What's Katie McDowell Up To?

Katie McDowell (McTAP) was a camper for three years and has been a coun­selor and the Filmmaking TA for the past three years. She is in her third year as an RTF major at the University of Texas in Austin.

Over the last few weeks I have been work­ing on two films. One is a senior Film major’s the­sis film, Merchant Prince. The oth­er is my final RTF 366K (Film Production 1) project, Mayfly. On the film Merchant Prince I am act­ing as Production Designer – this film is my final project for my oth­er pro­duc­tion course, RTF344M. The direc­tor, direc­tor of pho­tog­ra­phy and I have been work­ing togeth­er to help form the visu­al aes­thet­ic of the film. We will be shoot­ing the film on the RED cam­era, which will be a great expe­ri­ence. I’ve nev­er worked with the RED, so it will be a great expe­ri­ence to watch the direc­tor of pho­tog­ra­phy work. I am also in charge of props for this film. One of the most impor­tant props that we need is a knife with a dull enough edge to be safe to hold up to skin. I end­ed up buy­ing a knife and then going out­side and cut­ting into the curb like it was a loaf of bread. I prob­a­bly looked ridicu­lous but it worked to dull down the blade, and now we have a safe way to achieve the shot desired. I am excit­ed about this project! In fact, I may also be com­pos­ing some music for the final film! Not only am I pro­duc­tion design­ing this the­sis film, I am also work­ing with a part­ner to cre­ate a final 6-minute short film project for anoth­er class. I will be com­plete­ly in charge of the visu­als — Director of Photography (and Production Designer). I am excit­ed to attempt new light­ing tech­niques and learn how to work with the Canon 7D. We actu­al­ly had near­ly 100 respons­es to our audi­tions call, so we are very excit­ed for every­thing to come togeth­er. Even though we’re both juniors, we’ve worked real­ly hard on this project, com­pa­ra­ble to a senior’s the­sis film. Pre-pro­duc­tion has includ­ed hours of audi­tion­ing, sto­ry­board­ing, shot list­ing, loca­tion scout­ing, choos­ing lens­es, exper­i­ment­ing with light­ing, etc. It’s been exhaust­ing (on top of all this, I am also work­ing on a final edit­ing project – a short doc­u­men­tary about vot­ing), but it’s just what I want to do! I’ve been learn­ing so much by work­ing with so many oth­er peo­ple in the RTF depart­ment at UT, and I can’t wait for the shoot(s) this week­end! (and TAP camp, 2011, June 12-July 3!)