Last day at telecine. All footage looks good.
Returned Aaton, Bolex Rex4, and accessories to NWFF.
Came home with a big box of developed negative reels and a little metal hard drive.
Post production officially begins today.
Seems kinda quiet around here...
Thursday, September 12, 2013
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Final pickups II, and pickups from pickups (wrap Mondo Beacho)
Below is complied from Facebook posts. I have to learn to do this stuff in a consistent sequence...
Sunday (9/8)
Today was final day with actors, with help from Kat "Bolex truck" Brede.
Out on the bikes again, then by Little Coney, then out on the pier where we saw a seal, and finally back at the Grand Illusion Cinema (thank you Spencer Sundell!!)
Offically wrapped Will Poole, Ahren Buhmann, and Sarah Winsor. Gee, I'll miss these guys...
Plugged in the Aaton battery for the last time, for the handful of pickups I missed yesterday, which I'm getting tomorrow with Iain Dalton... It'll be nice to have some company.
Monday
I wasn't able to get a bunch of shots on Saturday, so today (Monday) I completed final shots for Mondo Beacho. This was with huge help and patience from Iain Dalton, my comrade-in-gear for the shoot and all around great guy.
Sun was slow to come out but holy cow, what a beautiful, quiet day.
We took our time, went all around the city -- even back to the beach one last time -- and got everything that we set out to get.
Man, this city is a hundred kinds of beautiful. If it weren't for the rain, they would've run us all out of here a long time ago.
Final night-drop made at Alpha Cine. Final telecine soon to come.
Sunday (9/8)
Today was final day with actors, with help from Kat "Bolex truck" Brede.
Out on the bikes again, then by Little Coney, then out on the pier where we saw a seal, and finally back at the Grand Illusion Cinema (thank you Spencer Sundell!!)
Offically wrapped Will Poole, Ahren Buhmann, and Sarah Winsor. Gee, I'll miss these guys...
Plugged in the Aaton battery for the last time, for the handful of pickups I missed yesterday, which I'm getting tomorrow with Iain Dalton... It'll be nice to have some company.
Monday
I wasn't able to get a bunch of shots on Saturday, so today (Monday) I completed final shots for Mondo Beacho. This was with huge help and patience from Iain Dalton, my comrade-in-gear for the shoot and all around great guy.
Sun was slow to come out but holy cow, what a beautiful, quiet day.
We took our time, went all around the city -- even back to the beach one last time -- and got everything that we set out to get.
Man, this city is a hundred kinds of beautiful. If it weren't for the rain, they would've run us all out of here a long time ago.
Final night-drop made at Alpha Cine. Final telecine soon to come.
Sunday, September 8, 2013
Pentultimate telecine, Final pickups weekend part I
A long and interesting telecine session on Thursday. Second to last one.
The bonfire scene, shot by the light of the bonfire ONLY, came out good. For a chaotic shoot and scene, there were definitely parts when it was quite charming, even without sound. That's Acting at work, folks. Lots of other good stuff as well.
I also ran a little experiment with the faulty Bolex (mine) and discovered that it does indeed work "okay". Ray, the telecine guy, said that he's never seen a project shot on Bolex that hasn't had at least one bad roll, so it must be inherent to the process. Anyway, in that Bolex test, I got a few very usable (for MB) shots.
Also in that test, I tried out this idea I have for using the Bolex as a still camera.
It totally works great. Fast lenses, interesting film stock, and 4000 -- that's right, 4000 -- frames per roll.
Interesting....
All in all, telecine was a success and we definitely have a movie here. Except for the stuff we're picking up this weekend.
I started final pickups today (Saturday). The sun didn't come out until around 1pm, which killed the morning I was hoping for. The bike shop guys nicely said I could come back whenever, so I did. Got some good ambient bike shop stuff around, then reshot some poster scenes (the date on the poster was for September. Why did I not see this?) lugging around the Aaton for the latter shots because I need to conserve Bolex loads for the movie-bikes stuff tomorrow.
Then I got a very nice but highly labor-intensive shot for the opening credits. The labor-intensive component pretty much gobbled up my afternoon, so after doing some household errands (and eating dinner) I met up with David Thomas having not gotten much of today's shots.
Anna pointed out that Monday it's supposed to be very sunny and my day job will be slow this week, and Iain is available on that day.
I called Iain and he's in, so the new plan is to pick up today's un-picked up pickups on Monday. That will be good.
Anyway -- around 730 tonight, David and I went down to the beach, a very beautiful and mellow Saturday night.
He juggled flaming batons (is that the word?) and it looked really cool. Good footage.
I also got some more pickup footage of the beach at dusk.
After that, we only had about 30 feet left on the roll (shooting Aaton short-ends) so we went to Fisherman's terminal and shot the boats at night. Its hard to tell if those shots will be usable, the angles weren't anything I had planned or could see an easy cut-in for, but a lot of the time random stuff like that comes in handy.
And it was good hanging out with David - he's a friend from outside the production and it's always nice to be able to decompress after dealing with hectic PR-type stuff.
Tomorrow is the final, final day with the actors: Sarah, Will, and Ahren.
Kat is coming along to drive the camera truck and help out.
A variety of shots, ending with back in the Grand Illusion to get the INT. screening room scene that was not usable the previous time.
Looking forward to the whole thing.
The bonfire scene, shot by the light of the bonfire ONLY, came out good. For a chaotic shoot and scene, there were definitely parts when it was quite charming, even without sound. That's Acting at work, folks. Lots of other good stuff as well.
I also ran a little experiment with the faulty Bolex (mine) and discovered that it does indeed work "okay". Ray, the telecine guy, said that he's never seen a project shot on Bolex that hasn't had at least one bad roll, so it must be inherent to the process. Anyway, in that Bolex test, I got a few very usable (for MB) shots.
Also in that test, I tried out this idea I have for using the Bolex as a still camera.
It totally works great. Fast lenses, interesting film stock, and 4000 -- that's right, 4000 -- frames per roll.
Interesting....
All in all, telecine was a success and we definitely have a movie here. Except for the stuff we're picking up this weekend.
I started final pickups today (Saturday). The sun didn't come out until around 1pm, which killed the morning I was hoping for. The bike shop guys nicely said I could come back whenever, so I did. Got some good ambient bike shop stuff around, then reshot some poster scenes (the date on the poster was for September. Why did I not see this?) lugging around the Aaton for the latter shots because I need to conserve Bolex loads for the movie-bikes stuff tomorrow.
Then I got a very nice but highly labor-intensive shot for the opening credits. The labor-intensive component pretty much gobbled up my afternoon, so after doing some household errands (and eating dinner) I met up with David Thomas having not gotten much of today's shots.
Anna pointed out that Monday it's supposed to be very sunny and my day job will be slow this week, and Iain is available on that day.
I called Iain and he's in, so the new plan is to pick up today's un-picked up pickups on Monday. That will be good.
Anyway -- around 730 tonight, David and I went down to the beach, a very beautiful and mellow Saturday night.
He juggled flaming batons (is that the word?) and it looked really cool. Good footage.
I also got some more pickup footage of the beach at dusk.
After that, we only had about 30 feet left on the roll (shooting Aaton short-ends) so we went to Fisherman's terminal and shot the boats at night. Its hard to tell if those shots will be usable, the angles weren't anything I had planned or could see an easy cut-in for, but a lot of the time random stuff like that comes in handy.
And it was good hanging out with David - he's a friend from outside the production and it's always nice to be able to decompress after dealing with hectic PR-type stuff.
Tomorrow is the final, final day with the actors: Sarah, Will, and Ahren.
Kat is coming along to drive the camera truck and help out.
A variety of shots, ending with back in the Grand Illusion to get the INT. screening room scene that was not usable the previous time.
Looking forward to the whole thing.
Tuesday, September 3, 2013
Mondo Beacho Pickups
I've been shooting pickups for the last week, a little here, a little there, as time and weather have permitted.
It's peaceful going out with the Bolex and shooting various things. Moving POV shots. XCU shots of stuff like the steel edged curb on the street with some yellow grass growing through the crack. A POV shot of the mighty Ballard Hardware building, and a POV shot of some railroad tracks which come out of the pavement and then, a few feet later, disappear back into it.
Also took the Aaton out to shoot out some short ends. I have a finite number of 100' Bolex loads so my plan is to use short ends for remaining ambient shots unless they HAVE to be done on the Bolex (such as moving shots, and shots in "sensitive" locations, like chez Shilshole Marina).
It's nice to do this stuff. However, during production I had a feeling of mission: we needed to get X shots done on X day, and now I have a feeling of peacefulness tempered with a slight terror of drifting off-mission. And I say "slight" only to make light of nightly nightmares I've been having in which I have forgotten a crucial scene that I don't quite remember and didn't write down but it needs to happen now or it'll be a total disaster...
Music.
Also did a bit of work on music yesterday and today. Yesterday I wrote a very bad song but that's a necessary part of the process when I'm starting up again. Today I thought of a way to approach some of the songs that I think might be useful, and now I'm thinking I need next to get a better handle on my eight track recorder. I need to be nimble enough on it that I can use it as a notebook, like I used to do with the old 4-track cassette machine back in 'the day'.
Ran into David Thomas (location sound) today and it was nice to chat with him about the shoot and some ideas for post. David's a musician and also did the mix on the Farrah and the Fairies song in the film.
Also sending out Honorariums soon. The "honorarium" is a small amount that is not in any way representative of the value of the person, but it's something. ... It's more like getting a chocolate bar from someone that you work on a project with, more than a payment by an employer.
We'll be going into the studio to overdub vocals on the Clanking Chains songs sometime soon, plus we need to record the bonfire songs from scratch. To help facilitate accuracy and understanding, I am recording new, borderline a cappella demos that are just me doing the song plus guitar playing root notes-only. The previous demos had the vox buried under 50 layers of fuzz guitar and racket, to give the feeling of the final product. These are designed for actual singers to actually know how to sing them.
I'm also contacting Greg Wharmby, my go-to guy for recording info, about how to get my 8-track set properly so it does what I want it to do rather than not doing what I want it to do.
Yes to the former, no to the latter. That's the plan.
It's peaceful going out with the Bolex and shooting various things. Moving POV shots. XCU shots of stuff like the steel edged curb on the street with some yellow grass growing through the crack. A POV shot of the mighty Ballard Hardware building, and a POV shot of some railroad tracks which come out of the pavement and then, a few feet later, disappear back into it.
Also took the Aaton out to shoot out some short ends. I have a finite number of 100' Bolex loads so my plan is to use short ends for remaining ambient shots unless they HAVE to be done on the Bolex (such as moving shots, and shots in "sensitive" locations, like chez Shilshole Marina).
It's nice to do this stuff. However, during production I had a feeling of mission: we needed to get X shots done on X day, and now I have a feeling of peacefulness tempered with a slight terror of drifting off-mission. And I say "slight" only to make light of nightly nightmares I've been having in which I have forgotten a crucial scene that I don't quite remember and didn't write down but it needs to happen now or it'll be a total disaster...
Music.
Also did a bit of work on music yesterday and today. Yesterday I wrote a very bad song but that's a necessary part of the process when I'm starting up again. Today I thought of a way to approach some of the songs that I think might be useful, and now I'm thinking I need next to get a better handle on my eight track recorder. I need to be nimble enough on it that I can use it as a notebook, like I used to do with the old 4-track cassette machine back in 'the day'.
Ran into David Thomas (location sound) today and it was nice to chat with him about the shoot and some ideas for post. David's a musician and also did the mix on the Farrah and the Fairies song in the film.
Also sending out Honorariums soon. The "honorarium" is a small amount that is not in any way representative of the value of the person, but it's something. ... It's more like getting a chocolate bar from someone that you work on a project with, more than a payment by an employer.
We'll be going into the studio to overdub vocals on the Clanking Chains songs sometime soon, plus we need to record the bonfire songs from scratch. To help facilitate accuracy and understanding, I am recording new, borderline a cappella demos that are just me doing the song plus guitar playing root notes-only. The previous demos had the vox buried under 50 layers of fuzz guitar and racket, to give the feeling of the final product. These are designed for actual singers to actually know how to sing them.
I'm also contacting Greg Wharmby, my go-to guy for recording info, about how to get my 8-track set properly so it does what I want it to do rather than not doing what I want it to do.
Yes to the former, no to the latter. That's the plan.
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
Production is (mostly) complete!
The last shot, after the nighttime bonfire scene on the beach, was in a sodium-vapor-lit corner over by Little Coney, with the members of the bands, hanging out after their gig.
The beer was live, and the mood a bit giddy. The cops had just put out our bonfire, which we'd mounted in the lower half of a Smokey Joe buried in the sand, and now most of the crew had gone home and it was Iain and I with a small gang of actors and a few rats on the rocks below.
No one was in the mood to be placed or blocked, so I walked away for a moment to fiddle with the camera, and just turned it on a few times. Werner Herzog said in one of his DVD commentaries that he always runs the camera for an additional minute to catch the actors/performers when they think they're done being scrutinized. I haven't got the budget for an extra minute, so I have to pretend not to scrutinize the first time.
Film is at Alpha waiting for telecine, but transportation issues prevent me from getting over there in a timely fashion. It might not be until the end of the week.
Anyway, once telecine is done, I will start posting screen caps to this blog. I will also post some more "behind the scenes" text to illustrate those caps.
Meanwhile, back on earth this morning, I brought back the light kit and the audio gear to the Northwest Film Forum. (I'll be using my own gear for additional ambient sound). The NWFF is an amazing resource, dare I say -- one of a kind? Everyone there is helpful and friendly (Dave Hannigan. Adam Sekular. ) and with not much work I filled out a grant application that is actually designed to enable people to get the grants to use the gear, rather than keep undesirables out, and my gear package was amazing. They even provided me with a backup Bolex when I needed it (see below) and had some extra 16mm cores to give me when I ran out the night before the shoot.
HOORAY FOR THE NORTHWEST FILM FORUM.
Now that the shoot is over, it actually isn't. As is typical (I think) there are a few small pickups to get.
One was supposed to be shot today, a reshoot of the bike riding scenes from the Bolex that I think blew its pressure plate so gave us unusable images.
Last night the weather report said it'd be thunder storms, and at 7am it was dark and ominous.
I called off the reshoot. And then the sun came out and it stayed pleasant through the day.
Dammit.
But we've had such amazingly good luck this shoot with the sunny weather we need that I am not complaining.
It only seems that way.
But even before we reschedule those pickups, I'm starting on the next big thing, which is music.
Specifically, I have to start working on some more songs to fill in the "radio" parts of the film where we don't have real bands.
Also, we have to record the actual vocal tracks for the Clanking Chains material, and we have to record the bonfire songs and possibly Farrah's track.
Stay tuned.
The beer was live, and the mood a bit giddy. The cops had just put out our bonfire, which we'd mounted in the lower half of a Smokey Joe buried in the sand, and now most of the crew had gone home and it was Iain and I with a small gang of actors and a few rats on the rocks below.
No one was in the mood to be placed or blocked, so I walked away for a moment to fiddle with the camera, and just turned it on a few times. Werner Herzog said in one of his DVD commentaries that he always runs the camera for an additional minute to catch the actors/performers when they think they're done being scrutinized. I haven't got the budget for an extra minute, so I have to pretend not to scrutinize the first time.
Film is at Alpha waiting for telecine, but transportation issues prevent me from getting over there in a timely fashion. It might not be until the end of the week.
Anyway, once telecine is done, I will start posting screen caps to this blog. I will also post some more "behind the scenes" text to illustrate those caps.
Meanwhile, back on earth this morning, I brought back the light kit and the audio gear to the Northwest Film Forum. (I'll be using my own gear for additional ambient sound). The NWFF is an amazing resource, dare I say -- one of a kind? Everyone there is helpful and friendly (Dave Hannigan. Adam Sekular. ) and with not much work I filled out a grant application that is actually designed to enable people to get the grants to use the gear, rather than keep undesirables out, and my gear package was amazing. They even provided me with a backup Bolex when I needed it (see below) and had some extra 16mm cores to give me when I ran out the night before the shoot.
HOORAY FOR THE NORTHWEST FILM FORUM.
Now that the shoot is over, it actually isn't. As is typical (I think) there are a few small pickups to get.
One was supposed to be shot today, a reshoot of the bike riding scenes from the Bolex that I think blew its pressure plate so gave us unusable images.
Last night the weather report said it'd be thunder storms, and at 7am it was dark and ominous.
I called off the reshoot. And then the sun came out and it stayed pleasant through the day.
Dammit.
But we've had such amazingly good luck this shoot with the sunny weather we need that I am not complaining.
It only seems that way.
But even before we reschedule those pickups, I'm starting on the next big thing, which is music.
Specifically, I have to start working on some more songs to fill in the "radio" parts of the film where we don't have real bands.
Also, we have to record the actual vocal tracks for the Clanking Chains material, and we have to record the bonfire songs and possibly Farrah's track.
Stay tuned.
Sunday, August 18, 2013
lots of shooting, working hard, updates to come!
So the good thing is that all my time is going into production, production-related things, and the movie. The bad news is my normally high standards of reporting are now about at zero.
I will be updating this site retroactively at the end of the month, after things have settled down.
At that time, I will have something interesting to report, and how.
You may also "like" me on Facebook.
thanks,
Erik
I will be updating this site retroactively at the end of the month, after things have settled down.
At that time, I will have something interesting to report, and how.
You may also "like" me on Facebook.
thanks,
Erik
Tuesday, August 6, 2013
telecine day 2+3
All footage looks great from Alpha Cine's telecine
Man, that Vision3 film is amazing, there is more detail in the twilight-shot scenes than I saw with my naked eye. And that was with the slower 250D film. I wonder if it'd be worth using that tomorrow inside the cupcake joint instead of 500T....
Also the Bolex HR 16 is officially a "go" camera - the footage looks great and it's a lot better for handheld.
Next shoot is tomorrow, very busy.
Man, that Vision3 film is amazing, there is more detail in the twilight-shot scenes than I saw with my naked eye. And that was with the slower 250D film. I wonder if it'd be worth using that tomorrow inside the cupcake joint instead of 500T....
Also the Bolex HR 16 is officially a "go" camera - the footage looks great and it's a lot better for handheld.
Next shoot is tomorrow, very busy.
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