THE FILM
A very short experimental piece (Perry - AKA titaniumdoughnut - a regular around these parts, is DP). At this point we are half way through production. The project isn't actually for a class though, so we've had hell to pave through. No insurance. Breaking several laws - I shalln't communicate the most severe. Yep. It's been lots of fun. BTW, you'll notice I keep changing tenses... that is because I'm too artistic to obey any grammatic laws. It is not because I am just not paying attention.

The film is effectively 5 shots, each pushing in on the same "Character" at a different phase in his life. At this stage we had 3 shots, and were preparing for two this weekend - the "old man" and the "middle-aged man", the latter being shot in an alley, the former in a soundstage.

This last weekend was especially exciting:

FRIDAY: Insurance issues. Rental company refuses to rent us equipment without insurance. I offer to put up stock instead, they indirectly call me dishonest. THAT made my day. Eventually we found somewhere nearbye (Hotlights) that would accept a cash deposit AND would be open Saturday.

SATURDAY: Lug $512 equipment from Hotlights, including a 6500W generator. Owe one additional favour to Perry. Planned intensively for shoot tomorrow - did not check weather. We called up our actor, found there had been some miscommunication about the shoot time, and so he had arranged something with Bruce Willis instead. Damn damn damn damn damn. Called up other actor who I auditioned and loved.

That evening, I didn't sleep a wink, but for occasional nightmares corresponding to snowstorm outside.

SUNDAY: Other actor cancels, as he has a cold. I look outside and cry.

Early evening, we shot the "old man". I loved this guy in auditions, because he marvellously captured the spirit of a senile old man. He was awful in front of the camera because he was actually a senile old man. D'oh!

Perry and I review all our footage so far, and decide the only way to go is to totally change the casting approach*, which also means we can shoot tomorrow morning before we lug the equipment back, but requires re-shooting the "Student" phase. We call up our third choice actor, who is conveniently able to meet tomorrow morning! Yess!!!

NOW THIS IS WHERE IT GETS EXCITING!
We had our generator soundly stored in an office downstairs in the dorm. My phone rings - which I can barely hold at this stage - and I'm being told that the police are taking the generator. WTF?!?!?! Run downstairs, it turns out we can't keep the generator in the building because it's a fire hazard.

This is New York City. The alternative is to leave it outside. In the cold. In the snow. Where it will surely break and get stolen. After an hour with a snow shovel, digging out a space to put the generator, we chain it with a wimpy bike chain to a bike stand. I remind you - generators are huge.

Eventually, I find a bar that is willing to keep the generator until 4am! I am forever grateful to Nevada Smith. We lug the generator across the snow covered street (takes about 20 minutes to move 200 feet). I go to sleep - bed rather - still haunted by nightmares about SAG regulations and Snow.

MONDAY
Wake up at 3 - fetch generator. Still can't hold my phone. When we realize it still takes 20 minutes to cross the street, and we're too young to get a Van, and our location is behind locked doors a mile away, and it is covered in 3 feet of snow, and we only have a partial crew who won't be best pleased to shoot on monday at 5, and our actor is wanting copy in four days - I weigh out pushing a metric tonne of equipment through a mile's snow, breaking and entering, snow shoveling out space for the dolly track and generator, defying several SAG regulations, and waking all who live in the residence our location is surrounded by against five hundred and twelve dollars and an hour's sleep, and come to the decision to shoot next week.

8:00 - Force Perry to help me push Generator half a mile to rental house - takes two hours. On the way there, we spy a "hotlights" van who pleasantly offer to pick up the rest of the equipment. I buy Perry a snapple to console him against the rational realization they could have picked up the generator too.

We're shooting tomorrow.

WHAT DID WE LEARN?
ALWAYS check the weather
NEVER over-do your equipment
ALWAYS remind your actor ahead of time
ALWAYS have a stolen bottle of tranquilizers on hand - cigarettes kill.

Will write a follow up after the shoot. As of now, we've re-cast the Student for shooting this Saturday, and tomorrow we're auditioning more old men. Hopefully less senile.


*Formerly, the idea was that the character would be portrayed at different stages of his life by distinctly different looking people, saying "this applies to everyone." On review, our two best performances look too similar, so we decided to cast more conventionally.

What were you lighting that you need a 6500W generator.. in the middle of NYC?

wow sounds crazy! good luck with it!

from what i got the generator was because they were doing kinda of long shots, so maybe a lot of lights had to be set up?

Basically, the director *cough* went nuts and rented lights which were far more powerful than we needed. So powerful, in fact, that the supervisor at the building which owned the alley we were shooting in, wouldn't allow us to plug them in when he heard about it.

I think it was a couple of 2ks and a couple 1.5ks, but I may be mistaken. The lights were to illuminate a rainy scene (artificial rain), shot day for night, in an alley with bright, indirect sunlight, so they did need to be powerful, just probably not THAT powerful.

it's never dull. sounds like a blast.

Yeah... a blast... you could say that :-/

We were shooting day for night. Correction. We *weren't* shooting day for night, but we were planning to.

Righto - today's shoot is the easiest of the lot, which should warm us into tomorrow's... which involves complicated things like rain machines and gravity.

Aside from no longer being able to feel my back, the shoot went marvellously well - furthermore we weren't doing anything illegal today (except murder two small children who decided to dance into the shot and start jiveing with the actor - I'll link to that take at some point). We were anticipating an overcast day and eventually got... something like that. With the help of a few tungsten lights, some PAM and a kilometer of gaffers tape, we pushed through and it looks lovely.

I'm trying to forget, for a moment, that it was a reshoot so it goddamn better look lovely.

Will touch back in tomorrow.

Here's a clip of the, ehm, two small children... before we killed them.

link

R.I.P. little ones, and in your next life don't get in front of Perry's camera, you've seen the consequences!

Nothing ever ever goes just right. But sometimes you can get pretty close!

We commandeered a back alley by forging some paperwork and lying a little bit - but it gave us privacy, protection from wind and 10 year old idiots (7 degrees F w/ windchill!), and from direct sunlight.

THE RAIN MACHINE
Set upon 4 C-stands, was the most awesome device in the world. When we sprayed warm water through it, it would immediately steam off the actor.

THE LIGHTING
3 1K lights aren't a big deal. However, we did over-power a surge protector and burst a fuse. Forged paperwork covered us for the damage.

THE ACTOR
OKAY - there's a funny story behind this. Heh. Heh heh. As mentioned in an earlier post, we have recently changed our casting approach - so without the time to re-audition, I had to rely on a headshot/resume and my notes... which consisted solely of "keep".
Perry and I have discussed the importance of NYU having a class one could take after "directing the actor" called "deceiving the actor". Scorsese sometimes drops a brick; Kubrick outright lied to his actors; my dream is to use a b-b gun. I'm sure it would help... if nothing else it would ease my tensions without giving me cancer. Anyway, we got a marvelous performance out of our actor by shouting swear words and the word "vomit". Seriously - no matter how good your actor, sometimes it's easier to get what you need by being... indirect. Ultimately, I'm *so* pleased with our actor's performance.

DAY FOR NIGHT
See the footage. Perry will post stills below.

That's a wrap! This is me signing out - look out for "Everything I've Done" as an addition to Studentfilms.com in a month and a half or so.

Just a few things that apply to some of the forums active at the mo:

1) PROFESSIONAL ACTORS - They're always your best bet. Your friends will understand what you need immediately, but a professional actor will add their own idiosyncrasies that you, as a single person, could not have come up with without another artist on board. Working with professionals only takes a bit more paperwork and thought to work out how best to approach <I>this</I> actor. Sometimes motivation is the way, sometimes you have to shout "Vomit! Barf out the words!" a lot, but the result is ultimately a more complex and honest performance.

2) HDV 1080i - Just see the full-sized screenshot. The one Perry's posting has been de-interlaced. If you don't like interlacing, just de-interlace the footage and you lose a bit of resolution. Though the resolution is still awesome. But interlacing systems are what you're most likely to be distributing on, and HD sized footage!!! I'm not complaining. No regrets with the Z1U.

(click for full-size version)


And, yes. HDV is 1080 interlaced, or 720 progressive. So, de-interlacing it halves the resolution, which gives you essentially the same result as 720P scaled up to 1080P. This capture is scaled DOWN to 720P.