Kevin Tostado – The Blog!

My AHS Capstone Status Report for 11/3:

Reality Check: Progress and Plan of Work
As far as our current plan of work goes, we are a little ahead on finishing the screenplay. Our goal is to have a finished version by this Saturday (11/5), which will essentially have incorporated any feedback on the script that we have received. We are currently awaiting feedback from Mark Chang and from Connie Burge, a Hollywood writer.
We decided that for the sake of the movie, it made more sense to deliver a finished script to the actors sooner than later, so that they would have more time to acclimate to the screenplay and the lines. We’re doing a full cast read-through this weekend, and noting with them how we intend for scenes to come across and for certain lines to be delivered.
As far as the annotation goes, I am definitely a little behind. I have not spent enough time looking through my sources yet for the annotation. I plan to spend a fair amount of time over the next week and a half looking through the books and working on my annotation, so that I can have my annotation completed on time on November 17th.

Brief Assessment of Work Done
I have fallen behind on the reading simply because I have devoted most my time to reading the script. After talking with Tom about the film theory book, it doesn’t really make sense to us to try and incorporate that in because film theory is a huge subject, and the book that we chose does not lend itself very well for skimming.
We met with Gillian last week to go over Version 3.0 of the screenplay with her. On the whole, she was very impressed with the improvements that we had made on the script. She still gave us a lot of areas that could be worked on for Version 4.0, which I have already begun to incorporate into the screenplay. We expect to have the screenplay finished by this weekend, which will free up a lot more time to work on the annotation.
We also have finished our test shoots in the last two weeks. Tom has edited the material we shot together and for the most part, it has turned out looking awesome. Being able to see the actors act out the lines we have written really helps us to figure out which areas of the script still need work.

Big Picture
I am really excited about the fact that we should hopefully soon have a finished copy of the screenplay. Our plan is to have a cast read-through this weekend and then start the actual filming a week later. We are still definitely concerned about the time it will take because we have shoots scheduled every weekend from November 12th through Spring Break (with Winter Break off).
As far as the Capstone goes, I am concerned about the annotation, but if I make the effort to solidly read through the books we have purchased, I feel like I can do a good job with my annotation.

So it’s been a long time since I’ve done a post that wasn’t specifically about the movie, and I feel that I owe it to myself to do a brain dump of what I’ve been up to.

It kinda feels really weird that October is already winding down because that means that soon it will be November and soon I will be 21! I don’t quite understand what happened to October, but I guess when you have meetings scheduled all day, every day, you don’t really have time to stop and think about things.

My SCOPE project is shaping up better than I expected it to: we’ve gotten a lot of stuff from Motorola that should really help us out, and we also just completed our first round of user studies tonight. Some interesting budget related issues have come up recently, but nothing too unusual for the realm of new Olin classes.

I decided to apply to UCLA film school about 2 weeks ago. I hadn’t really given it too much thought before then, because I didn’t really think film school would help me that much for what I’m interested in doing. I’m still not actually sure how much it will help, but I realized that the app deadline was November 1st, so I figured it would be worth applying, and then I could always decide not to go later. (If I didn’t apply now, I couldn’t just apply later if I wanted to)

Things seem to be coming along for the senior class. We have a ring design, senior t-shirts have been ordered, senior photos are in progress, we chose a cap and gown, we’re working on the process of how to choose student and staff/faculty greeters, we chose a diploma artist, and probably a bunch more stuff that I’m forgetting. Although I can’t wait to graduate, I know that I’m going to really miss all of my friends here at Olin as well as the whole atmosphere. One of the reasons I didn’t consider studying away is that I felt I’d be missing out on too much here at Olin, and I can always travel later on.

Tomorrow will be the first Halloween dance that I actually have taken the time to put together a costume. Hopefully people will think it looks good and recognize whom I’m supposed to be.

Things with Francys are going well. It’s kinda weird to think about the fact that there’s kind of an expiration date on things with her though, because once I graduate in May, I’m moving back to Southern California. I have no idea where the two of us will be by then, but we’ve both realized that it wouldn’t make much sense to try to carry on a relationship after that point, and I’m glad that we both seem to be ok with it.

Of course, since this is a brain dump of what I’ve been doing, I have to talk about how the movie is going. We’re getting to the point where we’ll soon have a “final” script to start shooting with. The cast seems to get along very well. The edited first test shoot turned out very nice. I keep thinking about what it will feel like for us to have a finished movie in just under 7 months from now. If anything, working on this movie has made me respect even more the Hollywood film industry.

Alright, time to start some homework… Who am I kidding? I need some sleep. G’night.

Today was a lot of fun, but a lot of work. We ran the first test shoot of a couple scenes.

Things I’ve learned today:

- Budget plenty of time for location set-up (furniture moving, camera set-up, etc.)
- Have a stage manager handy for line and blocking notes (Brendan would do this fine)
- Any line problems in the script will become very apparent.
- Having a tv monitor on hand is awesome for figuring out framing of shots.
- It’s very easy to forget about small details such as hair placement and character positioning.
- If a take is good on the first time, don’t shoot a second!
- The actors will get tired fairly quickly. We should take a break every 2 hours.
- We have plenty of people who are willing to be crew. Let’s figure out something for each of them to be doing so that Tom and I don’t forget anything.
- It’s fun to be calling the shots. (And…Action!)
- I should make sure my suitemates actually know what’s going on if we’re shooting in the room.
- 24 fps looks gorgeous!
- Having a behind-the-scenes cameraman makes filming even better.
- We’re making a f—ing movie!!!

Next test shoot will probably be happening next Saturday, either a day or night scene, but most likely an outdoor one.

After two auditions and lots of deliberations, we have a cast! Congratulations to the following:

Brian Wilkins – Bennett Chabot
June Hartman – Amanda Hurley
Chris Myers – Andrew Tsang
Alex Daniels – Aja Munsell

We are having our first readthrough of the script as a cast this Saturday night. Hopefully we’ll get some good feedback through how the cast interprets their roles. Tom and I will then work their suggestions into the script in order to continually improve it.

This is actually happening!

So Tom was talking to Anita earlier about life at Olin and philosophizing about several things, and apparently during the course of the conversation Anita said “It’s amazing how much can change in 24 hours.” Surprisingly, this quote has kinda inspired both Tom and I, and I think it is definitely in the running for a tagline for Bay State.

So I’m not that web savvy whatsoever as some of you may know, but I needed to put together a page for Bay State, the movie that Tom and I are working on right now. But the page is up. Please don’t complain about it unless you want to make me a better one (I’d be extremely happy if one of you did volunteer to help with the page).

The link is www.kevintostado.com/baystate/. Once we decide on a final title, we’ll probably register a separate domain for the site.

After a very long day, and a trip to Anna’s Taqueria, I’m mostly moved in back at Olin. The new dorm, East Hall, is excellent, although not entirely complete. I just thought I’d write a quick post before crashing for the night.

The plan for Bay State is to post fliers at Brandeis, Babson, and Wellesley ASAP, so that we can get our auditions done. Also, Kevin and I will be meeting with several people to begin editing the (now virtually completed) first full draft of the script.

An exciting year lies ahead!

The Princeton Review has released it’s annual ranking of the Best Colleges in America and similarly to last year, Olin has placed very strongly. The one’s I’m most proud of are: #1 in Best Quality of Life, and #2 in Best Campus Food and Dorms Like Palaces. Also, we’re no longer 4th in the category of “Stone-Cold Sober”.

Here are the rankings:

Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering’s
Best 361 College Rankings

Rank List Category
#8 Best Overall Academic Experience For Undergraduates Academics
#8 Professors Get High Marks Academics
#2 Professors Make Themselves Accessible Academics
#5 The Toughest To Get Into Academics
#4 Their Students Never Stop Studying Academics
#12 Gay Community Accepted Demographics
#1 Lots of Race/Class Interaction Demographics
#17 Best College Theatre Extracurriculars
#3 Intercollegiate Sports Unpopular Or Nonexistent Extracurriculars
#20 Got Milk? Parties
#14 Stone-Cold Sober Schools Parties
#2 Best Campus Food Quality of Life
#1 Best Quality Of Life Quality of Life
#2 Dorms Like Palaces Quality of Life
#16 Dodge Ball Targets School Type
#4 Town-Gown Relations Are Great Social

Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering Also Appears on These Lists:

Best Northeastern Colleges
This school is one of the 224 colleges named a Best Northeastern College by The Princeton Review. Our goal is simple: to identify some of the colleges and universities that we feel stand out within each region.

America’s Best Value College
This school is one of the colleges designated as one of the best overall bargains—based on cost and financial aid—among the most academically outstanding colleges in the nation.