This is not part of the movie. This is just an outtake I used as an excuse to procrastinate.
April 7, 2010
In post-production, I realize I left out a lot of production photos. They can fill in for my lack of blogging.
February 25, 2010
Feels so good to be almost done filming my first feature. We have two more sizable scenes left, and then a few smaller shots that we’ll probably take a break before grabbing. Hopefully I’ll start editing soon, but I feel good about the footage we’ve gotten. This will at least be a film I enjoy.
It feels completely different wearing the writer/director hat than it does to be a cinematographer, a gaffer, an actor, etc. Everything is up to me for the final say. And having so many jobs on this film is overwhelming, but that’s fine. It should be a challenge. This is something I’ve almost conquered. It’ll be half a year or so before I find out if other people like it, but no one can take this accomplishment from me.
When I decided to make this film back in May or June, I really didn’t believe I would follow through and shoot it. I always expected I would get far and back out right before we would actually begin shooting.
Fuck laziness.
The Weather Outside is Weather
February 12, 2010
Pretty sure we’re only two weekends from wrapping the film, but the weather is stretching it out. 100% chance that it will snow tonight—I had already canceled tonight’s shoot yesterday—and now it’s looking like there could be four to six inches of snow. This weekend was supposed to be full of exterior shots, so…
Fuck. It only snows on the weekends. If somehow this snow doesn’t stick and is gone by tomorrow, we’ll be better off. But I don’t see that happening.
I want to get this done. We’re so close, and I’m more than ready to jump in to post-production. I guess this just gives me more time to re-write the scenes we were going to shoot.
Trapped in the Closet
February 7, 2010
Chris came up with a joke today, probably a reference to me — Q: “Why do you not want to share a blanket with a director?” A: “Because he always gets too much coverage.”
Re-shot the twelve pages we shot before, this time with Chris. Already knew what I wanted (and what I had over shot before) so it went a little bit quicker this time. Felt really weird shooting the same lines with a different actor, but it all played out nicely. I’d love to film fake footage with different actors (sometimes way different) all playing Dylan to cut into a montage. Would probably only amuse me, but that’s fine.
I’ve been finding and hitting the limitations of shooting with multiple cameras pretty hard the past couple times we’ve shot. It really is amazing, and it does speed up the process tremendously… but I have to sacrifice framing and lighting sometimes to hide cameras in smaller areas. And I can only watch the footage from one camera while we shoot, trusting whoever is manning the other camera(s). A couple times I’ve decided to scrap two cameras for one so that I can tweak lighting or focus on smaller elements; I think I’ll probably plan my next feature to shoot at least half single camera. And a new goal is to make a smoother dolly by the end of the summer.
Saturday we shot the interior shots of the funeral parlor for the wake, with about fifteen extras dressed up around a coffin. I need to get better at working with extras—I get anxious and rush a bit when there winds up being more people. It just gets so loud between takes that I realize now I should probably pretend we’re still shooting when we make small tweaks between shots. I’m sure it will help.
We shot a couple scenes Saturday night that I’m really hoping other people will find as funny as I do. Can’t wait to start editing.
We’ve been singing R. Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet this whole weekend (you don’t need to know the words to be able to sing it), as we’ve been throwing cameramen and boom operators into small, cramped, full closets for extended periods of time. I haven’t had to climb in one myself, but I’ve (pretty much) spent my fair share of hours shooting from the least comfortable places. Trunks, closets, sitting in people’s laps, hotel rooftops, crevices that are smaller than I am, etc. Well worth it though.
Baby, We Should Sit Down
January 30, 2010
Not shooting this weekend because of the weather. After a week of sunny days up to the 60’s, today everything is covered in ice outside. There hasn’t been a clear weekend in almost a month, and that doesn’t help our shoot of only weekends.
Gives me time to do some more re-writes and tweaks though. Did the math, and we have 47 more pages to shoot. If we can do another 20 page weekend or two, it shouldn’t be too much longer.
Reading some Ray Bradbury shorts; I love the way that guy writes.
About me
A film with a horrible synopsis and a lot of heart. We hope.
