He's sitting in a dark room, isolated from any lights, cameras and crew. Staring at a monitor non-stop for two to eight hours at a time is the least glamorous part of editing.
Over 100 hours of editing went into the production of Dan Finnen's "Run Hollywood Summer." The final product unfolds as a surreal sense of accomplishment and a reward for all the effort and time put into making it.
In August 2009, Finnen, now a junior telecommunications major, completed and produced "Run Hollywood Summer," a full-length film that captures the process of a group of college students who decide to make a horror film called "The Terror Within."
"Whenever you do a feature-length film, it's like having a baby," Finnen said. "It is a long-term commitment. The movie never goes away. You have to keep taking care of it years after the fact."
"Run Hollywood Summer" premiered online March 8, and a webisode series, "Muckrakers," started last year and is currently in its second season.
The first season's finale to "Muckrakers" begins with Paul (Matthew Robert Smith) and Frank (David Podsiadlik) trying to figure out how to be cool while they eat lunch in the Art and Journalism building.
The best way they discover to be cool is to infiltrate a fraternity and report underground about what they find. Paul claims he's already cool enough to get in so he proceeds to change Frank into a "bro." They show up at the fraternity party with the hopes that the brothers will ask them to join.
Paul ends up going in alone and tells Frank to wait outside. Meanwhile, Frank meets a group of people who think he's cool enough to party, and he leaves Paul behind to meet someone who gets him to join a "cool frat" that ends up being a service fraternity. They tried to do two things at once to get their undercover journalism paper done and include enough "sex and violence" in it to make it interesting.
As an independent learner from a theater background, Finnen has changed his passion to film. His theater background has helped him work with actors when he shoots new films.
Finnen likes to have many things going at once, and he is constantly writing new scripts.
"I kind of look at school like my part-time job on the side," Finnen said. "I spend so many hours a day working on all these various projects, getting them working and I also do [telecommunications] classes."
While filming is one of Finnen's passions, it's not all glamorous, he said. He can spend hours in an editing room tweaking his final product until he thinks it's ready. During the shooting of "Run Hollywood Summer," Finnen said he went days without sleeping and spent thousands of hours into its production.
"I really want to do independent film, so my goal has been to be somewhat successful in independent film before I leave college," he said. "I haven't gotten there yet, but I feel like I'm giving it my best shot."
Derek Cox, a junior telecommunications major, met Finnen during the auditions of "Run Hollywood Summer." Cox hadn't planned on trying out but went to the auditions with his roommate at the time.
Cox ended up playing the character Hughes, one of the leading roles, in the film, and he was also the sound editor.
"When you describe it to people, it sounds so boring, but I love film making," Finnen said. "The process of it is so collaborative. I love working with people."
Cox identifies Finnen's and his relationship as business partners.
"If we're going to do a project, our first choice of people to work with is each other," Cox said. "We kind of have the same head. In the end our goals are the same, and we're working toward the same things."
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