I thorougthly enjoyed this shoot because I actually had time to be a little creative. The top challenge I’ve had to endure is the quick time schedule… or the lack there of. They always say, “You can’t rush art.” So much truth in those 4 short words.

Green screening is one of my favorite parts of film making. I enjoy the creativity of setting up the raw plates and planning ahead for what kind of creation is going to take place in post to complete the visual/fx. It’s like making a painting. Start the masterpiece in the field and put on the finishing touches in post.

In order to have the scene look real, proper compositing is crucial.  The lighting of the subjects and surrounding props needs to be the same as the “keyed in” footage, otherwise the two different layers will not match up and will look different.

Another critical effect with a moving car scene is motion blurring.  You must remember that if we were really filming the side of a car moving at 50mph, the background would be out of focus and quite blurry.  All of these effects must be created/tricked in post.

The process can be quite meticulous, but when the final outcome looks real, it’s the best feeling you can have in post!

This car scene required a total of 9 different layers. This consisted of background plates, shadows and reflections. It takes a lot to make something so simple look real.

nother day of shooting went well. We had a lot of extras today. You may think, “the more the merrier.” We completed everything we set out to do, however it took about 3 times as long.

A good rule of thumb… when it comes to timing your shoots, however long you think it’s going to take, just take the number of hours and multiply it by 3.

The more I work with the director (Jordan), the faster we can compelte each day of shooting. We’re finally learning how each other thinks, which thankfully saves us a lot of time and headaches.

We had another shoot today. Once the rain stopped we were able to film two short fill-in scenes.

We used a dolly (vehicle) as well as the steadycam.

So far we’ve completed scene 5 and scene 3.

We’re making progress!

Click image below to view sample footage.

We started shooting our full length film today.

The shoot took place outside. The setting was a surprise going away party for one of the main characters.

The lighting was nice, and thankfully we got a lot of useful footage.

The genre of this film is comedy/drama.

The film is being shot in HD, and will be produced on Blu-ray and Standard DVD after completion.

We’re using the Sony HVR-V1U, along with the Letus35 Extreme DOF adapter.

While shooting in 24P, along with the DOF adapter, this is the closest we’re going to get to the “film look.” Then with a few post production tweaks (adjust levels, add film grain, etc.), we’ll be all set!

We’re aiming to have all of the footage shot within 8 months. So the film should be close to completion within 1 year. We’ll know a closer date several months down the road.

Our director is Jordan Gessler.

I (Michael), am the producer, as well as director of photography.

We’ll be posting more updates soon.