20 Nov11

AYWR / THE STAGG DO Day#2

by Lucas McNelly

Few things in micro budget indie film are easier than being the gaffer when shooting a field far away from electricity. There's really no way you can possibly be expected to get electricity that far, if for no other reason than the production probably hasn't rented a generator. And without a generator, no electricity. No electricity means no lights. If you're far enough out there, in a remote enough location, you can't even block the light. Basically, you can bounce it around a bit, but 99% of the time, that's it. You're limited to what you can carry and the whims of the "Great Gaffer in the Sky".

So you spend a lot of time shading your eyes, looking up at the cloud pattern, and trying to figure out what exactly the clouds are going to do. You want to know ahead of time if there's some dark clouds on the horizon that'll make everything a lot darker or, even worse, if the sun is about to come out, thereby negating that fantastic soft box you've given the DP.

The Great Gaffer in the Sky has some fantastic lights, but little concern for how they affect your film.

But other than looking thoughtfully at the sky, there's not a whole lot you can do. You stay near the DP, just in case he needs something, but mostly you just stay out of the way and every so often offer some encouragement when needed.

Even that isn't so easy. There's a common plant in the UK called the nettle. It's apparently all over the place. Hell, it's even listed on the call sheet. I've never heard of it, even though Wikipedia seems to think it's all over North America. I grew up in the woods of Maine, and I've never heard of it. People will tell you to look out for them, and for good reason. They fucking hurt. And I don't mean like bee sting hurts. I mean 6 hours later you can still feel it.

I'm told you can boil them into a tea, but I'm not sure why you'd want to. Although, this is the UK.
The scenes in the field are pretty simple, transitional dialogue scenes. A minimum number of set ups and then we're done. So we trek out to the field to find a good spot, with the expectation that the cast is right behind us.

They aren't.

But we have a few things we can do. We're still waiting for one of the camera guys, but then he shows up and still no sign of the cast. Ten minutes go by. Twenty minutes. People are sitting down in the grass. Eventually they make their way out to the location, but they're unrehearsed. Add to that the fact that it turns into a moving shot, with a handheld camera going backward on some uneven ground and you've got a scene that takes a lot longer than scheduled.

There's a truism in construction that once the crew stops working, it's difficult to get them started again. At least, that's what they say whenever I watch FLIP THIS HOUSE. Same thing applies on a film set. Once they've taken a break, it's hard to get them going again. It's just human nature. So time spent on rehearsal after the shot is ready is usually time wasted, plus the time wasted trying to get things back up to speed.

We finish in the field, then it's back to the farm, where a new problem has emerged.

In the story, the judge (Bill Fellows) is a pretty well-off guy and therefore drives a pretty expensive car. The production, doing their due diligence, found an Audi to serve as a picture car. Only to find out just before production started that Bill cannot drive a stick shift. (I'm told the stick shift is much more prevalent in the UK than in the US.) So they can't shoot footage of him driving, which will be tricky because there's several pages of the script that revolve around that.

What to do?

Producer Zahra Zomorrodian has something that sort of looks like green screen material in her car and DP Richy Reay is pretty sure he can key it all properly, so it's up to the G&E team of myself and Grip Ben Moseley to make that happen. And we have to do it outside.

Loyal readers of A Year Without Rent will recall how on Sean Gillane's CXL, we had to figure out how to rig a green screen on the windy sidewalks of San Francisco. It's the sort of thing that rarely comes up, but thank goodness it did because now I'm able to use the tricks we figured out on Sean's shoot and put them to use here, only on a much bigger scale. Oh, and we have about a quarter of the gear we need to do it.

But someone says to ask Jerry if he's got anything in his van. Jerry is the sound guy who shows up in a panel van full of gear. Sure enough, he's got a couple of light stands with a T-bar attachment that we can affix the top part of the green screen to. The bottom needs to be stretched down to the ground and held in place, but we don't really have anything to hold it tight uniformly all the way around the car. So we start looking around the farm for heavy stuff. We find some metal bars to help weigh it down and some very heavy grey things that are about 4 feet long and used in a parking lot to stop a car from going any farther. I have no idea what they're called. We have 3 of those and since we're really low on sandbags, they go on the c-stands.

We still need more sand.

By this time, Ben and I have commandeered the two runners and the 1st AC James Grieves to help. I'm in one of those spots where I'm holding something that probably won't stay up by itself when we run out of sand. I look at runner Jonathan Teggert and James and tell them I need more sand.

"We don't have any."

"Well, figure it out."

Five minutes later, they come back with a small (roughly 1 foot wide and 2 feet long) burlap bag filled with rocks. And you know what? It works. It actually works really well. Use a cable tie to cinch off the top and you've got a bag that's more versatile than a sandbag, and just as heavy. You can distribute the rocks as needed, perfect for wrapping the bag around the base of a light stand, and they're easy to pack up at the end of the shoot.

The whole green screen is stuff like that. One of the more DIY things I've ever done.

Then there's a wait for the actors to get rehearsed. We shoot one half of the scene, then the car has to turn around to do the other half. And, yes, we simulate the car moving by pushing up and down on the hood.

The final piece of the day is a dream sequence where a scantily clad girl pours drinks down our actor's throats. Smartly, it's the last thing we shoot. Almost like a carrot on a stick to keep people moving.

And that's it for day 2.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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