3:03 – Production

On April 24, 2016, we finally got around to principle photography on my new short film project, 3:03. We had planned extensively for the shoot, including a plethora of test shots and lighting tests. When the day finally came, we felt very prepared. The day was a success overall.

Our call time was at 3:00, and we gave ourselves an hour of prep time before we planned to start filming at 4:00. Once our actress had successfully gotten into character and our camera was set up, we started shooting (five minutes ahead of schedule).

The first shot that we planned to do would be the most difficult. It was a stabilized shot that followed our actress as she walked from the bedroom to the kitchen, and then to the door. This was the shot that we had practiced on for weeks, and all of that practice really paid off. We had scheduled about 30 minutes to get the shot the way that we wanted, but we got several takes that fit our standards in 15. This set a good precedent for the rest of the shoot.

This was also the first time that we had been able to utilize our Glide Gear stabilizer on a project. It was a big purchase that was made over a year ago, so it was nice to finally put it to good use.

Since our planning was so extensive, we flew through the next several shots fairly quickly. These were a lot of close ups in a confined area, but we had done test shots to prepare and made notes of what lenses we would need, so we didn’t have any problems on the day.

In retrospect, we did face a problem while filming these shots, but it was entirely my fault. Despite having made detailed plans, I thought of a new idea on the shoot day, so I tweaked my plan. I set myself too far away from the talent and the camera operator, so I didn’t see a potential problem that we would run into for the edit. One of the benefits of my new camera is that I can see the shot being captured from my iPad screen, so I don’t have to be right next to the camera operator to see the preview screen. I now know, for future reference, that I need to stay near the talent at all times. It doesn’t matter if I have a preview in my hands, there’s still an aspect of being present that I lose when I’m too distant.

After breaking for lunch, we began set up in the bedroom. The shots we were capturing in this location were decently easy, but we were going to be ending on a difficult note. The last shot was an overhead view of the main actress while she was lying down. Luckily, with all of the time we had saved on previous shots, we didn’t fall behind schedule while setting up the contraption that would eventually give us one of the more stunning shots of the project. It took 40 minutes and several attempts to get the set up correct, and it was a pretty precarious situation, but I think it turned out really well.

Some of the more interesting shots to film will have to be kept a secret for now. No spoilers. I will say that I was worried about the reactions I would get from any passers by. We made several attempts to get these shots exactly how we wanted them, and all of these attempts were made (very quietly) in the hours when our neighbors would be sleeping so as not to create a disturbance. I hope that viewers enjoy them.

For the competition that we’re planning on submitting this project to, we’re required to have a BTS (Behind the Scenes) video. Jason Rugg was wonderful enough to both film and photograph the production process for our behind the scenes needs. He also was a fantastic asset to have on set as we struggled with that overhead contraption I mentioned. I’ll be working on the BTS video soon, and it will be shared here eventually.

It was also incredibly nice to be working with Sarah Sofia Serrato again. There’s an aspect to her performance that really sells the type of stories I’m trying to tell. Her imagination adds a lot of great things to my stories to provide an excellent performance that brings the audience along for the ride. I was very lucky to have her for 3:03.

Stay tuned for updates on the post production of this short film project!

New Camera – C100 Mark II

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how I was looking into updating my camera. Basically, after seeing my film Lights at the Geneva Film Festival, I realized it was time to update from my Canon T3i. I’d been using that camera for my films since 2012, and it was about time for me to upgrade.

About a week ago, I made the official announcement on my Facebook that I had purchased the Canon C100 Mark II. It was expensive. I got it on sale, but it was definitely a huge price increase from the camera I had been using. I got my T3i for $800. I got the C100 on sale for $4500. Big difference. I’m still reeling from that purchase.

Once the money left my account, I was better able to adjust to having this new, much more fancy camera. I’m not really the tech type, so I won’t lie, my more tech friends have been looking at the more tech details and then relaying them back to me. Those who know me know that I’m much more of a creative type. I can understand the functionality of a camera and how all the tech terms are supposed to work, but I can be easily overloaded with all the jargon.

Taking a picture of the new camera with the old camera.

There are definitely a lot of benefits to this camera that I’ve been seeing since we unboxed it. The viewfinder is fabulous. I’ve never been able to really enjoy using a viewfinder because of my eyesight. I’ve always relied on the preview screens, but the viewfinder on the C100 Mark II is pretty great. Mostly, it’s big. I like that a lot. The mobility of the preview screen is a significant improvement on the Mark I that I was originally looking at. I’m glad I didn’t go with the Mark I. Since it’s more of a video camera than the DSLR I’ve been used to working with, it also has a lot more of the controls that are known to be on video cameras. It’s a really good mix between a DSLR and a video camera, and that works really well for me at this time.

We’ve been doing a lot of test shots with the C100 for my upcoming short film project. It’s called 3:03, and I’ll be posting about that soon. Since 3:03 is intended to be another film shot at night, we were recently testing the camera’s low light ability. While it isn’t perfect in low light, my new camera completely obliterates my old camera in the dark. I’m definitely impressed.

It’s still not the absolute best camera in the industry. There’s no way I could afford that. It’s definitely a big improvement for me and my work though, so I’m looking forward to working with it on my upcoming projects.

Updating My Camera

I’ve come a long way in terms of equipment used for filming my projects. I started with a Flip camera when I was doing work on my own. Toward the end of that, I got a small JVC camcorder, which I used to film my portion of Life in a Day.

When I started doing work on a larger scale, I bought my first professional camera, and I’ve been using it since that point in 2012. I purchased my Canon T3i. I’ve used that camera for both photography and film projects for the last four years. It’s served me well. I filmed the majority of Lights with the T3i, and that film recently made it into the Geneva Film Festival.

Attending that festival really opened my eyes to several things about my work. The first thing I realized is that my stories actually interest people. My work is relevant, and I should continue my endeavors to make films. The second thing I realized is that, while my stories do affect people, I need to update my equipment.

In the four years that I’ve had the T3i, times have changed. Cameras have updated. My T3i can no longer keep up with my direct competition. In order for my films to be seen as professional, I need a newer camera, preferably one that is more centric to cinema. My T3i has always been more of a photography camera that I utilized for film.

I’ve been looking at the Canon C100 as the camera I would like to update to. It has the same sort of interface as what I’ve grown accustomed to, but it is far more specialized for narrative film. It’s kind of the perfect blend of what I would need a film camera for actually. One of my biggest upsets about my T3i has been the time limit that I can film. It makes it nearly impossible to cover weddings and events because the T3i can only film for 7-12 minutes at a time. The C100 doesn’t have this problem.

The C100 provides me with a camera that I can use for both event coverage and narrative film. This definitely helps me out. I’m specifically looking at the C100 Mark II because it also gives me an accessible viewfinder, a screen that can be maneuvered much easier, and the option for continuous auto focus. All of these aspects benefit me since I don’t have the best eyesight.

I’m looking to update to this camera within the next couple of weeks. When I do update, I’ll be sharing my thoughts on the camera, and I’ll most likely utilize it for my next project. It will be rather expensive, normally retailing at $5500. Wish me luck. I will need it.

User Error

I had a bad day.

I messed up.

I honestly don’t know what I was thinking.

Yesterday, a friend of mine asked me to come along with him on a shoot for a new reality show. I agreed, of course. I brought along my own camera because I wanted to make sure I was comfortable on the equipment I was working with. We shot at locations which were close by my home, so I was comfortable with the area. I clicked with most of the people there. It was a bit more than decent.

The whole time I was at the shoot, I was completely taken aback by how dark my shots were. It didn’t make any sense to me. I’ve used my camera indoors before. Why was it so dark now? I was bothered by it throughout the whole day, and I knew that I didn’t get as many good shots to help out as I should have. It didn’t make any sense to me at all, and I continued thinking about it throughout the rest of the day.

In the evening, it finally went off like a firework in my head. I had completely forgotten about ISO! That was the source of my problem, and it was so simple. I still can’t believe it.

At first, I thought that I had confused how ISO and aperture functioned. If you aren’t aware, in a basic sense, you can brighten your shot by lowering the aperture and raising the ISO. They help with the same problem, but they function differently in that way. At first I thought that I had confused them by thinking they functioned in the same way.

I thought about it even further, and even that doesn’t make sense. When we first began filming, we were outside in the sun, and I had checked my ISO to see if I could do anything with it to make the scene less bright. Upon checking it, I saw that the ISO was already at its lowest setting, so nothing could be done at the time. The problem is that, for some reason, I maintained that thought process throughout the rest of the day.

“Nothing can be done with the ISO,” my brain continued to think as we moved from outside to inside, and my camera remained at the darkest ISO setting.

It really pains me that I would make such a simple, but crucial mistake like that. If I had only thought to check the ISO again while inside, I wouldn’t have had any problems. Instead, I wasn’t able to capture much footage indoors, and the footage that I could capture is pretty dark. I wouldn’t be surprised if I wasn’t asked back to help again, and I wouldn’t blame them for not including me. I messed up, big time.

It’s incredibly bothersome. For one, I’m so embarrassed that at this point in my life and career, I would have made that type of mistake. I have no idea what was going through my mind yesterday to make such a simple mistake so possible. In addition, I feel terrible that I let my friend down. He asked me to help him out, and I completely failed at that.

If it isn’t painfully obvious, I’m still pretty messed up by it. I know I have to get over it, and move on to the next thing, but I’m finding that pretty hard to do right now.

ms and me: Production

I’m not new to production. I’ve done quite a few. I’ve made a film that took 8 months to create, and I’ve made a film that took 3 days. What I’ve never had to deal with before is having to make a 10-15 minute short film in just over a week.

Many people reading this will probably think that this is my fault, but let me tell you, this quick deadline has nothing to do with procrastination. It was just planned in the syllabus this way. I’m sure I wouldn’t have too much of a problem with this deadline if I had absolutely nothing else to do, no other responsibilities of any kind. Unfortunately, that’s just not how it is.

That’s the situation I’m in with ms and me right now. I feel like I have a really solid script. I have a wonderful actress who is doing a wonderful job conveying the emotions I’m looking for. This film has the potential to be really good. I’m just worried that this deadline, when paired with everything else on my plate right now, is going to put a massive damper on it.

Production for ms and me started this past Sunday, April 5th. I was free. My actress was free. My camera guy was free. Everything seemed like it was going to go great. I would finish filming it that day (since it’s decently simple), and I’d be able to jump into the edit and have plenty of time to finish it in time. I had completely forgotten, of course, that Sunday, April 5th was Easter Sunday. Locations were closed. Last minute parties and brunches were created. A second shoot date was necessary.

Unfortunately (You’ll find that this word will crop up a lot in this post), due to my schedule and my camera guy’s schedule, the next available shoot day wouldn’t be until the following weekend. This worked fine for my actress. I’m confident that we’ll have everything filmed that day. My problem here arrises with the time that I’m leaving myself to complete a satisfactory edit before the due date. The film is due Monday night, April 13th. I’ll finish shooting Saturday April 11th. I will be working at a different job all day Sunday the 12th, and I have other responsibilities on Monday April 13th. When can I edit?

There will most likely be at least one all-nighter involved. I’ve pretty much resolved myself to the fact that I will most likely not have the music that I want. I fear that I’ll be handing in an unfinished product. This is even more unfortunate when I consider that this will technically be my first film entered in a film festival. (I was entered by default because of the course syllabus)

It’s all just very overwhelming. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry about it. Things just didn’t work out the way I was hoping they would.

On a more positive note, the production is going very well when you forget about the deadline. As I mentioned, the actress in the film is phenomenal. She is just amazing. I really have no words. I’m very happy that she agreed to be in this film with me. I have an amazing production assistant who is helping me with locations, set designs, costumes and assorted tasks. She is brilliant. My camera guy and I have figured out a system to minimize communication problems due to visual differences. Overall, the actual production is going smoothly, almost too smoothly which is a scary thought. I hope I didn’t just jinx myself.

Due to the quick turnaround, I may not have time to make another post regarding the production or post-production of this film. We’ll see how that goes though.

Lights: Sixth Shoot

Saturday, February 7th 2015 was the sixth shoot of the short film, Lights. I’m happy to say that we finished everything that was scheduled. Although, it did take much longer than I had anticipated that it would.

We had three scenes on the schedule, and we met at 7:00pm. All the scenes were at night, and they were all outside. I was maybe expecting us to be done by 2:00am, but it took significantly longer than I had expected. We didn’t finish shooting until around 4:30am. I am incredibly thankful for my cast and crew for sticking with me through this.

The problem, while not necessarily a problem, was that the scenes were very heavy with special effects in post, so we had to make sure that the shots were going to work in post. This took considerably longer in order to plan out the shots accordingly. That’s where all the time went.

Either way, the scenes did get finished. I’m really happy with how they turned out, at least from what I saw through the camera. Whether the edits work out the way I wanted will be a whole different journey.

It was definitely a bittersweet thing. This shoot was the end of the bulk of the film. It was the last shoot where our main actress was needed. She’s been wonderful.

Images curtesy of our lead actress’s twitter.

Of course, I’m not entirely done with production. I still have pick ups of my role to complete for the final scene, as well as some transitional stuff and some cutaways. I won’t really know the extent of those until I make my way into the edit.

As far as schedule goes, my initial goal was to be done with production by February 16th. I have met that goal, and it looks like I’ll be a bit ahead of it. My next goal will be to finish the basic edit by March 2nd.

Things are coming together for Lights, and just in time for everything else to start.

Lights: Third Shoot

It’s been a few days since the third shoot for Lights took place. I made a post earlier about some of the events leading up to the shoot, and I alluded to some problems.

The third shoot was an incredibly long day. I was awake for about 24 hours, and we ended up calling it quits for the night because everyone was so exhausted. We completed 5 scenes, but fell behind on schedule again. Lighting is still proving to be a really large undertaking for my crew, and this sets us back on schedule. That’s what happens when you set most of your movie at night though.

We started off the morning at 6am. There was a scene that was set at sunrise, and for that day the sun rose at 7:11am. Shooting at sunrise is incredibly interesting. We were moving so fast. I have really never seen a production move about so quickly. Once the light of the sun started showing up, there was really no going back. If we missed it, we couldn’t try again. We had to film some of the first shots for that scene over again because the light had changed so dramatically, but we were able to get everything accomplished. I think it’s going to look great.

Our next order of business was to head out to the college campus where I needed to film the next three scenes. Everything started out decently. I had to step into an acting role of course which I felt made things very difficult. It takes so much time to act in a scene and then review the footage to see if it went the way you wanted it to. My wonderful extras were there, and one of them was even able to help with the production. The sun was completely risen now, so he was able to help out with reflectors. That was a massive help.

The scene after that though is when I encountered problems. I had originally intended for my scene to be shot in a cafeteria setting, but every door to that building was locked. This was pretty peculiar to me since I usually recall that building being open.  Since we couldn’t get into that location, we had to find another, so we ended up filming in an ordinary building’s lounge area.

This building was much more confined than what I was intending to work with, so my extras weren’t as necessary. In order to utilize them, we set up a tracking shot to show the scene, but then I sent them on their way. This was probably a good thing because if I had been in my original setting, I would have found myself in a difficult situation. I only had my extras until 12:30, but it took us until 1:30 to finish the dialogue in the scene.

After finishing that scene, we broke for lunch and resumed around the time the sun was starting to set. We went back to the campus and filmed that scene, which I felt went off without any problems. We grabbed some driving b-roll on our way back to the next location, and then we had a decision to make.

I knew at this point that we were going to be unable to film every scene that I had planned to shoot that day. There were 5-6 scenes left on the to-do list for the day, and it was 7pm. It had taken us 13 hours to get through 4 scenes, so I knew the full workload that I wanted to get done was not possible.

We decided to move on to scene 20. Overall, the production of this scene went over smoothly, but we did have some hiccups at the beginning. It had been a long day. We were all exhausted. I know I was getting confused easily. There was some confusion over the pacing, continuity and the overall story which needed to be cleared up. The temperature had dropped drastically, and in my determination to finish things, I ignored the signs of frost bite that I was apparently getting. Production halted until I put on more items of clothing. Once we got past that, the scene was a nice way to end a really long day. It was somewhat fun.

I got to drive fast.

Since we did fall behind schedule, I have put another make-up shoot on the calendar. Hopefully we will be able to wrap up principle photography this coming weekend. If not, filming will definitely be completed by the first week of February.

Lights: Second Shoot

Last night, I held a make up shoot for the scenes that I was unable to capture during the first scheduled shoot day. It was a relatively small work load, but that doesn’t mean that it was a short time spent filming.

The three scenes that needed to be finished were all in doors, within the same room. Lighting proved to be the most time consuming element. This was partially due to the art of lighting itself. It’s not something that can happen and look nice with the snap of a finger. It was also partially due to there being little to no help present for the shoot.

It really was incredibly small. My lead actress, main camera and myself were the only people present. This worked well for the tight quarters we were in, but it was pretty stressful on my camera operator who found himself running camera and setting up the lights while I directed the actress and gave him direction to follow the storyboard. Tensions ran pretty high at a few points and luckily no one got into any serious arguments.

While the shoot did run a little later than I was expecting it to, I’m happy to say that we finished everything I set out to accomplish. Lights is officially back on schedule.

Lights: First Shoot

As I mentioned in a previous post, filming for Lights started on Saturday, January 17th. While there were some difficult decisions that had to be made, filming did begin, and that is what this post will be about.

Since my secondary actress was gracious enough to step into the lead role of the film, we were still able to get some scenes done that I had planned. We weren’t able to do all of them, however, because she hadn’t come to the shoot prepared to be the lead character. She didn’t have any costumes with her, and she wasn’t familiar with any of the lines. For this reason, we had to cut most of what I had planned to film that evening.

We mainly focused on some found footage driving shots because the found footage would be needed for the editing scenes to be filmed later. We also finished scene 1 in its entirety since it’s a stand alone scene that isn’t in the same day as any other scene in the film.

The following four photos are from the set while shooting scene 1.

I have edited scene 1 already, and it sits at about 1 minute and 30 seconds. Since it wasn’t an intensive action scene and there was no dialogue exchange, I think it’s safe to say that the entire film will sit somewhere between 20-30 minutes. I still hesitate to give an exact time.

My effects editor has already worked with scene 1, and he has inserted the effects that need to be done. He’s very proud of it, and I’m extremely happy with it as well. Seeing the effects on screen (although they’re still a surprise for all of you) really raised my confidence in the overall quality that Lights will have.

I have a faculty advisor meeting still scheduled for Thursday where I will update him on my progress, as well as my setbacks. There is a make-up shoot scheduled for Thursday evening to finish what we couldn’t film over the weekend and get us back on schedule.

Glide Gear

I spent the day with E Leal Productions filming a test video with a “Glide Gear” slider. We borrowed the gear from a colleague at BATV, and the goal of the day was to see how our company could benefit from a sliding track device. We were originally only going to have a small clip, but we had a bit of fun with it and ended up created a longer short video.

We have some fun shots of cats that seem to be keeping quite a few people engaged.

Overall, it really improved the production value of our shots, although if we were to purchase one for our own use, it would probably be in a different style. We would consider buying one that was a little more in cost or making one ourselves.