Hey guys Riley a.k.a. jerkwithacamera here with a I want to be a filmmaker update. It has been a while since I have done an update but that is because we have been busy! We have filmed most of writers block. We have just one scene left but ran into troubles trying to light it in the wilderness from a small 150 W inverter at a truck :) In the meantime you can check out this funny slate cut which features the silly antics of Daniel and Noah throughout the shoot. We also have been working quite steadily on a script that I wrote in 2000 2001 we have cast my friend Abigail S the main female character and we are currently holding auditions for the lead male!
We also this past weekend we participated in Vancouver’s version of the run&gun 48 hour film competition. For those not in the know the running done 48 hour film competition is a competition in which teams have exactly 48 hours to write script cast film and edit a five minute or less short. To keep it real they give you three mystery elements at the very start of the competition that need to be incorporated into your finished product. Starting Friday night at 6 o’clock we were given the character of a delivery person who has at least one speaking line, it must contain five continuous seconds of a spoon, and include the line “we need a bigger blank” The best part about this was we assembled a team of strangers who literally we’re meeting for the first time at 5:30. Literally half an hour before the competition started!
How did it go? Amazing!! We bantered about a bunch of ideas mostly involving Jesus and eventually settled upon our final concept which Sean gracefully scripted out using Celtx. I blocked it in my mind while creating some awesome animated gifs that we actually put on a cell phone to act as a practical effect. I could have filmed a blank phone and then just fixed it and post but all of that tracking and rendering would take time so it was just easier to make it a practical effect within. And then I went to sleep for a couple of hours. I woke up early and wrote out our shot list for the day trying to keep it as simple as possible but it still ended up being over 53 separate shots in five locations in and around our studio. People started arriving from around 8:30 & some got started with makeup, others help dress the set well others worked on wardrobe conspiracy signs and tin foil colander hats.
We wrote the script around the set we had so dressing it was minimal. We made our characters fit the space and props that we had available to us. It was an extremely ambitious day. I would consider it extremely ambitious even if we could’ve shot well into the night but our main actress Anna had to leave by 6pm and some of our other actors had to leave by 4ish so that gave us 8 to 10 hours to film all 50 some seems.
I have to be honest with you, I didn’t think we were going to do it. but we did and it was an amazing feeling. we were wrapped by 630-7 o’clock to which we sat down and watched the dailies while drinking beer. That night I copied our 500+ gigs of footage and audio to my computer backed it up and began logging all the footage matching our audio from our external recorder. Crashing out at about 1 am & fitfully sleeping till i got up at about 5ish. After making more coffee I’ve began to edit. I had the rough edit done by 10:30am and then could go about the tweaking and the couple special effects that we had. I Also needed to film a couple more inserts of the phone. We had until 6 o’clock Sunday evening to submit our film over the Internet. meaning I wanted it to be rendered up by six so we could begin the upload with the extra time to spare.
That sort of happened it was more like rendered by 5:30 and uploaded with 10 minutes to spare but we got it up and submitted!!! One of the things I wish I had more time to do was properly colour correct the film we shot it raw with the Black Magic 2.5K to give us options in post and so I could utilize the high dynamic range and get away with left lighting. The final product that you will see Will I have utilized this very well while what was submitted was really a gross hack job because of time! In addition to lighting rentals we rented the DGI Ronan again and I’m very glad that we did we were able to cut the 50 some scenes down to 40 some by combining back and forth into a single fluid moving shot. This saves us an unbelievable amount of time even if I am still sore a week later. Everything else was care that we already had the Black Magic 2.5k Rode microphone Tascam audio recorder a dead wombat dollies jibs and tripods I cannot thank everybody enough especially people like Sarah who out of the goodness of her heart gave us all of our lighting rentals for free just cause she is awesome she in fact is in my phone as Sarah is awesome. One thing to remember is with all of your rentals make sure you keep track of all of their parts and pieces. Only the bare essentials of what was required for the Ronan came out of its box so nothing could get lost. We pulled one screw one in Allen key one base plate the Ronan add it set up stand leaving chargers and extra batteries in its case until they were needed. I also recommend that you do this with any other rentals. And I also recommend that you do a periodic check to make sure you have everything you were supposed to have. As it was we lost hey bag of scrims for the Ary 300 W to which I feel absolutely horrible about. This was a favour from Sarah and I kind of Effed it up. So keep track of all of your things. And equipment checklist is always a great idea I am extremely happy with what we produced in such little time. Last night we invited cast and crew over and had a viewing party it was amazing to see their reactions and to see how stoked they were about the project we are calling Unit One.
If you would like to see it join us at the Rio Theatre on August 8 at 9 PM links below to see ours and all of the entries that made it in this 48 hour film competition. I think it will be one heckuva night and tickets are only $10 Psst you should buy them in advance for I’ve heard that it will probably sell out! What next! We will continue to be doing auditions for our other projects which has been lovingly named “art film” it’s a working title. And perhaps next week we will finished the last scene from writers block and get that up and out for you all to see. And last night after our viewing party we brainstorm a couple of great ideas that we should be able to work out into a script very soon. It is all super super super super super super super exciting I can’t wait to share unit one. Which I will Post Live on the Internet as soon as the Gala screening is completed so if you can’t make it out to the real Theatre Watch our Facebook and twitter feeds for that. Also are you interested in joining in on all of our fun? If so click here click here click here we are always looking for more people who are interested and what we’re doing. Want to just follow along and keep up-to-date with us and our awesome click here to!!!