I'm in the early stages of editing my latest short with the SoCal Film Group (SCFG), entitled "Gone". It's the fifth short I've written & directed for SCFG, and -- as always -- had it's own series of challenges. I'd originally hoped to shoot it in 3 days: two days of "principle" photography, and a short day of inserts and pick-ups. Before the 2nd day was over, I knew I needed at least another weekend of shooting. It ended up taking four 8-9 hour days, plus a half-day of inserts.
The story takes place entirely in and around one car. It starts at the featured character's home driveway, and continues with him on his journey through suburbia, into "urbia" and finally to his workplace parking lot. Except for the first shot, it was all "DAY EXT." stuff.
I had considered shooting it partially or mostly with green screen. After doing tests with and without green screen -- and considering the various limitations and the realism required of the piece with minimal resources at hand -- I decided to shoot at practical (sometimes impractical) locations.
For that reason, the shooting times were limited to daylight hours -- which, in the winter (even in L.A.) means less than 12 hours. Even though we could have started by 7AM, I held the call times back to 8AM, to keep my cohort from yawning and napping during their precious, shortened-by-my-movie weekend. Therefore, we had to close shop by 5PM, when the sun was too low on the horizon to help us.
On Day 1, we managed to shoot 3 of the 4 scenes I'd hoped to complete. Part of the reason was the nature of the shooting situation, which required blocking as many reflections as possible from the featured windshield(s) of any given shot. This took some rigging time and a lot of careful adjustments. Also, we had a small generator that supposedly had enough power for the key light we planned to use -- but turned out to be inadequate for that task. We ended up using some smaller lights for the closer shots, which we had to place close to the edge of the frame for adequate exposure. Hey, that's what you get for "free" or "cheap" sometimes! At least we were able to use it for something.
Upon viewing the day's footage, it turned out that one of the scenes had technical problems, and would have to be re-shot. Sigh...
On Day 2, we got to contend with some impressive rainfall. I liked the weather on that day, as it contributed to the movie's atmosphere without the cost of rain machines. We DID have a "Hudson sprayer" of sorts, which was a great, cheap tool to use for creating fake rain on windows for closer shots (it has also been used by SCFG'ers several times for blood-spurting effects). Unfortunately, we also had some wind gusts that day.
We had a small HMI as our key light, and it worked beautifully on one of the scenes. After setting up the next scene, a gust of that afore-mentioned wind sent the HMI crashing to the asphalt, breaking the bulb. We only got one take of the master on that one, but it worked as an establishing shot, anyway. And the light was borrowed, to boot. Luckily the loaner was a nice guy, and forgave me.
On Day 3, we started shooting in a public parking lot. After getting through the first scene (the re-shoot from Day 1), we spent some time setting up for a second scene. Just as we were ready to start rolling on it, the local authorities told us we had to leave. Damn... At least they were nice about it. While we slowly and half-heartedly sort-of started wrapping up as the authorities watched from nearby, we rolled the camera (which was locked off) and let the actor run the scene a few times, hoping that it might actually be worthwhile.
Then we left, and during lunch, I looked at the stealth shots we'd just done, on a 40" HDTV screen: NG. No Good. Besides needing more takes with a director (me) actually present, watching and listening, the cable for the plant mic we had in the car was quite obvious [note to self and other interested parties: double and triple check your frame with your own, naked eye -- not a monitor -- just to make sure unwanted stuff isn't in the shot].
So, we moved back outside (on another street), and set up for the same scene -- again. And we had another lighting problem. Yes, the key light was malfunctioning (or so we thought). We finally got it to work, after a fashion... then we blew a fuse. After which I almost blew a fuse. But we resourcefully broke out our bounce cards and other reflective items, catching enough late afternoon sunlight to make the scene end up looking great, after all.
On Day 4, we got lucky. Everything I needed to get that day, I got, including a bunch of driving shots with a camera mounted on the car. Oh, we saw a cop car or two on our journey, but we were parked when they came around, and they didn't seem to care. We finished as the sun faded behind the trees in the near-distance.
Yes, there were some inserts and pick-ups left to do, but they could wait. And they did. I got them a few days later. Now, I need to finish the first edit, get some reflection shots and effects (to be added to the "blank" surfaces of the windshields), some voice-overs, sound design, music, etc.
More later...
