Shot more yesterday. More freeform stuff and arty stuff. I shot some stuff through a wide angle lens from my cheap Panasonic. The lens doesn't actually fit the Sony so I just hold it in front of the Sony. I liked the look, so I'll probably buy a wide angle lens that actually fits the camera.
Ben and I had a long discussion about the last post and this idea of "listening to the shot." (Erik was also making fun of me about that.) I was telling Ben I just don't know how a typical production works. How can you go out and shoot something that closely matches a storyboard? I can't even match what I shot on a previs. Ben wondered aloud whether it was the sheer amount of technology and skill on set. You can dictate the shot into existence. I wonder if it's just greater experience. If you've shot a lot, you have a general sense of what will work before you get into production.
I'm really feeling the need to find someone to DP. I just can't pay attention enough when I have to operate camera. I'm losing too many shots and unable to pay attention to performance. I finally figured out how to monitor on the Sony so at least now it's possible to use a DP. I tried everything from monitoring HDV into the laptop via Final Cut (5 second lag) to considering doing video assist with my Standard Def camera. Then I found that the Sony has a Standard Def 16X9 out. So I can monitor on a regular TV while shooing HDV 1080i. Not a good solution for monitoring color, but good enough for monitoring performance and framing.
Spent the morning making more props--the stars. I sculpted the stars out of Sculpey clay, baked them to harden and then filed down the planes/edges. Then I pushed these completed stars into more Sculpey to make molds. The molds are now sitting in the refrigerator, sprayed with Pam and filled with Knox gelatin. I'm hoping that these gelatin stars will be photogenic, but we'll see. If nothing else, I learned that nothing ever works the way you expect.
Been thinking about cheap alternatives to C-stands. Musician's Friend has mic stands including boom AND microphone for $19.99. That should work to hold up a flag. Better than the IKEA lampstand we're now using anyway.
I happened to be skimming through Peter Jackson's King Kong the other day, right after having watched The Phantom Edit/Phantom Menace. King Kong is kind of boring but it sure is beautifully shot. I kept thinking about how nice it looked compared to the Phantom Menace which had a thin, video-ey look that I wanted to fix in After Effects. That's the best they could do with their high price digital video cqmerq I thought? Then I did found out that Episode I was mostly shot on film. So what I thought was a video look was actually an aesthetic decision. hmmm.
I found that Ben and Erik check into the blog and have watched the dailies I posted. They gave Ben some ideas about performance (.e.g, don't be afraid to push the peformance to the edges) which worked great during the shoot. So the blog is pretty functional as a work tool. Maybe not so interesting if you're just dropping in to read, but functional.
1 comment:
The blog, as well as the drawn out shooting schedule are extremely illuminating to me. Ron and I discussed how, with enough human and money resources you can make what you imagine with little to no listening of any kind. This is what most of the cinematic "arts" are. I think that, for instance with an indy film that shoots for 500k to 2 or 3mil movie makers have developed a visual style that implies that a sensitive listening process has been used to create the film. To me 9 times out of 10 it is just a style like a Vin Diesel triple X movie for skinny people. The funny thing is that this film could come out looking kind of like one of those films. The question is, is there any distinguishing quality that will result, will it be quickly categorized, or basically incomprehensible. Or recognized as something strange.
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