Tonight's shoot went well. Gracie and Ben were really well prepared. Gracie looks terrific on camera and intuitively understood what we were after. You can see some test footage HERE. I'll probably have to grade the dining room footage to make it look more unpleasant. See example HERE. For another grade done in AE (overlaly layer, + levels adjustment on top layer) click HERE.
Some notes on the shoot:
Method acting
Ben and Gracie were eating the $1 Banquet Salisbury steak TV dinners. It certainly didn't hurt their performances since they're not supposed to be enjoying dinner. However, Ben said he liked the food.
Post production acting
I speed-changed the example footage to 85% (see the post on making video look like film).
Lighting
We were noticing how nice the light from the existing but unseen Nelson Bubble lamp looked during the lighting tests. One of us had the great idea to just put a higher wattage bulb in the fixture. Once we switched from the 60 watt to the 240 watt bulb the shot looked nice and natural. So that's the only lighting we used. The higher wattage buys you better color and lower grain. A good tip for the future: just use practical lights with higher wattage bulbs.
Walls
If I had been smart I would have switched the set and shot Gracie and Ben's medium shots against the yellow wall. Now it looks like they're in a yellow theatrical environment and then in an actual house.
TV
Last night I tried shooting the light projected from an actual TV set. Not enough wattage by far. So what you're seeing in the TV-watching shot is Erik controlling the Omni light using a $9 dimmer switch. You can actually buy a gadget that does this flickering for you. Cost: $675-$2790! See magicgadgets.com.
Sex or Food?
When I went to OSH today to look for the dimmer switch they were having a promotional event going on (they didn't have the dimmer by the way, I had to go to Home Depot) . There was a line for the free food but no line for the Laker Girls signing autographs. I'm not sure whether this says something about the Lakers, Mexican food, or the people who shop at OSH.
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