Happy Fireworks Day!

Well, sorry I haven't been updating lately. As you may already know, I got a job working as an electrician/grip on a horror movie called Killing Ariel. I refrain from calling it low-budget, because its budget is something in the vicinity of 50 times greater than what we had for Land of Entrapment; "independent" would be a better term, since it is being financed privately rather than through a studio.

I genuinely like the script, which is very convoluted and complex and Stephen King-ish. I have some hope that the final product will turn out the way the writer intended, mainly because we have an excellent editor lined up- Joel Negron, who just recently edited House of Wax. As you can see from his IMDb page, he has some other impressive credits under his belt as well.

Killing Ariel itself doesn't have an IMDb entry yet, which is kind of odd, but I guess without the studio connections maybe you can't get an "in production" movie on there. For that matter, I haven't gotten LOE on IMDb yet either, because I need to get it listed on a third-party website like a film festival website first. As soon as i get that lined up, by the way, I'll let y'all know.

The experience has been very enlightening for me, and I've learned oodles about the grunt work that goes into lighting and rigging. Most of our setups aren't too complex, but they're way ahead of what we were doing on LOE, which involved $17 tungsten-balanced bulbs from Kurt's Camera Corral mounted in $5 sockets-with-tin-reflectors from Home Depot and diffusion silks made out of white bedsheets and pvc pipe (also acquired at Home Depot). Working on Killing Ariel has acquainted me with professional lights and grip equipment, terminology, and use.

This is a picture the gaffer took of me and one of our sophisticated lighting effects. The printout got smeared a little, probably when people with sweaty hands were passing it around, so I need to get a digital copy from him, but hopefully you can make out most of the image. What we're doing here is shining a 1200 watt HMI PAR into a plastic tub full of water to create a "watery reflection" effect for a bathroom scene. Mirrors and pieces from broken mirrors line the bottom of the tub to increase reflectiveness, and my job was to constantly stir the water to keep the reflection lively. Note Tracer the cat investigating the situation (look just below my hand).

This is a lighting setup we did for an outdoor '70s party scene. It's a little hard to see the details, but basically a lot of what we did was shine lights into bounce boards in order to create soft, omnidirectional "moonlight" on the actors. A few smaller lights highlighted specific details of the background or action.

This is the "haunted mansion" location where most of our shooting is taking place. This place is a total trip - built as a mansion in 1908, the place has been owned by a Japanese-American family for the last fifty years or so. It's located on several acres of land, which are used for growing flowers (the family business). The house itself is pretty run-down and has actually been condemned, and is scheduled to be torn down in the near future. Kind of a shame, because it seems to me like the structure itself is okay, it's just a mess inside. The whole place smells like cat piss and cobwebs drape every corner. It's difficult to convey the atmosphere of the place through pictures, because pictures always seem to make it look nicer than it really is. Suffice it to say, though, it feels like a haunted house if ever there was one:

As an example of the kind of lighting effects I've been working on, we set up a fairly simple dolly setup for a scene where the she-demon glides into the room, scaring the crap out of our hero. The director wanted to use the dolly to give her movement the feeling of "gliding" rather than walking, and wanted it to be very backlit and atmospheric. Here's what the setup looked like:

And here's what it looked like with all of our lights on and the actress in place:

The view from the camera itself was truly awesome, I'm told. I didn't get to see it because I was sitting at this angle working a variac dimmer on a fill light as the dolly slid into position. Still, you can get a sense of what we were doing; strong backlights to shine through the plastic shower curtain smeared with blood, giving the actress a spectral and menacing appearance. We've done a lot of "lighting effects" shots for this flick, including fire effects, lighting effects, candlelight, etc... it's really a tour de force for me, exposing me to tons of different lighting situations and tricks. Next time I set out to make a no-budget flick (or help friends on theirs), I'm gonna have a whole new perspective on how to use light.

After I'm done with this gig, I'm going to head back to Abq (among other trips) and get some things going with regards to postproduction and sound. I have a few small shots to get filmed, and then I'll have the movie pretty well cut together. After that it's just a matter of getting the sound handled, getting some music, foley, and (possibly) dialogue ADR'd, and we'll be good to go. I'm still (very optimistically) shooting for a September release date, but we'll see...