Math & shooting ratios

If you remember, a couple of weeks ago I threw away files from my Capture Scratch folder. So today I spent about four hours digitizing. I'm almost, but not completely done. I didn't mind recapturing which is probably why I was a bit cavalier about trashing capture scratch. If you come from the design world, you know the "build it twice" idea... you building something, then build it again from scratch letting your knowledge from the first time inform the second time. This strategy works well for a lot of things. This time, I gave the files proper names when capturing (previously I had hundreds of files named Untitled, Untitled-1, Untitled1-1, etc.) Also, last time I captured without audio. There are some segments where it will be nice to have the original audio. I was also able to considerably streamline everything digitizing only what I needed.

This was also an opportunity to look over everything we've shot. We started shooting in February but it seems like a LOT longer than 7 months ago. Looking at those old tapes was like looking at a time capsule. Dozens and dozens of lighting experiments. A lot of bad lighting. A lot of shots that were shot centered and straight on going for that "theatrical approach." I also noticed the difference in Ben's performances. They are sometimes a little stiff, mostly because I'm forcing him to stay in frame when I'm in tight on a tripod or asking him to do some awkward thing. I now realize I can ask him to relax a bit more, that the formality I'm going on does not equal stiffness. If he were more experienced, he'd probably be able to work around my direction.

I've captured about 40 GB so far. This means that I've captured about 160 minutes. Our short is about 12 minutes long, so that's a 13 to 1 ratio. That didn't seem like much until I remembered that's the *captured* ratio, not the shooting ratio. I only captured about 1/3 of what we shot. So we shot about 40 to 1... somewhere between a feature film ratio and a documentary ratio. Actually, though, I'd say a great deal of that footage was us just doing tests and trying to figure out how to light at the beginning. We've been much more efficient in our latest shoots. So in a hypothetical next production, we'd probably be shooting about 20 to 1. In other words, the backwards, "work it out in the shooting" approach requires about double of what you might expect to shoot (e.g., 10 to 1).

Congratulations!

Congratulations to Ben and Krissy on their baby girl born yesterday morning. I am now busy figuring out how we can use a newborn infant in our script.

Got.. to.. log.. in..... post... new... blog... entry.....

Well school has definitely taken its toll on the project. Not only that, at this very second, Ben's wife is in labor with their first child. Still, I was able to do some script rewriting last week. I can picture where this is going. The experience of the film will be odd. It will feel familiar like something we've seen. And yet, it won't be exactly obvious what's happening, sort of like "what was that?" I think it will be like a TV show made by somehow who has never watched TV.

On the audio side, Dan is now working on the audio collage for the red room. I'm really looking forward to hearing that.

So it continues slowly, slowly but we do edge closer.

Ooopsie!

Hint: if the urge to delete your Final Cut Pro Capture Scratch folder ever hits you: DON'T DO IT! I think it was the term "scratch" that did me in. You know, this must be one of those folders that FCP really doesn't need, right? Now I have to go back and re-digtize a bunch of stuff.

What's up?

I'm now entering the third week of the semester, a traditional slow period for the film. Unfortunately, we've been working on this thing so long that it's become a seasonal event. This December makes two years of work. On Friday we finished with new pre-vis shots so by this coming week the entire film should be either shot or previsualized with the new middle and new ending. In a discussion on Friday I wondered aloud whether we could get by with fewer sets. Ben argued correctly, I think, that our character has to live in a normal house and not be a "unabomber" style loner who lives in a garage. So that took care of that--we can't get by with collapsing some of the scenes into the garage workroom. I also showed Ben and Erik the slightly redsigned workshop set which is now by a window which makes it much for photogenic and allows for more possibilities for lighting, etc. We've been looking at the church footage and we seem to think that it will work if the glass looks more cracked or shattered. So we'll see if plexiglass shatters or not.

It just gets worse...

Saw Ben today. We talked about some ideas for getting the bird shots to work. I went home and did some composites. Da-daah! It looked exactly like I was envisioning. And it was really easy. I shot the ornithopter flying in front of a white wall. Then all I had to do was make a garbage matte and multiply it in After Effects. So far so good.

Next I downloaded some royalty-free stock footage of flocking birds. Stuff I could actually afford. Then I tried compositing it into the windows to get a sense of what it would look like. But when I composited the birds, it looked like they had just pooped all over the window. Remember, the blood wasn't dark enough and looked gooey and transparent. It made me think about the fine line we have to walk and how everything needs to be delicately balanced. So to get this scene to work we'll probably have to be a bit more obvious. Maybe have a bird smashed into the window. Or feathers. And make the blood darker. Or use spiderwebbed glass. Or something.

Meh... [video]

Shot our practical effects at the church on Wednesday. We had only four shots planned but it took forever and didn't come out all that well. Of course, with the stories about Jaws' Bruce the shark and Star War's R2D2, I wasn't expecting much to go right with ambulatory practical effects in the first place. But in this case, it was less about the operation of the practical effect and more about the disconnect between the intended effect and what was visually possible during the shoot. After more than 20 takes, the best bird shot just looks like a blob flying past the window, not the mysterious silhouette I was hoping for. And the food coloring/karo syrup blood on the window looked like, well, karo syrup. In person the fake blood was as dark as we could make it—green actually. On tape it looks like clear sticky, liquid. On a positive note, Sean and I made lollipops with the karo syrup on Saturday. The shots may actually be usable. I'm not sure. Or I may try to do the bird shot as a composite.

[view flying blob bird shot]