Day 37/365
I am now just past 10% into the 365 days!
Bokeh, for those who don’t know, is basically a term that refers to shots that have that shallow depth of field I talked about in an earlier post. Go check out the Wikipedia page if you want to learn more.
Day 36/365
As I start this blog post, I’m 12 minutes past my daily deadline (ie. it’s 12 minutes past midnight). I just finished Photoshopping the best shots from today’s shoot, and I’m really loving some of these. Some of them are starting to feel like stories, with each shot telling a different part of the story.
In fact, I’m gonna give each group of shots a title.
Girl Next Door
Alone in the Dark
Portrait of a Dancer
Day 35/365
Here’s what a small stack of model discs look like before they head out.
Day 34/365
I can’t remember the last time I got this adventurous on an engagement shoot. And I don’t remember EVER shooting engagements with the bride-to-be riding in a speeding shopping cart!
This was just a lot of fun.
Day 33/365
There’s a million cool, run-down places to find in downtown Salt Lake if you look hard enough. I’m still discovering these places myself, and today’s shoot happens to be where I shot this:
My friend Sarah told me about it last year after I convinced her she’d do great as a model. She still doesn’t think of herself as a model, but I think she was happy with the results. As it happens, at the time of this writing at least, that picture along with the other shots I took were the last thing she blogged about.
Watch, she’ll post a new blog just to spite me 
Anyway, so I’m out around that area, shooting some more footage for NURF Wars (yeah, it’s taking a bit longer than I thought – and by “a bit longer” I mean “a lot longer”).
Here’s a few shots:
Day 32/365
I’m shooting more of NURF Wars tonight, so not much time to talk.
Here’s me forcing myself to experience natural light (ie. I went outside):
Day 31/365
Jaylene (yes, shameless plug – again) came home after doing some make-up work tonight, so she had some toast with a slice of bologna.
Here’s our creepy toaster light:
Here’s the sandwich before:
And here it is after:
Behind the Scenes on NURF Wars, Part 3:
We got lucky at the 24 Hour Fitness parking lot. We picked a car that stayed right where it was until 1am, when we decided to call it a night. So to whoever owned that white Chevy in desperate need of some cleaning, thanks! We were almost tempted to write on there, although instead of writing “Wash Me”, we’d have written “Thanks for being so serious about working out this late at night and giving us the chance to finish working on the scene for our short film. We probably couldn’t have done it without you.” Well, it was a really dirty car, there was plenty of space to write!
But too wordy, I know. So we decided against it.
I’ll get back to writing about the experience soon. For now, I need to focus on actually wrapping up the shoot. No, I’m still not done with it. But almost. Like the last little bite of bologna sandwich.
I can’t fit inside the Lamborghini, but I can still say I own one. I could have wiped off the dust and tried to pass it off as the real thing, but where’s the fun in that? Keeping it dusty gives me a chance to say “Can you imagine if I took care of a real Lamborghini as poorly as I do my scale model? I’d be a Hollywood celebrity!”
That’s more fun to say.
Plus I almost forgot to post today and I had to slap something together in a big hurry.
Anyway, on with yesterday’s show!
Behind the Scenes on NURF Wars, Part 2:
So we walked over to the Carl’s Jr. in the same parking lot, warmed up and starting re-thinking how to approach what was quickly turning into a disaster.
I decided that it might work to finish the shoot in a completely different parking lot within the same area. We would have to keep from exposing in the shots that we were elsewhere and we’d have to move quickly if we were to get remotely close to finishing the scene.
Fortunately, a friend of my actress had shown up with a truck just before we stopped to eat. I didn’t realize how crucial his truck would be until I remembered that I had written somewhere that I should tell my actors to follow me down to the parking lot from the initial location with their own cars. Why? So I could have a couple extra cars should I need to fill up a parking lot that would surely and quickly empty out as the night wore on. I forgot to remind my actors of that and we all came down in just my car… Big mistake.
Every parking lot in sight emptied out fast, including the one we settled on.
Tic, toc, tic, toc.
We settled on shooting at the 24 Hour Fitness parking lot. So we shot as quickly as we could with the cars that were there. Any new car that parked near us was golden and we assumed that it would give us access to the new car or truck for maybe 15 to 20 minutes, depending on how serious that person was about working out that late at night.
Inevitably though, the parking lot got emptier… and emptier… and emptier… And we still weren’t close enough to finishing the scene we needed.
So we started improvising.
Depending on the angle of the shot we needed, we would move my actress’s friend’s truck around to a new parking spot. Sometimes facing it forward, sometimes backwards. The assumption was that if I cut from one shot to the next fast enough, nobody would notice that we were filling a parking lot with the same truck over and over again.
But we still needed other people’s cars and they were slowly trickling out. So we kept re-thinking the action to match how many cars we had left.
Fssshhhhh… The doors to the gym would slide open… and we’d all stop and stare at the person casually strolling out… and we would plead quietly… “Oh please don’t take this car… We still need this one…”
Tic, toc, tic, toc.
To be continued…
Day 29/365
There is absolutely no way to describe in words the degree to which chaos overruns the set in the mind of a director, but the words “tic, toc, tic, toc” are a good approximation of the sinking feeling that you’re going to fall short of your goals no matter how hard you try, at least based on your own impossibly high standards.
So given my recent jump back into directing short films and the short explanation in the preceding paragraph, I think this image is in order.
Behind the Scenes on NURF Wars, Part 1:
On Thursday the 5th, we were set to start at 6pm. I made it out to the shooting location at 5:30. By the time we setup camera, lights, audio, ran through lines and blocked out the action for the scene, not having recorded a single shot yet, it was 6:35. And we had to head out by 7:00.
Remember, I don’t have a crew. I’m in charge of everything except the acting.
So we finished half the scene that I thought we’d finish in a heartbeat to head down and work on the really big scenes. We get down there in time at 7:30. Cool. But that’s where we found a blistering cold, humidity in the air and surprisingly hard wind.
Now, I don’t mind a little cold. I do live in Utah. It wasn’t pleasant, but that’s ok. It’s just that hard winds mean crappier audio. So we focused on the scenes where the audio could be more easily added in post-production. I had four actors that had very short parts with no lines, so I needed to get them outta there ASAP.
By the time they were gone, it was already 8:20.
By the time we finished a scene with audio (inside my car – no bad winds to deal with), it was 9:30, and I was mentally spent. I couldn’t think straight anymore, the cold wasn’t helping, I couldn’t make sense of my shot lists, the parking lot was far too empty for the scenes we needed, and on and on and on.
My 2-year break from shooting short films was taking its toll, as was everything else I had no control over.
Tic, toc, tic, toc.
To be continued…
Day 28/365
From the first time I worked with Ashley, I knew there was a lot of potential. She just had the right look for a model and a tremendous personality.
Yes, that makes a huge difference for me.
Have you ever seen an ad with Paris Hilton in it? I have. She has that same air of superiority, the same dumb look in her eyes and the same infuriating smirk on her face that you’re used to seeing everywhere else she appears. I had to quickly flip the page before my eyes caught on fire.
No amount of Photoshopping in the world can fix a lousy attitude.
But when Ashley and I did first shoot together, things didn’t turn out quite the way I’d hoped. I wasn’t quite as excited about the results as I was with the opportunity to have worked with her. We did get what I thought was a great headshot, but I felt like she was better than that.
So hopefully, with today’s shoot, I’ve finally managed to do her justice.
THE happiest accident of all time. She blinked while doing something I hadn’t directed her to do right as I took the shot. I have never, ever, EVER, EEEEVVER caught a blink that worked for me. Ever.
But this… Oh my… This works…
