Names of Group Members

Thomas Yee
Kurtis Chow
Kyle Historillo
Satbir Rai

Lighting Design

Through this project, we were really surprised with the results of our work. Lighting design was not something that we have normally done before.

On our first shoot day we made use of a book light. We learned this technique through Shane Hurlburg, who was DP on Terminator Salvation (yes, he was who Christian Bale yelled at). It’s called a book light. The set up was easily put together using a bounce and a shower curtain (DIY ftw!). Here were the results:

As you can tell, really awesome soft lighting. Really helped set a neutral tone for our interior scenes without looking flat and boring.

We were also incredibly lucky with our day 2 shoot. The day was overcast, but bright. We used very little staged lighting, instead relying on the available light. The results were incredible.

Final Video – Shoot Day 2

Our last day of shooting before post production has finally come! Great turn out today; sun wasn’t too hard, not raining, and very productive.

We had a couple indoor scenes to wrap up and had a couple outdoor scenes. The indoor was about the character imagining himself being kidnapped (the garage picture below) and the melodramatic scene where the Writer breaks out into tears trying to think of an idea.

Props to Victor for the great acting and professional attitude, and Kurtis for directing.

Overall, very good day filming.. nothing more we could ask for. Great experience and now it’s onto the editing.

Writer’s Block Film – Real Shoot

Sunday, March 17th.

10:00am – Group Members Meet at Location
1:00pm – Cast Arrives

The day of the shoot we gathered a little earlier to do some finalizing and storyboarding before the actor came for the shoot. Overall, the shoot went well with minor complications where we had some spacial issues but we solved it during the shoot. The shoot took about 6 hours with the Actor and 1.5 hours of prepping. We filmed all the indoor footage and leaving the outdoor footage for another date as we had limited time.

Cameras:
Canon T3i
Canon 7D

Lenses:
17-55mm f2.8
18-155mm f3.5-5.6
10-20mm f4.0-5.6
35mm f2.8
50m f2.8

Lighting:
Box Light using 1 1000w Lamp
White Shower Curtain to Diffuse
White Table Cloth to Diffuse

Special thanks to Victor (our actor) and Kurtis for consulting, planning and lending us the location.

Here are some photos during the shoot:

Group Project Update

Our group project is undergoing some heavy construction at the moment, so just a brief update.. We’re revamping the script, cutting the fat, making it straighter more to the point-type deal which means we got a lot of work to do. Our rehearsal location was terrible so we found a new location; bigger, more spacious, better. This will give our filming crew more leeway in moving around, setting up lights and having different types of effects. All in all, this is just a short update on what’s going on. An update is still an update.

Film Blog Entry #3

We filmed our rehearsal footage over the weekend and we shot it on one of the worst days; it was pouring rain, cloudy/dark so no natural lighting would help in anyway, and we could not film our outside footage as it was just terrible weather. We did, however, film our inside footage and turned out pretty well despite the small room. The script flowed well, the type of shots we planned to use somewhat helped as we had quite a number of limitations but we worked around it and the lighting was decent given the day we had.

We had one large spot light shooting at the roof which lit up the entire room fairly nicely. No hard shadows or any of the sort and made the lamp look like it was outputting that light. There was also a mic stand in the middle hung above the actors and didn’t get in the way of the filming.

The major problem we had was the sound syncing and how we’re mitigating those issues is to use a shot list. Using two cameras and finding the clips that matched were the big challenges here.

Film Blog Entry #2

During the Reading Week, we met up a couple times to plan for our group project; storyboarding, still shots, dialogue, script, and locations.

The first time we met we began to talk about the script and discuss whether we wanted to improve, change, or add anything to make it more realistic, believable and flow more with the storyline. We went through the script several times, changed a few things here and there but after a while we decided it was enough for the time being and we had to move on. From there, we set up the camera to take stills and see what kind of shots we were looking for throughout the entire script. We took pictures from certain angles, thought about every angle and why we wanted to use those angles as well. Once we took the stills, a storyboard had to be made and that was for the next time the group will get together.

The second day, we gathered the storyboards, went through every scene again and see how it flowed. The group meeting was successful and went smoothly; compiled the storyboard, narrowed down the script, listed our objectives for the next couple weeks deliverables and nailed down what we had to do.

Film Blog Entry #1

(document your thoughts on process, practice, readings, lectures,
technique, technology):

First Few Weeks:

The first week the group collaborated was the week where we decided to create our own original story and to ditch the idea to build on an existing one. The group met up a few times throughout that week to brainstorm on some ideas and with time, we came up with one; an introverted character who has a shitty job, no girlfriend, his goals are down the drain, his co-workers bully him and a talking tree. This tree sees this introvert getting beat up and bullied all the time and decides to help him out by giving him advice but in return for the advice, the tree wants fertilizer. As a group, we came up with a lot of ideas and worked on this for a few weeks but when it came down to creating character personalities, it all started to fall apart. We all felt drained and had a hard time building on this story so we scrapped this entire idea and began anew.

The technology we plan to use are our own camera equipment; DSLR’s, Glidecam, Tripods, RODE Audio and borrow library equipment if needed such as lighting gear or different lenses.

The lecture material has been interesting but not too informative as it has all been taught to us in previous classes. We wished it was more helpful in terms of filming our own project but the examples given were entertaining and gave us some idea of how to film our next project.