————————————————————————————

We were keeping all the candle lit scenes extra orange through white balance keeping the blue channel down to minimize noise. I think we shot it daylight balanced with Tungsten lights at 100 iso.

The bedroom was shot daylight balanced with daylight balanced lights at 320 iso to keep the image as clean as possible since the RED sensor is a daylight balanced one and anytime you can keep it fed with blue do so.

We shot on build 16 with 3 8 gig cards without a hitch. I think we hit the end of the card twice during a take but only because we had other shots on the same card.

We used Zeiss primes and 95% was shot on the 50mm and 95% was shot hand held.

Mike busted his ass with that camera on his back but since time was short it wasn’t worth it to switch camera ops after he got the flow of the scene down so Mike had to take it for the team and did it well. We usually switch up between us and also use Omar since he towers over the both of us and can get taller actors better.

The one thing that was a pain was that we sent our EVF back to RED for a fixing and that made the hand held work much much harder since we had to use the LCD. Mike had to bend his neck back all the time to be able to see the monitor. With the EVF you can adjust it in any direction because it sits on your eye so the eyeball focus distance isn’t a problem. I could never hand hold with the LCD since I can’t see that well close up and wouldnt be able to keep things in focus, at least not with the RED arm’s short distance.

We borrowed Kwan’s top mount and were able to mount the battery on the top of the camera giving it a shorter length for the tight spots so the batts didn’t hit any walls or furniture. Another thing was we didn’t put the follow focus on to save weight on the cam since we had to have the wireless units on there. We took the mattboxx off also in the tight areas to save weight and to keep it from bumping into things. The jump from 4K to 2K for the slo-mo was a little bit of a pain but lucky the slo-mos didn’t require wider angles since the sensor gets cropped a ton. We had just enough room to get the shots at 2K.

————————————————————————————

Aram talks about us doing 95% hand-held. That wasa true for the scenes we were shooting those days. A lot of hand-held with some specifically chosen dolly shots.

On the next shoot date, we will be doing mostly dolly shots with a few jib shots mixed in.

I am working really hard this time around one this aspect in my own film. I’ve done this to varying degrees in the past. In R.P.D.M., obviously I tried to represent the effects of the drug in a visual way, by slowing the footage down. In my film, BLOODY MARY, I developed a distinct look for the “Nightmare” sections, and a look for the “present.” Beyond those “looks,” the viewer was not given any real indication of which was which. Perhaps a little too obscure, but the point is, I was working on using the look of the film to communicate content. When the color was “X,” it was a nightmare, a vision brought on by the ghost. When the color was “Y,” it was the “present.”

Well in this one, I am going to be doing the same, but taking it further. The visuals will be important to understanding the story in this one, as I am going to be trying to represent a character’s various emotional states visually. In addition, representing transitions between a character’s emotional states visually. So what I am working on now, is how visual transitions work between emotional states. I do not want them to look digital, or like an effect, but more like a photographic, in camera effect.

I”m very drawn towards this kind of thing. To some degree it is very basic filmmaking; using the visual to communicate content. For instance, in 12 Angry Men, as the movie went on, the camera got lower and lower, so that the ceiling started to show in shots. This was to help emphasize visually the feeling of being trapped.

That’s the kind of thing I want to keep working on in my films.

Anyway, just some ramblings as I was working on this tonight. I will blog more about this as we go…

Here is a test: CC TEST

Thoughts on all of this?

]]> http://www.desperatecomfort.com/evie/2009/02/11/grabs-from-day-1/feed/ http://www.desperatecomfort.com/evie/2009/02/08/first-crack-at-a-poster/ http://www.desperatecomfort.com/evie/2009/02/08/first-crack-at-a-poster/#comments Sun, 08 Feb 2009 19:26:05 +0000 mark http://www.desperatecomfort.com/lostchildren/?p=110

I have never been good at these, and in the past, posters have been donated by those who are. R.P.D.M came from Zak, and CONSTANCE came from Timur. But I wanted to start getting something out there. So here’s take 1.

This one has a definite “Got Milk?” vibe to it, but I like the mystery. I always like posters that will make people wonder. The first one I did for R.P.D.M. just had a bunch of acid tabs on it, and no explanation of what they were.

Maybe I will get lucky and some of the past poster-masters will jump in with something better?

Also, a piece of concept art for the production. This is not a poster, but a piece that will be incorporated into the content of the piece and possibly into the feature later. I am going to let people wonder about what this is for a while. It will be revealed somewhat in the short, but probably not completely.

Leah and Scott in Rehearsal

So tonight we had our first rehearsal. This one was two hours and included both Leah and Scott. Tomorrow night I will rehearse with Leah alone, to work on the sections of the film where she is alone.

The rehearsal went well, and it seemed like we basically got done what we needed to get done.

As I’ve stated before, some of this film is improvised, based on beats I’d outlined. This scene in particular was the most improvised of all.

So the rehearsal had two primary goals.

First Goal - Solidify Beats

Solidify the beats in the scene. I came into the scene with a number of beats written down, more than we would need to get from point A to point B. The first outline contains a lot of ideas just thrown out there and put on paper. So in this rehearsal, I wanted to give the actors the chance to play with those beats, so we could start to pick which ones worked and which we could throw away. Through this process, we were able to really hone the scene down to something specific, with shape and direction, and we were able to toss out anything extraneous to the scene. From this, I will write down what we came up with and that will basically be the scene. I will still not write all of the actual lines, so that when the actors get in the moment and are pursuing their goals, they can use whatever words come to them in that moment. And those might be different from take to take. As long as they are playing their objectives, I am willing to let them say whatver comes in the moment. Talk and Listen.

So basically we ironed out the scene.

Second Goal - Give Actors Time to Work

Scott finds an important moment

The second main purpose of the rehearsal for me, is to give the actors a time and place to work. As we worked through the beats, I try to make it clear that this does not have to be a performance, that they are to use the time to seek out and find the moments, find their objectives, find their connections to the characters and the moments they are playing.

This might entail having them feel their way through an important moment until they find out what makes that moment work. Sometimes, I have them slow down, or even pause the scene to live in that one moment, until they can reach into themselves and find their own personal connection to it. But the main point is that rehearsal is a place for actors to figure out how the scene works.

I often see filmmakers who believe in no rehearsal at all, in order to “keep it fresh.” They somehow believe that the goal of rehearsal is the ossifying of a performance.

To me, rehearsal is for the actors to figure out what the scene is about, and how it works, so they know what their homework is. So they can take the work home, work out the objectives they need to play and the connections they need to have to the material.

Leah Rehearsing Alone

The last thing I’ll say is, I think rehearsal is ten times more important on low-budget productions. Not only does it give the director time to focus on the performances, when he/she is probably doing a million other things to get the production going, but it also gives the actors a dedicated time to focus on the performances.

If you’re making a $100 million movie with Tom Hanks, Tom Hanks has the leisure to spend six months working on a role, doing cop training, etc. If you are working on no budget affair, the actors most likely have day jobs and other concerns. Of course, all of these actors will work on the roles on their own. But I think it really helps to give them that dedicated time to purely focus on the work.

We cast the last main role. I had auditions last week, and came away with the larges number of good candidates I’d ever had. Meaning, the choice was harder than ever before. It’s always seemed that if I came away with one great option, it was a good day. But this time, just about everyone who read could have done the part, and it came down to nuance. And look. I’ll say a little more about look in a bit.

This audition consisted of an improvisation with Leah, based on beats I outlined from the actual scene. I had given the candidates the outline about a week before. And all came in with various levels of preparedness and all performed well in the improv.

Now to nuance. I’ll just talk about three of them as examples.

1. There was one actor in the group who was easily the most experienced. His resume included the many prominent TV shows. And he was good. Really good. He came in the most prepared too. He had made the most specific choices and came in prepared to work with them. He made adjustments as I asked for them without missing a beat. He would be a dream actor to work with on just about any project. But his excessive experience and skill were also a hindrance, to a degree. He was so good at acting, that I had a hard time seeing him really let go and lose control of himself. Now I don’t mean hauling off and hurting actors and breaking things, but there comes a point when watching an actor when he really starts to fly, and you can tell that they genuinely have no idea what is going to come out of his mouth next. These moments are golden and should be captured on camera at all costs. They are also very rare. Maybe Actor A would have gone there just fine. But it seemed to me that it’s not where he goes.
2. There was another actor whose resume included a Uwe Boll film. But I didn’t hold that against him. He came in prepared, but was more willing to let himself actually go. He had less experience than Actor A for sure. And he was my second choice. Which brings us to look and Actor C.
3. Actor C is Scott, the actor I cast. When I weighed everything, Scott had the best blend of what I was looking for. Skill to pursue and objective and stay in the moment. Trust enough to let himself go in the scene and really just be there without knowing what will happen next, and lastly, the thing that put him over Actor B was his look. And for this part, if you understand that the character is a virgin, who has never even been alone with a woman in any romantic capacity whatsoever, if you lay all of that on Scott’s look, all of those things are amplified. Because the other actor looked like he could have been early 20s. So if he has never had sex, well, okay, we all have met someone who hasn’t has sex until college. But Scott looks clearly in his 30s, and could read into early 40s.  And anyone who has never had sex up to that age range, we really wonder about. And I wanted the audience to really wonder about this guy.

I think this is a point that I disagree with Zak on. I’ve seen him say he casts for the actor and re-works the role based on that. And that is one way to work. But in my mind, movies are photographs. So I don’t think it’s unreasonable for a director to want to conform the photograph to what’s in his mind, in terms of design, color, light, and actors. Also, I think you can get a lot of mileage playing on peoples’ pre-conceptions with the images you show them, as with the character above.

Or, for another example, when working with Leah on this part, this part is very much NOT her. The part calls for her to be very sexual. And she’s a big floppy goof-ball.

Exhibit A:

I am keeping some her goof-ball in the role, but also, the thing I’ve been telling her about being “sexy” is that she is already young, beautiful, thin, and tall. Just by showing up, she is 80% the way to being a sexual being in our minds. So she doesn’t have to do much more at all in her performance.

Hitch knew this about casting and of course most modern Hollywood films do as well. You cast Grace Kelly and already every guy in the audience is wondering what the hell Jimmy Stewart’s problem is. I hesitate to call it a short hand, but rather let me say that images are loaded. And a filmmaker can work on that loadedness.

Rehearsals are set for tomorrow, Tues 3rd and Wed 4th.

Otherwise, Leah has been for her fittings and the costumer is now working on Scott. Aram and I have been hashing the look of various scenes back and forth. I have been storyboarding and shot-listing and taking care of the million and one details that come up. And I am now thanking God for the new Ikea we just got in Brooklyn, because I imagine it will come in handy for last minute prop runs.

More soon…

• We have signed on Aram Bauman to DP, and will be shooting on the RED ONE 4K digital cinema camera. He’s known on DVXUser as Beat Takeshi. I will start a new post soon about the look of the piece and how it relates to the content. Then get Aram to add in his thoughts on it.
• Also, there is one serious VFX shot in the film. For that I have recruited a friend of my girlfriend, The Nikks, who works at the NYC post house, THE MILL. On New Year’s Eve, she said she would like help on one of my films, and even though she was three sheets to the wind when she said it, I got her to agree again when she was sober.
• I have contacted the relevant parties about about securing the final locations.
• Auditions are scheduled for next week. I have seven actors coming in to read for the remaining role to be cast.
• Storyboards will be done this week.

So Leah and I have gone back and forth on the story and the complete outline is about done. As I’ve said before the performances with be improvised, but now the scenes and beats making up those scenes, thus the archs of the characters, have pretty much been charted. Over the next two weeks, we will be honing this, refining the beats as much as we can. Then we will go into rehearsal and figure out which beats work, which ones need change, and with any luck, we’ll find a whole bunch we never knew were there. But this outline is a good starting point and very clearly indicates the characters’ objectives, so though the rehearsals will be improvised, we should be able to keep on track.

I guess it’s all right to come out with it now. This short is about a character who appears in a feature film I am working on.

I’ve been working on the script and the business plan for this feature film for some time, and in all likelihood, will continue to do so far into this year. But I knew I wasn’t going to be able to go very long without actually making something. Couple that with the fact that I need a lot more practice as a director anyway, I thought, I am going to produce a short or two this year, no matter what.

At the same time, I felt like I could not let myself get distracted with other projects, when I should be keeping my nose to the grindstone on the feature.

So I decided that all of the short content I would produce this year would be set in the world of the feature. I would use some shorts to explore characters, flesh out the world, etc. And at the end of the day, I would have a lot of peripheral content that might go along with the feature film.

So though this short fits in with the theme of Loss, it also serves as an exploration of one of my feature characters. And it’s having the desired effect. The things I learned about this person in the short, have already informed her behavior in the feature script.

For a long time, I’ve been an advocate of writing about your characters, fleshing them out with narratives, journals, biographies and such. So I guess this is just an extension of that technique.

I’ll go into some more detail about this in future posts…

Acting

Leah has agreed to start doing some blogging of her own on here, regarding her acting process. Hopefully she will have something within a few days. I will have a lot more on this as well once we go into rehearsals.

Business

Casting

Having lost the first actor I wanted to cast opposite Leah, I put out a casting notice and got many responses. I will be contacting the ones I want to see tomorrow, and setting up auditions for the week after next. If all goes well, by Feb 1 we will be cast.

Storyboard

Now that the outline is finished, I can start working on the storyboards. It’s my hope that these can be pretty much done by the first of Feb. as well.

On Podcasting

I meant to get on this, I really did. But in all honesty, when I’m working, it’s next to impossible for me to split my attention enough to film me working and talk about it at the same time. So I am going to really try to get some going, but can make no promises…