be talking with Ms. Quann about her prom story which involves a very classy mullet. This week we also re-shot scene 7 in the math wing, but this time with Casey and the stuff looks good, its all edited and what not. Today we’ve dedicated the day to figuring out just what we should do over vacation. Our shooting schedule over vacation is ambitious to say the least but if we manage to get it all done we’ll be in a really good place. Currently Casey is in touch with Anthony attempting to figure out whens the best time to shoot at his house with his mom. Friday Dragon Fruit is planning a field trip to Kim Ciardiello’s (yes Casey’s girlfriend) closet to film a scene.

In other news this week was spirit week and Becca went all out most days. Most school spirit award?? We think so! Also, In physics Becca’s egg suffered a hairline fracture after being dropped one story… Rachel’s died instantly on impact. Ms. Rhodes wasn’t impressed.

Hellloooo fellow Dragons

 

This week has been awesome for team Dragon, lots of editing done by our fantabulous editors Rebecca Goula and Gabby DiRino! Monday we got interviews from kids around school, prepare to laugh your behinds off when you see these scenes!  Jill Songin wins the award for best interview to date. Speaking of Jill shes making our poster. We had a meeting this week which went really well. We bounced ideas around about what we want the poster to look like.  And we finally landed on a great idea. I can’t wait to see the finished project. What we love about our movie is that everyone gets in it. Not only  does everyone get in the movie but a lot of non-film fest kids will even get to be on the poster.This week we filmed several scenes that we had already done with Drew, now done with our actor/director Casey McGuill. Yes, folks, we dragons can do it all! Also, Pat Maloney has been such a sport working on our music! It sounds amazing! We’re still working to tweak it a bit to find the best sounds possible but so far its fantastic.

Many thanks to Mr. Bakale and all the kids in his study for tolerating us coming in and filming! You’re champs! Till next time kids!

L8er

whattayaknow

 

Dear Dragon Readers,

This week was very productive. We got a lot of filming done. We were able to film both scenes with Becca and Cashman. Let’s just say that Cashman takes his role very seriously. He gets right into character. We also had extra time and were able to re-film scene 23, which was originally with Becca and Drew, but we replaced Drew with Casey. The footage looks pretty good so far. Wednesday was certainly interesting. We attempted to film scene 2 with a serious case of the giggles. No, seriously though, we couldn’t get through a single set of dialog without hysterically laughing. We usually get through the lines pretty quickly, but it took all class long to finally get it. First Becca had the giggles, which then passed on to Nicky (the scene is with both of them), and then the giggles passed onto Casey, who was filming. We got through it though. Anyways, we’re spending today importing and editing the footage that we took this week. Ohhh and we also lost a poster. We put Drew on task of hanging up the posters and whattayaknow, one of them fell behind the lockers. We’re looking to find a job for him. I know he can be productive in some area, we just need to figure out what. ~stayin’ hopeful~ According to Bri, “‘Gabriella’ is doing a great job sub-clipping and editing. She has been spending so much time on this movie, and I’d just like to say, it’s CERTAINLY paying off”. That’s all I got for ya, seez ya zoon?

PEACE’N’LUV. BI