production!

Well, Jon and I had an excellent week of production, and have returned to California as of early yesterday morning. This year's Texas Rose Festival went quite well, and was well covered in the local media. Jon and I shot about 13 hours of footage, and our friend Michelle shot another 3 hours of Camera-2 footage; we primarily covered the coronation (front and backstage) and coronation rehearsals, and we also got great material from the Queen's Tea and the Rose Parade.


We didn't cover my brother closely, the way that I thought we would. Instead we got a more broad span of many people, focusing primarily on the event rather than the people. My current thought is that I'll be using a voiceover narration in order to string it together into a cohesive story... at this point, though, it's still too early to tell.

My adviser Jamie Meltzer recommended spending a whole week away from the footage, just so that I can approach it with a fresh mind for editing. The editing process will last at least a couple of months, and I'll be greatly assisted by my friend Charlie. I'm looking forward to it.


Also, many thanks to East Texas production companies Tripwire and N-Ventive, for giving us access to inexpensive/free equipment rentals.

Flying to Tyler in Two Days

On Tuesday morning, my friend Jon and I will fly to Tyler from San Jose to spend 5 days filming some of the events of the 2008 Texas Rose Festival, themed "A Royal Tribute to the Rose."

After much deliberation, I've decided to loosely focus this on my brother, Michael Rogers, who is escorting this year's Rose Queen Sarah Clyde. Because I know Michael much better than any of the other people involved in this year's Rose Festival, I should be able to capture him in a way that adds more depth to the film, highlighting the humanity of the people involved in TRF.

And we'll see how it turns out. There's a small chance that this film will be just as much about the Rose Industry as it is about the TRF; If this is the case, then I'll need to shoot some footage of rosebush transportation in December...

This week will be very important in shaping the direction of this film, and I'm looking forward to every bit of it.