Adventures in Production

So, like I said, we had a great shoot last sunday, but lets talk a little about getting there. We had a few issues, one we've tamed and one that's ongoing. We wanted to get the water turned on so we could do hair and make-up on location. Our plan B was to do Hair and Make-Up off site at another building and truck the Actors back and forth. Fortunately for us Trish and Charlie's brother in law is a first class plumber and he is always very, very giving of his time for our special needs. We had a few leaks in the building when the water company turned on the water for us so we had to shut it off to do the repairs. When we shut it off, Jason (our brother in law) said the only thing he was worried about was turning it back on since the building is so old. Well, his instincts were correct and the valves for the building were so old they were stuck off. He ended up replacing a huge section of the main inputs after having the water company come back to turn off the street level on/off. Then when we went to turn it back on this valve was also broken. So they're gonna be digging up the access to replace it on Friday. So for the shoot we were on to plan B.



This is the problem we solved. Echo and Reverberation in a warehouse is not your friend. We had to insulate the building for sound absorbtion. After a bit of research and 7 hours going up and down on our scissor lift and tying various materials to the raftors, we have a much less reverberant room - an absolute requirement and something we were glad worked out so well.


This is the actual first thing we shot. It was Friday night and it took us way too long. Barnaby and Charlie had already put in a 12 hour day at the set and Trisha had been up for work since 5:30, and then we spent 5 more shooting. We were all a little frazzled. But the shots were good and the audio sounded nice. Samantha did a great job.


Here's us shooting. This was one of our simpler setups. Just a headshot and speaking. Nothing real fancy. We were hitting the backdrop with 2 500 watt 3" fresenels both spotted down. Alicia was lit with a 500 watt diffused through a pop up diffuser as a key and filled with our lowel caselight. She had a small diffused kicker in front of her too although I don't know if it was really doing much.

This is the final light. This is a still from my 30d not a framegrab. I'm trying to take shots for our Hair and Make-up artists.

This is Rosalind, Our Hair Stylist working her touchup magic before we take a shot. The actress she is working on is Katie Sheets.

Here's Katie in final light. Her setup is the same as I described above for Alicia.


Here's Katie all "Blossomed" out. These are from a series in the movie where we see a group of senior portraits that speak. They're all era specific. She is lit on her back by 2 500 watt fresnels one coming from each side out of frame. She has a 500 watt kicker at her side that is lighting the wall and giving her hip an edge. I might have been able to flag it a bit more. Her key is the same diffused 500 watt fresnel and her fill is the caselight.

This is Abigail Wright. This is a still from the Senior portraits scene. I think this portrait might be my favorite. It all came together so well. Hair, Makeup and set. Rosalind spent about 4 hours crimping her hair into this perm look. It turned out awesome, and the sweet wholesome 80's make-up that Lauren did was perfect. I lit her with a 2 500 watts thru a 36 inch difuser from the right with our caselight on the left for fill. The background is 2 500 watts from 45 angles and two 250 watts hanging from above.

This is Lisa Marie Smith. This is going to be composited into a Magazine cover. Its going to have fun movie text. We even had her "push" some text out of the actual shot. It should look really cool when its done. The interesting thing here is that the 30d rendered the greenscreen as Cyan. Whats with that canon?
Here is the first shot of the day. I saved it for last because it is so killer! The actors are Brandi Payton, and Christopher West, but in the script they are called Euphoric Couple. I think we might have made Brandi laugh a little in this picture, but for the actual shot it was oh so Euphoric - and there's nothing funny about that. We weren't sure how easy of a shot this would be. We tracked to the right and pushed in, and the actors met each other for the first time that day. But it went super smooth. I basically threw all my light I could on them and got a 1:2 ratio. I diffused their keys with some muslin and it worked really well. It was a little off color so it gave them a bit of warmth. This was a great way to start out the day.
-charles