MUBI brings you a great new film every day.  Start your 7-day free trial today!
Welcome to MUBI.
Your online cinema. Anytime, anywhere.
Log In With Facebook
21 Oct11

FAT KID DAY#2

by Lucas McNelly


I often describe the lighting kits on indie films as "5 lights and 4 c-stands". It may be an Arri kit or a couple of LEDs or even some work lights from Home Depot, and it might even be 6 lights, but the concept remains--there's never as many as you'd like, and chances are you can't even use all of them properly. So you can imagine how exciting it was to walk on the set of FAT KID RULES THE WORLD and discover an entire truck full of lights and grip equipment. And not just a pickup truck someone had borrowed, but an actual equipment rental truck. I haven't seen one of these since all the way back in February when I spent a few days on Andrew Brotzman's NOR'EASTER. That feels like a lifetime ago.


You see, I took the DIY path to directing. I made a (terrible) short (no, you can't see it) in which I literally spent 20 minutes trying to figure out how to work the camera. I made more shorts after that, slowly adding more and more stuff, until the time came when I realized I was going to need a crew. I directed a feature before I even worked as a crew member. My experience with lights and grip equipment is limited to what I've used, which is the basic "5 lights and 4 c-stands", hence the excitement about getting to use all these other things. It's kind of like Christmas.  


For Day 2, I've been assigned to the truck and the tutelage of Dan Misner, the Best Boy Grip. Dan's based out of Boise, but works all over. In a couple of weeks he's going out to Fargo for a shoot and has stories about working with Peter Jackson's crew in New Zealand just after they finished the LORD OF THE RINGS films. Him: "I've never seen a crew so in sync. Someone would drop something and someone else would catch it before it hit the ground."

Our first order of business is to black out the windows in the street level apartment. My thinking is we'll put up a shitload of duvetyne, but first we've got to build a tent around one of the windows so they can put a light in it later.


In the photo, you'll notice that wall isn't ideal for attaching things. Sure you could tape it up there, but you wouldn't have a whole lot of confidence in that holding all day. For an hour or two? Maybe. But all day? No chance, especially not in Seattle, where it'll probably rain. Instead, Dan affixes a 12' bar to the wall with clamps and we attach the top of the tent to that. It's nothing all that complicated, it's just the sort of thing that those of us in the DIY world never have. But why? It's not expensive. It won't fit in a car, but there are ways to transport it. There's a million different ways to do it, none of them difficult.

I have my theories, but I'll save them for a later date.

Dan's pretty sure today's going to be a slower day in the truck. This is neither our first or last day in the location. Nearly all of the gear that'll be used in the apartment is already in the apartment and will stay there overnight.  


For all practical purposes, our day will consist of 2 parts. Part 1 is daylight. But we're shooting all night interiors, so it has to be dark inside. Ergo, we black out the windows. That's done. Part 2 comes after it gets dark, but we have a couple of hours to get ready for that.

Until then, we organize, the priority being to have everything where we need it, so that when we need it, we can get it quickly. This gives Dan a chance to train me on the various pieces of equipment. Some of them I'm really familiar with, some not so much, and some I've never used before in my life. It's instructive, especially for someone like myself who's never actually been trained.

We know from the call sheet generally what we're going to have to do tonight, and even over the next couple of days, so the goal is to get ready for that as much as possible. Sure, you can assume there will be changes and tweaks and a few moments of sheer OMG PANIC, but that doesn't mean you can't be ready and make educated guesses based on the information at hand.  


Night falls and we're ready. Using the schedule on the call sheet (and confirming over radio with people inside), we're able to break down a window as soon as it's no longer in play, so from the outside it all looks seamless. And that's, essentially, your goal when you're working away from the epicenter of shooting. They should have no idea what the hell you're doing. If the director (or the DP or the actors) becomes aware of what's going on in your part of the film's universe, then that can't be a good thing. Chances are you've fucked up. If you've got the equipment and the information, you should be two steps ahead of the camera at all times. They've got enough to worry about without having to make sure you're doing your job.


And from what I can tell, Dan's good. He makes it all look effortless. We're so far ahead, I have plenty of time to take pictures through the windows, which makes for a unique way to watch a production. I feel a little bit like Jimmy Stewart, minus the broken leg. And Grace Kelly.

 

 


Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter:@lmcnelly.

0 Comments
16 Oct11

FAT KID Day #1

by Lucas McNelly


One of the questions I get a lot on A Year Without Rent is "where do you find all these films?" Well…there's a lot of ways. Some of the filmmakers are people I have a pre-existing relationship with. Either I've known them for a couple of years or I've worked with before or I talk to them a lot on Twitter or whatever. But there's only so many of those projects to go around. The rest come in a variety of ways, but usually because someone heard about me via some channels, one thing leads to another, and I end up on a film set.  That's kind of how I ended up back in Seattle. Sort of.  

One of my biggest allies in Seattle is Wonder Russell (@bellawonder), the lead actress in THE SUMMER HOME and one of those people who apparently knows everyone in the Seattle film community. She'd been plugging the AYWR updates for THE SUMMER HOME, which caught the attention of Ben Rapson, the social media guy for a feature film coming to Seattle by the name of FAT KID RULES THE WORLD. Ben contacted me and after I explained to him exactly what it was I was doing, he ran it by the producers. And that's more or less how I ended up back in Seattle.  

Simple, right?


Between then and the time I'm supposed to show up, my communication with the production is pretty spotty, so I'm slightly worried. Just how much do the producers know? What's this film going to be like? It's one of those strange situations where the film is already in production, so my arrival is obviously low on their lists of priorities, but still these are the kinds of things that serve as red flags before I show up.  

I get to the building and can't really see anyone. There's an equipment truck parked on the street, but I can't really see anything going on. Then again, I'm pretty early. I spot a tent with food under it (craft services!) and they direct me around the corner to where the producers supposedly are. I turn the corner and there's an entire block of RVs and trailers. Holy shit, this film has a budget. I'm shown to the 1st AD Allison Eckert and Key Set PA Keri Owens. They know what I'm doing and proceed to take me into the building where they're filming and give me the tour of the production. I meet some of the producers, who all know who I am and what I'm doing (would you let me on your set without doing some research first?). It's a tiny set, just a 1-bedroom basement floor apartment that's being made to look bigger than it is.


One of the first things Allison and Keri ask is if there's a specific thing I want to do, but since my mission is to pretty much fill in the gaps as needed, I shrug and say that I'll help wherever they need me. So their plan is to rotate me around the different departments. For Day 1 I'm in the Art Department.  


The Art Department has 3 people in it (plus me) and the primary job today is to dress the bedroom of Jacob Wysocki, the titular Fat Kid. The character is big into online gaming, World of Warcraft type stuff, so we're hanging posters of game levels and maps on his walls. The maps are made out of multiple sheets of paper that'll be taped together. It's a simple enough job, but you want to check to see just how they should be taped. Are these maps that the production has taped together to look like one big map? Or are these maps that the character has taped together to look like one big map? Because those are two completely different tape jobs. And maybe it's something that very few people watching the movie will ever notice, but it matters. All those little things add up.  


Next, we have to arrange some Tabasco bottles in his room. Apparently the character is a big fan, as he's got bottles all over the room and a poster on the wall (bonus: Tabasco has signed off on the use of their product). All the bottles came in boxes, so someone has come up with the idea to take the bottles out of the boxes, thus doubling his collection. Then, we set up the computer to play a DVD that's just a collection of solid colors one could chroma key to. Somehow I get pegged as the computer-savvy person, which would be fine, but we're using a pretty old PC. It takes a few minutes to remember how to get a DVD to play in full screen in Windows, especially since the default media player refuses to do it. Later, when we'll shoot in there, my job is essentially to stay close by so I can jump in and put it back to the full screen mode, should something happen to it (and it does).

All the while, the production is filming in different rooms in the apartment, namely the living room. I'm in the living room, taking pictures during the slow moments, when director Matthew Lillard (yes, the actor) spots me and introduces himself to the new guy on set. I tell him who I am and what I'm doing here. His eyes light up in recognition, "Oh, you're that guy! Wait, I'll do something interesting…"  


I love those types of responses. They're so much easier than the ones where I have to keep explain why I would do something like this.

Before Matt can do "something interesting", they're ready for the next shot and he's quickly to the monitor, talking to the gaffer about hot spots on the wall and whether or not that one shadow looks right. It takes about 10 seconds to realize he very much has a clear idea of how the film should look.

And that's maybe the most interesting thing he could possibly do.

 

Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter:@lmcnelly.


0 Comments
13 Oct11

CXL Day#6

by Lucas McNelly


I almost never read the scripts for these projects. Not because I don't want to, but simply because it isn't practical. On probably half of them I don't even get a script, so that makes it easy. But on the rest I'm usually only there for part of the shoot, and I just don't have time. My days are pretty full and given the choice between reading a script and getting caught up on these blog posts, I'll pick the latter.  

When you work on a film where you haven't read the script, you spend a lot of time wondering what the hell is going on. Turn on a movie half-way through and you get the same effect. Often I'll assume a supporting actor is the lead, simply because the first scene I see revolves around them (sometimes the film doesn't know either, but that's a different blog post). After a while it becomes something of a game to try and piece together the rest of the story based on some very limited information. Try it sometime. Turn a movie on randomly, watch 2 minutes, pause it, and see how much of the rest of the film you can figure out. You can probably figure out more than you think.


But when Tamara Larson, the Art Director, shows up with boxes and boxes of plastic dinosaurs, you start to think that maybe this is a script you should have read. I've been on this film for 6 days now and had no clue there were dinosaurs in it. No clue. I knew the main character changed a lot over the course of the film, but dinosaurs? Really? I don't even mean it as a criticism, just a surprise at what's happened.


Also, there's new characters. I'm so confused.  

For the first part of the day, we're filming in the living room, which has been turned into some dinosaur-friendly, eco protester war zone. It's really startling the difference between today and yesterday.  


It's always interesting to watch an Art Director go to work, especially on a zero-budget shoot where you know they've got clearance for almost nothing. So you've got to cover stuff without making it look like you've covered it. Nothing looks worse than a strip of black tape strategically placed over a logo. You can't show the logo. Coca-Cola (or whoever) isn't going to be impressed that your film is giving them free publicity, so you can either greek the logos with your own thing, or you can cover them. The general rule of thumb is that you can get away with showing 40% of a logo without getting yourself in trouble. There's logos in real life, after all. Thus enters the fine art of hiding a logo without being obvious about it. A popular approach is to drape something over it--a shirt, for example--but you can't make it look bad. Should there be a shirt there? Is the shirt obviously covering a logo? Does the shirt itself have a logo? Now try and do that in an entire room, and if you think there's half a chance that the image or logo or whatever might possibly be a problem, you cover it. Hell, if you aren't 100% sure, you cover it. Don't risk it.  

On CXL, there's a built-in advantage in the script where the character employs spray paint in their work, which makes covering things that much easier. Channel your inner Banksy and problem solved.  


From the living room, we move to the hallway, where Sean wants to severely minimize the amount of light coming in the window. That's easy enough. Black some of the windows out and put screens in other places and viola.  

And then, we're in the bathroom. Sean's bathroom is pretty small and we've got to figure out how to get a light in there with enough room for Sean to shoot a couple of setups. It's the eternal dilemma in filming. Filmmakers love setting scenes in bathroom for multiple reasons. It's where a character can be their most private and vulnerable and exposed. So it's a natural fit. But they're a nightmare from a technical standpoint. The light in a bathroom is always terrible--harsh and unforgiving and shitty--and the space is always so small that it's difficult to get a camera in the room effectively. You can't exactly put in dolly tracks. Hell, you usually can't even fit in a tripod. But lights? Sure you could try and attach the light to the ceiling, but all we've really got is some c-stands. It ain't gonna happen.


So what to do?

Enter Katherine Bruens, one of the good producers, the kind you want on set. She comes up with a solution using some shelves she's produced from somewhere. She lays them across the sides of the bathtub, her only concern being whether or not they'll slip, the two smooth surfaces against each other. She then puts a c-stand on the shelves, weighing them down with more weight than you'd normally need in this situation, the theory being that the extra weight will keep everything in place. And you know what? It works. We get the shots. The shelves don't break. They don't slip. No one gets hurt. Victory.

Even the dinosaurs survive the day. 

Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter:@lmcnelly.

0 Comments
08 Oct11

CXL Day#5

by Lucas McNelly


When we last left Sean Gillane and his merry band of San Francisco pranksters, they were shooting green screen footage on the street, guerilla filming at the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge, and generally trying to stay one step ahead of the law. In the meantime, I went to Los Angeles to work with Paul Osborne. But the schedule, as it sometimes does, took me back through San Francisco. Knowing that CXL was designed to shoot in chunks, I got ahold of Sean to see when they were filming next. As luck would have it, the next shoot dates coordinated perfectly with my trip through town.

And that's how CXL became the first repeat film in A Year Without Rent. A person could win a lot of bar bets with that little bit of trivia. Of course, if you managed to find someone who cared enough about A Year Without Rent to wager on it, they surely will have read this.  



There's something disorienting about coming back to a project after some time on another one. You recognize everyone, so there isn't that day where you have to explain to everyone what exactly it is you're doing. The familiarity is nice. You've even shot in this location before, so you know where everything is.

Sort of.

Because there's still that other film that you just worked on. Was it all a dream? Did you really drive from San Francisco to Los Angeles and back? How long were you gone? Is this Narnia?  

Everything has changed, but everything is the same.

Which is maybe why I spent 5 minutes looking around Sean's apartment for the china ball, only to realize that this film doesn't have a china ball. And why I spent another 5 minutes at craft services trying to find one of the Vuka Energy Drinks we had in Los Angeles. I liked them. Why are they not on this shoot?

It's not so much confusing as it is mildly disorienting, which is somehow worse. There's just enough coherence to trick you into thinking you know what's happening.



But let's talk about the day.

For every film in A Year Without Rent, I'm sure to ask the filmmakers beforehand for some parameters of what they don't want seen. This almost entirely becomes a spoiler question. I usually say that I obviously don't want to reveal your big plot twist, but if two crew members get in a fight, then that's obviously a different story.  

CXL probably has the most interesting thing on their "don't show this" list (so far). All I can say is that it's a striking visual that is a massive spoiler and the first thing you'd want to put on the poster. You can probably guess how much of a dilemma that puts the production in. On the one hand, you want to protect your movie and the viewing experience for your audience, but the thing you most need to hide very well may be the thing that draws in the most audience. It's like if you made SE7EN for $50,000 but still had Kevin Spacey in it. Hide Kevin Spacey and you fuck up your marketing. Promote him and you spoil your movie. You can't win.  

Still, it's a good problem to have.  



But today we're shooting a bunch of that spoiler stuff. It looks really cool and the process behind it is pretty awesome and essentially perfect for one of these blog posts.  

There came a point in the day where I said to Sean, "hey, I'm just going to start taking pictures of this and not run them because you're definitely going to want them later."

That struck everyone as a good compromise. There's plenty of time to figure out what to do with them.

Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter:@lmcnelly.

0 Comments
03 Oct11

Favor Day #10

by Lucas McNelly


All through this production, I've heard tales of our "seedy motel" location, a place so vile and disgusting, they couldn't even bring themselves to put me up there. (And I've slept in a few pretty questionable places so far)

Today, we film there.



On the way there, the first thing I notice is that the neighborhood seems to be getting nicer the closer we get to the motel. Could it be that they're fucking with me? That it's some elaborate joke? We're driving through Burbank, which is a pretty nice part of Los Angeles, past steak houses and rather upscale shopping places and some trees that were probably imported from somewhere else.

And then, we cross a line. The wrong side of the tracks, minus the tracks. The real estate is maybe 1/10 the value it was 2 blocks ago, maybe less. Pretty quickly after that, we find the motel. It ain't nice. But what's most perplexing is that there's a really expensive Corvette parked next to Paul's car. It doesn't belong to anyone in the production, which means that someone who can afford a sports car is staying here. Maybe it has something to do with the recession.  

Maybe it's Frank McCourt.



The motel is bad, don't get me wrong, but I expected worse. From what people were saying, I fully expected to find a dead hooker between the mattresses. This is just…shitty. I've slept in dirtier places. Still, dirty is dirty. Katie and Tiffany replace the sheets.  



It's a pretty easy setup. Put a china ball on a gobo arm. Set up the soft lights. Wait.

There's a sexy rendezvous to film, which means a closed set. Then we reset the lights and films some scenes with Blayne and Patrick. Really basic stuff. Let the location do a lot of the work. Paul takes the TV out of the room, which has the dual effect of making the room look shittier and eliminating the reflection issue. A craft move, if you ask me. There's a lot of waiting next door in the staging area. We watch TV. Get some work done. Play a little UNO.  




Katie gets all dressed up to be a dead body stand-in, since the actress isn't here. This means she has to lay on the floor, which sucks, but she is allowed to sleep, so that's something.



In the original schedule, day 10 was supposed to be the last day of the shoot. Somewhere along the way that changed (which is really standard) and it become the second-to-last day of the shoot. The problem is that I have another commitment for the new last day, as I'm due at the Film Courage Future of Film Curation panel (and screening of my first feature BLANC DE BLANC). But Paul's got a minuscule crew, so this becomes my schedule for day 10 & 11 of FAVOR:

6am: Wrap.

11am: Drive across town to LA Talk Radio.

Noon: Guest host (basically chime in every so often) and talk to this week's guest M.J. Slide.

2pm: Head over to Hot Pixel Studios to test everything for the panel/screening.

6pm: Screening of BLANC DE BLANC (also available on VOD).

8pm: Panel.

Midnight: Drive back to set.  



They're in full swing when I get there. We're shooting exteriors, which are pretty easy at the motel, but still they can use all the help they can get.  

We get the shots and get out early. And that is a wrap on FAVOR.

Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter:@lmcnelly.

 

0 Comments
02 Oct11

Favor Day #9

by Lucas McNelly


Previously, on FAVOR: Paul Osborne drove us out into the desert with a shovel and told us to dig (what could go wrong?). Well, now we're back at his house for a day of filming (it's a scheduling thing).  

The schedule calls for something of a shorter day (even by Paul's standards), and we're mostly shooting exteriors, so many of the lighting issues from the other day persist.  

Mainly, when the shots call for action on the porch, it's more or less simple. The soft lights work, as the porch is covered and the light can bounce around rather than vanishing into the Burbank night. Add in the LEDs throwing light in from the flower bed, and the big issues basically revolve around shadows and reflections in the window. Nothing too complicated.  



And that would be great, but there's one more point of action--the street. The shot is essentially this: Blayne Weaver drives his car to the front of the house and walks to the front door. Sounds easy, right? During the day it would be. But you can't just send Blayne into the darkness. People will (hopefully) pay good money to watch the movie and will want to <i>see</i> him (audiences…sheesh), so we've got to light it. Paul wants it to be a pretty wide shot, so it's up to us to make that work.



Remember, we have very few lights, and not good ones.  

You'd assume the first step here would be to figure out the shot, but it isn't. Well, not exactly. You want to figure out the general camera POV. There's no point locking yourself into a shot until you know what you'll be able to light. In our case, we want the camera to be across the street, which will allow the lights in the house and the streetlight to act as practicals.  

Next, the most powerful light we've got (a 1K LED) is going to have to work as a general light. In normal night scene, it'd be the moon. For a day scene it'd mimic the sun, but we want it to look like another streetlight. It goes on the only c-stand and we jack it all the way up. That'll give us a general wash.  

We have to run power from the house, which is tricky, as we've got orange extension cords that the camera will see. So we have to hide them. This is pretty simple, as we just have to snake them as far to the side as possible.  

Then comes the tricky part: lighting the lawn.  



Paul's lawn is on a hill. A pretty steep hill. For obvious reasons you don't want to put a light on a hill. There's a couple of spots that are kind of flat, but most of them would most definitely be in whatever shot we could possibly use. We can put one of them on the far-left side of the lawn, which has two pretty level spots, and throw some light across the grass. This is now the left edge of our frame (and why we don't pick a shot before we look at lighting options). Whatever we do, that's as far left as we can go.  

The soft lights are pretty useless here, but they can put more light in the house, which should spill out the windows a tiny bit. And even if they don't, the light will read better in the house.



Since we're going to want to see the car approach from the right (Paul's house is at the end of a dead end street, which is convenient for our purposes), we don't really have a right edge of the frame. That is, we can't exactly mimic what we did on the left.

But…there are some trees. If we put the other 500W LED on the pavement up by the porch, we might be able to hide it behind the tree. Best we can tell, that's our only place to hide a light on that side. So it kind of has to go there.  

So far, it doesn't look terrible. It's pretty dark, though, so we take the small battery-powered work light, gel it orange, and hide that on the lawn itself.  

By this point, we have a pretty good idea of where the camera is going to have to be, whether Paul wants it there or not. Aspiring directors take note. There will be points in your filming career, especially on low-budget shoots, where the lighting and camera people will tell you that this is the shot. Your first instinct will (rightly so) be to question that. But if they're sure, don't fight it. Chances are this is the only place the shot can be. They're not trying to usurp your directorial genius or vision. It's simply that they know for a fact that this is the only option you have. Have them explain it to you and go with it. You brought them onto the film to do a job. Be smart like Paul Osborne and let them do it.



That covers the lawn and the house. The only thing left is to light where the car will arrive. Sure, the streetlights will do a lot of that, but it could still use some help. We've got one more light: a 1000W work light, the type you'd buy at Home Depot. We used it in the desert and it comes out again here. We set it up and there's a problem: like most work lights, the light has a safety cage on it. Well, the cage is throwing a pretty distinct shadow on the trees. Some diffusion would take care of that, but we don't have any diffusion and I'm not sure we'd even want to diffuse it. We need every bit of light we can get. But the cage is screwed on. Sure there's a big sign on it saying that one should never, ever take the cage off. Out comes the screwdriver.

And we're lit.

But can Bunee Tomlinson, our 18-year-old Production Assistant from Oklahoma, explain to you why we're lit? Let's find out. 


Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter:@lmcnelly.

0 Comments
01 Oct11

Favor Day #7 and #8

by Lucas McNelly


We're combining days here for the first time on A Year Without Rent for one very simple reason: nothing happened on day 7. Well that's not completely true. We filmed part of the movie. It wasn't like day 7 was a day off or anything, even if Paul Osborne said that some of us probably didn't need to show up. The plan was to put Paul, Patrick Day, and [actress] in a car and have them drive around. Basically, just car interiors. Not only did he not need us, but there wasn't exactly anywhere to put us.  

But I've been doing this a long time, and I know that no day of filming ever goes according to plan. It's better to be available and not needed than to be needed and not available.  

Which is how Joe Pezzula, Katie Schwartz, Tiffany J. Shuttleworth, our new PA Bunee Tomlinson, and I ended up sitting in an RV in a grocery store parking lot for hours upon end, playing UNO.

It's about as exciting as it sounds.



Every couple of hours the picture car would swing back through, but beyond that there wasn't all that much to do. Oh sure, we all brought work to do, but none of it got touched, which is kind of a shame, as it seemed like a pretty good opportunity to get a lot done.

I know what you're thinking: you need an RV for that? And you're right. We don't need an RV for that. A RV for that would be excessive.

Day 8 of FAVOR is a night shoot in the desert with practical effects (more blood!), a generator (ooohhh), and even a second PA. More specifically, we're shooting at Vazquez Rocks. You've seen things filmed there. GALAXY QUEST shot there, as did STAR TREK (both older variations and the lens flare-tastic J.J. Abrams reboot), and it's easy to see why. It's a stunning landscape, punctuated by the signature pointed rock formation.  



Naturally, as soon as we show up, every single member of the cast and crew starts climbing up on the rocks because, let's face it, deep down we're all just little kids.  



We have that same lighting setup, of course, only here we really need the extra power from the work lights. The first thought is to set up some 3 point lighting, but it becomes clear rather quickly that the desert is just going to swallow the lights up. But, if we cluster most of them in the same spot and use one of the 500W LEDs to throw in some fill, it more or less works. Add a battery powered light we've gelled to match the others and we've got something.  



The generator, of course, is our source of electricity. The production has spent the extra rental money on the silent model. It's anything but. We wrap what we can find around it, but it barely makes a dent. Finally, we have to get a little creative in re-routing our cables until we can put the generator far enough away with enough things in-between it and us to muffle the sound enough. Then, since a generator won't last forever, we're on the clock.  



It takes exactly no time for the dust and sand to get everywhere. Our lights are just powerful enough to light the scene, but they're really hot on the bumper of the picture car. We tweak, but it doesn't do all that much. Eventually, Paul just figures out a camera angle that'll frame out most of the issue. More often than not, if you've got a lighting issue that just isn't working, the best solution often involves re-thinking your set-ups. Maybe the camera can move 3 feet to the left and still accomplish exactly the same thing.  



One of our scenes involves the actors digging in some dirt in order to [REDACTED]. Only, the people in charge of the desert do not allow you to dig in their dirt. You have to bring in your own dirt, and it has to be a specific type of dirt too (because a desert doesn't have enough dirt). You can imagine how annoying this is. We need maybe 3 wheelbarrows full of dirt--tops--but the smallest amount we can order ends up being enough to fit in the back of a pickup truck. That's a lot of extra dirt. We have one shovel (which is actually a prop) and no wheelbarrow (but we do have a plastic bin). This is why you always want a few extra people on set. The 2 PA's do most of the shoveling, but we all chip in a little here and there while doing other things. This is one of the big differences in scale of films. On a bigger film, there'd be a department doing this, but on a small indie everyone works on it, from a PA to the director. It has to get done.



Shooting in the desert proves to be a little more difficult, so Paul shoots slower than he has other days, but he's still on schedule. The guy's a machine. Part of me is impressed and part of me is terrified that we're going to end up not having nearly enough good footage. But, Paul's happy with what he's getting, and if he's happy than you have to trust he's getting what he wants. It's just, I can't remember a shoot where we wrapped early every single day. It's madness.

He does it again in the desert, and just as he calls "wrap", the lights flicker, then go out. The generator is out of fuel.  

Maybe Paul isn't so crazy after all.  

Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter:@lmcnelly.



0 Comments
31 Aug11

Favor Day#6

by Lucas McNelly


The one big issue with using soft lights as your primary lighting source is that they don't do a whole lot when you take them outside. They're kind of by definition a blunt sword, and they don't put off a lot of light, so taking them outside pretty much just turns them into a practical light, and who has one of those paper IKEA lamps outside? So, to shoot outside, we have to turn to our other lights, 3 LED lights with stands (a 1k and 2 500's) that we can pretty much gel orange. We have no diffusion that I can find. We do, however, have some work lights.

You don't want to use work lights unless you absolutely have to.



Our goal with the LEDs is pretty much just to try and make them look like streetlights as best we can. Really, we just want some motivated light to make sure people can see what the hell is going on in the scene.  

Luckily, our first scene is in the garage, so we can use the existing light (replacing a bulb here and there). And the garage itself is one of those garages that you can only get by having someone live there for a long time who loves to tinker with multiple projects and isn't such a fan of throwing things away. Not a hoarder, just a pack rat. There's even an old car in there somewhere. A really old car. It might have even been new when they parked it in the garage.

It's kind of perfect for Patrick's character. I can't even imagine how you would create a room like this from scratch.



From there we move outside, which really tests our lights. The 1k, as high as it will go and as close to the frame as we can get it, helps. But it ain't great. This is where you really want to direct light, to pull out some flags and some black wrap and really create some shadows. Kind of like this:



But that's not an option on a mass scale, and it doesn't fit well with the look of the film's interiors, so we do the best we can with the lights at hand.  

The other issues at hand involve [REDACTED] being [REDACTED] and the inherent problem of attempting to do that without either actress actually being there.

Remember the old trick when you were a kid and you'd put pillows underneath your blankets so your parents would think you were in bed? You know how it never, ever worked, even though it worked so perfectly for Ferris Bueller? Yeah, it doesn't really work when you're trying to do it on a film set either. It looks fake. And that, of course, just won't do.  

That's how we ended up taping Paul's teenage daughter inside a sheet and shutting her in the trunk of a car. The big issue being how do we hide the fact that Paul's daughter has a completely different hair color than the actress without it looking like we're hiding it for the sake of hiding it. Or how we had a 10 minute debate about just how much mud we should put on UPM Katie Schwartz's feet and how best to show it.  

I can't even imagine what sort of porn film the neighbors thought we were filming.  

Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter:@lmcnelly
0 Comments
28 Aug11

Favor Day#5

by Lucas McNelly

  

Joe is back!


When a crew is as small as the crew on FAVOR, you really notice when people are gone. Mostly because they film so many damned roles. Take Joe for example. Joe is primarily the boom operator. But he's also running power all over the place and setting up lights. And those are just his primary responsibilities. There are no extra hands. So when Joe's gone, there's a pretty massive hole in the crew. But now he's back.  



One of the running themes of FAVOR has been the various injuries that have started to accumulate. A couple of days ago, director Paul Osborne slipped on some wet grass and twisted his angle. Seeing as he's the camera operator and we're mostly shooting handheld, a twisted ankle isn't so helpful. We've offered to help him run the camera, but Paul is resolute, gritting his teeth for the length of a take, then hobbling the rest of the way.  



And today, as a result of yesterday's stunts, Patrick Day has a brand new accessory--a broken finger. Also, his back hurts. Pretty much everyone is starting to get a little injured on this film.  



Today (well, tonight) we're shooting one of the final scenes from the film. Obviously, we can't talk about that much. So let's talk about where we're filming. The location is a house in the Valley, in an area called Chatsworth. Now if you're like me and you don't really know much about the various parts of Los Angeles, then you should probably know that Chatsworth is pretty much the epicenter of the porn industry. Go ahead, scroll down the Wikipedia link. It's a little factoid that has absolutely no bearing on the production, but I think it's good to give a little context of where exactly we are. It might also give some context into what the neighbors assume we're doing at 3am.  



But what we can talk about is the value of a good art director. Ours isn't great. My first day on the project was the art director's last. Let's just leave it at that. Anyway, he put together some fake beer bottle labels for the production (even though they could have very easily used Brainerd Lakes Beer for this exact reason). The labels look nice enough. They have that micro-brew vibe about them and everything. The only problem is they have some rather well-drawn images on them. But where did they come from? Keep in mind that in the 20 minutes I talked to this guy, I explained the term "greek" to him twice. (Greeking, if you don't know, is when you do something to cover up a logo that'll appear on camera.) It's too late to try and get him on the phone. Do we shoot it and take our chances? We could, but pretty quickly the consensus becomes to greek the labels made by our Art Director. It just simply isn't worth the risk.  



I'm pretty sure the other productions in the neighborhood didn't have that come up during filming. *rimshot*

Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter:@lmcnelly.
0 Comments
25 Aug11

Favor Day #4

by Lucas McNelly

There will be blood. Maybe. Or maybe not.

 



We're doing a practical effect where a character gets [REDACTED], thus leading to a lot of blood. Like, a lot of blood. What the special effects people have decided to do is wrap a pad around the actor's torso where the [REDACTED] happens. Then, you know, blood. As I understand it, there's a couple of ways you can do this. You can put a packet of fake blood in the spot and figure out a way to break the bag open at impact. You can cut around it so that the impact is off-camera and you add the blood later. Or you can feed the blood in from somewhere else, usually via a tube. We're doing the tube method.  



All of the methods have their own strengths and weaknesses. For the tube method, for example, the challenge comes in trying to get the blood to show up at the right time. Think about it. You've got a tube that starts in an actor's clothes, which means it has to snake in from somewhere off-camera. That tube then runs to a spot that's safely out of the frame, where it's being held by someone who's feeding blood into it. That's a pretty long way for blood to travel on a schedule.

So you time it as best you can and you do everything you can to give yourself more time and more chances to get it right. You schedule lots of time around it, and it's generally a good idea to have as many copies of the article of clothing that's going to get bloody as possible. In our case, we've dressed the actor in a plain white t-shirt, the type you can easily get in bulk. We have, I think, 6 of them. That should be enough.

It isn't.  



The blood comes early. The blood comes late. It comes in the wrong spot. It comes before we even start the scene, like an over-eager teenager. Before we know it, we've gone through all 6 shirts. So, like any good production, they call lunch. Then, laundry.  



Today we're a bit shorthanded as well. Katie Schwartz our UPM is in Michigan at her sister's wedding and Joe Pezzula is at a different wedding. That means that I'm the sum total of the sound and lighting departments for the day (well, night). Cut to a couple of hours later and I'm holding a light in an angle our stands can't achieve with one hand and holding the boom mic with the other one. It's a little tricky. Actually it's a lot tricky.  

Tomorrow Joe comes back. Thank God.


Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter:@lmcnelly.
1 Comments
22 Aug11

Favor Day#3

by Lucas McNelly


All through Day 2, one of the chief topics of conversation was how to shoot a scene with prop glass.  


Let me explain. In the scene, an actor has to throw a wine bottle against a door, thereby breaking it into a gazillion little pieces. Generally speaking, actors don't like it if you ask them to deal with real broken glass, what with it's ability to draw blood and everything. So, you have to deal with prop glass--the sort of stuff they use in the scenes where the stuntman jumps through a window. We have one molded in the shape of a wine bottle.  

But only one.  



We're also (naturally) shooting in a one camera setup. Do the math and we've got exactly one chance to get everything perfect. One. You never want only one shot at getting something on film.  

So what do you do?



You rehearse the hell out of it. You make sure all of the actors know exactly what's going to happen. You make sure the crew knows their moves in detail. You leave as little to chance as humanly possible. And even then, you're skating on some thin ice. Remember that even after doing a perfect take, very often a director will opt for a safety, just in case something goes wrong that no one spotted.  

One take is scary. One take where the key prop is going to be destroyed is even worse.



If you're smart, you start looking around for contingency plans. Newell, our stills photographer, is using a 7D, and while that isn't really the same as the AF100 Paul is using, it's not that different in the great scheme of things. Close enough that should something happen to the footage on the AF100 (a very remote possibility), the footage on the 7D could work in a pinch. So, we set Newell up next to camera to record it as Option B.

Me, I'm recording it on my camera in case something goes wrong so we'll have footage of the fuck up.  


Of course, it goes off without a hitch. Nothing ever goes wrong when you're prepared for it to go wrong. It's always when the camera is in the other room or something.  

But it's the preparation that's key.



The other big event is that we're being visited by one of the FAVOR Kickstarter backers. Sort of. One of the backer rewards was that the backer got to do a 1 hour Skype session during filming. What that means in reality is that a backer is live on Skype via Paul's iPad as we film. Remember Bruno, the garbage man who would carry Oscar the Grouch around? Being in charge of the iPad is kind of like that. He gets passed around, and while I can't speak for him, it seems like a pretty sweet perk. He watches the takes, and while lights are being tweaked, the actors talk to him about life, the project, and what drew him to back it.  



This is the sort of thing that we should all be doing. It's a personal touch. People love it. Provided your equipment and location make such a thing possible (it might, for example, have been tricky on UP COUNTRY, but when your primary location is a house with wifi? It's a no-brainer.  

At least it should be. As common sense as getting out that second camera, just in case the first one fails at a critical time.  

Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter:@lmcnelly.
1 Comments
20 Aug11

Favor Day#2

by Lucas McNelly


You know how I said it's generally a bad idea to film where you live? Well…here we go again. We're filming at Paul Osborne's house in Burbank, and while it's generally not a good idea, the house has one advantage that may be helping things along: it's at the end of a dead end street, which means that sound is only coming from one direction and traffic is scant.  

Never under-estimate the power of good sound in a location.

In the narrative, Paul's house functions as the residence of our lead, Blayne Weaver, and the word is that we'll be at the location for a couple of days. Makes sense.  



Fitting in with Paul's minimalist, DIY approach to FAVOR, the interior lighting kit is pretty simple. We've got some LED's that we can gel to whatever we need, but primarily, he's lighting the interiors with soft lights. That means that we're using those china balls and upright lights you buy at IKEA, only with better bulbs inside. It's one of those approaches that either works really well or not at all. They're super easy to set up and move around, but you can't really put a lot of direction into the light source. It's a trade-off. Also, actors like soft lights because they even our skin issues and blemishes.  

The downside of these lights can be scary. You sometimes can't control them very well, especially if you want to do something specific (although there are ways around it). But the thing is, Paul knows this. He's shooting the film himself. So, above all else, this is what he wants his film to look like. And that's the most important thing.



I may not be the best grip in the world. Part of the reason I decided to do A Year Without Rent was that I wanted to learn more about how various departments and jobs on a film set functioned. You know, the ones that aren't "director" or "producer". I'm a firm believer that the more you know about what everyone on your set is doing, the better director you'll be. It's common sense, right?

Point being, this is a lighting kit that's well within my range. I know how to use all of these lights. There's no learning curve. And as small as this crew is, this is immediately beneficial. And by small, I mean really small. Joe Pezzula, the sound guy, also seems to be the lighting guy (along with Paul). This is the sort of set where it's clear that "an extra set of hands" might be a bit of an understatement.  



We shoot in the living room, which is a little tricky because Blayne Weaver is drinking real wine instead of juice, and after a bit, that tends to add up. Then, some bedroom scenes where the LED lights prove to be a little tricky. We're trying to put enough light in the hall, but it keeps spilling into the door frame, which is too hot. The space is tight, with barely enough room to fit the stand before it ends up in the shot. Not enough room to flag off the excess light. It takes a bit, but we figure it out.  



It's indie film. We always figure it out.

Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter:@lmcnelly.
0 Comments
18 Aug11

Favor Day #1

by Lucas McNelly


I'm not entirely sure where the rumor originated that I wouldn't take A Year Without Rent to Los Angeles. Sure, one of the project's primary goals is to see indie film outside of the major hot spots, but who's to say that you can't be outside of a major hot spot, but right in their neighborhood? It seems obvious to me that some really interesting indie filmmakers would exist in Los Angeles. It'd be pretty impossible for them not to.

Also, I know a lot of people in LA. And the weather is nice.



So that's kind of how I ended up at a place called Chili John's in Burbank to work on Paul Osborne's second narrative feature FAVOR. I qualify it with "narrative" because you probably know Paul from his documentary work, the seminal indie film documentary OFFICIAL REJECTION, which chronicles the festival experience for his film TEN 'TIL NOON.  

I have not seen it, but a lot of people think I'll really like it. Probably because one of my pet peeves is the festival system.

I kind of imagined that Paul, being an indie film celebrity, would have this massive crew of people working on his next project, essentially just to be there. But when I arrive on set, it's pretty clear that Paul's going a different direction and has a skeleton crew. The light kit is equally small. It's surprising at first, but makes sense when you think about it. FAVOR, a film about a guy who accidentally ends up with a dead body he needs help moving, is very much in the noir camp, which allows for a bit of "dirtiness".



Paul is operating the camera himself, which is our second film in a row to do this, and the word from the production is that the film is moving fast. Sound guy (and all-around right-hand man) Joe Pezzula tells me that on a couple of days Paul has added shots and still finished the day early.
 
I can't remember the last shoot I was on where the day finished on time.  



Chili John's is a cool little diner in Burbank, a very old school picturesque place where you'd imagine regulars have been coming every day for years. Naturally, we have to greek a bunch of stuff. The art guy has brought these generic label stickers, which are helpful up to a point, but they haven't been sized to cover what we have to cover, so we end up resorting to the standard indie techniques of just hiding stuff with other stuff.  



Part of Paul's motto to move fast involves recording sound directly into the camera (Panasonic AF100), which is something I haven't seen in a long time. It eliminates the need for a slate, and it definitely speeds things up, not just in production but in post as well.  

We shoot our inside stuff, then move outside (but not without eating some fantastic chili first), where we're using gelled LED lights in a variant of a 3 point lighting setup.  



This being a night shoot, it becomes quickly obvious that in Los Angeles it gets cold at night. I wasn't prepared for this. I lived in Tennessee for a year or so and the nights were pretty much as stifling hot as the days. Here I'm really rather cold. Not as cold as the shoot in San Francisco, but cold nonetheless.  

And sure enough, Paul wraps the day early. Go figure.

Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter:@lmcnelly.
0 Comments
09 Aug11

CXL Day #4

by Lucas McNelly

 

There's nothing quite like a really long day of freezing cold exteriors to make you appreciate the simple joys of filming inside. You can put your stuff down and there's chairs to sit on and bathrooms nearby and it's generally a lot warmer.  


Of course, the scenery isn't as nice, but that's the trade.


Today we're shooting in Sean's apartment. You already know what I'm going to say. Don't shoot in your apartment unless you absolutely have to. Nothing good can come from it. Nothing at all. I know, I know, your film works perfectly for your apartment. You wrote the script to play to the strengths of the building layout and the type of floors and all that. Still, don't do it.

 

  

Sean knows all of this, of course. But, we're doing it anyway. Why? I'm guessing out of necessity.  


Although, the bedroom does have some nice paintings on the wall, kind of a tree mural, so that could be a factor, as I think I heard the VFX guys saying something about trees.  

 



Most of what we're doing involves our couple in bed. It seems pretty basic--two people just laying there--but they're going to put some stuff on top of that so the big discussion is whether or not the buttons on Cole's shirt will function as markers they can use to track movement.  


The consensus is that it depends. If we can see one button, then definitely not, but if we can see two or three, it should be ok. So then it's just a question of adjusting Cole's shirt so we can see the correct number without it looking completely obvious. Not as easy as you'd think.

 



Also not easy is the thing we've rigged to try and backlight Cole and Lisa as they lay down. You can see it in the picture, but essentially what you've got is multiple gobo arms working in concert (gobo's seem to be a theme on this shoot) with enough black wrap to create a mini spotlight.  


All that's really left after that is to pull out our makeshift green screen rig that we had in the street on Day 2 and do some more multiples.  



For a variety of reasons, the plan is to shoot CXL in chunks. So there's this 4 day shoot which is the first one and, as I understand it, the section with the bulk of the VFX shots. July and August bring the other sections. I want to say those are going to be more traditional, but don't quote me on that, as I can't be completely sure.


I find that the more films I work on where I'm not there for everything, the less I worry about the stuff that's going to happen when I'm not there. Is that because when it happens, I'll be on another shoot? Or maybe because I can't exactly report on what I don't see? Perhaps. But I think that on some level it's so I can still be surprised when I watch the final product. At least that way, part of it will be completely unexpected.  


Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter:@lmcnelly.

0 Comments
07 Aug11

CXL Day #3

by Lucas McNelly


When I came up with the concept for A Year Without Rent, I kind of imagined myself getting to see all of the iconic places in the country. I'm not sure why I thought that. I hate touristy stuff (probably as a result of growing up in a state who's #1 industry is tourism). I've been to New York City several times and it's never occurred to me to go see the Statue of Liberty. Put me in a new city and I invariably want to go where the locals hang out.  

But of all the American landmarks, I figured the Golden Gate Bridge would be one of the easiest to find (and take a picture of). A trip to San Francisco seemed inevitable (especially since Sean Gillane got his project on the calendar before we even started the Kickstarter campaign), and it seems like a landmark that'd be kind of hard to avoid.  



I never thought we'd be filming at the Golden Gate Bridge, but that's exactly what we're doing. Of course, we have no permit. So the first thing I do is take a lap around the area, trying to look like as much of a tourist as possible, and scope out where our potential problems might come from. It's really similar to the approach criminals take when they're checking out a target. Where are the police? Are there security cameras? Where might the police come from, should they be called?
It's always kind of fun. At least, I think so.

And yes, we're filming very close to the spot where they filmed VERTIGO.  



There's two things. One involves a conversation on the sidewalk. It looks innocent enough. Sean, Katherine, and Ken Fisk (who's now pivoted from VFX Supervisor to Gaffer) can hide in the rocks just below the sidewalk, the trick being to keep the boom as inconspicuous as possible. Nothing gives away a film production quicker than a boom waving around.


The second part is a little harder to hide. Sean is on top of a car (as you can see) and Lisa is pretending to do damage to the picture car. Basically, we're saying "please come stop us". But no one comes. We get a lot of strange looks. A couple from Dallas stops to talk to us and they end up doing a scene as the owner of the car. Another guy apologizes for watching with the explanation that he's from Iowa.   


From there, we're in a really remote location across the bay, on this walking trail that's literally at the very edge of the country, seemingly as far west as you can get in the Bay Area without being in the Pacific Ocean. Barges float by every couple minutes on their way to Asia. It's a really beautiful location. It's also really fucking cold.  




There's a really cool old neglected dock that Ken and I are convinced we can walk down to, but Sean talks us out of it. It's a shame, because the photos would have been fantastic.
 


What we're filming, I can't talk about for content reasons, but it's easily the hardest single thing we've tried to shoot so far. It's a combination of physically demanding, emotionally demanding, in freezing cold weather, trying to do something pretty precise. It's the sort of thing where the person operating the camera has to slate because everyone else is holding something that's either heavy or in the exact spot it has to be in. Or both. And we're racing the light.



Let's see if I can tell this story without giving anything away.

I'm holding something heavy, that I've got wedged into my thigh to stabilize it. I'm standing in front of the camera. Yes, in front of the camera.  

"Am I in?" I call out to Sean.

"Um…nope. You're good."

I look over my shoulder. There's no way I'm not in this shot.

"Are you sure?"

"You're fine."

Later that night, I looked at the footage. Sure enough, I was clear of the frame. To this day, I have no idea how. Maybe some of that VFX magic at work.

 
Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter:@lmcnelly.

0 Comments
04 Aug11

CXL Day #2

by Lucas McNelly


I was in San Francisco for a couple of days prior to this shoot (and prior to jetting over to Delaware), where I had the pleasure of taking in a screening of Sean Gillane's first feature THE ANNUAL, a film about a couple that decides to date for exactly one year. It's just about a perfect premise for an indie relationship film, and it was interesting to see how Sean used a lot of the places near where he lives.  

Except that he didn't live in that neighborhood then.  

But he does now, and so we're filming on the streets around Sean's apartment. It's kind of an odd application of the Auteur Theory, but I think it works.  



If you've never been to San Francisco (or, at least this part of San Fran), it's important to know that a lot of people park in private garages in what's most easily described as the basement of their apartment building. What this means is that there's 10 or so spots on each block where you have to keep the sidewalk clear so people can drive in to their parking spots. It also severely limits the number of places you can park on the street.  

But say you're trying to set up a dolly shot into a green screen on the sidewalk. You have to find a spot that works both for light, other background, and doesn't block anyone's driveway. It's tricky. Plus, it's kind of windy, which causes issues with the green screen.  

The screen has to be pretty taut all the way across, which is harder near the middle of the bottom, so the solution is to wrap the bottom of the felt around a gobo arm and let the weight of the arm pull that tight. The weight also has the side benefit of fighting the effects of the wind.  


Beyond the green screen stuff, a lot of what we're shooting today is what Sean calls "multiples". I'm not really sure what that's going to entail in the end film, but essentially our actor (Cole Smith) will repeat the same action multiple times, each time in a different outfit. Of course, this involves him changing clothes pretty quickly in some pretty public places, sometimes just a shirt, but sometimes pants as well.  


One such multiple is a dolly shot in a stairwell, a shot that's been the subject of much discussion in pre-production. What we've got is an actor going down the stairs and the camera dolly's across the stairwell. The camera (a 5D) is on a small wooden stand with a 20 pound weight on it (more weight on a dolly move can make it smoother). Under that are some skateboard wheels on normal skateboard trucks. Then, we've got a board with rails attached (to keep it from falling off). The big trick is how to best get the camera smoothly (and consistently) across the board, since we're doing multiples. Not surprisingly, we end up tag-teaming a couple of different methods.  



Will it work? We shall see.

Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter:@lmcnelly.
0 Comments
01 Aug11

CXL Day #1

by Lucas McNelly


I've never worked in front of a green screen before, so when Sean Gillane tells me that his film CXL (stands for cancel) is going to involve some VFX green screen work, I'm pretty excited. Maybe intrigued is the better word.

We're shooting at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, CA, which conveniently is where Sean works. The crew for this film is super small--probably the smallest yet on A Year Without Rent. Sean is directing and running the camera himself. Beyond that there's a team of three VFX guys with some lighting/grip experience, a producer/sound person (Katherine Bruens), and me. Oh, and the cast.  



I guess in my head, I thought shooting on a green screen would go faster than shooting in real life. You're in an enclosed space with no variables, and all you need to do is film the live-action portions. Not so much. Lighting is almost harder in a way. When you're shooting outside, there's shadows all over the place and a lot of them disappear into other stuff, but it's a major concern how the actor's shadow plays out across the green. Is it harsh enough? Too harsh? How well will they be able to key around it or with it? And, more importantly, how will that shadow then interact with the world they're building under it?



Add to that the fact that the light needs to be as evenly distributed across the background as possible, and the need for tracking marks that the actor won't cross in front of, and it can all add up pretty quickly.  

It's complicated stuff, and involves a lot of huddling by the VFX people to figure things out. Essentially, what ends up happening is two things: 1) Sean blocks the scene and lights it for what he needs narratively. 2) The VFX people then try and re-light the scene without changing Sean's lighting, so that they can most effectively do the post work.  

When you look at it that way, it's kind of time-consuming.  

It's also pretty obvious why actors aren't big fans of this sort of thing. Cole [name] spends a lot of his time interacting with a post-it note, which isn't exactly the sort of thing people think of when they become actors, I imagine.  


But all of that is a prelude to Sean's goal of pulling off a forced perspective shot, which is a tricky enough thing to do in the real world. Will it work? I hope so. Usually I can tell pretty easily if a scene is going to work, if it'll cut together, but here I have no idea. It certainly could work. Hell, it probably will work. But I just have no idea whatsoever.  


After that, it's across the street to shoot something in an alley. Only, with a crew this small (even smaller, since 2 of the VFX guys have left), I volunteer to guard the grip cart that has lots of expensive stuff on it. Seems like something we shouldn't leave unattended on the streets of a major city.



Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter:@lmcnelly.
0 Comments
30 Jul11

The Terrain

by Lucas McNelly

Editor's Note: Obviously, I cannot be everywhere at once. With that in mind, I've started reaching out to fellow members of the film community who might be interested in bringing the AYWR experience to a film shoot near them. Up first: Film Courage's very own @KarenWorden. Enjoy. - Lucas

A couple of our friends launched a Kickstarter campaign in May for a short film entitled The Terrain. It’s almost every day that people we know (and many more that we do not know) reach out to us for help with their crowd-funding campaigns. (You can get word out about your project through FilmCourage.com by submitting an article to us. Email us for info).   

You can imagine our surprise when we heard about THE TERRAIN Kickstarter campaign through the gossip grapevine after they had eclipsed their $2500 goal.  We’ve known Brian Durkin and Todd Cattell on a personal level for years, yet they did not press us for assistance.

After we discovered the link, Brian, Todd, and producers Vivian Lee and Matthew Blanco had already exceed their goal in the first few days. The train was in the station and those who wanted to ride could get on if they wanted.

Long story short, THE TERRAIN not only met its goal, it kicked its goal’s behind raising $7,310 in 30 days, exceeding the initial $2,500 goal. THE TERRAIN is a narrative short film written by Brian Durkin, starring Todd Cattell and Marisa Petroro, about two friends and fellow soldiers who return from war, broken and vulnerable, recruited into a covert Los Angeles assignment.  

Flash forward a month.  I receive a new camera. Being thoroughly inspired by (i.e., copying) Lucas McNelly’s ‘A Year Without Rent’ campaign and its accompanying pictures, I wanted to take set photos.

I e-mailed director Brian shortly after getting the camera, inquiring if he needed a volunteer set photographer.  He thankfully obliged and after several e-mail correspondences sent me a very organized call sheet.  Eavesdropping on Lucas a few weekends ago, he mentioned to a group of listeners that an organized call sheet is sign of a great production.  Even better when it mentions the weather report.

I had trouble sleeping the night before the first shoot. Yes, I was just a ‘volunteer,’ but what if I forgot the camera battery?  What if the photos were not usable?  Being a person who rarely gets a good night sleep, I tossed and turned on one of those hot June nights where terrors were hard to fend off.  

When the alarm sounded a few hours later, I wasn’t quite in the mood to be social, let alone take set photos.  But David prompted me to get going, and after downing some strong coffee, we drove to the shoot location (a little late and slightly ornery).

As we pulled up to the set location, the shoot was already in progress. I hate being late to things. Putting my ego aside, I readied the camera. This was my first shot as I quietly made my way to the set, shoot in progress.

 

Day One: Exterior shots of The Terrain




Day One: Exterior shots of The Terrain

The neighborhood was a mixture of cute little houses, one with so much ‘stuff’ in the front yard that someone on set affectionately referred to it as the "Sanford and Son" house. Another house across the street had a bunch of cute kittens and their mother cat in the yard. Cute cats in the yard always make me feel at home.   

While on set things flowed so well that I didn’t have time to be nervous or tired. The producer, Vivian Lee, walked by and I snapped a quick photo of her on the way to replenish some essential set supplies.   



Day One: The Terrain producer, Vivian Lee

Inside I watched actors Sarena Khan (as Neda) and Brian Burnett (as Reza) take their cues from director Brian Durkin.  The day called for a mixture of interior and exterior shots, with production halting momentarily for a blaring car stereo and car alarm.



Day One: Actors Sarena Khan and Brian Burnett

DP Casey Feldt always amazed me how he prepared for shots and (at times) was able to balance a cigarette in his mouth. He seemed to know instinctively which angles he wanted.



Day One: DP Casey Feldt

For day two of the shoot on the Terrain, David and I drove from our radio show (right after our interview) with director Leonard Zelig, producer Roberto Alcazar and crew of SubHysteria, not even grabbing lunch. THE TERRAIN's second day of shooting took place at an old warehouse in Downtown Los Angeles.   

The warehouse was intriguing, dusty and a little scary. Many rooms and enclaves inside this old ammunition storage facility just didn’t ‘feel’ right. The energy was off. However, the energy on set was great, although we were under time pressure to wrap at 5:00 p.m. sharp. The building manager would arrive at the property to lock up or tack on the appropriate billing for extra time.  It was now 3:00 p.m. Things were rolling fast. Air conditioning was non-existent and we were well in the midst of an L.A. summer.



Day Two: The Terrain interior warehouse shots as actor Todd Cattell
readies his aim

My brief time on ‘Day Two’ of THE TERRAIN went by fast and furious, but shots were made. Although hurried, we made shots were made just in time. As the building manager arrived to lock up a few minutes before 5:00 p.m. he told us about the spirits and ghosts which befriended him at night inside the warehouse. He explained that most of the entities were friendly and called him by name, asking questions about ‘who was that guy here today?’ He seemed at ease while he told this story.  Whether true or not, I didn’t care. It fit perfectly into the day and I didn’t want to ruin this experience.



Day Two: The Terrain interior warehouse shots as rock star PA Kyle Kao surveys the shot

Director Brian Durkin and crew mentioned that they picked this warehouse especially knowing the exterior shots would receive little disruption from too much traffic. Unbeknownst to them, a movie/commercial shoot of some type was taking place on this Sunday afternoon just block away, rerouting traffic right by our location. So it was busy with cars whizzing by and slowing down to eye our exterior shoot. Funny how when a camera is out people can’t help but strain their necks to see if anyone famous is around.



Day Two: The Terrain exterior shots, waiting for traffic in between scenes

 

Day Two:  The Terrain exterior shot of warehouse as actor Todd Cattell (Major Jacob Kohl ) waits for his cue


 

Day Two: The Terrain exterior as shots are checked

As I got back into the car at the end of the day, I felt empowered, satisfied with the photos I took, and happy that some great friends put together a first-class production. I watched first hand that you don’t need to wait for the phone to ring or an e-mail to validate your worth. You can make it happen on your own with proper planning, choosing the right people for your team, and taking the ‘Black Swan’ approach of not being too rigid at the risk stopping yourself in the process.

Karen Worden is a (very) part-time actress, co-host/co-producer of the Noon (Pacific) Sunday radio show Film Courage on LA Talk Radio.com, as well as co-owner of FilmCourage.com, along with husband David Branin. Each Sunday, Karen and David interview filmmakers and content creators from around the globe on surviving and thriving the entertainment industry. Karen, David and their three cats live in Los Angeles, California. Follow them both on www.FilmCourage.com, @FilmCourage, @DavidBranin and @KarenWorden.
0 Comments
27 Jul11

Terminal Legacy Day#4

by Lucas McNelly


Call time today was two hours ago. We've not yet gotten a shot, and we're holding for tape. Yes, tape. Blue painter's tape, to be specific. And how could a film of this size be brought to it's knees by something so small? Well…


Yesterday Morning

There's blue painter's tape in pretty much every shot in this film. Problem is, the windows can't just be sealed in plastic. They exist in one of three stages: sealed tightly, ripped, and completely torn down. All three require tape. And since sealing the windows is easier and quicker than setting up a light, we're constantly having to re-tape the windows.  

Basically, we're going through a lot of tape (and plastic).  

It's no secret that we're going to run out, and the Art Director tells the producers that it probably won't last the day. It almost definitely won't.

There's a hardware store a mile away. We've walked past it after closing down the bar.



Yesterday Afternoon

And there goes the last of the tape. Ahead of schedule, even. Since I'm the one who used the last of the tape, I go over to Brian, one of our producers who showed up that morning to tell him we need more tape, and soon. Keep in mind it's in virtually every interior shot of the film.  

Brian tells me that he'll get it "first thing tomorrow". Again, this is a prop that's in every interior scene of the film. It costs, what, $3? We probably have another 6 hours of shooting tonight. But according to Brian we 1) won't need it until tomorrow, which Dane Williams and I find surprising because the schedule has changed every single day, 2) don't have a PA to go get it anyway (although there are 6 or 7 cars sitting outside that could easily drive a mile).  

Dane and I just kind of look at each other in disbelief. I suggest that maybe, just maybe, we should send someone who isn't doing anything to go get it just in case, as I'd hate for production to be halted by something so stupid. He tells us it shouldn't be a problem.  

No one on this shoot has seen a schedule in 3 days, so it's kind of hard to argue with him on that point. But we do know the schedule has changed at least once a day.  

According to Brian, he made the schedule.  

Yesterday Evening

I walk through a crowded hallway with some grip equipment and have to step around Brian, who's sitting on the floor playing NBA Jam on his iPad.  

Later, he stands in the middle of the smallest room we've shot in to-date and talks about how he's going to join the Producer's Guild.  



The shoot goes 15 1/2 hours total. Amazingly, we don't need the tape again.  

This morning

The van that's supposed to pick us up is 20 minutes late. Behind the wheel? Brian. Maybe he stopped to get the tape? We drive by a hardware store. I wonder aloud if they sell painter's tape there.  

"Oh, there's the hardware store," Brian says.  

Clearly we have different definitions of "first thing in the morning".

We eat breakfast. Then, at the scheduled start time, Brian and one of the other producers get in a car to theoretically go buy things. An hour and a half later, the lights are set. We're ready to shoot. We have no tape.  

No one is surprised.  

Finally, Christine and I start digging through the trash, trying to piece together old pieces of tape that are not completely fucked up. We do, sort of. It looks terrible. I have no doubt that you'll be able to see which scene it is when you watch the film.  

Mostly, I feel bad for director Brian Kazmarck. He's got an impossible enough task without having to deal with this bullshit. No director should have to deal with this sort of bullshit. If a producer can't procure a $3 roll of tape from a store a mile away, why are they even there? If you can't fulfill the basic functions of a PA, you should not be on a film set.  

From there, Brian the Producer proceeds to plant himself as close to the monitor as possible. Keith, the sound guy, has to reach over him to get the boom in. I have to step over him to slate the scene. He serves zero function behind the monitor. The AD and Script Supervisor are having a hard enough time seeing everything they need to see without him being there.  



That afternoon, Christine gets sick from putting spoiled milk in her coffee. She throws it away. Brian sees her. His response?



One of my filmmaker friends on Facebook, a director you've heard of, probably summed it up best: "Sounds like they're playing a birthday prank on you."  

Happy birthday to me.


Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter:@lmcnelly.
0 Comments
24 Jul11

Terminal Legacy Day#3

by Lucas McNelly


It's so stupid, but one of my favorite things is when a grip or DP uses a c-stand to hold a branch. I have no idea why, but it strikes me a damned cool. Maybe because it's such a lo-fi approach to getting something pretty specific, or maybe it's because the angles of a tree branch are just something that cannot be faked. Well, I guess it could be faked, but what would be the point? It's such a DIY approach that harkens back to the days of just shooting with what was laying around and making it work.  


Plus, it's fun.  



So that's what we're doing, trying to put a c-stand in a bush, with all sorts of branches clamped onto it, so we can get a cool shadow on Whitney Kirk as she points a gun at someone. Or, to quote grip Dane Williams (as heard in the above video), "I wonder what the neighbors think now."



The premise of the scene is this: Cuyle Carvin's character is gone (and so is Cuyle, gone back to New York for a couple days), so the interplay is between Whitney and Sally Greenland, an Australian actress who plays Cuyle's sister.  

In good news, every lawn in the neighborhood has already been mowed this week, so we don't have many sound issues.  



After the outside shoot, we're upstairs in the space that was previously the green room for the cast and crew. It's never fun to shift the green room, people get settled there and things get kind of spread out, but when you're limited in space, that's what you have to do. But what we've got is essentially two green rooms. One is a general staging area and one is dedicated to wardrobe and makeup. Guess which one is harder to re-set? The big debate then, is how best to do this. One school of thought is to re-set everything, but AD Carolina Solando and I think this is not such a great idea.  



Finally, Carolina comes up with a solution where we can make the first room look like the second room. It's a really good fix, and like all good fixes, it's easy to execute. So easy that we're all surprised no one thought of it earlier. We run it by director Brian Kazmarck and once he makes sure that can actually work, we have a plan. And even better, it'll save us at least an hour of work, which is vital on such a tight schedule.  

And in that modified second room, yours truly is playing the role of "soldier in boots", which ends up being more complicated than it sounds. In the scene, Sally Greenland's character is hiding under a bed when a pair of boots walks by. It's a basic scene--you've seen it before--that really quickly conveys an emotion the audience can latch on to. But there's questions: how do soldiers wear their boots? Do they tuck in the pants? No? (According to Google, the Air Force requires it, so we go with that.)



I kid with Brian that I need motivation for my character, but in the end, it turns out I do. There's walking, and then there's walking with purpose. And then there's walking with a specific purpose. I have to hit a pretty tight mark to frame my feet against Sally's head, but the carpet is in enough of the shot that we can't spike the floor. So I'm using a monitor, which is kind of reversed. I miss the mark more often than I hit it, but eventually we get it.  

This is why I'm not an actor. God forbid I actually have to say lines of dialogue.  

Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter:@lmcnelly.
0 Comments
19 Jul11

Terminal Legacy Day#2

by Lucas McNelly


Let's talk for a second about the little things. Thanks to the internet (maybe you've heard of it?), every day on every film set in the world people check the weather report. Almost always it's someone in the production with some scheduling responsibilities, but pretty much these days everyone checks, simply so they can figure out what to wear. No one wants to be uncomfortable all day.

So when the weather report calls for scattered thunderstorms all day with a 60% chance of precipitation, you assume it'll rain. So when it does rain, you won't be in trouble.



Cut to half-way through Day 2 of TERMINAL LEGACY. A tornado siren goes off. Yes, a tornado siren. And the deck of this house is full of things from the living room--books, DVDs, rugs, and a bunch of other stuff that can't exactly get wet. Now instead of just pulling the lights inside, we have to drag in all manner of things that shouldn't be out there in the first place. Heavy things. Fragile things.  

And why? No one knows. My guess is that it seemed easier at the start of the day, but now a 15 minute delay is over an hour long.  

It's one thing to store stuff outside when it's supposed to be nice all day, but when the forecast calls for rain, it's gonna rain. And sure, you can't predict a tornado siren, but you can make it easier to work around it. At the end of the day, isn't minimizing the potential damage what we all need to be doing?



As for actual filming, the highlight of today is that we're filming a character death. Naturally, I can't tell you much more beyond that. Per usual, I've told Brian Kazmarck to let me know if anything is off the record, and he definitely wants a character death off the record. Hopefully that alone isn't too much, but this is a sci-fi thriller and people die in sci-fi thrillers.  



Instead, let's talk about Tony Burns, the director of photography.  



It usually doesn't take too long to figure out if a DP knows what he or she is doing. Watch them light a few scenes and watch a few shots on the monitor and you get a pretty good idea. Having said that, Tony Burns knows what he's doing. Maybe it's because he's got a smoke machine running for virtually every shot (more on that as we progress), or maybe it's because he's British and everything he says sounds really smart, but I get the sense that he and his G&E team (of which I'm sort of part of, I guess) is doing a damned good job.  

I think, if nothing else, the film's going to look really good.  



Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter:@lmcnelly.
0 Comments
18 Jul11

Terminal Legacy Day 1

by Lucas McNelly

 

If you were to ask me what day in the calendar year would be the one where people are least likely to be doing yard work, one of my first guesses would be the day after Memorial Day. I mean, who has that Tuesday off? I've had plenty of jobs where it was strongly implied that "getting sick" on the day after a holiday wasn't exactly going to be taken at face value.  

But here we are, the day after Memorial Day, shooting outside in a quiet neighborhood in Newark, Delaware and there's got to be 15 houses around us either mowing the lawn, trimming bushes, or just hammering on metal. And the thing is, we can't see any of them. Every five minutes, Assistant Director Carolina Solano wanders off in search of noise. It stops. And then it starts up again from a different direction. Indie film whack-a-mole.  



It's also hot out. Really hot. Like, 100 degrees and humid. I don't know if this is affecting everyone, but considering that I've just come from a string of cold locales, it seems awful. Also my body thinks the 8am call time is actually 5am, so there's that.

Anyway, we're outside. It's 100 something degrees out. Everyone in the neighborhood is making as much noise as possible. And we're doing a fight scene.



If you've never done a fight scene, here's how it works. You do the blocking first, obviously. That way everyone (actors, camera, sound, grips, etc) knows what's going on. Then you do it at quarter-speed, so the actors can get their movements figured out. The last thing you want to do is try and fake a punch for the first time at full speed, unless you want someone to end up with a broken nose. You work your way up from there to full-speed so everyone is comfortable. Even then, there's no guarantee that no one will get hurt.


Like any outside shoot, this one quickly becomes a race against the sun, as it climbs higher and higher in the sky, moving our usable shade down the side of the house, then across the lawn. We shift with it, cheating the action further and further away from the house, where the trees offer more protection.  



Which is not to say that lead actor Cuyle Carvin doesn't have time to graze on some clovers. I had one. They aren't bad. Sweeter than you'd think.



While we've filmed outside, Christine Arboleda (who's functioning as pretty much the entire Art Department) has turned the living room into a set. It's kind of like those HGTV home makeover shows where they come in and turn your living room around on $20.

And because there's an airborne virus that must be contained, part of the set decoration involves putting plastic on the windows. But how to tape it? It's one of those things that involves endless discussion on a film set: what's best vs. what's narratively best.



Cuyle's character is a scientist and therefore would know that plastic tarp and blue painter's tape isn't going to create all that much of a quarantine. But, who has quarantine supplies in their house? Do you? It's a fine line of believability a film has to walk, and it's not really something you can outright win. Some people will point at the blue painter's tape and say it wouldn't work. Other people would point at proper quarantine supplies and question where they came from. You really can't win, so you have to commit to one of them and just sell it the best you can.



We have plastic tarp and blue painter's tape, which has the added advantage of not pulling the paint off the walls when we take it down. That's a pretty vital consideration.  



The day is a long one--14 hours or so--and we're wrapping up, waiting for instructions on where people will sleep (there's apparently a town house across town some of us can stay in) when word comes down that production won't be providing dinner. Word of this spreads pretty quickly through the crew, most of whom were under the assumption that it would be provided and haven't eaten in 7 hours or so.  

So the crew walks the half-mile to the only place in town any of us have been--the local bar. There's food there. And beer. And margaritas.  
Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter:@lmcnelly.
0 Comments
16 Jul11

Day 4 on THE SUMMER HOME

by Lucas McNelly

 

Assuming you're more or less on schedule, a short day is everyone's favorite day on a film. String enough 14+ hour days together and a 8 hour day sounds like a vacation. Of course, some of the simpler things get a lot trickier, as everyone is a little punch-drunk.

 

As you can see, we're not so good at doing something as simple as cutting up kindling, which isn't hard at all. Also, it's raining again. Of course it is.

We shoot a couple of scenes by the wood pile. A big embrace. A broken coffee mug. More kindling.  

An exhausted group of people.

From there, we drive to the nearby beach to film the ending. The rain has let up, mercifully. The big challenge here is a really simple one. We've got two people in a car, virtually no grip equipment, and a lot of glare on the windshield. A lot of glare. We're trying to flag it off with flexible reflectors, but the reflectors are also showing up on the windshield if they aren't in the perfect spot. Thankfully, they're flexible, which is pretty much required to hit that sweet spot.

And if it didn't take every pair of hands on set to get it in that spot, we'd have a picture of it. Instead, we have this.

 



I can't really talk too much about the rest of the shoot, what with it being pretty much a spoiler, but suffice to say it went pretty smoothly. Then, back to the house to pack up.  

A lesson for aspiring filmmakers: you can work your crew 13, 14, 16 hours a day for no money. You can do pretty much anything. Really, you can. And if you open a bottle of champagne for the crew to drink while they're packing up, you'll have a very happy crew. Beer works too, but not as well as champagne.  



********
In the days since I left Seattle, the creative team behind THE SUMMER HOME has launched a Kickstarter campaign to pay for the film they've already got in the can. Check it out. And if you can throw them a few bucks, that'd be fantastic.

 

Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter:@lmcnelly.
0 Comments
14 Jul11

Day 3 of THE SUMMER HOME

by Lucas McNelly

 

When I was a little kid growing up on the coast of Maine, I distinctly remember having a t-shirt for the "Seattle Rain Festival, January 1st - December 31st". It was yellow. I have no idea where the shirt came from. I have no relatives in Seattle and no one in my family has ever, to my knowledge, ever even been to Seattle. But someone explained to me that the shirt was joke. It might be the first joke I remember. And, hey, I still know it.

I mention it now because I'm in Seattle and, naturally, it's raining off and on. Thing is, we need it to stop. Actually, we don't even need it to stop. We need it to slow down by the time it gets dark so we can safely shoot a night exterior.



In the meantime, we're shooting inside. We're using duvetyne to black out the windows in the bedroom and bathroom to get a night scene. The bedroom windows aren't in the shot, but the small bathroom one is and DP Ty Migota wants to try and keep the tree outside in the shot, so he sends Nick out to wrap the duvetyne around the tree. Sure there's better ways to do that, but we don't have access to those better ways.  



Later, under easier circumstances, we construct a tent of duvetyne using c-stands and clamps on a porch outside a window. We're able to put a small light inside the tent. It's not so high off the ground, so it works. Until the rain picks up, of course.

Part of the challenge inherent in THE SUMMER HOME stems from that lack of knowledge about the location. We have gear we don't need and need gear we don't have. It's not as simple as just going to the store to get something--we're on an island. The ferry only runs so often.  



So I guess it's not so surprising when Ty Migota holds a ND filter over the lens because there isn't a matte box. But what is surprising is how a couple of hours later, when the lighting in the living room isn't right, he holds that filter over part of the lens, fixing the exposure issue on the actor in the background.

It's a perfect no-budget indie film moment--using the tools at hand to get it done, convention be damned. And you know what? It works. It isn't something you're going to write to the film school alumni association about, but it works.



And really that's the spirit of the whole production. Just make it work.


So when the skies clear at the start of Magic Hour, we all run outside and improvise a scene with Wonder and Paul on the shore. Then, we set up for our night shooting, which involves a broken down car on the side of an actual road, with me around the corner to stop traffic (we have no permits) before the headlights get in the shot.  



Next thing I know, I'm spinning a c-stand with a 650W on top, trying to simulate passing street lights. I can get 4 full rotations before the power cords get too tightly wrapped around the base, then it's back to 1 and start over.



And then, just because no one has gotten hurt yet, we film a scene where Paul has to literally scale the side of the house. Everything is wet and slippery. From my vantage point on the balcony he's attempting to reach, I see his hands grab the rail, then slip momentarily before re-gaining the hold. It's something they're going to have to replace the audio for because you can definitely hear a couple people gasping.

He doesn't seem to mind, and if that isn't the sign of a dedicated actor, then I don't know what is.


Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter:@lmcnelly.
0 Comments
10 Jul11

VOD, FTW #2

by Lucas McNelly

Not too long ago, I wrote about the process of putting my feature debut on VOD. It's not a bad little blog post, and I encourage you to read it, if for no other reason than for context on this post.

I kind of figured the issue of VOD would be settled for a bit. Dynamo makes a good, clean player. Now all that was left to do was sit back and let the money roll in (right, Sheri Candler?). But it seemed like as soon as I hit "publish", the game changed.

Enter, Distrify.


Basically, Distrify is pretty similar to Dynamo, but with a couple of key features. Namely, you can up-sell DVDs, Merch, etc, inside the player.  

Obviously, this is a great help, as you can get someone to embed the player on their site and the audience doesn't have to find their way back to your site just to buy something. It's all in one easy-to-manage embed code. It's one of those things that really should have been standard a year ago. But, better late than never.

It's also really, really easy to embed on Facebook.



That's not even the important part. Distrify lets you set up people (or, rather, let's them set up themselves) as affiliates. Basically, if you host the embed code of my film on your site, you get a cut of the money when someone rents via that player. The implications are obvious. What's a better motivator than money? (Answer: almost nothing).  

If I'm understanding it correctly, you can even get paid on Twitter/Facebook referrals, which is pretty awesome.

The minimum affiliate fee is 5%. Distrify does a 70%/30% split overall (which is pretty much standard now), and they'll actually 50/50 split the affiliate fee with you, which is nice.  

I set my Affiliate cut at 30%, which is really high, mostly because our goal is to see what does and doesn't work in advance of UP COUNTRY. So if you got your audience motivated, you could make some beer money with not much work.  

Players

Thing is, your average audience member doesn't care about all that. For them, the experience is key. What does the player look like? What does it do? Let's see.

Here's the Distrify player.  


And here, for comparison, is the Dynamo player:



Basically, what you've got here is form vs. function. The Dynamo player looks a hell of a lot better, but the Distrify player does a hell of a lot more. So right now, my guess is it'll come down to what your priority is.

Or, one of them could adopt from the other. That'd be nice.

Stats

As promised, let's look at some stats. The Distrify player has just gone live, so we don't have anything substantial there, but Dynamo has been up since May 25th. Not a lot of time, for sure, but it's something to look at.




Obviously, we're not going to be buying any sports cars just yet. The player loads kind of make things hard to read, so let's zoom in.  



Again, not good numbers. Then again, is anyone really sure what good numbers are? Honestly, I haven't got a clue if we're doing well or not, compared to what our expectations should be. And that's kind of the point of this.  

We'll keep you updated. In the meantime, it'd be really great if you checked out the movie. It's a hell of a bargain. And the more rentals we get, the more motivated I'll be to post more updates (hint, hint).  

Or, better yet, why not trying out the player on your blog and see if you can't rake in some affiliate cash?

Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter: @lmcnelly.
1 Comments
06 Jul11

Seattle International Film Festival

by Lucas McNelly

 

Old friend (and project regular, it seems) Phil Seneker sends me a message on Twitter saying he's got an extra ticket to the Opening Night of the Seattle International Film Festival, if I'm going to be in town and feel like going. I've got a couple of days until I have to be at the next project, so I figure what the hell.  

The plan is to meet him at the event's Will Call area and the webpage says the event starts at 5:30, so I spend the day editing UP COUNTRY in some Seattle coffee shops. Around 3pm, I give Phil a call, but there's no answer. 4pm, no answer. I jump on a bus and head downtown to the event (which is more or less next to the Space Needle). I walk by the Red Carpet, where Ty Migota (THE SUMMER HOME) is shooting footage for something, but no Phil. Nor is he at Will Call. His phone rings and rings. No answer. Twenty minutes or so pass. Nothing.

Huh.



Finally, I figure Phil's not going to show and go looking for someone who's working, which isn't actually that hard. They pass me up the line. I explain who I am and who I write for and, simple as that, I've got a General Admission pass and two free drink tickets. Because, really, if I can't talk my way into a film festival, then there's really something wrong with me.

I'm inside maybe 5 minutes when I run into Phil, who's headed out to give me my ticket. Turns out he's actually working the event.



I figure I might as well help him out, since he's actually working, which involves very little. Mostly I keep track of his shotgun mic for him and point it at the podium during the introductory speeches.

 

 
One pretty interesting thing they're doing this year is partnering with Starbucks to offer a selection of SIFF shorts over Starbuck's in-store digital network around the country. Essentially, until the end of the festival (June 12), you can go to any Starbucks. Log into their Wifi and it'll take you to the digital network (it's easy. I do it pretty much every day) and you can watch SIFF shorts right there. It's a pretty fantastic way to get some of the shorts out there to a wider audience and actually provide some additional value for filmmakers.  

SIFF's Opening Night Film is Justin Chadwick's THE FIRST GRADER. Phil and I duck out as it starts, fully intending to watch at least part of it…until we realize that the VIP section is still open and still serving.  



The movie ends (oops) and the VIP section fills up with, well, VIPs. I take a bunch of photos and Phil shoots some b-roll. When you walk around a VIP section with a camera, people pose for lots of photos. They figure you're supposed to be there. And I guess, in a way, I was.



From what I can tell, it's not a bad festival they put on at SIFF. It's not really the sort of thing that seems, from the schedule, to program a lot of indies, but if you're in Seattle, it's a nice way to see a lot of world cinema all in one place.

And, hell, I still have my drink tickets.
 
Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter:@lmcnelly.
0 Comments
05 Jul11

Kevin Fox

by Lucas McNelly

Maybe because it's I just launched a VOD rental of a film, or maybe it's because VOD was the subject of the recent #filmin140 panel, or maybe it's because it's just a coincidence, but I feel like selling your work has really been the topic of the week. And so it's fitting that I'm writing this from the living room of a filmmaker who's actually having some success selling his work online.  

Kind of karmic, if you ask me.

The question then, is how is this filmmaker selling stuff? What are they doing that you can, in turn, do yourself? Let's find out.

Kevin Fox of Kevin Fox Films was on of our more vocal supporters during the Kickstarter campaign, which automatically puts him high on the list of people I want to try and meet. He lives pretty close to San Francisco, so with some time to kill, it seemed like the perfect chance to take him up on his offer to visit.  

Kevin lives in "cowboy country", which is an important thing to note.  

Every year he makes a short doc related to a rodeo that comes through town. He then sells said rodeo-themed doc to the western audience--a decidedly niche audience, to be sure. He describes the films as "not exactly CITIZEN KANE". So it's easy to disregard his sales as a fluke, but that would be a mistake.  

There's a ton of videos in this market that are essentially "how-to" videos about roping or steering or whatever it is that cowboys do, so Kevin knew that he'd have to go an extra step to set his doc apart from those videos. He got on Withoutabox and started searching for a festival that catered to western content. But rather than just scatter-shot all of them, he dug deeper, looking for a festival that was young enough to be easy to work with and close enough that he could easily attend.  

He got himself into the Modesto Reel Food Festival, packed the audience, and took home an audience choice award.

From there, he burned some screeners and sent them to people of note. But not who you and I would think of as people of note. People in the rodeo business. Places like Western Horseman magazine. Stuff like that.

Honestly, it's a pretty old-school approach. But think about the audience. I don't imagine cowboys are reading Ted Hope's blog out on the range. They have better things to do (nothing against Ted, of course). So in a way, he's catering his approach to how his audience lives--lots of stuff in print, whenever possible. Not because he isn't active on Twitter or Facebook or whatever (he is), but because his audience maybe isn't so much.  

What he is able to do is use all that technology on the back-end. Anything he can teach himself to do at a professional level, he does. Everything else he outsources. He does all the fulfillment himself because his research has shown that he can be cheaper, faster, and more efficient than anyone he'd hire.

I know what you're thinking: that sounds awful. But it doesn't have to be, provided you get it down to something of a science. You also end up being on a first name basis with your mailman.  

Kevin's approach is rather deceptively simple: he takes the lo-fi aspects of self-distribution and combines them with a Web 2.0 sensibility. He contacts people on Facebook to get inclusion in their print media. And, more importantly, he's much more likely to quote positive comments by his audience than he is by any critic or any festival or, really, anyone his audience hasn't heard of. But they have heard of each other--fellow fans, people in the rodeo industry--and that's who's opinion they trust. And so he plays to that strength. And he interacts with them not as a company that's putting out DVDs but as a human being, because people would much rather talk to a human being than a company.  

He made an interesting point that on Twitter, he's much more likely to follow @lmcnelly than he is to follow @YearWithoutRent (for example), even if the content is really similar.

It's such a simple concept that it's easy to dismiss. But, you know what? Almost every time he goes to his computer, there's a new sale.  

So maybe sometimes the old approach isn't such a bad idea.

Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. Follow him on Twitter: @lmcnelly. Or you can rent his first feature BLANC DE BLANC on VOD.
0 Comments
16 Jun11

Day 2 of THE SUMMER HOME

by Lucas McNelly

It's a sunrise call for the first shooting day of THE SUMMER HOME. The first scene, as we saw yesterday, involves a shoot at first light on a dock. 

 

Almost immediately it starts raining. Welcome to Seattle. The dock we're on is maybe 5 feet wide. There are no posts securing it in the corners--just a big post at the end--and the entire thing pivots on a line from the shore to the post like a big see-saw. So picture that dock and how, um, unstable that could be. Now, put a RED camera on it, along with six people, actor Paul Vitulli on a chair, sound equipment, and a monitor. In a misting rain.

 

Well, make that five people, as it took Eric the sound guy exactly 30 seconds to decide he'd be much better off just standing in the ankle-deep water. I'm not sure I blame him. Luckily, it's not a complicated scene, so we're in and out (out and in?) pretty quickly. And most of that stuff discussed in the video? That whole discussion about match cuts? Tossed.

 

But isn't that essentially what figuring out a scene is all about? You come up with the scene when you write it, and in your head it looks perfect, but your DP sees it differently in his head. Your actor too. And in order to get everyone on the same page, you go through the scene, beat by beat, trying to figure out the best, most efficient way to do it. Very often you'll have 3 or 4 versions of that. Sometimes (rarely) you get it right the first time. But the important thing is the process, because it's there that you really dig into the scene. The deeper you can dig, the richer the final product will be, even something as simple as a guy sitting on a dock at sunrise. If you're working a film like THE SUMMER HOME, where there's fewer than 5 lines of dialogue, then it becomes even more important. There's no exposition scene where Character A tells Character B something Really Important, so you really have to know not just what narrative points you're trying to get across with a scene, but whether or not they'll be noticed by the audience. Easier said than done.

 

For the rest of the day we're pretty much in the bedroom. The location has a garage, which we've cleaned out to function as a staging area, so while the house is small, we're able to at least move around more or less freely. Plus, we've got a fiery Executive Producer who demands attention at every opportunity. Seriously, Falcor has more energy than the rest of the cast and crew combined.

 

It's a long day, wrapping late in the night and the turnaround is short, which is far from ideal, but it's the film everyone signed up for. And Wonder Russell brought lots of beer. You can ask a crew to do a lot if you supply beer.

 

Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter: @lmcnelly.

0 Comments
11 Jun11

Day 1 of THE SUMMER HOME

by Lucas McNelly

If you've been following along from the start, you'll remember that earlier this year I took a ferry out to Vinalhaven, an island off the coast of Maine, to work on Andrew Brotzman's NOR'EASTER. It was very cold in the North Atlantic Ocean in February, and I think everyone pretty much assumed that would be our only ferry film. Because, really, how many people film on remote islands?  



That's why it was a little surprising to find myself back on a ferry mere weeks later, this time heading for an island off the coast of Washington State. Is it a sign of a new island film movement in indie film? Were we all so enamored with LOST that we just had to find our own little Dharma Initiative? Probably not. My guess is it's just a coincidence.  



The West Coast film in question is Kris and Lindy Boustedt's THE SUMMER HOME. Written by the Boustedt's and lead actress Wonder Russell (CONNECT TO), it's a small character drama revolving around two nomadic characters who come across a house on the ocean.  

We're filming on Lopez Island (but the film isn't necessarily set on an island. I think we just need a shore), hence the ferry, in the summer home of someone in Wonder Russell's family. The cast and crew arrives on two different ferries. In the first one: myself, co-director Kris Boustedt, DP Ty Migota, and AC Nicholas Davis. None of us have ever seen this location before, or anything beyond a couple of photos of the exterior.

Think about that for a minute. How many times do you check out a location before you start filming? Three? Four? But if the location is decently far away and you're working on a short turnaround, you might not be able to do a proper location scout. And without a proper location scout, you're pretty much just flying blind. And the house is, well, it's pink. Really, really pink. Grandma pink. I'm not sure photographs could have done it justice, even if we had them, but here's one.



The schedule calls for our first shot on Day 1 to be a single person on a dock at sunrise, only the dock is a little different than we thought--chiefly there's a big huge post in the middle of it. The sort of thing you can't exactly shoot around to get the effect they're looking for. Well, not easily. So maybe shooting around it isn't the best idea. Maybe you use it to your advantage.

 

It's pretty clear that despite not having seen the actual location, these guys are well-prepared. I sat in on a couple of pre-production meetings and watched them go over and over the script, trying to squeeze every last bit out of it. So maybe that's a decent substitute for not seeing the location. Sure, it's a hassle, but you have to compensate by scouting out the emotional locations until you know them like the back of your hand. Will it work? We'll see.

 

Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. His feature-length debut is now available to rent on VOD. Follow him on Twitter: @lmcnelly.

0 Comments
07 Jun11

When the Schedule Implodes

by Lucas McNelly

In the early stages of planning this adventure, we knew that one thing we'd face is the fluidity of indie film schedules. Because, let's face it, even big-budget films change shooting dates all the time. And with indie film, it's even worse, as you're often forced to work around some really random scheduling quirks. So we knew from experience that people would end up canceling, or having their schedule change. These things happen. Of course, we didn't quite anticipate this much shuffling.



In the first 5 weeks, we've had 6 projects either move or vanish on us. Some of them have shifted their dates and we've been able to pick them back up. Dave Bullis' series GAME OVER being one such example. They're up next--in Philly--and provided I don't get any bad emails today, I'll be getting on a train tomorrow morning to head over there.  

Others, like Victoria Westcott's LOCKED IN A GARAGE BAND, had to reschedule, but rescheduled into someone else's dates, which creates what I guess you'd call a good problem, but it's a problem nonetheless.  

And some, like the film I was supposed to be working on this past week in Minneapolis, have been postponed and/or cancelled, which pretty much means that the money went away and if it comes back, the film will happen. It sucks, but that's the reality of the situation. But when a project cancels, where does that put yours truly, your couch-surfing hero? Well…in limbo. One of our expectations was that in the wide, wide world of indie film, there's always something happening. Or, as Phil Holbrook said, "I figured you'd be overwhelmed with projects" (so did I). And so the thinking was that:

1) Yes, schedules would shift all over the place. We knew that. But we didn't think we'd have so many. Are we just "running bad", as they say in poker? Maybe. But maybe not. There's really no way to tell.  

2) How hard would it be to fill in a day here and a day there? Especially if we had more projects than we knew what to do with? Seemed like it would be pretty easy. But we've had a lot fewer than we thought so far (although, that's certainly picked up recently). Couple that with more cancellations than we anticipated, and you've got lots of gaps in the schedule.  

3) The stuff we've been able to find that could fill in the schedule hasn't been all that feasible. Could we fly to, say, LA and do a day on something? Sure. But our budget simply can't swing the cost of a flight vs. that amount of time.

Now, if we need to fly to LA for 2 weeks, that makes a lot more sense, but we have to be careful that we don't stretch our budget too thin. No one benefits from that. Maybe part of that is timing. I was in Chicago for a couple of days recently and was kind of surprised that I couldn't find anything that was filming for a couple of days. And we had some pretty well-connected people asking around. And now, of course, there's something in Chicago, but it conflicts with the Philly shoot. So it goes.  

It becomes a domino effect. We've tried to schedule smaller stuff (1-3 day commitments) around bigger stuff (features, mostly) in that general section of the country. But when a big project goes away, it makes it really hard to justify driving 2,000 miles for a smaller thing. So when one thing gets cancelled, it makes everything around it that much harder. Sometimes we can fill dates at the last minute, but often we can't.

So what happens when we've got a week to kill? Well, this week I got on a plane and flew to Pittsburgh, which is one of my "safe" spots where I can just show up at someone's door and crash for a couple of days, no questions asked. That sort of fall-back plan has been more valuable than I thought it would.

Which is not to say that the week I've spent adjusting my blood-alcohol level hasn't been productive. I've been able to catch up a little (mostly on my sleep). I helped a friend of mine shoot some video for his job. I spoke to some MFA students at Chatham University about the project and the various ways that filmmakers these days have to network and utilize social media to help tell their stories. And we may have lined up a cool thing or two that could pay off down the road, but I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about that yet. So it's been quietly productive, you could say. But probably the most value has come in the opportunity to recharge my batteries a bit. I was starting to run out of steam for a minute there.



And if I remember correctly, the schedule is pretty solidly booked until mid-June or so. Cross your fingers that it stays that way.  

Filmmaker Lucas McNelly is spending a year on the road, volunteering on indie film projects around the country, documenting the process and the exploring the idea of a mobile creative professional. You can see more from A Year Without Rent at the webpage. Follow him on Twitter: @lmcnelly.
0 Comments
Newer Posts