Alaska and Advanced Production Prep

From July 31st to August 7th my family and I were in Alaska for a weeklong vacation, we got to Juneau and less than 18 hours later we were on a ferry to Gustavus. We did a lot of hiking, kayaking, and biking, met interesting people, and saw a lot of different wild life and landscapes along the way. Not only was it a great experience in itself, but it helped me to regain the enthusiasm I'd been lacking when it came to working on my Advanced Production project (otherwise known as an AP).

The AP I've been working on came partially from the fact that at Chapman University we aren't allowed to use car mounts in order to film actors driving in cars, and at first this seemed like a big obstacle to me because I wanted to do a road trip film. Other than that, the limitations on the AP are few, but the script cannot be more than six pages in length once it is locked and ready to be filmed, and you must be able to shoot it in 3 days. After some thinking, I realized that I could make a road trip film without ever showing the characters "on the road," but mostly at pit stops. And so was the start of my AP idea. It's still got a long way to go, school hasn't even started yet, however, I'm trying to get a head start.

So what does Alaska have to do with my AP? One experience in particular directly influenced the flow of a couple of my scenes, and that was after a kayaking trip when we met Harvey "Wallbanger." He'd built an amazing bench, hauled it out to the beachside by the harbor, and sat it there. Why? Because he said he thought that spot needed a bench, "Bet you can't do this sort of thing where you're from," was what he said to us. Nope. Definitely not. The way it meshes with my AP will be revealed as time goes on, but I was struck by this incident because it served as a reminder that many times fact is much better than fiction.