Saturday, July 5th, 2008: First Day of Photography, Part 2

So the number one rule for a director, well, probably more for a producer, but the number one rule is get your pages. Every shoot day that you have, there’s a set amount of scenes that you want to shoot; these scenes are however many pages, and each shooting day is broken down to pages. The goal of any filmmaker on a day of production is to get your pages.

Well, I’m happy to say we got our pages. It just took a lot longer than we would’ve liked.

So, why did it take longer? Was it because we were late? Well, Bill wasn’t late because we were shooting at his house all day, and since he lives there, I’m not sure how he could be late. I actually thought Bill was late too as I arrived at his house early and it looked like no one was awake. I thought maybe he took his little brother Kyle, who’s helping out on this shoot, for breakfast. Nah, Bill was there, and you read right. I arrived early.

So as Bill and I are setting up the gear, and the Brevis, and the tripod we just rented, Kyle, Melon and Alicia trickle in. Kyle and Melon help us set up, and Alicia goes over some stuff with me before setting up her own make up room.

Lisa Thoms, who’s playing the Landlord, arrives early and she’s sent to make up and wardrobe while we continue setting up our lights. She sends Lisa down to me when she’s done for approval, and we play with a bandanna, then bang! She’s the Landlord.

Justine Vella arrives, who’s playing Dana, and she’s sent to makeup and wardrobe. We’re also waiting for Steve, who won’t arrive until two, and I’m told he’d like to further dress the set. That’s fine I figure, as Joe Vomvas, who’s playing Grant, is stuck in traffic and will be late. Then I remember a shot that we can do that involves no actors and is just a shot of the messy house Grant and Dana decide to move in to.

The original plan was to have a dolly move outside of the house, with the Landlord leading Grant and Dana up the walkway to the house. Alright, now it’s a race against time. Whoever gets here first, I decide, will dictate what shot we do first: what shot we’ll pop our cherry on for this production.

Turns out Joe won. He kicks it around with the rest of the crew as we wait for Justine in makeup. Justine is freed, then Joe goes in as we set up the super awesome dolly system outside for the dolly move. Steve arrives, and he continues to dress the set as we’re outside readying for the shot.

We forget their luggage, so then we have to get the luggage, and Steve the set deck God of set decks, covers the logos. The dolly isn’t 100% smooth, so we sweep the area the dolly will travel on. Then we let out some air in the tires. Well, it turns out that the super awesome dolly system we have isn’t as super awesome as I had thought. Bill and I run back to my pad to grab our rail dolly. Yeah, we’re starting late.

We boom it to my place, grab the dolly, and head back to Bills. We set it up and start doing some takes. Nice and easy way for the actors to start it, simple move for us… so we do a lot of takes. Then we move into the house for another dolly move.

The next shot we did was a dolly back shot down a hallway as the Landlord leads them into the main room. We rock out a few takes, no problem. There’s a bump during the take because of a bumpy thing that sits on the floor that divides the two rooms. I have another shot so we can cut around it, no problem.

We move to the cutaway shot that I had planned earlier that we don’t need any actors for. Here’s where we really find out that the super awesome dolly system isn’t so super awesome. Outside, we figured it was just because of the bumps in the road as to why it was shaky. Inside there’s no excuse. We think it’s the treads on the tires. We scrap it and decide to just do two separate shots of the long hallway. We have to do two separate shots of it because on the rails we have a limited length we can go.

We rock out those takes in a bit, then realize we didn’t do something that’s crucially important. We didn’t turn the 35mm adapter on. Ooops. Going to have to do that again. We turn it on then do the takes again.

We finish doing the scene with Lisa, and she stays around for a bit more because I didn’t tell her she was done. She took it in good stride. She did a fantastic job, and I really thought I was going to have to write out the Landlord character until she auditioned, because I didn’t think I was going to be able to get someone that could do that part. I’m super glad she auditioned, and I think she did a great job in that role. Really cool chick too.

The problem I told you about the 35mm adapter? Yeah, that’s going to happen all throughout the shoot. Someone will turn it off, we won’t know that it’s off, or forget, we’ll shoot, and then we’ll realize it’s not on, then have to shoot again. For the most part, we caught it after a couple of takes, but it was particularly painful one time as we were doing a pretty intense scene between Grant and Dana. We just finished all of Joes coverage and we had to move some furniture around to get the shot. We move it all back, and are about to shoot Justine’s coverage when Bill notices the adapter isn’t on. Sonuvabitch!

Joe did a bang out job with that scene, so I’m pretty upset that we have to do it again, but what’re you going to do? We put the room back, reposition the camera, and Joe does it again; only this time he does it a lot better. Awesome.

Let me tell you, after this day, I’m so confident in these two actors to carry the movie for me. They totally blew me out of the water, and they’re making us look really smart for casting them.

We’re super behind at the point where we have to relight the main room for night. I like to shoot pretty quickly, and this is the antithesis of it. It was just everything technically that could’ve went wrong, did. The funny thing is, it wasn’t anyone’s fault. It was just too much “new” and too steep of a learning curve.

When I first scheduled this shoot, I had planned for shooting it with just the DVX. With just that camera, we could’ve rocked this out in five or six hours easily. But with the Brevis on board, the constant need to measure focal lengths, the doubting of focus, the new aspect ratio, the new dolly, and plain old rust, it ended up being a fourteen hour day. It was almost six pages we were trying to get, but they were all in one location, and other than the first scene, only between two actors. For Episode 3 we did six pages in about four hours, so we could’ve had this done in five or six easy.

I was really slow lighting the set at the onset, and when it came to light the set for night, I was slower doing that as well. It’s definitely the rust. We also did quite a few takes trying to get all this focus stuff down, not to mention the tripod which we just touched today for the first time; other than to pick it up and take it out of the rental shop. Also, with this new aspect ratio, I had to adapt a lot of my shots for it. I usually shoot 16:9, which will give you more height. With the 2.35 you’re taking away that height, so the height I planned to exploit, I had to counter for. Also, there’s just some movements and framings in 16:9 you can’t have in 2.35:1.

So the set is night now, and we do the second to last scene, which just involves Joe. Now we have to shoot the final scene of the night, which is Dana walking in and confronting Grant. Like any good Camera Operator, Bill is worried about the focus constantly. This is new after all, and we’ve never worked with measurements before, so we don’t always rely on them.

I plug the camera into the TV so Bill can see the focus more, and wouldn’t you know it, the whole image looks vignetted. I know this can happen on wide angle lenses, but I thought my 35- 70mm would’ve been safe. Also, we can’t see the vignetting on the LCD on the camera. My heart sank, as did Bills, as we now think the worst, and think we may have to shoot the whole day over again.

Bill makes the producer decision to keep shooting and if we have to re-shoot, we have to re-shoot. I agree with him. What’re we supposed to do? Cry. Bitch please.

So we shoot the rest of this final scene, and for the performances, they’re fabulous. Joe and Justine definitely brought their “A” game to this ballgame. Good for me.

We wrap a little after 1:30am. Everyone starts cleaning up, but after this torturous long day, everyone’s dragging their ass a bit, including me. My main priority right now is to go back home, look at the footage on my computer, and see if there’s vignetting on the whole day, just the two dark scenes, or just that shot. I clean up a bit and then grab the camera and head off. Halfway home, I realize I forgot the tape.

After returning back from Bills after grabbing the tape, I quickly pop it into my computer and start going through it, grabbing random footage and throwing it up on my screen, analyzing it. I crop it to the 2.35 aspect ratio. I’m glad because it looks like we’re safe. I send some stills to Bill over messenger to see if he sees any vignetting. I even export a low res version of the shot we saw the vignetting on when it played on his TV. It seems fine, but there might be a touch of vignetting. Nothing I can’t live with. I come to the conclusion Bill suggested earlier: his TV is fucked.

However, the two dark scenes we shot are noisy as hell. I’m not sure I can live with this. They almost look like static. Over course, I’m exaggerating, but I know what I want, and noise isn’t it; not in my video, not in my women.

I decide I’ll get a better look at it when I sit down to capture the footage on Wednesday. Tonight, I know I have to get up in a few hours to shoot again, so I just don’t have the time, although the notion did tickle my fancy. I already cleared it with Justine and Joe to do re-shoots if we have to, when we thought we would because of vignetting. I’m sure they won’t mind for noise. I’ll light this bitch better too, although I did like the way the light was hitting the actors for that last scene.

I decide before going to bed to throw up some stills on the Facebook Group and my diary. They’re just random stills I got, so if someone is making a funny face I apologize. They may not even be the best looking shots we got from that day, but I’m pretty impressed with the Brevis and the 2.35 aspect ratio, so I throw them up for others to see.

Other than the technical issues, which had I been smart enough, I would have anticipated, I thought the day went great. I had a great time, and these three new actors are really cool people. They all took direction really well, and we all seem to be on the same page as to where the characters are. For what we got on screen performance wise, I’m as happy as a junkie in an opium den. From what I could tell, other than the two dark scenes, technically, it’s looking pretty sharp too.

Hopefully tomorrow will be a better shoot as we’re somewhat used to the Brevis now, and we’re used to taking measurements for everything. However, tomorrow’s the first day I break out the V-16 for a shoot, so it might be more of the same.

But that’s tomorrow. Today, we got our pages.