Following Focus

Finals are finished and classes are out. I thought I might see the “break” part of winter break….  Instead I’ve already got projects lining up. But hey, it’s what I like to do. I just finished editing my buddy’s acting demo reel.  Never done one for acting before, but it turned out pretty well.  Now I’m working on a three-part interview series to promote Upland’s new brew called Campagne Velvet.

That’s my setup right now. It’s dual screen, but the right screen is a bit smaller in resolution than the left. The right is 1024x768 and the left is a full 1920x1080.  Then again, I got it at GoodWill for 15 bucks so I’m not complaining.

I’ve got another shoot in a few days for a promotion video in Indianapolis and then I’m off to LA for a week in January.  Upon returning, the projects will continue.

One whole short film, shot in an entirety of 6 hours!  Not bad, eh?  The shoot went over pretty well.  It helped to have Brian double as 1st AD to make sure we stuck to a strict schedule.  I realize now that not a single shoot I’ve been on (for T436) had a designated 1st AD.  So far it’s been up to the Director, Producer or possibly DP to make sure everything is going according to schedule.  Considering these shoots are pretty low staffed, a 1st AD isn’t always necessary but I do think it should be one person’s designated job to watch the clock.  And yell at everyone. 

I’m downloading and backing all of today’s footage now.  It looks great and I can’t wait to see the final cut.

FINALLY.  Principal photography has come to an end for this short film.  I didn’t realize until we had started shooting that this ~5 min film has eleven locations.  But production has concluded and following it closely is post-production.

In terms of production, all shoots went over quite well.  Everyone involved stuck to their assigned tasks and worked very collaboratively.  There were no real hiccups in production other than a miscommunication with talent, resulting in the rescheduling of a shoot.  Other than that the shoots all went pretty smoothly.

So now I’m in post.  I’ve gotten a soundtrack together (as well as rights for music) and soon I’ll gather the actors and do a bit of ADR/O.C. work.  After both audio and visuals are put together, I plan on exporting into Adobe SpeedGrade.  I’ve never used the program, but I’m in the process of learning it.  It seems like a powerful tool and definitely a step up from Premiere’s 3-Wheel-Color-Correction plugin.

Pushing such treacheries as sync-sound and program crashes to the back of my mind, here’s to Post-Production.

So I realized it’s been a while since I’ve updated this, which I can thank my cluttered schedule for. Over the course of the last week, I’ve been involved with four different projects: Odd Job, The Drop, iDate, Mark Totte’s thesis project and my own film, Meeting Ends.  My classmates have good set etiquette and are comfortable with the equipment. I’ve DP’ed the lot of them (save Odd Job) and would have to say that each has shoot has gone pretty well.