The Musician and more!

So we finally wrapped The Musician, which I was the DP for this week. I guess saying that I was DP was misleading though. Because the shooting was so sporadic there were a couple times when either Luke or Ashley had to do the DP duties for at least part of the shoot. They seemed to be great when they stepped up to that task though. I think this project will end up looking pretty nice, although I don't think I personally like the overall story of it. I feel none of us got as into the project as we would have had to in order to make it really something special. This is something I blame on the fact that it was a story none of us were too keen on and it was at a time when we all were working on other projects too. I think it will end up being a solid project but not anything special and I mainly think that's because of the one project a week thing.

 Despite all this, everyone that I worked with was fantastic. As always Pat, Luke and Ted were completely professional and a pleasure to work with. This was also my first time working with Ashley and she was also great. She was easy to get along with, had good ideas and was very helpful performing the duties of both AC and audio at times. The actors we used were also quite nice to work with. They were pretty clearly not actors, but they were still happy to try to do anything we asked of them.

Other things going on this week that I am a bit more excited about are pre-production for JFK's Cat and A Darkened Dream. Both of these projects I really think are going to come together nicely. JFK's Cat is going to be a very humorous film that I am the DP for. It's going to be shot as a company promotional video and will include a re-enactment of the JFK assassination. The story lends this to be a bit more of a boring shoot from a DP standpoint because I won't be looking for these artistic meaningful shots, but rather I will be looking to imitate the style of a crappy corporate video. It's definitely going to be a fun project though and we're all very excited about it.

A Darkened Dream is also coming together although that's a bit earlier in the pre-production stages. I am a bit more excited about this project because its a bit more my style and it was my idea and I am directing it so I guess you could say its kinda my baby for this class. Of all the projects I have worked on I think this one will be the most my vision. I'm really very excited to start shooting this next week and I'm really hoping to make it into something really nice.

I guess that's about all for now I'm excited about the shoots and I'm sure I'll have more to say after JFK's Cat and A Darkened Dream.

The Pursuit

We just wrapped an exhausting weekend of shooting for the pursuit. It is now 6:30 on Sunday and I have been working on the pursuit essentially nonstop since 4:00 on Friday. Let's start from the beginning shall we?

I got my brand new Canon 7D on Thursday and we wanted to use it to shoot the pursuit, so Luke and I walked around Friday evening to the various locations and tested it out. We shot a lot of test footage and then reviewed the footage, in the end we decided to shoot the majority of the footage at 30fps with a shutter speed of 200. This gave the look of vaguely choppy that worked really well for this high intensity action. We decided to also shoot some things at 60p so that we could have some potentially awesome looking slow-mo.

Saturday we decided to shoot the majority of the action so that the other actor and I were fresh and ready to perform whatever awesomeness the choreography required. The choreography by the way was done by me as well thus bringing my credits to Producer, Actor and Action Designer. So Saturday was definitely the most exhausting day. We did a lot of parkour so that by the end of the day I'm sure all our moves looked sloppy because we were so tired. But we got some really good stuff in and I'm really happy with it.

Sunday, was the day to get all of that boring story stuff out of the way. We started the day with a bit of action and then in the afternoon knocked out the story. We had to break about 3 times due to light rainfall but we were fortunate enough that we never had any serious issues. It was actually nicely overcast all weekend so I think we got really lucky on the weather. Working with Keetin and Nikki was great they were both wonderful and gave very nice performances.We finally wrapped a bit after 5 which meant that both days we somehow managed to stay almost exactly on schedule, which is quite shocking.

Overall, I am definitely happy with how the shoot went. I think there were a couple of things we could have planned out a bit better, mainly the two times in which there is actual story being conveyed. However, that is as much my fault as anyone's. Everyone was great to work with. I had a lot of fun flipping around with Eric and he really helped to make this film as visually pleasing as I wanted it to be. Chelsey was great at taking charge of the shoots and came up with some really nice shots. Luke was a fantastic DP. He really did a great job of being creative and making some shoots look really gorgeous. Matt was great on audio, he was very professional throughout the shoot and great to work with. John was a great AC he made sure the camera stayed nice and dry during our few delays. Pat and Eric were the best PAs I could have hoped for and Eric even got a nice little cameo in. I really could not have asked for a better cast and crew to help make my vision come to life. I'm really excited to see how the editing goes.

Obtuse Offenders

So yesterday we finally wrapped on Obtuse Offenders after something like 2 weeks of shooting. For this production I was merely an actor and PA. Nevertheless this was a very rewarding shoot overall. I endured a scratched up back from being dragged around so much while I had to lay motionless and corpse-like. I spent several days with a sore head after falling on it out of a car several times. I even had a shirt turned pink after the fake blood I had all over was exposed to a substantial amount of rain suddenly. But in the end, I think it was all worth it. I really enjoyed everyone I worked with. Pat was a great producer, he really kept things organized and was good at making sure everyone knew when and where we had to be at various times. Luke was a great director, he really did a nice job of controlling everything that was going on and I think did a nice job of getting the best out of the actors. Anton was a very creative DP who sometimes took a bit too long to set up a shot but made sure in the end it was always a great shot. Ted was great to work with, although I have no idea how the audio turned out because I haven't heard any of it. Also the other actors were great to work with. I think we really got along well together and I hope our on screen chemistry worked well. I think this shoot helped me to learn how important it is to be efficient in what you do on set. Its important to try to make sure that everyone is working to be ready for that next shot as soon as possible. If someone isn't doing one thing then they should be doing something else. It's also important to know what you want going into the shoot. If you don't have a specific idea for each shot then you sometimes take too long to determine what you do want. Although I was only an actor and PA I think that what I learned from this shoot will help me when I play a bigger role in my upcoming productions.

The Assassin Critique

This blog is my T436 critique of my final scene fragment, The Assassin which can be viewed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsF4_ca2Zf0. This by far was my most satisfying scene fragment. I think it all came together quite nicely with some really nice shots in between. I shall start with the things I liked best and then move into my criticisms. The most beautiful thing about this, in my opinion are the lighting effects. I didn't use a light a kit for this so I had to just do the best with the location that I was in. Luckily I was able to recognize that certain shots would look really good with the given lighting. I as able to get the reflection of the sun in my close up of Chelsey's face in such a way that it gives both characters a mystical glow about them. Also the final shot where Chelsey's body is lying on the ground looks really nice with the strip of light coming in. I also think I had some very nicely composed shots. I really like the early shot where Luke's foot enters the frame and I really like the shot through the leaves. I thought about racking focus from the leaves to the characters but I decided that leaving them out of focus would nicely preserve the mystery of the characters.

The main problem I have with my short is that the two times I rack focus, its very subtle. The space I was in was a bit more limiting than I had hoped it would be and I didn't have much space to allow me to zoom in enough to get very vivid differences in the focus. You can tell that there is a rack focus when Luke's foot enters and when Luke exits the last shot but really almost only if you're looking for it. I think that given the benefits I got from the lighting in this space however, I still made the right decision in choosing to shoot here. Another issue I have is audio related. I apparently didn't pick up Chelsey's one line as well as I thought I did so it's very quiet. I wish I would have been able to recognize this and pick this up better, but considering this was mainly an exercise in cinematography I am ok with a slight audio issue.

Overall I think this is my best scene fragment yet, and I am definitely happy with the results.

My first 3D shoot... sort of

First, to explain the title, this is the first time I have been behind the camera for a 3D shoot, the other one I just acted in. Although I guess even that isn't right because over the summer I also did a brief interview test thing for T351 in which I was behind the camera, but I did so little that I don't think it really counts.

So anyway, yesterday we shot The Warehouse which I directed. The shoot went well, but was rushed. This was most of our first times dealing with a 3D shoot and everything took much longer than we expected. So we didn't get all the shots we originally planned but we did get some really nice stuff. We got to use the jib with the 3D rig too, which was awesome. we had to balance it out with 80 pounds on the end and it took three of us all operating the jib to get the shot. But overall it was a good shoot. I think all of us worked pretty well together, and the actors were great and really cool about how long we took with everything. Nikki did a great job of keeping us all on task and tried to keep us moving as quickly as possible. Chelsey did a really nice job on camera and got us some beautiful shots. Anthony was great on sound. I'm excited to see how Gesi does on the editing and Joe was a tremendously helpful PA. It was also really nice having Chris there to make sure we didn't screw things up to much. I think we gave him a scare once or twice but I don't think we broke anything, or at least I hope so.

I think in future productions I'm going to have to work on limiting my number of shots. 3D just takes so much longer to do everything, that its impossible to expect to get too many shots in one day of shooting. I really like how certain things look in 3D though. Also the parallel rig was a lot easier to make adjustments with than I thought it would be. It was so quick and easy to change the interaxial distance that I no longer feel as limited by 3D as I was worried I would be. As long as you are careful with each shot and bring a tape measure, its really easy to do just about anything you might want to. Just don't expect to do too much in one day.

Well I guess thats about it. I think there are some pictures from the shoot on facebook, so you can have a look at those if you want. Oh yeah and this is my production blog. Yay.