Production challenges

The biggest challenge we ran into on this production was room. Much of it was shot in the interior of a semi truck where space is at a premium. We used our Panasonic HPX250 HD camera on the shoot due to it’s smaller size.

We brought in JFO Production to provide lighting and a gaffer for the shoot. Trevor Elliot showed up in a 3 ton truck and did an amazing job lighting the set/truck both inside and outside.

We shot the project on our Panasonic HPX-250 P2 camera since it’s small size was advantageous for shooting in such a limited space. This was our first corporate production with this camera since purchasing it in mid December and we were not disappointed at all with it’s performance. The camera gave us amazing images and as we recorded in 10bit AVC-Intra we have the latitude to push the signal around in post where needed.

We also brought in Michael Bruggemeyer as the camera operator and Director of Photography on the shot. Michael is a joy to have on the set and brings a wealth of knowledge to any productions.

We shot most of the day in the truck and finished up with a few truck exteriors and shots of the tools required for doing the install.

The project is currently in post production and will be completed by mid January.

With story concept well underway I left the brainstorm session to get some sleep. Being through this process before I knew that Friday night would be my last chance at a full nights sleep until this iron man version of filmmaking was over. I fell into dreamland with the visions of a knockout 1940′s looking fem fetal who was lifting a cheek to squeeze one out.

Saturday morning, The script arrives

I awoke in the morning to check my email and read the script that the writer, Marianne Bates, had worked on all night. Although I was still uneasy about the flatulence part of the equation there were some laugh out loud moments while reading. The script was complete with the hard boiled slang that is to be expected from any self respecting film noir project. After a few hours of gathering music and sound effects that would be needed I headed down to the first location to start importing the footage.

The DSLR workflow

I arrived on set and started getting footage from the camera crew. The film was being shot entirely on DSLR cameras so there was a bit of a challenge to post production. When working with these cameras you need to shoot audio on a separate device since the on camera audio is far from usable. Luckily  we had an amazing location sound crew that gave me all the separate tracks plus a mix channel that was being mixed on the fly. For the most part this allowed me to use just that mix track which saved a lot of time in post. I set up the portable editing suite and started importing and syncing image to sound.

Here’s a quick tip for you. If you’re going to do a DSLR workflow I would suggest having an assistant editor on the project to sync footage for you while you edit. Not because you’re “The Editor” and this work is below you, but because it will save you time and allow you to concentrate on the cut. I did not have an assitant so it was up to me to do it all.

When I had caught up to the crew on importing the footage I had an idea for the murder scene in the film that was being shot by the second unit. I asked the 2nd unit director, Christopher Francis, to get me some shots that I wanted in the scene to build some tension. I asked for closeups on hands, faces etc… and boy did he deliver.

Back to the edit bay

When I was out of things to do on location I headed back to the shop to start cutting things in the edit bay. This was the first time I pulled the color from the shots and started looking at the images in black and white. I immediately knew that if nothing else, this would be a beautifully shot film. I have heard is said that the measure of the cinematography in a film is if you can stop on any frame and then hang that frame on the wall as a piece of art. This film achieved that in my opinion.

I decided that instead of cutting the film on one timeline I would split it into scenes and cut each scene as it’s own entity. This was both a good and bad idea. On the good side it allowed me to let each scene tell it’s own story, sort of like a chapter in a book. The down side will come a little later, I don’t want to still the beans (pun intended) just yet.

More footage arrives

A I was happily editing away when more footage arrived at the edit bay. I stopped editing and began importing that footage. Remember what I said about having an assistant? This was where I really needed it. Nothing like stopping the creative flow to start doing technical stuff. This footage contained the scene in the interrogation room and when I started cutting the segment where the female detective, Theresa Lane, is interrogating the female lead, Cristyn Chandler, I had limited coverage on it. I basically had a wide shot and a closeup, both 2 person shots. I had no closeups as singles on either actor. This turned out to be a very happy accident.

Unknown to me the closeup single shots were still on a card that was in one of the cameras on location. Not knowing this I assumed that the coverage I had for this scene was the wide and closeup 2 shots, nothing more. So I worked with what I had. The scene transitions from wide to close to break up that action. I had my doubts on if this would work, but after I roughed in the shots, it worked amazingly well. In the scene there is tension that builds between that characters and this not traditional, maybe even a little odd, juxtaposition of the shots added to the tension. The difference in framing was enough to make it not quite a jump cut, but enough to make it feel a little… tense.

At this point I had all but the last scene cut and that footage was on the way from the last location as the crew was wrapping. Little did I know I was in for a interesting little musical surprise…

To be continued…

Cast and crew of "The Heiress Lethal"

The 48 Hour Film Project

The film was made for the San Diego 48 Hour Film project. For those that don’t know, here’s the details of how it works. First you throw caution to the wind and agree to making a film in 48 hours. Next you stoke up the fires of courage and sign up. Then you get the rules…

Each team must complete a film of 5 to 7 minutes on 48 hours.

On Friday evening the tams met and you pull a film genre from a hat.

After every team has a genre you get the element that must be included in the film.

• Element 1 a prop. For this film, a chair
• Element 2: A character. For this film, Rita Hernandez a doctor
• Element 3: A line of dialogue, for this film. “I’m trying my best”

The Genre

When it came to pulling a genre we pulled Film Noir. At one point someone asked me if I thought that genre was an advantage or a disadvantage. To tell the truth I think it’s both. Why? Because it is such a recognizable look and feel. If you do it right people will love it, do it wrong and everyone will know that it was done wrong. So you better do it right.

The brainstorm

The teams approach to creating a story is fairly simple. A couple weeks prior to the project we submit short ideas for a concept within the genres that could be pulled. When I say short it’s a one to two paragraph treatment of a story idea. Now the we never have enough treatments to cover all the possible genres and every time we seem to draw a genre that has no treatment for it, this time was no different. The team was gathered together around a table and the ideas started to fly.

A film full of flatulence

At some point it was suggested that our female lead be the murderous wife of a bean company executive who suffered from an extreme case of flatulence. Yep, we were making a fart movie. Needless to say this did not sound like a great idea to me. Being one that has never been a fan of “bathroom humor” I was somewhat appalled by the fact that we were making a movie like this. Despite my repeated pleas that we had fallen to the lowest common denominator of comedy, we went forward with the concept… Boy was I ever wrong!

To be continued…

So far we have used it on a 1 web video project for ZeroWatse USA where it performed amazingly in a natural light situation. We have also shot a couple episodes of BariatricTV.com with it and it’s given us wonderful images under studio lighting conditions. And since BariatricTV shoots on a weekly basis we’re well on out way to recouping some cost by forgoing purchasing video tape.

The bottom line is that we are very impressed with the performance of the camera. We would love to put it to work on your next video production.

In the final shot of this promo we have a snow boarder that throws show up towards the camera and we end on a landscape shot to drop the logo over. When we first cut it together though it was missing something. We needed a wet drippy lens from the snow that was kicked up, and we didn’t have it. The shot that we ended on looked like the one in the image above. Nice, but not what we really wanted.

So what’s the solution? Make a wet drippy lens and add it in post. We set up a shot with a piece of glass hung from a C-Stand and another C-Stand behind it with a sheet of black construction paper. We also wanted to match the sun in the original shot so we used an on camera light to get some highlights on the top part of the glass. From there it was just a matter of rolling the camera and using a spray bottle to mist the glass. We wound up with a piece of video that looked like the above image.

Back in the edit bay it was just a matter of dropping the wet glass shot over the landscape image and then applying an Add composite mode to it. The results were even better than expected.

To have a look at the finished composite just have a look at the promo by  CLICKING HERE

Production challenges

The biggest challenge we ran into on this production was the use of camera movement on the green screen interviews. By doing this we then needed to add similar camera movement on the background to avoid having a floating body over a static background. We overcame this by motion tracking the foreground interview subject and applying that motion onto the background graphic.

Production Challenges

The main challenge on this project was one of voice over. The owner of the establishment was a native of the United Kingdom and was dead set against using a fake British accent. The accent had to be real and he would certainly know the difference. To solve this problem we turned to the internet. After receiving demos from a number of UK based voice talent the client settled on one. The voice over was recorded and email to us to be dropped into the spot. When all was said and done we still deliver the spot to the client for under $1,000.00. Even with international talent.

Production Challenges

The challenge on this spot was the turn around. Basically we needed to produce the spot and have it ready for air in 24 hours. This meant there was no time to shoot video. We overcame this by using still images. The majority of the images in this spot were still images shot in our office.