If at first you don't succeed, get an actor who can use a power drill

Ben and Erik spent most of the day working on the new rig--success! Ben built a wooden frame that extends from the garage ceiling grid. The rig is now powered by a vari-speed electric drill. After lots of adjusting, the spinner runs a little fast, but pretty reliably.

We also distressed the green table quite a bit so it wouldn't look quite so pristine.

I realized that one of the main problems I was having with the dvx100 was framing. The viewfinder is 4 x 3 unless you shoot with bars (and lose resolution). That and the softness of the previous image convinced me to go back to HDV format. If necessary, I'll convert to 24p using something like Magic Bullet later.

Here's the new reference shot with temporary lighting. Color-correcetd with levels & deinterlaced in AE. Shot Portrait mode with a garden flood light + the regular lighting kit. With Ben's stuble and his Member's Only jacket, it does look sort of reminiscent of the Raiders of the Lost Ark reference footage (see Production Begins!).

HDV test

De-interlaced and color corrected in After Effects using Levels only. Shown at 33%

SHOT NOTES--WORKSHOP SPINNER SEQUENCES

FIRST UNIT MASTERS =============================

MAKE sure security camera is set up

DAY 1
DARK GREY SHIRT
FULL LIGHT
Ben comes in. Anticipation as he looks to the spinner right away. Stares at it for a while in satisfaction. Does his ritual--writes down in his notebook.

DAY 2
DARK PURPLE SHIRT
HALF LIGHT
2. Ben comes in. He assumes it's working. Gives it a cursory check. Looks over/tightens the components a bit. Does his ritual--writes down in his notebook.

DAY 3
ORANGE SHIRT
SMOKING FULL LIGHT
3. Ben's already there. Smoking. Writing something in his notebook. Maybe doing some other business

DAY 4
LOTS OF SMOKE IN THE ROOM
JACKET
Night--wearing jacket. Stand and bow shot. Then move closer and stand.

DAY 5
GREEN SHIRT
Ben comes in. Does a ritual. cursory check--woah. what's that" Microscope.
Micrsoscope shots

DAY 6
RED SHIRT!
Tight on Ben as he comes in. he's in the been there done that mood. Then he notices. Push in to see... the spinner not working!

Checks it. Double checks it.

Hmmmmmmmm.

Aha! Let's look in the camera.


FIRST UNIT--COVERAGE=============================

Day 6--red shirt--Tight on Ben as he comes in the room. He looks to the spinner. It's stopped!

Day 6--red shirt--Dollly in



Day 5--green shirt--CUs of Ben looking through his camera

Day 5--green shirt--DOLLY IN TO Ben LOOKING THROUGH CAMERA

Day 5--green shirt--DOLLY IN TO Ben LOOKING THROUGH CAMERA. Then ben looks up





DAY--AMBIGUOUS---Various med shots, etc. of Ben doing stuff like tweaking spinner, setting it up. Looking at bottles

DAY--AMBIGUOUS---CU: The moment of truth: Ben in GOGGLES sets the spinner spinning.Tight. Rack focus

DAY--AMBIGUOUS---MED SHOT--SAME AS ABOVE BUT MED

DAY--AMBIGUOUS---Various CUs of Ben putting together the machine: books, materials, Ben putting the gadget together, Ben turning it on-seeing it light up. A wide shot.



Home clothes---Stop motion shot of Ben sleeping as time goes by



2ND UNIT/ CUTAWAYS=============================

top view spinner slow push in

Top view. Spinner is stopped. Lights turn off.




Shadow shots with spinner falling--who did it? Who/what is the perpetrator?

No one in room--projector projects clouds in garage

Close ups of the machinery, gadgets. Ben's book's (don't forget physics books)


****

Production begins!

(top: 1440 x 1080i image recompressed in JPG format)
(bottom: 24p frame uncorrected)

Production on noise: short film began yesterday.

Here's the status of the project.

Camera

I tested out the 1080i Sony. This isn't the HDR-FX1, but the cheaper model that costs about $1600. Still, it has all the basics (although stripped down): white balance, 100IRE only zebra. Interesting format. The video is actually captured at 1440 x 1080 and then gets stretched out to 16:9. The frame detail is pretty nice. The camera uses a CMOS instead of 3 chips. The color wasn't as rich as I'd hoped so I had to pump up the color reception. But the image still isn't as rich as I'd like probably because of the interlaced (vs. progressive) format. The format is also taxing on the computer. Capture is not real-time. When you capture into imovie HD you get a message saying "capturing at 1/4 speed, etc." Apparently imovie caches the information then has to spend time converting to its intermediate HD codec. Of course rendering times increase.

The general question is: what's the most important: resolution, frame rate, progressive scan, rendering times/convenience? After deliberating for a while, I came to the conclusion that frame rate and progressive scan were most important in terms of look. Going 24p would give me 3 of the four above. The resolution of the Sony was nice, but the color and shooting at 60i just wasn't what I wanted.

So we're shooting at 24p on the Panasonic VX-100.

Perpetual motion: the Bruce the Shark of independent filmmaking

Getting the spinner to work was hard and Ben and Erik have come up with a new strategy to get more consistent results. Erik had constructed an elaborate marionette-like system that attached to the motor. However the spinner spun off center. We tried another strategy but still got wobble and inconsistent speeds. After working on this thing for about four hours and shooting just a little, Erik and Ben have come up with a new strategy that involves building a more accurate rig. The previous rig didn't work, they think, because it did not provide an accurate centerpoint which is crucial for accurate spin. We had a long discussion about doing the spinner as a composite. It seems like all of us would much rather have the spinner work practically.

We also took a look at the first footage. This was the first time with everything in place--Ben, the working (sort of) spinner and the lit set. The feeling was that the spinner looked too inconsequential. Granted, these were wide shots, but the sense was that the spinner ought to look more magical. There's a balance we're trying to get where the spinner seems hobby-like and mundane and where it comes across as a magical apparatus: the consensus is that the scene looks too mundane and needs more magic.

We're going to bring back an old idea. The spinner box has a hole in it which was originally going to be used for a crystal or a light. We'll put a light in it. Then we'll also try uplighting to get the spinner shadow to project onto Ben's face. So the light should appear to emanate from the spinner itself. Reference image from Raiders of the Lost Ark...

Once we get the lighting and practical effect worked out, I think shooting will go quickly. Ben's performance was very good. In class I've been talking about the difference between impressiveness and spectacle. Impressiveness in filmmaking looks cool and expensive. Like nice visual effects. Spectacle is one of the reasons why we see movies--to see things we haven't seen before (I hate talking heads movies). Although often the two are related, what we are trying to do in this film is create spectacle without impressiveness. I realized that every scene of this video has at least one difficult element--either an effect or a location, or a prop. None of these is impressive, but all are there to create a sense of spectacle linked to meaning.