I had the opportunity to attend the first public screening of The Approach on May 2nd at Red Cliffs theater. Thanks to Kathy from my Intro to Digital Motion Picture Production for bringing one of the film's trailers to our class's attention. In fact, the trailer was done so well that I immediately wanted to see more and I downloaded the song used in it because it, basically, helped capture the moment of what was going on on the screen. FYI, it was "Sail" by AWOL Nation...great song. The trailer did its job we'll and grabbed my attention immediately when we watched it in class.
The screening of the film was a pretty big turnout. The students who made up the crew of the movie, some of the cast members who are local rock climbers, or "dirtbaggers," families, friends, other Dixie State students, and, surprisingly, people from the general public, we're all in attendance for the screening. In fact, the number of people that showed up for the initial screening was so high, a second screening was allowed following the first to accomodate the people that were not able to find a single seat.
The film itself was great. Obviously my anticipation was high because of the quality of the three different trailers that were released and I was happy to see many of the local climbing spots featured. The students did a great job giving gathering information about many of the climbers' and their lifestyles and backgrounds. The cinematography, selection of camera angles and shots were awesome...by the way, where did we acquire a helicopter from? Part of what I have realized over this past semester is that it doesn't take much more than a GoPro Camera and someone willing to climb a little to capture some great footage and seemlessly edit it into other footage to make a great film.
The film was short, only about 45 minutes long, but I felt satisfied afterwards. Yes, it could have been longer and captured more background stories from the climbers, but for a first screening, everything was great. Phil Tuckett mentioned that it is better for a film to leave an audience wanting more than to have a film that was too long and wasn't as fulfilling. He said his students made a good choice to leave it as it was for length.
My only slight complaint was the sound quality, but will obviously be remedied in future edits and will be much better by the time DOC Utah rolls around.
Following the screening, Phil and the other student-filmmakers answered questions from the audience and gave us all a few details about how the documentary class works. This was the most amazing and surprising part about the whole project...
!6 weeks ago...THAT'S IT-just when I was starting my Intro to Digiral Film class-this students gathered together to come up with an idea. Some of them had never been involved in making a film before. The movie that I watched was created in just a little over 3 months! I can't even write a single research prospectus for my COMM 4450 class in that amount of time. For those students to come up with an idea, wrestle with it, refine it, find the people and locations, film it, edit it, and present it at a local theater to hundreds of people...to me that's INCREDIBLE. Now, up until this semester, I didn't know a lot about the process. I thought that because I was a willing consumer of movies, I tended to think that my opinion following a film really mattered. How an idea made it to a big screen was a distant subject to me. Even the documentary class in the Communication department was unknown to me. To see what was achieved by these so-called newbie fil makers in only a few moths time, gives me a little hope. Maybe some day I will be able to create a palpable research paper so that I can graduate! In fact, maybe a part of me wants to be a part of something big like the production of a film and given the time, maybe I will enroll in Phil's class and try my hand at helping with making a movie.
To the makers of that movie, I say: congratulations and good luck with the final edits. I look forward to seeing it in the future. Thank you for that little sense of Southern Utah pride that I felt as I watched our local "climbing secrets" portrayed on a big screen. Thank you for making me feel that, even though I'm just a non-professional college student, there are still possibilities for me.Thank you for inspiring me that I might be able to do more with my time, even though I may not value it as much as I should. Finally, Thank You for making a trailer that caught my attention enough and compelled me to want see it, regardless if it was part of my final assignment for COMM 2660...Honestly, I would have been at the screening anyway. Heck, I even bought the AWOLNATION song from the trailer on iTunes!
