I'm only several months behind

Okay, so for those interested, this post is going to mainly focus on the breakdown of how THIS semester is structured. Enough of the old, on with the new.

So this term is effectively called the 508 semester, and it's supposedly the most time consuming of the program. What I heard before coming in was that it was meant to be such that they could force those few left that were planning on quitting to do so this semester.

The way it works is as follows:

Towards the end of the first semester we are informed of which section we'll be in for the 508 semester. The 55 (minus if anyone dropped, which one person did in our group, but then I believe two people came back from previous semesters only to have one of them drop out, somehow miraculously that brought us back to 55) students are divided into four "colors" each labeling you to a section of class.

There is no difference between the classes in theory, however, as there are no locked down lesson plans the faculty have a large amount of pull in how each class is run. Additionally, each 508 has a professor from each discipline; Directing, Producing, Editing, Sound, and Cinematography. So, because of the large sway the faculty hold, each class ends up with differing amount of instruction in each area.

However, the majority of your time in these classes (held two days a week from 9-12 and 1-5) will be spent watching dailies and edited cuts of other people's films.

Here is where I should explain how the groups within each class work. At that same time we were told which color group we were assigned to, we were also assigned to a Trio. The trios were supposedly randomly (I have no idea how random this was or not, but I have no reason to doubt them) assigned. The idea being that these groups of three would take on different roles for each production:

1. Director/Writer
2. Cinematographer/Editor
3. Producer/Sound Recordist

These then rotate from each production to the next; where a 1 becomes a 2 for the second project and then becomes a 3 for the third, or a 3 becomes a 1 for the second project and so on and so on.

We were allowed to state our preference of when we would shoot when we applied for the 508 semester, so these assignments seemed to roughly approximate our preferences. Obviously, it's impossible to please everyone.

Other than 508, we are required to take 529: Writing the Short Script, and 509: A confusing class about post-production. 529 is a straight up screenwriting class with actual script assignments and the 509 class seems to be a new class that has yet to find it's footing, but revolves a lot around editing and sound design.

In general, the 508 semester is a huge step up. First, everyone knows at least a little bit what it is they're doing. All the people who had never been on a film set in their lives and had no concept of the jargon and basic elements that go into making a movie, have now done at least 2 of their own and probably helped out on several others in various capacities. Second, the school takes 508 much more seriously. You can't use any copy written material without approval from the source, there are far more resources at your disposal, and there is an actual screening in the large cinema on campus (Norris).

By resources I mean, they give us a large amount of lighting equipment for the entire year, more than we had access to the entirety of 507, and on top of that, they allow us to check out additional lighting on basically a whim. We are given better sound recording equipment, and more importantly, we have access to the program Pro Tools (an exceptional sound editing program), we are given access to newly built folley stages (sound proof rooms for creating sound effects and in our case, also for any dialogue recording done after shooting the film), and finally, probably most impressive in terms of access that USC provides, we are given a 3 hour mix session in which advanced Sound students work their magic on our films, filtering out extraneous sounds and bringing up or down additional effects we have inserted and created for our film.

By the end of it all, each of us has a 5 mintue 30 second film (or less) that we directed and wrote, as well as one we produced and one we edited and shot.

Next, I'll discuss how this is all working, some of the issues that have come up, and ultimately how my upcomming production is going (as I am the third of the trio, only I have left to shoot)...