Today HateCity Pictures turns 2 years old.
In 2006, on my 32nd birthday, I walked into the Dallas city courthouse and obtained the DBA for "Hate City Productions." The name had been something I'd been tossing around in my head for a while, but that was the date that it was formalized. Kind of like naming a baby before birthing it. In the interceding 48 months, the name has changed to the sleeker "HateCity Pictures" and we've made a couple of movies and had a couple of changes to our "staff." Eric Padilla came in for a time as a producer and art director; but will be leaving after completion of "The Betty." Eric Gunter was on board for quite a while as resident director of photography. Maggie Smith, fortunately, has come on for "The Betty" as a script supervisor but has also taken on some production management duty. And then there's Glenn and I - running things in as good a semblance of tandem as two idealistic, competitive, headstrong alpha males can hope to and so far making a pretty good go at it. I'm proud of the work we've done, proud of HateCity, and ready to kick things up to the next level in year 3. Happy birthday HateCity!
Happy Birthday!
Shooting Postponed... Again
Well, where we thought we'd have the shipping yard this weekend to finish out the couple of scenes left there, apparently that's not the case. And what's more - they're paving the place! So, assuming we're allowed to go back we face likely continuity issues.
Fortunately, our worst case scenario isn't that bad. I can change locations on one scene if I need to by rewriting to support it, and I can scrap one scene if it's really necesary, though it's one I'm kind of fond of.
That makes our next shoot the first weekend in September and in the mean-time I'll be storyboarding and working on a replacement for Elizabeth.
-Chris
Outtakes from "The Betty"
There's always shit to laugh at when I'm going through footage. If not, then nobody was having fun and the quality of the shoot is probably pretty low. Here are a couple from last weekend that I found a bit funny. Enjoy.
Qelsi & the Bee
Well, okay so it was a wasp, but bee sounds funnier. This damn wasp wouldn't leave Qelsi alone as long as the camera was on her. As soon as we aimed the lens at someone else it left her alone.
Watch her threaten to Kung Fu the thing.
Lion Face/Lemon Face
Don't know why this is so funny, but here's a little acting exercise for you.
Images from "The Betty"
I've been meaning to post frame grabs of pictures from "The Betty" for a while now. Well, shooting more of the opening scenes the other day got me playing around editing a rough cut, which of course led me to experimenting with the overall look of the film.
These grabs are just ones that caught my eye as visually nice, or, in some cases, challenging in a way that made me want to test the look and color correction on. Looking at these images, I'm really happy with the way this film is turning out. These aren't final by any stretch - just me playing with settings in After Effects trying to develop a style.
I hope you like what you see.
Greg Mansur as The Caesar
Eric Rhoades as Oatmeal - playing it tough
Qelsi Qualls as Thumper & Greg Mansur
Yours Truly as Archie, with Eric in the background
The Caesar's evil eye
Eric is the most facially expressive actor I know.
This isn't part of the scene; This is Qelsi holding a casual conversation with Marty Ezelle - a good friend and member of the crew.
Thumper and the Caesar
Me again. A fun trick for me in acting - and as the director I have this latitude - is to throw something out there in the first take that wasn't in rehearsals or wasn't expected by the other actors. Just kicking my legs up on the desk in the middle of the scene got reactions from all the others - two of which I now don't think the scene could do without.
A little money.
Oatmeal and Archie at Reno's Chop Shop in Deep Ellum. This is one of those scenes that, because of the lighting and the speed with which we had to get our shots, is going to be challenging to get right; but at least this test shows I can get a serviceable image out of it.
Rene Garcia as Hector the BookieThere will be more of these soon. I'm having fun with them. Postproduction is one of my favorite things in filmmaking. I may be getting a bit ahead of myself with this work since the movies only about half shot, but seeing these images is fueling my drive to get this thing in the can.
Back to the Yard
Our return to the location we started "The Betty" on was somewhat less grandiose, but nonetheless a rewarding shoot. This time we had a crew of three and knocked out a single scene. It was an exercise in flexibility for sure. I scrapped the shot list as soon as we got into the converted container "office" because there was no way to make the lighting work the way I had visualized it in my head. It was narrower than I'd imagined and more run-down than I would have liked.
Working to a schedule though, we shot till about noon and we'll have to make another trip out there. two more scenes (one very short) in the container/office and one outside it, with a few pickups and we can scratch that location off the list.
I started cutting together a rough cut to see how the shots played together and I'm pretty pleased with it. We shot entirely with available light, setting a desk next to one of the windows, and the results, particularly on Greg's face, look great. I'll post some grabs soon.