took a quick pic w/my phone of my editing station, figured i'd post it ;-)
Production Stills from 9/20/08
Well, here are some production stills from Saturday's shoot. I'll post some more frame grabs later in the week.
Our willing subject.
So when the guys at the office asked "what did you do this weekend?" I have a fun show and tell session.
Glenn behind the camera.
Is Oatmeal checking out Elizabeth? Or is Eric checking out Meredith?
It just looks so official.
Robbie standing in for me, and squatting down about a foot to do it.
Why hold the boom when you're in a tight frame? I initially bought the telescoping stands for shooting musical performances for "Huzzah!" But they sure have come in handy pretty often otherwise. (not to disparage Robbie's boom operation)
Thanks to Damon for taking all these pics, but thankfully someone grabbed the camera and got a shot with him in it. He did a great job making the numbers on the clapperboard aesthetically pleasing too. (To give credit, I think Robbie took a some of these too).
Filming makes me happy.
How a Bill Becomes a Law
I've been meaning for a while to post a little bit about how I come to some of the images I've been showing off of our current film, "The Betty." I do all of this work in Adobe After Effects CS3, and in fact the way we shoot is geared toward a post-intensive process. This is nothing original, though. I really have Stu Maschwitz and his book "The DV Rebel's Guide" to thank for introducing me to this process, which is really ideal for low budget filmmaking. There's a lot to it, and when the Betty's done I expect the final render to take the better part of a week, but I've got more time than I do money.
Nothing in this post is final, of course. I have a preset look that's constantly evolving while I work on the picture so that I'll be prepared when it comes time for the final online. Having this preset also allows me to get these images out and share them with people pretty quickly. For this example I'll use an image that we shot yesterday and I spent a little time this afternoon working with.
The sensor image (off the camera) is purposely low contrast. This is to maintain as much detail as possible so that I can add contrast and saturation later on my computer which handles color a lot better than my camera. The parts of this image that are hot are mainly because of the lighting. We shuttered the windows so the brightness of day didn't go to pure white, which it almost does anyway in the images below.
First I use the Rebel CC tool to color correct the image. I do a 3 point color correction and then use the hue/saturation tool to de-saturate the reds which are really hot.
Now I apply my preset look. This is a little backwards from a typical workflow, but I like to start off from where I am, know where I'm going, and try to figure out the best way to get there. For "The Betty" the look preset has a couple of key characteristics. I use two photo-filter effects: a cooling filter and a sepia filter. The cooling is generally pretty subtle because it can make things really blue really easy. I adjust the curves with a very slight s-curve to bring up contrast in the lighter and darker portions of the image. In some cases I use grain removal, which is the case here, with temporal filtering, because the curves brought out some of the grain more than I wanted. Lastly I do a color profile conversion based on a film stock, bump the brightness a little, and letterbox it for the cinemascope aspect ratio I want.
The problem I now have is that I've lost some detail in the background, and our abductee just looks kind of dull sitting there, everything but Oatmeal is just too dark. So I relight the scene using the exposure effect, but I mask it so that Oatmeal isn't effected - and feather the mask so you don't notice the transition.
She's more present in the scene now, but I've blown out (overexposed) my windows, losing the shutters. So now I duplicate the initial image, mask the windows portion of it, feather that out, and place the layer in between the exposure effect (which is in an adjustment layer) and the Color corrections (which are also in adjustment layers).
I've also overexposed the TV and lost detail in its image, which just seems all kinds of wrong because the TV is a light source itself. So I apply the same methodology I just used for the windows, but with a smaller feathering of the edges.
And with all of these pieces finally in place, you have the image that I want you to see - or actually the conceptual image that I spent 30 minutes on. Like I said, this isn't final and the final cut of the movie will probably have another shot of the scene and a somewhat different look applied.
That's all for today, but I'll have more up later in the week. I'm excited about some of the footage we got. None of the shots were particularly amazing or challenging; but the flow of ideas as to how we use them to tell the story is really exciting.
Huzzah! update
Well folks,
I'm not nearly as eloquen as my partner Chris (god that sounds ghey every time i say it) but I figured I'd give an update anyway. Expect a new trailer in the next coming couple of weeks, and a 'cast of characters' coming even sooner. For now, here's a couple of outtakes I thew up during the editing of the trailer. Did I mention that editing a documentary is a VERY lengthy process, wowzah!
In this one we see why it's bad to have a ton of video production equipment in the hands of a drunk man trying to sleep through this fucking racket .. Ah, sharing a hotel room with Chris during out travels can be trying at times ;-)
The lady in the background doesn't seem too pleased about the honking, which was alot louder in person but the lav mic did pick some up ;-)
And in this one Chris's tells us about his favorite past time, skunk striping
The New Betty
Alright folks, here it is. We've finally re-cast the role of ELIZABETH in our short film "The Betty." Filling the role will be Meredith Adams. Meredith, as it turns out is the case for all actors in this movie, comes from REACT Actor's Studio. This isn't favoritism in any way. When we did any audition, it turned out 90% of the actors who were worth a damn came from my own school; which was pretty re-affirming. Meredith is pretty new to REACT, but she's very natural, comfortable in front of the camera, and a very nice fit for the part. If all goes well we'll be shooting the first scenes with her this weekend.
A Good Day at the Office
Well, all elements conspired to produce a good shoot today. The "dolly" wheels that Maggie talked about below are awesome. I have a problem with a lot of microbudget productions that rely on the "poor man's steadicam" to heavily, because it often looks like shit. I love moving the frame through space, but there's honestly a reason that steadicams cost thirty grand: shots on them don't look handheld! I'd much rather throw the camera up on sticks than run around with it if it's gonna be distracting to the audience. But these little wheels and Maggie's hardwood floors let us get a steadicam-like shot without looking like crap.
There were a couple of shots that felt food and I was anxious to check them out when I got home. One in particular was done so well that I'm at a quandry as to how it should be cut - or, rather, whether it should be. Take a look at the shots below. The continuous shot is really good and the danger of cutting it at all is disturbing the emotionality of the scene. The most important cut in the way the shot was conceived was the close-up shot of Archie (me) screaming at Oatmeal (Eric). So I did a sequence with a couple of close-up cuts in the beginning of the scene; but I didn't do any other cuts. The CU's at the other side of the room just didn't match the take and I feel no need to cut for cutting' sake. I am slightly torn between the continuous take and the scene with cuts at the beginning.
Anyhow, much credit and thanks go to everybody involved today. Everything clicked, it was a very easygoing shoot, and the results were awesome.
Archie's House
As you all know we're getting the ball rolling again on "The Betty". We got back to work last month and we're hoping to keep the momentum going throughout this month of September.
Today we assembled a small version of the crew and shot some footage of scenes taking place in Archie's house. We had a good day and by the time we wrapped we were very satisfied with what we accomplished.
I made sure to get a few production stills of the day, so here's a sneek peek at how we put things together.
Meet our new toy. We were fortunate to score this wheeling base for our camera tripod and it was beyond wonderful for the shoot today.
Two shots of Archie and Oatmeal thinking about their problem the best way they know how - with a case of beer.
Meet today's Set Supervisor. Maizy was gracious enough to let us take over her home for the shoot.
That's all I have for now. We'll continue to keep the sneek peeks going while we're shooting, so stay tuned for more.