For the love of all things RIDICULOUS

First off, my Frag Doll Application is finished! This time around, instead of me sitting in front of a camera and answering questions, my boyfriend suggested that I should read a story. I loved the idea, and spent the next few days creating my storybook; laying out all the pictures, deciding what videos should be displayed as I spoke and when, and creating the storybook text. Jason (my boyfriend) and I spent the next week setting up lights, filming scenes, and trying to find time to sleep somewhere in between it all.

I submitted the written portion of my application on Friday afternoon, and my fantastic boyfriend spent the entire day editing my video interview. Now, you might be thinking "But Kim, the video interview is only a 3 minute movie....what could possibly take him so long to edit it?" WELL - aside from horrible traffic, sleep deprivation, and crashing computers, we also had to deal with creating a "living storybook," complete with videos and green screen captures. Here are pictures, just to show you how massive this "video interview" undertaking was...

 (Lights filling up my Living Room)

 (Massive Green Screen)

(My mom on the green screen) 

(My boyfriend, the talented director) 

 (Me, being a princess)

(Me, being a Space Marine Princess)

(Test Run!)

(The Set - look at all those controllers!)

(Opening page of my storybook)

(Reading beneath the camera)

(So many controllers)

(Last day of filming)

As you can see, we put a ton of effort into this film. Little did we know that tragedy would strike just before the deadline. When we tried to render the final product - Jason's computer crashed! We didn't realize it at the time, but one of our green screen film captures was causing the problem, so every time we tried to run the 30+ minute render, it would crash. Running out of time, Jason thought quickly and rendered a copy of just one film take - that of me in front of the camera reading the storybook (sadly, all his hard work editing would not be submitted). After that was rendered, we only had a little bit of time to send the video through yousendit.com - and just sending the video took many hours. At this point, I wasn't even sure if my application would be accepted, since the video interview would probably be received after the deadline.

We were pretty bummed, but this whole experience has inspired me to do better and plan ahead for these applications. I've already started thinking about what I'll do next time...

And just so you all can see the difference in the movie we did send to the Cadettes and the one we should have sent in, here they are:

Film (no green screen captures or editing):

Film (edited, final version that should have been sent in):