It was the apotheosis of deserts. . .
6 November 2004. It's been almost a month since my last post, in which I declared my intent to finally buckle down and get workin'. So it's only fair to ask, I suppose, what I've gotten done in that time. The honest answer is, not much, really. I've only really started editing full-time this past week, but now I'm in full editing mode, so things are getting done. I feel terrible that I've neglected the website, too. So, from now on, I'll have a blog post here every week on Monday morning to let everyone know what's going on. I may post during the week as well, when something interesting and noteworthy occurs, but in any case you can be assured of new content every Monday.
I'm hoping to get a rough cut of the whole movie done in a month or two. The more I work with it, the more I realize that cutting it together in the right order isn't going to be the hard part. Getting it to look good, cleaning up the audio, doing foley work, etc., will be the hard part. But one thing at a time, right?
I do have some progress to report. I've been working a lot on the opening scene and the opening credits this week. I haven't gotten the beginning completely finished, because I've decided I need a few more shots that I'll get next time I'm in 'burque. The basic structure is done, however, and I'm pretty happy with the result.
For those of you who weren't there that day, it was a brutal shoot in the middle of nowhere beneath the searing, naked rays of the Sun. The scene is pretty long - about 3 minutes - and mostly consists of Our Hero (Leland) and Andy (Aaron) running out of gas and setting off for town with a gas can. Using the bed of Sean's truck as a dolly, we filmed the scene about 10 times, trying to get that one perfect take. Because the situation was so miserable and setting up for each take took a lot of time and work, we only ended up getting one angle:
Having only one angle in a 3-minute scene makes things tough, since it leaves you pretty much stuck with picking the best take. But since this is the first scene of the movie, and since I haven't come up with any better idea for how to present the opening credits, I decided to cut to black title cards during the scene:
This allows me to change takes with no one being the wiser. This allowed me to take the best segments from each take, and the final product is, in my humble opinion, pretty entertaining.
I haven't exactly figured out the order that people should be listed in the credits. I'm sure there's some official formula that I'm just not aware of. A couple people have told me to just do it however I want, and that sounds good to me. I'll probably list the actors in order of line count, since that seems pretty fair. Leland will be first on his own card, since he had about three times as many lines as anyone else (!). The number of title cards will basically depend on how many times I need to switch between takes, so once that's finalized I'll figure out how to spread out everyone else.
Incidentally, I put up the few photos I took in the Gallery section: check them out. I know I promised a month ago to get the rest of the behind-the-scenes photos uploaded. I will get them up there, I just have to use a very annoying interface for uploading so it's usually easier to decide to clean the bathroom instead. I will start uploading pictures as soon as I can, and I'll post here to let everyone know which ones are up.
If you weren't there for the desert shoot, you may not have heard the story of how we rescued some dogs that had been left out there by some soulless, worthless scumbag:
Left to right: Sonora and Saffron.
When Adam and I got out to the location, these two dogs just sort of appeared and started following us around. They had no tags or anything to identify them, and they were so far from the city that they couldn't have just wandered out there. We managed to get them some water and put them in my (air conditioned) car during the shoot. Afterward, Drew took them home until a home could be found for them. It took him a couple months, and I was starting to suspect that he was going to keep them, but he did finally find a new home for them. They now live with a nice retired couple.
Well, that's about it for this week. Come back next week for the next update. Same bat time, same bat website, and all that. Next on my agenda: Scene 2!
I'm hoping to get a rough cut of the whole movie done in a month or two. The more I work with it, the more I realize that cutting it together in the right order isn't going to be the hard part. Getting it to look good, cleaning up the audio, doing foley work, etc., will be the hard part. But one thing at a time, right?
I do have some progress to report. I've been working a lot on the opening scene and the opening credits this week. I haven't gotten the beginning completely finished, because I've decided I need a few more shots that I'll get next time I'm in 'burque. The basic structure is done, however, and I'm pretty happy with the result.
For those of you who weren't there that day, it was a brutal shoot in the middle of nowhere beneath the searing, naked rays of the Sun. The scene is pretty long - about 3 minutes - and mostly consists of Our Hero (Leland) and Andy (Aaron) running out of gas and setting off for town with a gas can. Using the bed of Sean's truck as a dolly, we filmed the scene about 10 times, trying to get that one perfect take. Because the situation was so miserable and setting up for each take took a lot of time and work, we only ended up getting one angle:
Having only one angle in a 3-minute scene makes things tough, since it leaves you pretty much stuck with picking the best take. But since this is the first scene of the movie, and since I haven't come up with any better idea for how to present the opening credits, I decided to cut to black title cards during the scene:
This allows me to change takes with no one being the wiser. This allowed me to take the best segments from each take, and the final product is, in my humble opinion, pretty entertaining.
I haven't exactly figured out the order that people should be listed in the credits. I'm sure there's some official formula that I'm just not aware of. A couple people have told me to just do it however I want, and that sounds good to me. I'll probably list the actors in order of line count, since that seems pretty fair. Leland will be first on his own card, since he had about three times as many lines as anyone else (!). The number of title cards will basically depend on how many times I need to switch between takes, so once that's finalized I'll figure out how to spread out everyone else.
Incidentally, I put up the few photos I took in the Gallery section: check them out. I know I promised a month ago to get the rest of the behind-the-scenes photos uploaded. I will get them up there, I just have to use a very annoying interface for uploading so it's usually easier to decide to clean the bathroom instead. I will start uploading pictures as soon as I can, and I'll post here to let everyone know which ones are up.
If you weren't there for the desert shoot, you may not have heard the story of how we rescued some dogs that had been left out there by some soulless, worthless scumbag:
Left to right: Sonora and Saffron.
When Adam and I got out to the location, these two dogs just sort of appeared and started following us around. They had no tags or anything to identify them, and they were so far from the city that they couldn't have just wandered out there. We managed to get them some water and put them in my (air conditioned) car during the shoot. Afterward, Drew took them home until a home could be found for them. It took him a couple months, and I was starting to suspect that he was going to keep them, but he did finally find a new home for them. They now live with a nice retired couple.
Well, that's about it for this week. Come back next week for the next update. Same bat time, same bat website, and all that. Next on my agenda: Scene 2!
posted by 505 Films at
12:52 AM
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