This weekend the HateCity Pictures crew was lucky enough to be invited to participate in Kansas City Renaissance Festival's Media and VIP Ticket Holder preview party. And let me tell you, Kansas City really knows how to put out a warm welcome!
When we woke up at 5:00am Friday morning to drive to Kansas City, none of us really knew what to expect for this preview as we were also scheduled to film rehearsals the next day. We thought there might be a show or two and opportunities to interview cast. When we arrived at the Faire Grounds, we were pleasantly surprised that this preview was less dress rehearsal and more social party complete with complimentary drinks and food. We had a great time talking with people there at the preview event. Glenn met several of the Faire workers over beers at the pub and was able to set up interviews for when we return for the actual Faire. And we all got to enjoy a couple of the stage acts performing.
The sunset over the faire grounds was simply spectacular.
Saturday morning we were up at 5:00am again so we could head out to Captain Sin's home and document her transformation process. We shot a lot of great footage of Captain Sin as well as the people around her at the faire grounds.
Once we had to leave Captain Sin, we found several other groups rehearsing.
This was an interesting choral group comprised of various cast members. We only heard a couple of their songs, but I'm anxious to hear the whole set as they were quite good.
And this was the Yeoman Bodyguard of the Yeoman Warders. They are a military reenactment group comprised of ex-military, police, and firefighters. They were a lot of fun to watch practice. Later we caught them doing their pole arm drills. This group is particularly unique to this faire. They will be joining the Muskogee Faire next year, but until now have only participated in the Kansas City Renaissance Festival.
So far we are very pleased with the footage we were able to put together at the Kansas City Renaissance Festival. We were also very thankful for the warm welcome we received. We are all very excited to get back out to this faire sometime in September so we can film the cast in action with patrons. Until then, we'll be busy cataloging footage.
Kansas City Renaissance Festival Preview
Three Nos
Saturday afternoon was spent on the set of a new project. This time we filmed a Viral Video piece called Three Nos written by Glenn Bailey and Elizabeth Owens. The piece was directed by Glenn Bailey and lensed by Chris Durham as Director of Photography. Cafe Rembrandt in Dallas graciously opened their doors for us so we could film in their bar area. And I really do mean Graciously because the owner who opened the bar for us Saturday morning also closed the bar the night before. So when you all see this final product, please do us a favor and comment to the fine folks at Cafe Rembrandt on how beautiful their bar is. They have fantastic food there. Really.
The usual suspects were in attendance for our crew plus we added a few more folk whom I had previously not worked with. It was nice to meet some new faces and I must say that we all worked rather well together. I, for one, look forward to collaborating more with these crew members.
Below is a snapshot sneak peek at our two actors in Three Nos, Marty & Jae. They look like they were having a good time before we started actually filming.
For this particular location, we had the luxury of having overhead balconies so we were allowed to get a little creative with our lighting arrangements.
We also had a small amount of Sound FX for this production. I think about half of us on crew had laptops of some form or fashion out doing various work for the shoot. I used mine to keep track of scenes; Glenn's was used for Sound FX; and various other people had theirs ready for backups and we were almost All loading production photos and video to share with the world. I honestly don't know what people did on set before laptops. They really are just about a necessity these days.
Three Nos was shot with a new camera for our crew. Previously, we had been shooting actual film on Chris Durham's Canon XL2. And while the Canon has been great, who can resist a bigger, better, shinier piece of equipment? Below is what Chris had to say about this new camera set up we borrowed for Three Nos.
"Originally we intended to use Chris Owen's Sony HVR-Z5U. It's a great camera and I'm shooting his upcoming short "The Purse" on it. I've been doing everything I can to use it and kick the tires on it. We did tests a few weeks ago and it looked great. Then I came across an opportunity to use a Letus 35mm lens adapter, provided by Michael Owens. We intend to use one on "The Purse" so of course I jumped at the chance. Unfortunately, when we got on set we found that we didn't have everything we needed to connect the Z5U and Letus correctly. Michael came prepared though and had one of his Panasonic AG-HVX200s with him that was already set up for the adapter. We lost resolution going to the HVX, but didn't see that as a big deal because the final delivery for this project is web, and possibly some standard def DVD for promotional purposes. Of greater concern was the fact that the Z5U has much better low-light performance than the HVX; so where our original tests only required two light in addition to the practicals, we ended up having to throw a lot more light at it. Our total light on the shoot, originally planned at 750-850 watts, ended up being 4,250 watts. We really wouldn't have been able to pull this off without Michael and his gear."
And here is a sneak peek at what the camera captured. These are actual screen grabs from the footage shot on Saturday.
I think the entire crew was rather pleased with how everything turned out on Saturday. The planets must have aligned in or favor or something.
Currently, Three Nos is in editing. Keep watching this blog and www.hatecitypictures.com for its release.
New player in town
This weekend was dedicated to a new character, Tommy. I don't wanna give anything away about the character or the plot, so I'll just make with a quick cut to the photo teaser:
This weekend also made use of interesting props. Props which we had searched high and low for and found only one. Props which used to be in such abundance we took for granted that we'd find one. And thus a bit of a script change was necessary. Below is a photo of said endangered prop.
Even as my cell phone sits next to my keyboard, I am still shocked at the absence of the payphones in a city. Where once fathers made sure their daughters kept a quarter in their shoe for emergency calls home, now cell phones exist even in the hands of the middle school set. Where once was a haven for untraceable nefarious calls, is now a necessity to re-write the goings on of criminal activity for the low budget filmmakers - us. The result actually did turn out pretty cool, though. It's funny how boundaries will turn out a better alternative than you would have ever thought about prior to said boundary.
More of Archie's place
Qelsi focuses on her scene...
as our director, Chris Durham focuses on the shot.
Meredith and Eric run through their lines before we begin shooting.
And just so we're sure, What day is it Glenn???
It's Cowboys Game Day!!!!!!!
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.