Music Video Shoot – Second Weekend
The second shooting weekend for To The Rescue’s new music video being produced by Hotcakes New Media can now officially be considered a successful shoot. It was, however, a rocky shoot. Want to know why? Keep reading.
Doing night shoots are tricky. Unless you are able to properly block the windows to simulate nighttime, you have to wait until it’s really dark to get your lighting set up correctly. In this case, shooting this scene at Anne and Dave’s house, it was crucial to wait until it was fully dark out before starting (past 9:30pm!) because of the HUGE windows in the space. This led to a very slow start, but ultimately, not really a issue as I had informed people that the shoot would run until midnight (which it did, almost to the minute). Instead, the main issues we faced were due to the small space we were working with, and the performance of our lead female.
First, the small space; Small spaces are always difficult to shoot in. It makes it difficult to set up lighting far enough away to avoid hot spots on the skin (completely white areas due to too much light) while providing a decent fill light to make the lighting look natural. In this case, we had to soften our lights with frosted gels because they were too harsh, and place lights in precarious positions in the stairs. For the entrance, we had to literally hang a light with a softbox over the stair railing. The good news is, Dave and I are getting better (faster?) at lighting, so everything turned out very nice. The only issue is one shot where the light is a little too bright (at the entrance, directly below the light), but I was able to fix it in post.
Second, the acting; Jay, our lead male, is a natural. His performance was very consistent and very well acted. Our female lead, Kandisse, was not as natural. It was a little more difficult to get the performance the way we wanted. In all fairness, after looking back at the original script (before the editing), the dialogue was not 100% believable to begin with, so it made matters worse than they should have been. The issue was that she was not conveying the emotion we wanted for the scene, which was hurt feelings driving to anger. Instead, she was portraying it more as self-pity and despair, with long drawn out sentences that felt completely manufactured. After taking a break from shooting and Dave going over the inflection we were looking for with the actors, we on a roll, and the performance was becoming more honest.
With all the issues we had in shooting, we were afraid we wouldn’t be able to put together a believable scene with the footage we had. But it turns out we have more than enough footage to put together a great intro scene with nice pacing and flow. The editing is now done, and it’s official; The scene works very well and Dave and I are both happy with it. I should also mention that Lorelei, the producer for Moonrise Productions, was on set to help, and provided the scene saving gels for our lighting. She has a great eye, and noticed a few glitches I didn’t catch while looking at my monitor.
So you want more pictures? Of course you do! (but crafty people will find the video on YouTube if they know how to search well enough)
Here you go:
On to July 4th for the big accident scene shoot.
A7
Tags: a7, andy morris, canada, hotcakes, hotcakes new media, music video, Ottawa, production, to the rescue, video, Work
June 26th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Hunts’ Production Notes:
We all take for granted when we watch motion pictures on the big and small screens (well for the most part not so small anymore), the ease and natural feel we get from the majority of actors we see when they portary thier characters, what we don’t realize is that every single movement they do is blocked and logged and picked apart for sake of continuity and racking focus of the camera (for those movies shot on film). Professional movie crews always inlcude a continuity person (script supervisor) who continually monitor every single action made by the actors on every single take to make sure that what you see on the end product is as if the movie was done in one continous take from a multitude of different cameras shooting simultaneously for 2 hrs. Acting is so much more than just delivering lines, its the ability to continually repeat your movements and emotions exactly, take to take for the sake of post production and believability of performance. And it is the challenge of the director to properly convey to the actors not only what they are saying but what they are “doing” in each take. Our shooting that evening proved to be a lesson in blocking and directing for continuity as both Andy and I became pretty lenient on how both actors delivered thier actions they made to try and help portray the degree of naturalism we were looking for. As Andy later found out, our leniency proved to be a challenge in the edit suite. Perhaps it was the soaring heat inside, or the confined space (guess my house was never designed to do interior filming) that alot of the little things the actors did that we should have considered were over looked as patience was starting to wane. We were not getting the naturalism we were looking for in our intitial takes from our actors and angles and lighting positions were limited. And I was beginning to feel frustrated that I was not relaying properly to the actors what we wanted of them from take to take. So as Andy stated, we put the camera down to a break and regroup and let the actors go outside to rehearse which allowed them to exchange dialouge on a personal level and to get to know one another. When we resumed things things got rolling, the acting more natural and low and behold we started to get the shots we were looking for. Now don’t get me wrong, the evening was not as bad as this writing may make it appear….it was hot, it was a challenge but that is to be expected when making any kind of motion picture. Learning to deal with all the elements. Now, you may wonder why we chose my house for the location of this sequence when both Andy and I have commneted on it’s lack of space, well when you watch the completed video (or catch the sequence cut on youtube) you’ll know why. It yields a couple of nice shots that we would not have been able to obtain with a common, solid door to an entrance.
In the end we got the actors where we wanted them to be, enough footage to give options in post and Andy cut together a really good, well paced dramatic sequence that will kick off the video.
So to echoe Andy’s statement, a big thanks to Lorelei and both of our wives for being there and lending support…and yes, I’m very happy with how it turned out!!
Time to gear up for the next shoot!! Let the Camera roll!!
Hunts
June 26th, 2009 at 11:21 pm
Nice posts gentleman!
You both worked very hard last Saturday! Congrats! Both your wives are very proud of you and believe in the both of you! I`m really getting excited about seing the rest of the shoot and of course the final product! You both have great potential!
MC! Thanks for being my buddy last Saturday sweetie! Big hugs!
Love,
Anne
June 27th, 2009 at 8:49 pm
Aha!!!!! I found it!!!! I’m one of your subscribers now so I’ll be following you on YouTube too! I go under the nick I had when I was on P.O.F…… well, a slightly modified version…
Wow! Considering the challenges you both describe, your video on YouTube is great! Very well done! Awesome guys! It just gets me excited about seeing the rest of it. So now I’ve seen the bar scene, the couples scene and now I await the accident scene… Keep it coming boys! We are all cheering you on!!!
Love Tina
June 29th, 2009 at 2:17 am
Awesome Tina… you little internet sleuth you.
Thanks for the kind words, as usual.
The accident scene is fast approaching, and I’m getting nervous. It’s a big shoot, we don’t have a firm location to film yet, and I still have to wrangle some extras to be in the shoot. Plus, if the weather doesn’t cooperate (i.e. if it rains) we are screwed. Damn outdoor night shoots… driving me crazy!
A7
June 29th, 2009 at 10:01 am
RAIN…..is not an option!!
Come on Andy, you love outdoor nights shoots with bugs in the lights and crickets in the audio…..oh wait, no audio to do…..just gotta deal with the bugs……and NO Rain!!!!
June 30th, 2009 at 9:07 am
Hi Andy, Dave,
If you are still looking for extras, please let me know the details as I am not sure what you are looking for….I could probably be of assistance depending on your requirement and the date of that particular shoot. If it fits in between visits from contractors with our current home renos (my roof is going to be re-done), I’d be happy to help out. But if you are looking for a burly, 6 foot, 200 pound guy or similar looking men, then I guess that would count me out…..
Tina
June 30th, 2009 at 11:15 am
TINA!!! YES!! We could use you. And especially Alfredo! He would look good as a cop. And you would look good as an accident witness. The shoot is July 4th, 7pm to 11pm at my parents’ house. Can you make it? It would be amazing if you could. If yes, I’ll send you an email with all the details.
A7
June 30th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Andy, Dave – Sign us up! We’ll both do it! I just spoke to Alfredo and both of our schedules are open for this Saturday evening. I am home today – I am off this week with Alfredo joining me starting tomorrow for the rest of the week. When we get the details, we’ll go over them and come back with any questions that we may have. Call me at home if we need to chat before hand.
I’m really looking forward to this! I remember how much fun it was the last time I did some “extra” work for you. Let’s hope the weather cooperates – it’s been pouring rain each night this week – no walkies for the puppies so far on my time off….
Love Tina