Elindil’s secret Shoot days

Shoot Day 14 &15 - Out of Order

Sat, 10 Nov 2007 09:18:27 +1100

By now we were feeling pretty confident with Blue Screen shooting and the process of setting up, lighting, blocking through scenes, shooting to save hard drive space and so on. An advantage of shooting Blue Screen was we gained on screen monitoring and the ability to playback takes, without having to deal with timecode breaks, or accidental erasures (I have a pet hate of watching back footage on set from tape because the risk of damaging and losing footage is too great). But now we could watch shots back without fear of destroying the material (unless a hard drive failed). This particularly helped with the scenes that I was acting in, but also allowed us to have confidence, knowing that we had captured the shots as planned. Rather than ‘grabing one for safety’ which I am not a big fan of, we knew we had the shot and providing there weren’t any hard drive failures we could move on confidently. Especially dealing with stunts it was nice to see that we had captured the elements correctly and were even able to watch them back frame by frame to make sure.

Today we were shooting at the ‘location’ called ‘The Light of Arkanand’. By this stage my body had given itself over to sickness. Although I didn’t have flu like symptoms, my throat was torn to shreds and I was in a constant out of body state of mind. I was popping Cold and Flu tablets as well as Panadol for the pain of the sore throat and ordering Lemon and Honey teas every chance I got (Rachel must have made 100 of them over these remaining 5 shoot days).

The greatest challenge for this weekend was created by unavailability of cast. There are so many shots where we were simply working around the fact that one of the cast or another just were not there to shoot. It probably means that the final cut of the movie won’t have as many wider shots of the environment, although my hope is to make up for the in the set up of the scenes so that the audience still know where everything is as we cut around the tighter shots.

The light of Arkanand provided many challenges as well. Apart from the tremendous reliance on post production to make this location work, there were some great performances from the cast. This weekend and the next will create some performances that will take the movie to a new level. It was exciting to see it all come together...even though at the same time, it was becoming more and more obvious that pick up shoots were inevitable. That we would end up with 8 or so pick up shoot days was a surprise...but in the movie making business, the surprises seem to come thick and fast. Surprises and changes...changes that in the last week of principle photography would take us from a 2 day weekend to a 3.

Shoot Day 20 & 21 - At least we’re learning

Sat, 27 Oct 2007 02:04:07 +1000

Between Sunday of last week and this Saturday a lot had happened. To start with we had to get the Blue Screen movie files from last week off the computer and into storage. We had filled the 900GB of storage in the two days (For those that are technically savvy this was 3 x 300GB drives in a striped RAID - even then we were pushing the speed limit of the data coming from the camera). Considering we weren’t shooting at full speed yet I knew there was a very real danger of us running out of space in a single shoot day. We were copying the files to RAID 5 storage for protection, but doing this over a network was very slow. It literally took days for the files to copy over. I realised this wasn’t going to be a method we could use to empty the drives from a Saturday to Sunday (let alone a Friday, Saturday, Sunday - which happened on the final shoot weekend). I bought an external SATA Card and a 1 TB External SATA Drive. That meant we could copy files across to that drive as a half way measure during shooting and free up the internal RAIDed drives. Not the safest way to go, but as long as we didn’t have a drive failure we would be able to keep shooting with minimal delays. As it turned out we only needed to stop once or twice to move files. Usually this was done during lunch, but even then it could take up to an hour to move 300GB (which we could easily do in a morning - *NOTE - we could record data 3 times faster than we could get it off the system, so one hour moving files meant we had recorded for 20 minutes...and we were being ruthless with our recording - deleting bad takes, pressing record after everyone was in place, the slate was in shot...a quick slate and action! I also never let takes role on. If there was a problem we would rehearse again...and once we got it right we would then shoot).

Anyway, back to the week between shooting - there was a meeting to talk through the problems that occurred with setting up the blue screen. We decided that we needed an extra person to help manage the cast particularly if we were running late. On a bigger budget shoot this would be the Second or Third Assistant Director. Andy Strempel who was assisting his wife doing make-up volunteered to also do this role. We also met for rehearsals for the scenes we were shooting this weekend. John, Dad and I returned to the car port and did some work on making the ‘studio’ more wind resistant, light resistant and easier to set up and pack up. We also had shoot days being moved around to cater for cast and crew’s availability - which meant lots of emails and phone calls; organising when, who and where. At this stage I felt like there was a good chance of us getting everything we needed shot for the entire movie in our current schedule. I had been editing as we went along to get a sense of whether sequences were working and so far we were doing fine. However, these last few weeks were extremely busy and I couldn’t get the footage off the computer fast enough let alone edit it as well. The editing for these sequences would have to wait. Even though I had bought the extra hard drive that only added extra time to the transfer of files to our RAID 5 drives during the week and there was one week where the computer literally finished copying files in time to grab it and head out the door for more shooting. As it turned out we managed to get the files across with time to spare this week, we would have next weekend off so that would give us enough time to regroup and then push through to the end of the schedule, but first...we had to get through this weekend - 2 more days of Blue Screen.

There is something about working long days in a blue screen environment that can start to send you a bit batty. I’ve heard other people talk about blue screen syndrome, but often that refers to the lack of rational, making poor blue screen decisions while shooting. For example you get so used to seeing blue that you don’t realise one of the actors has partly got blue on their costume. An obvious example, but the same mistake can be made for other elements of blue screen that can make life down the track a lot harder. However, in our circumstance blue screen syndrome was more about the overwhelming sense that everything in life is just blue. Your eyes are overstimulated with the colour and everything can seem a little weird.

It seemed we had learnt from last week’s mistakes and the day went very smoothly. Even though we were shooting entirely blue screen and could have recorded sequences in any order we decided for the sake of lighting, costumes and make-up that we would still plan out which scenes were going to be done in which order and at which time (within reason). It also meant that the actors could be more prepared for the scenes that were coming. The scenes covered over this weekend were all set in what is known as Elindil’s Cave.

One of the scenes in Elindil’s Cave is a long action packed sequence. Plus this same location is visited in two different eras by different characters. For story telling purposes I adopted a method of using the same shots and sequence...almost like a rhyme the audience will know what is coming the second time...which should add some tension. It also meant I was able to save time shooting. We made up the characters for both scenes. Shot it with one group and then used the exact same lighting and markers and shot it with the next group. We would then set up the next shot. Light it and repeat the process. There were some angles where it was totally appropriate to use the same shot for three or four different moments in the movie. With the flexibility to move the camera in slightly different ways for each shot and to modify the background this was a great time saver during shooting.

Overall this weekend was a massive improvement on the weekend prior. And we now had a weeks break to prepare all the way through till the end of principle photography.

Shoot Day 18 & 19 - Blue Screen sickness

Sat, 20 Oct 2007 20:53:47 +1000

Coming into shooting Blue Screen had been an interesting exercise. We had looked at many different options and locations for shooting a number of Interior scenes. Because of some of the stunts that were required in these scenes there was already the need to do Blue Screen work. But, one of the scenes also had a very complicated moving rock wall written in the script. We looked at the possibility of using a practical set element for this wall, but the more we looked into it the more we realised this set piece was getting out of our budget range. It was decided that this element would be created as a computer generated item in 3D. Therefore, we needed to obtain a Blue Screen studio and now purchase 3D software. We also needed a camera that could output uncompressed video and computer equipment that could record a minimum 100MB a second. This does sound expensive, but since most of those costs were required anyway it made a great deal of sense to attempt to shoot a number of the unusual interior scenes in this manor, saving on further set building costs, as well as space to shoot and store them. That is not to say that this decision wasn’t without it’s problems and challenges, but ultimately it was a better use of finance and man power (that said, it did add over a year to the post production timetable).

For the professionals amongst us Blue Screen was something that we had worked with, but we had never built our own, or recorded the material live to computer. Thankfully with research, testing and careful decisions we came to the 20th of October with essentially all the equipment we needed, but we really had been scrambling to have it all ready to go. We had decided to shoot under the house of our DOP in his car port, as it gave us maximum height to shoot as well as some protection from the weather. However, the final test assembly was done during an evening and really didn’t show us all of the problems that were were going to face the next morning. As it turned out the Blue Screen material wasn’t thick enough to block light that was behind it and there was a lot more ambient light than we had hoped in that undercover position. We had given ourselves a couple of hours to set up the blue screen, lights, camera and recording equipment, but now we also had to black out the rear of the blue screen, cut down the ambient light, do a test record and iron out any further problems. It took us about 4 hours. Not only that, but we discovered a power issue. We were tripping circuit breakers, and that wasn’t even under full load. People scrambled to fix wiring, drove to find tarps, purchase extra lighting and anything else that needed doing. I was very hands on for all this, being the only one familiar with the new camera set up, the recording requirements and trying to keep things moving. Meanwhile, we were short of production crew and we had cast members arriving at their scheduled time. We also discovered that we just didn’t have enough light to get the blue screen area lit and be able to add fine detail to the foreground. We were falling a long way behind. That said, everything kept turning up as required. Wazza showed up to perform and just happened to have two lighting kits in his car. This was the final thing we needed, and now, finally, we were able to get shooting. Cast were helping get food organised and everyone was very patient, even though we were getting further and further behind, as shooting was much slower than the speed we had got up to on location. The first shots we got were actually some of the first shots of the entire movie and worked great. The very first blue screen shot is a tilt up from Elindil writing to his face. I had always wanted the camera to be very fluid through out shooting, but I knew that blue screen shooting could very well put a halt to that movement. However, in the weeks leading up to production I become aware of a few techniques that we could use to let the camera move freely. For me this was tested to a degree, but I hadn’t actually tried it with Blue Screen material, but without any back up plan (other than coming back and shooting again) we plowed on shooting in this style, hoping it would work. It would not be until at least 8 months later, when I came to start working on the blue screen footage that I would realise we had made the right call, the movement of the camera really added a lot to the blue screen shots. By the end of the day it was obvious that the cast, as patient as they’d been, had not enjoyed the process. While we were light for crew, we did not have the procedures or experience to deal with problems. While everything was working and we had covered all areas in planning we were fine, but as soon as something was overlooked, or something didn’t go to plan we were left off balance. The fact we had very few issues during shooting was a testament to our scheduling and planning, on the other hand, it was a glaring problem that we were not able to deal with issues quickly or effectively when things went wrong.

That first blue screen shoot day was a very long one, especially as we were returning the next day to record more. On Sunday we wrapped on time, but with lots of shots still to be done. We would be returning many times to do blue screen, so I knew we would be able to pick these scenes up, but it had been a valuable lesson in the chain of command; in putting procedures in place to deal with delays; of having contact people for the actors to check in with (all of which would happen on a bigger budget production) and having experienced people in the right jobs (another budgetary consideration). That said, considering our budget and expertise we managed to get through this day and the days to come...but this weekend was not without it’s toll. It would start my decline into the hands of sickness...which would last till the end of principle photography.

Shoot Day 17 - A relaxing & productive day

Sat, 13 Oct 2007 00:40:15 +1000

You would hope that after 14 days of planning and shooting we would have got it right. The only issue for the day was the unavailability of one of the cast, but it was something I was pretty sure we could work around.

We started the day shooting the exterior to the ‘Old Man’s house. We had already shot all of the interior scenes on shoot day 11. We took about 2 hours to get all the shots done and and in no time had left for our second and final location for the day.

The final part of the day would all be shot at the location of Alan Scott’s house. There were a couple of exteriors out the front of the house, but once they were done we soon moved to the rear of the house to shoot the rest of the scheduled scenes. On the whole these were all straight forward and we even had enough time to shoot extra coverage, something that was a rarity.

The greatest challenge for the day was acting and directing the scenes, particularly as my character was often looking away from what was happening in the rest of the scene. We didn’t really have time to watch takes back so I would watch the rehearsals and listen to the takes hoping that everything was working. Thankfully it all went well.

We shot late into the day and utilised the sun disappearing for some of our evening/night time scenes. This was a fulfilling day to walk away from with everyone well and truly in the swing of what they needed to do.

Shoot Day 16 - A great but challenging day

Sat, 6 Oct 2007 02:50:26 +1000

Shoot days 14 and 15 had been moved till later in the schedule for various reasons and because of the nature of shoot day 16 and the permit we had for this location it became a necessity to leave shoot 16 on it’s original date. A 2 hour drive was on the cards in order to get to our yet again ‘undisclosed’ location.

Today was not without it’s challenges and yet, somehow either they were becoming more and more normal or else we just managed to overcome the hurdles with greater ease. On the way to the location Leanne (my wife, continuity, script sounding board, driver, cook and endless support) picked up some of the cast. Andrew Hill and Dave Serafin from their homes and Cassie from Melbourne airport. David Donchi arrived with the early crew who met Mark Urquhart (Victorian Parks Ranger) at the location. This location had been visited 3 times in the lead up to this shoot, the final time within just a week or two of shooting in order to work out what was allowed as part of our permit. The areas where we were allowed to shoot were outlined and a basic plan for the shoot had been worked out. Today we also were offered the use of a Jimmy Jib crane from Spectrum Camera Cranes, including one of their operators, Graeme Daisley, who’s wife was pregnant and within a week of her due date. In the lead up to this day I had expected to get a call saying the baby was on it’s way and it was not going to be possible to have the crane. Totally understandable, as I saw it the crane would be a bonus for the movie, but I certainly wasn’t relying on it (although I’m not sure how I would have gotten some of the shots without it).

On arriving at the location we found that between our last visit and now a tree had fallen right where I had wanted to set up the crane. This was going to make the crane almost pointless. However, we had a Parks Ranger with us and Mark simply pulled out a chainsaw, and with the help of most of the cast and crew moved the fallen tree and set the crane up.

While that was happening, Dave Donchi and I started shooting running shots through the bush. This all went smoothly, except when Dave at one point tripped and fell, while attempting to jump over a large fallen tree (a different one).

Dave was fine and we continued on starting to use more of the cast as the scene built. We now had Geoff, Daniel, Mark Snell and Dave Kroiter running, jumping and diving all over the scene. These were all high energy shots and we had a couple of falls down the hill, Geoff’s being the nastiest with a few cuts and grazes. I think there were some very tired legs after those shots were completed.

By the time we had finished those shots the crane was ready to go, so we strapped the camera to it and completed those shots. The actors at the bottom of the falls were not having fun at this stage. I was not aware that the terrain below was really quite treacherous. During my reccy trips I had never gone down there and from way above they didn’t seem too bad, but looking closer at where the actors were, made the danger more obvious.

We finished this location off at the bottom of the falls and everyone did a great job of the scenes as well as making sure no one got injured.

To finish off this day we were lead to this water crossing...

where after 4 times through at speed the 4WD coughed, spluttered and died. One of the distributor leads had given up and Mark and Rachel drove off to find a garage that might have a replacement. By the time it was dark they returned, changed over the lead and then headed for home. A long day, but quite successful.

Shoot Day 13 - Making up for lost time

Sat, 29 Sep 2007 02:20:29 +1000

Originally shoot day 13 had been abandoned. It was Grand Final Day which meant Dave Serafin was working and it was obvious that both Cast and Crew were growing weary due to the amount of shooting we were doing on top of normal life. That said, after 2 weeks break everyone was ready to do what they could to get the movie back on track. A half day was planned to pick up the footage that had been missed on shoot day 7.

As had almost been the case every time we shot, the weather was perfect. That didn’t always mean it was sunny. Sometimes scenes actually worked better being overcast, and today was perfect for the look we needed. The morning and early afternoon went off without a hitch. Not only that but the cast continued to shine. Performances were getting stronger and stronger and confidence in the process was growing as well. It was a good day of shooting.

The coming shoot days schedule needed work and there were lots of changes made to the order that we would visit locations and shoot scenes. In order to save some time in communication we kept the shoot days numbered the same as the original schedule and simply moved those days to different dates...confused? The long and short of it is, the coming shoot day numbers are out of order, but will be listed in the chronological order they were shot in. If this doesn’t make sense let me know by making a comment and I’ll attempt to further clarify.

Shoot Day 12 - Are we learning yet?

Sat, 15 Sep 2007 01:32:03 +1000

Back at the same location as Shoot day 10. This time without the same camera problems as last time. All in all it was a very productive day shooting. Susan had another opportunity to stand in as Cassie’s double, while everyone else had a second go at the scenes that were shot at this location.

As mentioned in the entry for shoot day 10, one of the scenes wasn’t working. There were some minor changes made to that scene before shoot day 12, but this scene would be shot at least 2 more times (the second being the final pick up day, in a different location, with essentially a brand new script!)

This day went off smoothly and produced some great moments in the movie. This also lead into a 3 week break, the reasons of which were various: We were not ready to shoot a few scenes based on permits, equipment and the like; Actors became unavailable to shoot on certain dates; and we were aware that after shooting 12 days in 7 weeks (remembering that most people were also working full time jobs) there was a tiredness creeping into the cast and crew. It had been a tough journey so far and the break would be good, although it was cut to 2 weeks as we saw the opportunity to do a half day and pick up the scenes that weren’t shot due to the car accident on shoot day 7. Cast and Crew were open to the idea and the half day became shoot day 13, Grand Final Day 2007.

Shoot Day 11 - Hot, bothered and long

Sun, 9 Sep 2007 01:15:06 +1000

Most of the schedule prior to day ten was used to shoot scenes that were less reliant on great performances from the actors; chase scenes, smaller scenes and more of the comical moments of the movie. The schedule had been designed to give the actors a chance to get used to the crew, the style of shooting, their characters, their make-up, costumes and develop a routine. With those aspects feeling more comfortable for everyone, especially the actors, it was now time for them to make the most of their characters, and the scenes we were now running into were going to stretch everyone involved.

We had two long and very important scenes to shoot in Rodney’s house (our cameraman). Here answers and motives were about to be revealed that would set the characters up for the rest of the movie. I wanted a real earthy feel to this set, Grant’s character is hermit like, living in a log cabin that doesn’t have electricity. This scene is set late in the day and it’s starting to get dark, particularly inside his dingy dark house, and it was a great chance to use natural light; fire and candles, even though the sun was still very much shinning outside (ironically, the daytime scene that we shot next would not be finished until after the sun had completely disappeared). I should mention that while the impression of just natural light was achieved in this scene it was in fact lit with well placed lights. A quick aside regarding lights: My intention throughout the movie was to always have a very natural look and feel. John did a great job of really making sure scenes did not feel over-lit.

Of course, with a fire, candles and lights and a cast and crew of 15-20, the house started to get hot quickly. We started shooting the wide shots first and allowed Grant; who had the majority of lines in the 10 page scene; to get warmed up, used to the scene and flowing with the dialogue. From memory we also shot all of Dave’s and Cassie’s close ups as well. By lunch time Grant had the scene down and was flowing nicely, which was great because after lunch we would shoot his close ups. Of course, the room was getting warmer and warmer and 30 minutes later we were all full of food and struggling to concentrate. We had little to set up to get shooting Grant’s close ups, but by now Grant was suffering from the heat and food, the flow that we had just an hour early was gone. We were all struggling because of it. All we could do was push on and hope to find some energy. It was slow and hard going. Every line and connection to previous lines was difficult. However, the upside of this situation was that we did a lot of stopping and starting, and that allowed me to really guide Grant through the dialogue as I had heard it in my head while writing it. Grant is such a natural performer that the stopping and starting wasn’t a problem for him either. He brought an amazing quirkiness and interest to the character which may have been lost if we had just pushed through the dialogue as it was flowing before lunch. It is now one of my favorite scenes; lighting wise, acting wise and story wise.

Once we moved onto the next scene it was much smoother sailing. The very last shots of the day were close ups of Cassie in an emotional moment. She did a great job, but because of the content this was further draining and by the end everyone was feeling the effects of two long days of shooting in a row. Weekend over, it was time for everyone to head home and get ready for work the next day. Luckily, next weekend we would only be shooting for one day.

Shoot Day 10 - Slow Start and camera lessons

Sat, 8 Sep 2007 19:33:55 +1000

Although at the time we didn’t know it, today marked the beginning of the attempt to get the story on track as we shot one of the most important scenes of the entire movie. We were slow to get going, this scene had a lot of props and not all of them made it to the location first thing in the morning. It also was a very large scene, which I had already re-written many times. The other pressure today was limited time with Cassie. Part of making a movie on the cheap is that you have to be flexible with people’s time, especially those that are involved in nearly every shoot day. Arranging the shooting schedule to work for Cassie wasn’t a problem, it actually made the day fun, and makes for an interesting edit, where we either shot around the fact that she wasn’t there, or used our props/continuity person, Susan, to stand in for her. However, there were enough distractions in the day to allow us to miss the fact that the camera was running at 18db of gain - not good. If you look at the shot above at it’s current size, it looks fine. However, if you click on it you’ll find shots that you can make larger and see where the gain problems were. Unfortunately, we were shooting mostly from the camera monitor which is smaller than the image above and thus simply had no chance of seeing the problem. A quick aside: Throughout shooting we set the camera up in the same way, shooting with manual iris, a fixed white balance (depending on whether we were using lights or daylight) and no gain. But every now and then a setting would get knocked and gain in particular when set to auto would disappear from our monitoring...which meant that we weren’t alerted to the problem. The only clue we missed was that we were impressed with the amount of light we were getting. Of course once the gain problem was illuminated we were plunged back into darkness.

Most of the day’s shooting was lost. However, I began to realise that I wasn’t happy with the scene yet. It wasn’t terrible...and the performances did it justice, but it needed to set up a lot of plot points and it was doing that, but it felt, slow and daggy and laboured. I wasn’t giving the audience enough credibility to follow the story, but at the same time I wasn’t making the characters live the moments, they were just handing out information. It wasn’t quite exposition, but it also felt like we were spoon feeding the audience. The scene needed more work, before we would return to shoot it. There were quite a few scenes to shoot at this location and I knew we would be returning again, so there was time to get it right. That said, my intention was never to waste time, but ultimately, apart from a handful of shots, most of the day was put down to learning.

Shoot Day 8 & 9 - A total turn around

Sat, 1 Sep 2007 00:37:50 +1000

What a difference a week makes. After last weeks misfortunes it was daunting as we faced the most expensive shoot days. A weekend trip, 4 cars, 16 hours traveling, at least 15 cast and crew shooting at 2 locations. It was the furthest we were going to travel, the most expensive accommodation with the largest cast and crew present, for what ended up being about a minute on screen. Of course it was to get the stunt as pictured above and as always with these trips, it’s the companionship, the getting to know each other in new ways, that really stands out and makes the whole experience worth while.

The highlights for me were as follows:

• The trip up: John, Michael, Rodney and I in one car is a dangerous mix
• A sunset walk on the beach with everyone.
• Dinner: Funny conversations and a great meal
• Forgetting tapes: we got to our first location, looked in the camera case and....no tapes. Of course they were in a bag in the living room at home. We managed to use some from our behind the scenes stocks and bought some new ones to get through the day, but it was a bit scary for a moment there.
• Hikers stopping to watch us shoot for lunch, applauding at the stunt.
• The stunt: That moment of silence as everyone watches with anticipation. That brief moment when everyone is wondering what is going to happen, there are few moments like this in life.
• Wet bums: Thelma and Louise got their nick names and both had slips wetting their pants in the stream.
• Dangerous jumps: and yes, we all could tell that the water was cold!!
• A BBQ on location
• The silver car parade (every car that we took on this trip was silver).

All in all it was a fun, shoot. Great people, great jokes and great fun. A total turn around from the events a week prior.