Seriously, this film almost didn’t happen this month. I’ve been over-busy with work (which is a major reason why there’s only been one post since the month began) and a lot of it got pulled together at the last minute. I don’t think I could have done it without my wife, Christina. She helped me brainstorm the story, write the script, pick the location; and she put together a fantastic lunch for everyone during the shoot. With all that being said, the shoot went great on Monday. The film stars my friends Allison and Jay; and also features Christina and I in a small roles. They all did a fantastic job!
We got together around 11:30am, ate lunch and they read over the script. Then we packed up and went over to my parents’ house. I was going for an outdoor cafe kind of feel and their back patio ended up working well for the scene. We set up, went through a couple of dry runs and then got right to shooting. Jay and Christina traded off holding a bounce-board (that would be a fancy word for a piece of 3′ x 4′ white foam core) to bounce the light onto the person on camera. Whoever wasn’t in the scene was holding the foam core. The lighting was a little tricky but it turned out pretty good on camera.
Sound was a whole other matter. Unlike my last film, this one contains a lot of dialogue. In fact, it’s primarily dialogue, so I wanted to be sure to get a good clean recording. The nearby crows and constant airplane traffic overhead did their best to keep me from that clean recording. Jay did his best to get rid of the crows with small rocks and an old tennis ball. The airplanes just had to be tolerated. I only had one lavaliere mic, so I would use it on one person at a time. For instance, I shot all of Allison’s scenes and shots while she wore it and then I had her give it to Jay and then run through all of their lines again, this time with the camera (and sound) focused on him. It seemed to work pretty well.
I’ve already captured all of the footage and put together my first cut. It’s looking good and the sound is decent. Tomorrow is going to be all about figuring out a musical score and mixing the sound.
I also uploaded some production photos we took on Monday (as well as a few from “Mystery Box”. You can find them on Flickr here.
