Sunday, January 23, 2011

Day 30

After 30 days over six months, we finally wrapped principle photography!  We shot all of the interrogation room scenes in the same room as the HUB scenes.  We just used one white wall and shot as if we were shooting greenscreen, where the actors and set moves to change angles, rather than the camera.  The hotel was also kind enough to let us use one of their rooms for a half hour, which gave us an extra level of production value.

After cutting the previous day’s footage, I started to realize that my 90 page script was turning into a 75 minute film (the joys of action movies I guess).  Knowing this, we improvised a few extra scenes to help pad the film out and add to the character development of our bad guys.  On the plus side, the film moves at a good pace.  Not too fast, not too slow.

Saturday, January 22, 2010

Day 29

We shot all of the CDF HUB scenes today!  14 pages of script in six and half hours!  I think that’s a new record for me.  It helped though that all the scenes were in the same room.  Walt Leathers came did great playing the part of Kidd, and Jon Jordan was a pleasure as always to work with too (He plays West).  For extras (techs), my buddy Matt Clark showed up first, followed shortly after by Kevin Lonam.  Yes, the same Kevin who plays like three different characters already.  We shot him from behind all day.  In keeping with the spirit of one actor as multiple characters, Kimberly Cruz was kind enough to show up as well (she also plays the news anchor).  She also invited her friend Nick Moore, who also did a great job.

Today also marks the first time I’ve used Magic Lantern on a film shoot.  We had no problems with it.  Also, since I knew it’d be a busy and long day, I brought my editing computer with harddrives and used it as a DIT station, allowing me to dump footage during breaks.  I also was able to convert it all to offlines while we were shooting.  That part was nice.  I would totally do the same again on my next film if I’m able to.  So much nicer than coming home and waiting three hours.

Tomorrow, if I can get ahold of Ben, we’ll be shooting all of the interrogation room scenes.  If I can’t, we’ll have to come up with another plan when I do hear from him.  So yeah, great day!

Friday, January 21, 2011

So tomorrow starts the big weekend of finishing filming.  I’ve got a lot of stuff to do today to prepare, but I can’t wait to get the film in the can.  On a side note, the film was featured on ChristianFilmmaker.com  Hopefully that lets more people know about the film =)  You can read the full article here:

http://christianfilmmaker.com/?p=1335