This is Halloween!

There’s no better way to get in the Halloween spirit than filming a spooky music video for the ladies of So Sketch for their upcoming show at The Second City, “A Nightmare on Wells Street”.

This weekend, under the banner of E Leal Productions, I did just that.

For this music video shoot, we were essentially camera operators and our own grips. The writing and planning for the video was done by the ladies of So Sketch Comedy. We were just helping them bring their vision to life.

It was a long day. We were on set for 12 hours. There were a lot of extras and locations, and a lot of those locations needed to be used at night. This pretty much ensured that we would be out late. Everything was filmed successfully though. It was a good time.

Since most of my work over the last few years has been as a director and producer, it was a bit of a challenge to take a step back. I still somehow managed to smuggle some details and become a bit of a line producer though. I kept track of the storyboard and acted as an in-between for the director and camera operator.

At the moment, we’re hard at work on the edit. It’s coming along really well. We’ve almost got a completed draft that will be sent to the director for her opinions. I hope she likes it as much as we do!

Return to Sender: Prop Design

In the same way that set design became an important factor in the production of Return to Sender, prop design became pretty integral as well.

I think, for the most part, the set design played hand in hand with props, in the sense that the sets helped solidify character traits. There was a whole other level though that, again, was entirely new to me.

One of the props was a huge factor in the film, and it took a while to get it exactly right. There is a box in this film, and it plays a pretty big role. My initial idea was to make it look like a package that had traveled the world, but I could never get it to look right, and it never looked good on camera.

The box that we ended up utilizing in the film fell into my lap after Valentine’s Day. I received a gift in that box, and after a bit of thinking, we realized that it would provide the best look on camera. This box ended up changing some of the wording with the script. It worked with the overall theme I was going for though, so I think it was a beneficial change.

This box will be used in promotional materials, so I feel comfortable sharing a picture of  it here. This is the final design for the box which was used in the film.

The other element of prop design that came into play was with our detective characters. We spent a good deal of time trying to figure out if it was necessary to get holsters and weapons for our detectives, but when we examined the script and where the detectives would be positioned, this was deemed unnecessary.

Overall, we ended up going with a sort of clip on badge. We designed the actual badges ourselves. They were placed inside of plastic lanyard style holders. We used the head shots we received from our actors as the pictures on the badge. We figured they would be small enough to be passable.

I’m pretty happy with how they turned out for what the roles in this film were. If the roles were on screen for longer and in more than just a sitting position, then we probably would have gone more in depth.

As with my post about set design, I think my experience with props in this project will push me in the direction to pay more attention to these details in future productions. It’s about time really. I should be paying attention to things like this.

Return to Sender: Set Design

Before Return to Sender, I had never really put much attention into set design. I just used whatever was in the location I was lucky enough to get. If it wasn’t actively at the location, I didn’t really think about it.

For this particular film, that changed because one of my locations didn’t have any furniture. We had to make it seem like someone lived there. We had to start from scratch.

We hatched an idea that our main character was an artist, a painter to be specific. We had a lot of props at our disposal to work with this idea. We set up enough furniture to make our shots look lived in. We had canvases and paintings on the walls. I think we successfully made it look like a painter lived in the space we had to film in.

This character was curious and outgoing, so we used a lot of bright colors and creative ideas. We had the actress dress in red to work with this theme as well.

Our second location had more furniture already. We just had to cater it to our character. We didn’t want to overuse paintings on the walls again. We wanted to do something different that worked with the furniture and such. We ended up going with more neutral colors, photographs, and flowers.

This character was the more reserved of the two. If our lead character was the type to be the first one on the dance floor, this character was the type who needed to be coaxed out with her. I decided to make her a cat person with a photograph of my childhood cat. We had flowers around the set and a photograph of a beach. They were very subtle things, might not be very noticeable in the final cut, but the thought is there.

I think my favorite aspect of the set design that we chose to do was to add matching paintings. My production assistant Sarah Sofia Serrato and I had been to a painting class together in the past, so we both had different versions of the same painting of an owl with pumpkins. Sarah’s painting is in the background of one of the shots at the lead character’s house, and my version of the painting is in the supporting character’s house. We aren’t sure if anyone will really see it and make the connection, but we liked the thought behind it.

I’ll definitely be taking this experience with set design into future projects. Even if it doesn’t really show up completely within the shots of the film, it really helps solidify the character and their motivations. It created a mood on set. I liked that fact.

Of course, other elements that came into play with this project had to do with prop design. I’ll discuss those in another post.

Return to Sender: Shoot Day 2

On Sunday, March 18, 2018, we had our second day of shooting for my upcoming short film, Return to Sender. After our first shoot was so immensely successful, I was really looking forward to another day of filming.

At the first shoot, I felt that it took a bit for me to get back into the director’s chair, at least to sit there comfortably again. By the end of that first shoot, I had gotten the swing of things again. I was hoping that I’d still be ready to go for this second shoot as well. I think I can safely say that I did well.

This shoot had the same crew as before. I definitely had more actors to work with this time around though. I was working with three actors at this shoot. Two of these actors were playing minor detective roles. They clicked together very easily. I’m very happy with my casting choice for them. The other actress was playing my supporting character. She really embodied the role, just as I knew she would when she was cast.

We filmed the bulk of the story at our first shoot, so this time around was definitely much more simple. It was a smaller location, so there was less area to appropriately light. It was actually my own house, so there was less space that needed to be decorated. I mainly had to focus on empty wall space. I’ll talk more about set and prop design in another post.

It wasn’t as difficult as I thought it was going to be to direct three actors at once. Either I just got lucky or I was adequately prepared. In any case, I’m happy that it went well.

For this shoot, half of the day was spent finishing up the visuals for the end of the film. Once this was completed, the majority of the cast and crew were able to leave. Our supporting actress stuck around for a while longer in order to fill in some of the audio gaps from our first shoot. Despite it being her first time recording voiceover, she got the hang of it very quickly. She did a fantastic job.

It all went very smoothly. Everyone got along really well. There was lots of laughs. This made for a really great energy throughout the day. I think the food at craft services went over well. I almost wiped out and dropped the camera rig at one point while attempting a handheld shot that won’t even make the final cut, but I think it went well!

We’re officially in post production now. I can’t wait to see how this all turns out.

Return to Sender: Shoot Day 1

It finally happened. The first shoot day for my latest short film Return to Sender took place on Sunday, March 11. After holding auditions and weeks of planning, we were finally ready to go.

I needed to be on set at about 8:00am, so before that we needed to pack the car. Then, we had an hour commute to the shooting location. We got there early to begin setting up and make last minute decisions for set design. Luckily, we had a lot of this done days in advance so there wasn’t too much to do.

Crew time was 9:00am. This is when we started working to set up lights, balance the steady cam set up, put markers on the floor, get the boom pole ready. About 30 minutes before the cast arrived, we started setting up the craft services table.

10:00am was the talent call time. I was very glad that we had everything set up and ready to go before our actress arrived. It really saved a lot of time, and I think it made a good impression. It looked like we had our stuff together.

Overall, I think the shoot went really well. The actress we cast as our lead was just as impressive on the shoot day as she was at the audition. I’m really happy with the performance she gave.

There were some pretty tricky shots that we wanted to get for this part of the film. We had spent a lot of time leading up to the shoot practicing them, but they still required a lot of time on the day. These shots included a bit of gear. We had a steady cam rig, a slider, monopods for tighter spaces. I’m very grateful for all of the prep we did for those shots because it helped us be more prepared on the day. I’m always happy to be prepared.

I did end up making some decisions on the fly that diverged from my plans. I was a bit worried about how that would work out in the edit, but based on our rough edits after the fact, it all seems to be working out perfectly.

I’ll talk more about the editing process when we are officially in post production.

As for directing, this is the first time I’ve been in the director’s chair since we filmed 3:03 in 2016. It definitely took me some time to get back in the swing of it. There were a lot of mistakes I made at the beginning of the shoot day that I find pretty embarrassing. By the end of the day though, I think I was good. I think I was back to normal.

Hopefully I’ll still be ready to go for the next shoot. This shoot will be on Sunday, March 18. The upcoming shoot will be in a smaller location with three actors instead of one. It will be a different experience for me. I hope it goes well.

Reborn is Complete?

I’ve had this blog for several years now, but I’m unsure if I’ve ever written about Reborn.

Way back in the fall of 2011, I showed up to a “Movie Makers Club” meeting at my community college, and a group of people was attempting to make a music video. I didn’t know much about it, so I asked how I could help. I got a pretty simple job at first. They wanted me to press play on the song that the video was for so they could keep time.

During this simple job, I gave some insight that helped solve one of the problems they were running into. This led to the directors bringing me on to do some camera work for the last parts of the video. You can view said video below.

Apparently I made a good impression during this time because I was soon brought into the bigger project that the music video was a precursor to. The project was called Reborn, and it centered around a woman named Luna who discovers the hidden truth about her own dark past. In the beginning, it was meant to be a pilot episode for a television series.

Since most of the people who were working on Reborn were just starting out (most of us were all pursuing the same degree at the community college), we didn’t have a lot of the experience required to know what decisions were good or which decisions weren’t so good. The writers got excited and turned the pilot episode into a 6 episode story arc. The rest of the crew was just as excited at the prospect of doing such a cool thing!

In due time though, reality set in. It’s hard to take on such a big project at any time, but it was even more difficult when everyone was a full time student, some with additional jobs on top of that, and our participation in Reborn was on a volunteer basis. When you mix those type of schedules with the time constraints of filming and locations, it doesn’t take long to realize that you might have to pull back a bit.

We filmed pretty much the entirety of episode one before we realized we were going to have to make some cuts. The writers condensed the 6 episode arc back down into an extended pilot, so they could get to the actual point of the story they were trying to tell. Unfortunately, this ended up cutting some characters, making some filmed scenes unnecessary, and creating some plot holes.

I started off as a lead camera operator for the project, but as the changes continued to happen, I ended up getting more responsibility. Reborn was the first project that I started storyboarding for, and this process has continued on to every one of my projects since. At some shoots, I had to step up as an assistant director or a director of photography. Many of the shoots were very ambitious, especially for the beginners that we were.

I can honestly say that I learned from both Reborn‘s successes and it’s failures. Being a part of this project has shaped my own career in countless ways.

We finished principle photography on Reborn in 2013. This brought us into post production, and that was the next hurdle to cross. By this point, I was heavily involved with E Leal Productions, and both Erik Leal and I took on the editing of the project.

We were still working and going to school, and there were a lot of issues that needed to be dealt with in editing, so it wasn’t a fast or easy task. I believe we finished piecing the story together sometime in early 2014. At this time, I made and released a teaser trailer. I definitely acted on that far too early. There was still a significant amount of work to be done. You can see that teaser trailer below.

We sent the final edit out for original music in 2014. During this time, there were a lot of issues. Nothing ended up getting done with the project for almost two years. There was some discussion by producers about canning the project, and that was shot down. Too much time, money, and effort had been put into the project over the years for it to just be dropped like that.

In 2016, the task of creating the original score was given to Ryan Cwiklik, who composed the music for my short films Lights and ms and me. He was able to fit time in his schedule to supply music for Reborn, and on the first day of 2017, he finished it. This gave E Leal Productions a good push in the right direction to finish the sound mixing, foley work, and color correction. In just over a week, everything was finished.

At this point, we’re just still reeling that after so many years, Reborn is finally done. A concept that was first thought of in 2011, will, at last, be shown in 2017. We contacted the producers of the project to share the good news and got promotions underway, all while planning a special cast and crew screening for all those involved.

With this blog post, it will become official that Reborn is finally complete. Check out the trailer below!

Xcelerate 2016: Week 4

This post took a bit longer to write than all of the other weeks of Xcelerate 2016, and this was because, for me, it extended a little bit further. I just finished a second week of Lights, Camera, Action! While the class ended this past Friday, it continued somewhat through the weekend, and into the following week.

The reason for this extension was editing. Due to the new format for the class, which I’ll explain next, I just felt that it would be easier for me to edit the film for the kids in my group.

I mentioned briefly in a previous post about how we’d been planning on changing up the format of the class. In previous years, we’d stuck with a pre-made story called “The Secret of the Pirate’s Treasure.” On the first day of class, we’d familiarize the kids with the story, and then we’d start filming on Tuesday. The rest of the week would be filming that particular story, and the final film would need to be finished by that Friday.

We had two weeks of Lights, Camera, Action during Xcelerate 2016, and both of them were slightly different. In the first week, we still filmed the pirate story, but we were able to eliminate the viewing on Friday, which gave us more time to film the story. It wasn’t as rushed. During the second week, this week, we changed the format entirely.

In this past week, rather than work with a pre-made story, the kids were able to write their own. We just gave them a genre! On Monday, we discussed some aspects of filmmaking, showed them the cameras, and did an exercise where they put a short story together. On Tuesday, they formulated the story for the movie they would make throughout the rest of the week, including storyboarding which I loved to do with the kids. Then Wednesday through Friday, we filmed their story!

There were 8 students in the class this week, so we split into two groups. I took one, and another instructor took the other. I don’t know much about how the other group’s week went, but I know that the students in my group got to get a lot of hands on experience. As the week progressed, students were able to run the camera, operate the boom mic, help with direction. It was great! I really felt like I was able to teach them something.

Unfortunately, we ran into some technical difficulties on the first day of filming, and we ran into situational difficulties on the second day, so it took us a bit longer to finish than I would have anticipated. If we had finished earlier, the kids would have gotten a more hands on approach to editing as well. When we finished on Friday, I was only able to briefly show them the editing program and talk a little about avoiding jump cuts and choosing the best shot to tell the story.

Since I didn’t know anything about what the other group did, it’s safe to assume the other group didn’t know much about what my group did either. This is why I asked if I could take the edit home and do it myself. I figured it would be easier for the other instructors involved because they were teaching the class on top of their regular day jobs at the college. We had over 10gb of footage to sift through, and even with the guide I made, it would have been a chore to navigate.

I may have gone a bit above and beyond on my edit, but I was just really excited. The kids put so much effort into the film, and I wanted to give them something to be proud of. As I write this, I’m still making the finishing touches, and I’ll be taking it back to the college this week.

There are definitely still changes that need to be made to this format of the class, but I think this is a good idea that we should continue to run with. I’ll probably make a round up post of the films from all the weeks soon since this is the first year they’re all going to be on YouTube!

Catharsis: Production

I previously wrote about the pre-production on Catharsis, a short film project I’m producing for Jason Rugg. The production for this film began on April 29th, and it continued into April 30th.

There were several issues in the pre-production process which led to a lot of last minute script changes, we worked our way through these changes as best as we could on the shoot day, but it did prove to be difficult at times because plans were changing on the fly.

One of the biggest aspects of this short film has always been that the majority of it is a club scene. When doing a club scene, you need a decent amount of extras. After having a hard time having people commit to coming out, we finally got 8-10 extras for the scene. This is less than we were hoping for, but we made due. The director stuck with a lot of close ups, but it will definitely be important to be mindful of how often we show the extras in the final edit.

On the bigger production day, we had Scott Mackay on set. Filming his portions of the film didn’t take very long, but he was fun to have while he was there. We filmed some behind the scenes interviews with him that may eventually be used. His parts were filmed before any of the extras showed up.

Both of these scenarios were filmed on Saturday, April 30th. This was the bigger day of production with craft services and extras and such. Production actually started on April 29th though. On that day, we met with the main actress and filmed the scenes where she is alone, as well as her preliminary voiceover.

There are still some shots that we need to pick up, and if anything comes up in the edit, that will have to be addressed as well. I’ll be writing about the post-production process soon, but for now I’ll tell you, I’m really liking how Catharsis is turning out.

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!

Rooty: 3/4/16 Shoot

This was the day.

This was the day that we finished the bulk of principle photography for Rooty.

Ever since we planned the original production schedule, we had hoped to end the production process with the final scene of the film. Despite having multiple setbacks and many scenes rescheduled, we were able to keep this part of the plan, and I really feel like we benefitted from it.

The final scene is both sad and hopeful. It’s a perfectly melancholic end for a short film that started in a similar way. In many ways, this tone mirrored the thoughts of the cast and crew who were present. We were happy to have accomplished such an undertaking, but we were sad at the same time.

I will admit that we got off to a rough start. It was a cold day, and we were shooting outside again. We were dealing with a very bright sun, and the clouds weren’t cooperating. This was making shots appear overblown or casting harsh shadows across the actors’ faces. On top of that, we had a plethora of pedestrians on the bike trail where we were filming. Some of them stopped to stare, while others carried on with their business as usual.

The reason that we picked this particular area for filming was because it appeared to be a wooded area. The director had this location in his head when he wrote the script, so I’m glad we were able to film there. We had to make some sacrifices because of the direction of the sunlight, but overall, I think it looks pretty good.

We did have to set apart some time at the start of the shoot to clear a path so that our actors weren’t stepping over uneven brush and debris.

Now that principle photography is completed, we’ll be moving on to the post production phase and making way for promotions. We’ve already been brainstorming potential ideas for a poster image for the film, and as I mentioned last week, the edit is already under way. I won’t be updating as frequently during this phase of production because there won’t be as many new things to say.

When a substantial amount of the edit is done, or when the edit is entirely done, I’ll have an update on that. Also, when a promotional poster is finished, I’ll most likely be updating with that as well. You won’t be hearing as much from me on the topic, but know that I’m still looking forward to the end results.