Principal Photography Done

Ah, we got it. At 1:30am on the morning hours of the 2nd (which thanks to daylight savings time, means we get home by 1am), we completed principal photography on my movie. Now is where the real fun begins (and the real magic happens). Of course, I'm a little shy on hard drive space, so before I can load up the 2 hours I got on Saturday, I have to cut together the footage I got on the 18th.

Not that this shoot was without its shortcomings, but my experience from day one helped me get through day two with fewer problems, so my 2 hours probably has more usable footage than the 3 1/2 I got on day one. Of course, it seems that some people have difficulty learning lines still which created additional frustration among the cast, and I think he was feeling even more this time around. While I expected issues, the tension rose as the shoot wore on. However, I'm hoping that the multiple takes of his lines will yield enough to make him look like a solid upstanding amateur.

Some things that went well, though, had to do with my desire to rehearse the scenes first and walk through it without the camera in hand. It allowed them to solify their lines and actions, and allowed me to see where they wanted to be without forcing them into a hole within the lens. We did that for Scene 33's reshoot, and I managed to get a single take that I think I'll use uncut, since I enjoy one shot takes.

We will likely have sound issue with the outside shots, however, since we got all kinds of miscellaneous sounds out there that can't be cleaned up such as wind, dogs, church bells, and traffic. Yeah, the pickup on the Engineer's mike is so good that he was getting traffic on the expressway at least a half mile to a mile away. We'll have to get everyone together in the room that we did our initial read-through in to re-record a lot of the outdoor sound. I really hope that goes well, as one person did not like acting along with a recording of another part that needs to fit together seamlessly in a single uncut take. I can only imagine how she'll do trying to re-act with herself.

Now the issue is getting an NLE that I can use easily enough and has enough features to warrant bothering with it. I'm still syncking up the sound in Windows Movie Maker and I plan on doing the rough edit in it, but need something more robust to make it look consistent in color and sound, as well as doing some minor effects on the video here and there to either clean up some pixels or lower the light to make it look darker. That sort of thing.

It's kind of a long road, but there is a festival deadline on December 16 that I want to make if I can. So we've got to get this sorted out as well as finding a way to either extract the sound from the final video or it'll need to be worked before hand, which is kind of silly since why work 6 hours of sound when you're only going to use 90 minutes of it. Haven't got it all worked out yet, but we're going to have to soon cause I want to get editing here.

Reviewing Day One

So I have been watching the footage I got from October 18 on my movie. I got the sound files from The Engineer, and it turns out that Windows Movie Maker, which I'm using for the initial cut until I can track down a usable Non-Linear Editor for some color correction and better sound editing feature, doesn't allow the use of the files that he created. Adobe Soundbooth will open them, but not save them as wav files for Moviemaker to use.

I've found I can save them as MP3's, but that creates yet another problem. Turns out those compressed sound files also compress the time at a rate of less than a quarter second per minute. Not significant for a music file you play on your iPod, but when you're trying to align the sound to your uncompressed video, it makes a huge difference. The Engineer turned around and was able to resave the files as wav files, so I was able to retain the uncompressed sound for aligning it to the 3 1/2 hours of footage I got from my 15 hours of shooting on the 18th.

I'm praying I can cut most of this together to be some kind of coherent movie, but it's a little daunting at this point, especially all the pauses and "line" requests during the cuts. I was a little "Ed Wood-ish" in my shooting style in that most takes only have one take to them, so if something doesn't work, I have to cut away to another take to cover the mistake. I'm hoping I don't have to do it too often.

I did get ahold of one amusing story from the shoot, though. The Engineer had set up the sound for an outdoor shot, and placed his laptop (that was recording the sound) on the hood of his truck. Well, he moved a little too far away from it or something, and that's how you get a Mac to crash. It hit the ground and popped several catches on the case, besides shutting it clean off (yeah, that sound file didn't come through, though I did get the crash on the camera's sound). He snapped it back together, turned it back on, and proved just how sturdy that Mac was. It worked fine the rest of the day and still does.

Of course, from that same scene, I discovered my amateurish blocking of the scene. Scene 33. It was such a mess that the footage I got is completely unusable. I cut together a hasty version of it to see if it would even remotely work since not only was the blocking a mess, but the lighting was awful as well in several takes. Yeah, it'll be something we'll have to redo this coming Saturday.

The only other question mark we have to work out before I can start editing is how to extract the soundtrack once the film is done. So far we haven't figured out how to get an uncompressed audio track out of the movie file. So at this point, nothing is edited. Have to figure that out before I can cut on it.

Making A Movie

This last weekend was the beginning of the culmination of years of work for me. Since 2001, I've been practicing the art of screenwriting, following my work on musicals and plays. Well, screenwriting has stuck with me the longest and to date, I've written some 60 screenplays, teleplays, and shorts. I'd taken one of my features and decided to shoot it myself. It is a no-budget script with five people and one location: a house. It's a straight drama with no effects and lots and lots of dialogue. For having no money, it's perfect.

The plan was to shoot the entire 80 page script in a single day starting at 8am and going right through till 11:30pm. I had every shot planned and every scene timed out to the minute. I had plenty of tapes; the Engineer was running the sound; we had bright lights to make sure we got a good picture. It was perfect.

Well, almost. There were a few things I failed to take into account. First and foremost was my own inexperience. After all, I was undertaking the mammoth task of shooting this thing. I'm the director, producer, and cameraman. There were no assistants of any kind. This inexperience lead to some blocking issues, some weird shots, and extra time take trying to figure out the real life versions of what I saw in my head.

The other issues concerned the actors themselves. I failed to allow for something I can only refer to as "diva time." This would be the time that actors use to primp themselves into what they feel is presentable for the shoot. Understandable completely, but one didn't start doing this until I said, "Let's go." They almost completely failed to be on time for most of the shots, and then there was the matter of knowing their lines. Most of them knew their lines just fine most of the time. There was a couple that nailed almost every one. Some needed prompting the first time through a scene. One barely survived two lines without needing help...every time. This latter one caused some frustration (which I contained exceptionally well) not only from me but from the rest of the cast as well. And I'm not saying anything here that I don't suspect he knew already...

So, with all this, we got through most of it. There are quite a few scenes we didn't get to, but fortunately, the people who allowed me to use their house are allowing me a second day on November 1st to finish up. According to my schedule, it's only the evening, so it won't even be all day that we shoot. I'll send out a schedule revision later, but it's mostly night scenes anyway. I'll also go through what I did get shot to see if anything need to be redone.

Anyway, it is exciting, and I can't wait to get editing on what I have to see how it turns out.