Rough Fight work in progress!

It's coming along very slowly, but I think it looks pretty darn cool. I still have a few places to fix shots- the robot getting splattered and some other shots liek that as well as placement and positioning and backgrounds. But the exciting thing is that it looks pretty nice.

How would you like your own personal blimp?

This is a test I did to see how well I could blend a live action shot I did with an actress/steampunk named Cherie Savoie and the blimp I made for the first establishing shot of Boston. I think it turned out pretty well- Although at four minutes a frame, the sequence took 24 hours to complete. I would like to add a little rock and ease that stop a little more, but as a test, I think this looks awesome.

It works!

This is the first mostly complete shot I've done. It's for the trailer and has a ton of awesome innuendo- it was a lot of fun to shoot, and even more fun to finish off.

It went awesome.

The first day was a total success.

Here we go...

Shoot starts tomorrow at 9. I will be there around 7:30 or 8.

Yikes. It's really happening.

The weekend schedule!

Saturday:

• 8am - Setup and prep. Breakfast.
• 9am - Nolan, Workman, Scott & Mark
• 12pm -Lunch
• 12:30pm - Scott & Mark
• 2pm - Scott, Mark, Steve, Kat, Chris
• 3pm - Scott, Steve & Chris
• 4pm - Scott, Chris & James
• 5pm - James & Kat
• 6:30pm - Dinner
• 7pm - Kat & Chris
• 8pm - Assess the stamina of cast and see where we are!

Sunday:

• 8am - Setup and prep. Breakfast.
• 9am - Extras
• 10am - Steve, Chris and Extras
• 11pm - Ensemble and Extras
• 1pm - Lunch and release Extras
• 1:30pm - Pickups
• 4pm - Kat & Chris live action reference

The newspaper props.

 The stack on the right is for the opening of the film, when it gets dropped to the ground. The single one on the right is for one of the extras to hold before the Golightly shoots past.

Here's a closeup of the newspaper. I'm pretty happy with how this came out, although modern newspapers are four inches narrower than the papers from 1870. Weird, huh?

"Oh, I forgot to grope her!" - James Muscarello

We had a blast rehearsing for the upcoming film shoot in two weeks. Here's a highlight from the afternoon!

Ready for the shoot?

 So today I went to Target and bought some organization. At least, that's what I was telling myself as I picked up large plastic boxes with which to organize my props/weapons/etc. It worked, mostly, but it also showed me that I have a lot of stuff. If I need to do another period show? Hahahahahaha. No problem.

 Here are all the costumes on a "Professional Target clothes rack. With wheels." Well, professional or not, this thing is gonna make Saturday morning easy peasy.

I have a lot of guns. Granted, one of them is my friend Marks, but still. Pretty awesome!

The fateful telegram...

So yeah. I found some awesome Western Union vintage telegrams from the late 1800's and recreated them using the new moniker United Union Telegraph Co. I made up a fictitious president and changed some of the fine print to create this prop. I also used a manilla envelope cut down to the right size and reglued with rubber cement. Looks convincing enough to me!

Shooting Schedule

Hey! It's official. I just paid the deposit on the stage today, and here's the plan.

I would love it if you can watch College, Steamboat Bill Jr. and The General before the shoot. They are all Buster Keaton films and even though we're not going slapstick, I love the performances and the overacting.

My house
Saturday June 4th
4pm to 6pm - blocking rehearsal.

Atomic Studios
2556 East Olympic Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90023

Saturday June 18th
9am to noon - Shooting the opening loading dock
Noon to ? - TBD

Sunday June 19th
9am to noon - Shooting the extras shots
Noon to ? - TBD

Over the next three weeks, I will be figuring out our schedules as some scenes require everyone and other scenes require two or three people tops. Once I get that done, I will publish the call times here.

Atomic Studios is awesome.

I just went there tonight on my way home from work. It's a 24 hour studio that is much bigger than I thought it would be. I tentatively booked it for the 4th and 5th, so hopefully my entire cast will be able to make that date. Ooooh. Now I'm getting excited.

Teresa said "Can you try and shoot everything in one day? That place is really expensive!"

Silly rabbit.

Attention, cast!

We will be using Stage 101to shoot this thing in.

Actually, no, we won't. No wonder I haven't heard back from them. Or rather, in a timely manner. They're out of business. Yep. Got a form email tonight. Went down there to look. Now the building is some kind of dance facility for the neighborhood. Oh well.

We will probably be shooting at Atomic Studios instead. They charge more, but they're still in business, which just goes to show.

I've emailed them and haven't heard back yet, but the facility looks like it should be perfect.

Originally, we were going to have the first shoot the weekend of the 14th & 15th of May but I need to book the studio a week in advance. (That's what all the books say, anyway. I've never done this before- I really don't know for sure.)

I didn't hear from most of the cast until this evening and so I decided to hold off on the shoot until I heard from everyone and then use June 4th & 5th as the first shoot, and follow that up with the 11th & 12th as the second shoot.

I only need the entire cast (and six to eight extras) together on one half day. The rest of the time we will focus on the individual interactions- Fanny and Farnsworth, Fanny and Wu, Fanny, Glowerston and Mulvey, etc. Once I nail the script down completely I will be determining how best to use the time for all of these breakdowns.

Thanks for your patience! Here's to a year and a half in prepro!

Another test for you!

I had to fix Jakes eyes as he was looking at the camera the entire take, and this was the only coverage I had as a close up. It ended up working out anyway and just as a test I added the text of what he was saying.

One of the things I've noticed is that the dialogue cards tend to interrupt the flow of the scene a little. Most times, it's ok. But having subtitles of a sort helps out with that, if they're creative!

Here's something new!

This is a test of the first shot, as Dad comes out of the water. It's not finished, the miniature Fleet will be back behind all those flames. But it still looks pretty good, so I thought I'd share.

This is the finished version of the second shot, with all the mattes cleaned up and some additional smoke elements thrown in for good measure.

All in all, I think this is going to look pretty awesome! Scott is looking pretty sad about the whole thing, which I suppose is how it should be.

Hopelessness... Despair...

Actually, that's a little bit how I feel looking at the twelve minutes of green screen I'm going to have to pull for this movie. Heh heh heh. Seriously, though, this is a very early version of the middle shot in Mulvey's flashback as he imagines his father's last moments. I still need to pull a matte for his hair, but all the elements are blending together quite nicely.

I've also dropped in the overhead shot for the extreme pull out, but I'm approaching it a little differently in the real shot as I didn't really know what I was doing the first go around. I'll post it once the Fleet is finished and in.

It's getting pretty exciting!

One of the funny things that Scott asked me as he was bobbing about in the hot tub was "Can you imagine doing this... and getting paid?"  Hell yes. Yes I can. It's so much fun.

Here's a photo from the shoot!

Here's a very moist Scott. It's going to be interesting to see what the green reflection in the water is going to do in terms of pulling a matte, but I love the look of the firelight on his face.

No pictures yet, but...

Holy crow, the shoot went really well tonight.

I had estimated about two hours to get all three of the shots, and it took... two hours.

The shots look beautiful. Man, the Canon 7D is awesome. The results look really professional and even with a green screen behind Scott, it totally looks like he's lost at sea.

Now I gotta get the ship built.

Another film shoot!

Yup. Thursday night at 8:15, Scott gets in the water and pretends to drown while the merchant ship Fleet meets its fiery doom.


My wife's friend Delphin has graciously allowed us the use of his heated pool for the night- It's a black bottom affair that should allow me to pull a really nice matte on that last pull out shot. I've also packed the green screen for the closeups.

Essentially, we're looking at three shots. The first is looking at father from the front, as he watches his ship burn. The second is over his shoulder so we can see the burning ship. The third (and most difficult) is from directly overhead as he loses hope and the vessel explodes. This is the grand reveal. The camera pulls out from the closeup and becomes a map.

I built a pretty neat firelight rig for the shoot. A few years ago IKEA was selling these butt ugly torches for children's rooms, cheap. The thing is, though ugly, they had a really neat random flicker built in, with an umber filter on top. And they're pretty bright. So I bought about seven of them, not really knowing if I would ever find a use for them. Well, I now have an ugly torch array to cast a fiery rim light on Scott. Perfect! I also bought some cheap 500 watt work lights to light up the green screen.

This is the first of the two flashbacks during the prologue.

And, while things have been slow on the filming front due to family illness, I'm hoping to shoot the whole damn thing at the end of May.

Nothing to report...

Sorry, gang. I've been plagued with some health issues of late and between my Mother in Laws bout with blood cancer (I didn't even know such a thing existed!) which she thankfully won, and my own trip into all the horrid side effects of sleep apnea, my energy level has been below zero.

However, it looks like I will be doing pick ups for the flashback sequence this Sunday, and shooting the shipwreck flashback next Sunday. I will keep you posted about that. It's going to be very exciting.