#studentfilm

[nbaczynskifilm]

My father, CD's, VHS

What I have learned from this stay is how truly elusive my father is. I entered this project thinking that this home is a hub of his energy, while actually it's just the same as my home in Scotland. There is nothing actually special about the home, apart from the memories that have been made there and the people who still occupy it. Unfortunately my father does not linger in the walls like a ghost as I hoped...

What does linger is photographs,CD's and VHS tapes I completely forgot existed! One thing I have unfortunately learned from my stay here in my grandparents house is that my father is someone who is hard to track down. I hoped that we would have so much archive of him living here in Debica but there's barely anything. Everything that does exist is from his early childhood...after his teen years the pictures become less and less common.

There are so many albums where is my grandparents and my aunt etc...my father was someone who loved being away from home it seems. He studied away from home and then decided to go to America for a few months...which turned into a decade. All of these prime years of his life he was away in the US with my mom and later on me and my grandparents were back here in Poland. Its nice to know that my grandparents also have questions and that they themselves don't have a full understanding of who Sebastian truly was...

So what I am trying to say is that there is no physical location that defines my father...I was very wrong about that.

I have been going through all of these CD's with very old pictures of me and my dad back in America and they make me feel so emotional. I didn't even know these existed and that he held onto them for so long...he was the one who burned all of these pictures onto CD's. It's so sweet to see how much time we spent together. It's even sweeter to know hoe important it was for him to preserve these memories of me, my parents took A LOT of photos in the US. Its made me understand my dad a bit more...

unfortunately our VHS player isn't working...its incredibly frustrating. It just reinstates this feeling that my father keeps escaping me, like I can't have a proper grasp of his life. All I want is the feeling of closeness but so far this journey has been tough. I can't seem to reach my father no matter how hard I try.

[r3admylips]

The Road Home Short Film

A film I made for my final project is on youtube! 

https://youtu.be/VhLo8Yj_SQE

A closeted housewife escapes an abusive marriage to be with her true love on the road.

[zombiegurlz13]

my coming of age short film about 2 teenage sisters...

enjoy <3

[awesometania]

There are other Laurels, but it’s on the net now, so I’ll update it later. Enjoy Hipposterous (2019). A lot of great students helped me with this, doing  some inbetweens, and a lot of background and painting primarily. If you worked on it, please leave a comment! And everyone else, show it to any children you know. It’s for the kids.

[tracktourmusik]

Fragment

[thememorykeeperfilm]

Production Phase

This past week, no shoots for The Memory Keeper were held. This week was all about rest and preparation for a big two-day shooting period this coming weekend; in Abbot, Maine. This town is a solid 2.5-3.5 hours from the production bases, so a lot of prep is involved! 

The assistant director, Ethan, and I spent much time coordinating shooting schedules, driving schedules, food, and sleeping arrangements; because yes, the whole cast and crew is spending the night! The location is a quaint little forest cabin, but a tiny one. It’ll be a tight squeeze, but a fun one. 

The director of photography, Clara, and I have also spent quite a bit of time ensuring we’re on the same page in terms of shot list and visual expectations. We’ll be having a long meeting about it tomorrow to solidify our plans and feel 100% prepared. 

The art director, Mason, and I have also done a lot of costume and art preparation. The scenes we’re shooting this coming weekend involve a new character, Yoachim. There’s a post further down the blog about him if you want to learn more about him. We costumed up that character, and got prop preparation and set dressing down. One of our props is a meat pie, I can't wait to eat it after as a reward… 

Some other little bits and bobs to update on is that our film is officially cast! It took many weeks to find the right person, but our Étouale finally has a face! More about them and their gimmick in the posts to follow. This was a hard character to cast, especially because I’m unable to pay the actor a proper salary (this being an extreme low budget student film). I’m so relieved this is finally done!

Additionally, our lovely social media manager has a fun trick up his sleeve; necklace making! One for Yoachim (the horse one) and one for Ocelia (the ocean themed one) are pictured. Ocelia is also a character you’ll hear about later!

Lots of energy and planning has gone into this week to make this coming shoot period the best it can be. Crossing my fingers it goes without a hitch!

Kathryn Morin (she/her), Director

2/14/24

If you’d like to learn more about this project:

View “The Memory Keeper” proof of concept - https://youtu.be/p8Nyk3x-oMI?si=YwNvypkpPH9jfMoa 

Instagram - thememorykeeperFILM

[swan-song-production-blog]

Second Leg

This project that started off as emotional spills onto the kitchen checks at work has surprised me at how it has flourished. There is still much work to do, but I feel as if ever since it blossomed into the concept for my junior film, it has taken on a life of its own and I am merely a vessel for its journey. I am excited to see where it goes and at the same time, I hold a sliver of fear rooted in uncertainty. But that’s okay. In what has been rendered so far, I have already learned so much about myself as a person and an artist. That “aha” moment when everything suddenly flows like water for a fraction of a second. My goal for this film is fairly simple: to actually complete it within the given deadline (or fight like hell trying and finish anyway after the fact) and more importantly, to hopefully resonate with at least one other person that sees it and give to them what so much art out there has given me. I’ve got 17 weeks to go from a rough animatic to fully experimentally animated. Even simple can sometimes seem like a tall order, but I’m ready to see where this path will lead and what version of myself will come out the other side.

[amitballs]

My graduation film "In Depths" is available now to watch online!

A boy follows a friendly young seal on a journey into the depths of the ocean. There he'll discover a wonderous underwater world, and the damage exacted by humanity's pollution.

Directing Animation and Design: Amit Bar Noi Guidance: Tal Lotan Art Assistance: Lior Bar Noi Music and Sound: Kobe Shmuely

[doublecesquared]

Jack Astro Title Cards

I finished my student film this year, you can check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6N-1WzsGdJ0

Anyway, here's the Title Cards

[nbaczynskifilm]

Some BTS insight!

As the days are going along the more comfortable the gang is. It now just feels like I live with these three girls. Ive completely adapted to this lifestyle and we have even adapted a routine! We've been having two/three shooting points each day: one after breakfast, then possibly during dinner and then one after dinner. It's like each day we have morning and then afternoon exercise! The hours not being so strict allows me to sit back and it makes the days go by very quickly.

We now have tons of very interesting footage...maybe even a bit too much. It will definitely be a struggle in the edit to file through everything but there are already moments that stick out to me as important. Its pretty crazy how much can happen on a two week trip, I feel like I have grown a lot since the first day and that my perspective has changed drastically.

For the longest time before this trip I felt ever so slightly directionless, like I didn't know where this project would actually go...

I finally have a good footing of understanding that the journey that I am experiencing is fully internal and that the answer is also within me. I genuinely think it's quite amusing that at some point I didn't think that my grandparents would appear much within the film...when now their advice and stories are what have created this narrative. The heart of the film is our relationship with each other.

But anyways here are some BTS shots

[martys-film-blog]

The songs!

"Phone_Chime" is heavily inspired by the band TWRP and their song "Birth of the Blues".

"Peaceful" is an entirely origional track made for this film :)

[asmallbirdinmayy]

Hello everyone,

I would love to introduce the short film that I'm producing. Any support towards the project would be very much appreciated. Thank you!

[dcobbjr]

MOODBOARD #1 - High School

“MAGNET” is mostly inspired by and takes place at Bishop McNamara High School. I have very fond memories of McNamara; I consider it to be the best four years of my life. Much of what is shown in the film will be a dreamy, stylized depiction of my high school years. My goal is to recreate my experience as much as possible in both the backgrounds and in some crowd shots I’ll (hopefully) animate in this film.

[skullravencomics]

December 13th

[thememorykeeperfilm]

Production Begins

Welcome to the blog of The Memory Keeper; a fantasy short film following the journey of a young woman and her grandmother with Alzhiemher’s getting lost in the forest as it comes alive with Québécois folktales. 

This project is the sum work of a two semester course at Southern Maine Community college. It’s often dubbed a “senior film” for the associates degree in Media & Communications (with a focus in video production). At the end of this academic semester in May, The Memory Keeper will be theatrically premiering at The Nickelodeon Theater in Portland, Maine. 

My name is Kathryn Morin, I’m the director of The Memory Keeper. Last December, I pitched the idea for this film to a panel of producers and was fortunate enough to obtain the greenlight. Last semester, as well as over winter break, I spent many hours organizing legal documents, the cast and crew list, creating the proof of concept, and running a successful Indiegogo fundraiser that raised our goal of $2,275.

This past weekend, February 3rd and 4th, were the production’s first two days of shooting. This was months in the making. 

Our first day went as smoothly as it could have. The film is set mostly outside, but for this day most scenes were interiors. My father was actually one of the supporting actors for this scene, so directing him was a bit silly. It felt weird to be his boss for once! We had issues getting sound from inside a car, as the car moved while the camera was on a tripod outside of it. The audio for it was hard to get, but it just took patience and persistence. Our sound operator, Sam Martel, managed to contort himself in the back and blended in perfectly! We used my car for the scene, which had literally never been washed since I got it last August. So funny enough our art director’s first task during production was to clean my front windows.

Later in the day, a background extra no-showed, causing a bit of a panic because we really needed that background character. Luckily, I was able to “reuse” my dad’s character (Thomas, the father of the main character Chloe) there. He saved the day as dads do!

Otherwise, production went super well. There was a little hiccup in craft services (“crafts/crafties” is the film term for food) being delayed, but it got there on time and we had the best sub sandwiches. 

The production day on the 4th was a little more hectic. This day was entirely outside, and involved the character’s getting lost in the forest. One aspect of production I learned quickly was that you can never communicate too much with your director of photography. For this project, our DP is Clara Edgecomb. An oversight in my directing led to a shotlist being created that did not match the location and some visions I had for certain shots, so for over half the scenes for that day we had to brainstorm the shot list on the fly. I’m so so grateful for Clara’s patience and ability to adapt and work quickly. 

Our biggest issue that day, though, was the sound. Towards the later half of the day, my neighbor started logging trees right next to our shooting area! I managed to talk him into ending his session early, but then a motorcycle started ripping up and down the neighborhood, chainsaws went off in the distances, three planes flew by consecutively… it was a nightmare. The day was scheduled to last 8.5 hours, and the sound issues delayed schedule by fifty minutes. 

I almost scrapped filming our last scene because I didn’t think we had enough time left, but my crew really advocated to crunch time and get it done. By then, the sun was low on the horizon and we were in the forest, so we battled the sunset for that last hour of production. Eventually, we walked away with some beautiful shots and we ended right on schedule. Phew! We’ll have to be mindful of light continuity for our next production days.

Through all the chaos of a first filming weekend, we stayed largely on schedule and things went well! Our actors did a phenomenal job, and already embody the characters to my vision and have great chemistry. The crew really brought their a-game and utilized their experience to create efficient and quality work. I’m so proud of everyone and had a great experience. 

This blog series will be a semi-weekly occurrence in accordance with blog assignments for my class. Stay tuned for more posts! Feel free to ask questions, my social media manager will do his best to answer or relay information from me. 

Kathryn Morin (she/her), Director

2/5/24

If you’d like to learn more about this project:

View “The Memory Keeper” proof of concept - https://youtu.be/p8Nyk3x-oMI?si=YwNvypkpPH9jfMoa 

Instagram - thememorykeeperFILM

[fivealivefilms]

Let's wrap us this #weekend on a high note! Check out my #award-winning #film short MISSY'S MUSICAL MISADVENTURE! I promise you, it's NOT a drag! Thanks so much to the #awesome #students at Orlando's VALENCIA COLLEGE Film School for helping me make this happen!