Fifth Wall

Oct 7th, 08 / 0 Comments

I’m working on the scrips for an Internet TV series called Fifth Wall, which I guess could probably be best described as the kind of thing for people who thought the Will Ferrell film Stranger Than Fiction just wasn’t meta enough.

It’ll run for ten episodes (I’ll discuss my rationale for this in a separate post sometime), each around ten minutes long, and filming will hopefully begin sometime in November. Check back for further updates.

Fifth Wall, Production Commentary

Robechet A

Aug 11th, 08 / 2 Comments

There isn’t a whole lot to this one. I asked people if they could stare at the camera with dead expressions, inspired by Killers From Space (riffed on by The Film Crew a.k.a. the later cast of MST3K), a film punctuated by inexplicable close-ups of the actors with dead, somewhat angry expressions on their faces that are completely inappropriate to the situation, likely because they were filmed at an entirely different time. At the end of the film, Mike Nelson explains (or, well, lies) that this is a well-known film technique called the Robechet, named after a famed French actor who died during filming.

A few didn’t turn out, either because the subject was incapable of holding the expression long enough or they didn’t look quite dead enough. (Yeah, a few people blink, but…)

I’ve only managed to grab a handful so far, but I plan on getting more and re-filming some of the ones that didn’t work. Keep an eye out for Robechet B, coming sometime in the near future.

Uncategorized

Rocket Man

Jul 26th, 08 / 2 Comments

This is my first attempt at making a short film, shot on a Canon HV30 in 24p with the wide angle converter. The idea is sort of a Silver Age thing that’s perhaps a bit of a throwback to the Twilight Zone or Philip K. Dick’s short stories.

There were a few scenes in here that were really fun to edit:

The phones: We tried to get the pay phone to ring, but it wouldn’t let us call in, and it would’ve been way too hard to work out the timing so that it would ring at just the right moment. The timing would’ve also been tricky with Tom’s cell phone. So I just found a sample for a phone ring and downloaded the MIDI file he uses for a ring (canyon.mid from Windows 95) and roughed them up a bit to get them to fit into the shot.

The stairs: We shot this twice, actually. The first time, after I’d finished editing the sequence, I noticed we’d forgotten to have Tom stop at the top of the stairs while filming the loop before so that he’d match up with himself on the lower level. We re-filmed again, and then I set up a series of masks throughout each shot that would disappear at the right moment to make way for the next set.

The cereal aisle: We’d gone into the store to film without knowing whether they were going to kick us out or not.  I was going to ask permission, but I couldn’t find a manager anywhere.

Janet did an awesome job making up all the fake food containers. There’s Horizon organic pig milk, Papsi, Chikken of the Sea brand dolphin, Hitler Pringles, and Churrios (which have been shown to increase cholesterol). The stuff in the fridge and the smaller containers were pretty simple to put together and match up, but it would’ve been impossible to paste up a bunch of fake covers onto every Cheerios box in the store. We were already worried they were going to kick us out, and they certainly would have if we started messing around with their stock. Plus, it would’ve been difficult to match the colors, and we wouldn’t know how many we needed to print out, and when you start printing out larger images, they start looking funny, etc.

The simplest solution, then, was to edit the shot later. I sent Janet a frame without Tom in the shot, and she made a layer with just the cereal box replacements. It was then simply a matter of masking them appropriately as Tom walked through.

The mirror scene: What was great about this one was the causality, which was a bit confusing during filming. His reflection — which is several seconds ahead — turns before he does, which results in him turning around to look at the date on the back of his shirt, which results in his reflection having turned earlier on, since it was earlier in time. Again, a matter of careful cropping and masking.

The thing that made cropping a little annoying was the fact that I’d fucked up and accidentally set the white balance to “auto” at some point. I must have bumped it in the menu while setting something else and not noticed until it was too late. Lessons learned for next time.

Speaking of which:

Things I’d do differently next time:

1. Pay more attention to the sound, and carry around a set of headphones so that I could hear what the mic was picking up. Just because I can hear it doesn’t mean the camera can in the same way. I might need to pick up a wireless mic to use for shots that are further away, even though the DM-50 is really good at picking up sound.

2. More takes. There were a few times where I wished I had more footage to work with, and more versions of the footage. Even just the audio. In fact, there were a couple times when I used the audio from other takes, but wished I had something even clearer to put in.

3. Exercise more control over the scene’s environment. There’s one scene where I didn’t really notice that there was a fan going in the background, and I really should’ve paid more attention, since it kind of fucks the sound up a bit.

Bonus story: Tom was uncomfortable with stuffing food items into his bag, so he re-bought the Hitler Pringles (half of which I’d already eaten) and the tuna. The woman in the checkout didn’t even notice that we were purchasing half a can of Hitler Pringles and a can of dolphin, even though the latter had difficulty being scanned and she had to look closely at it to get it to finally go through.

Production Commentary