Delayed
Production Notes - 4/3/05, Sunday
Today
is Delayed day. This will be the first D.I.K.(e) Productions short shot
on actual film. That's right, no digital. There has been an ongoing battle in
the movie industry as to which medium is preferable.
Obviously,
film is winning the battle because 95% of real movies are shot on film. If you
want to see a movie in that other 5%, go see Sin City, which was made
using completely digital technology. The main advantage of film is that it looks
ridiculously better than digital, even better than HiDef-digital cameras. In
fact, for a digital camera to effectively exceed the image quality of a 35mm
film frame, the camera would require 3, 12 mega-pixel CCD's. The current
generation of Hi-Def digital cameras operate at about 4.5 mega-pixels on a
single CCD. Film can theoretically capture an infinite amount of image
information because its a chemical process rather than a digital process.
However, film is a pain to shoot when compared to the ease of digital.
I'm
for film over digital, because film just plain looks better. I almost feel
insulted when I see a movie that was shot on digital, just because it's the
"indie" thing to do. "Hey, asshole, I'm paying 9 dollars just to
see your movie, how about you put some effort into it and make it look nice?
It's not exactly fun to watch pixels jagging out all over the screen." On a
side note, if anyone ever tells you their film was shot "documentary
style," that translates to "it was shot on digital, there was no
thought given to the shot selection, and it looks like shit." It's kind of
like when they list houses as "quaint" or "cozy" when that
just means the master bedroom is as big as a closet.
Anyway,
if you're just going to watch something on a computer or TV, then digital is
great. D.I.K.(e) wouldn't even exist if it weren't for digital, so our style is
heavily influenced by digital moviemaking techniques. Interestingly, the film
camera we're using to shoot Delayed is only slightly bigger than your
average pro-sumer miniDV camcorder (check out the pictures of me holding the
camera; yes, its that small). Before we even start shooting, I'm positive the
camera-work in Delayed is going to be far more advanced than any other
film in my class. The camerawork will be exactly like the camera-work in other
D.I.K.(e) movies. This is saying a lot, because shooting a movie on FILM that is
100% hand-held is a feat rarely tackled in a student film setting (watch a
student film, and its 95% tripod shots and 5% pseudo-dolly shots. Very few seem
to realize you can just pick up the camera and walk around with it). All other
D.I.K.(e) movies have been 100% hand-held, and Delayed will be no
exception because of our digital roots; only this time the image quality will be
WAY better. Needless to say, we're all excited about this day. Here goes
nothing.
Sunday
- 8am (sort of)
- Dan and his wushu friend Terry have come out to San Francisco for the weekend
to compete in a wushu tournament. This just so happens to be the week I'm
supposed to make a short for my film production class. We all went to the
tournament yesterday, had a great time, and saw some awesome wushu. We all feel
inspired to make this movie awesome, despite the fact we each had only 5 hours
of sleep on Friday and Saturday. We wake up at 8am, which is actually 9am
because we all forgot it's daylight savings time. By the time we start shooting
its around 10am.
10am
- I decide to skip shooting the opening shot of the movie, and push it back to
the very last shot of the day. This will prove costly later. But, we shoot the
rest of the opening scene quickly. We spend more time moving equipment from
place to place than we do on actual shooting. But the opening scene goes really
well, and everyone is helping out in some way. I enlisted the help of two film
school friends, Ijah and Brant, to help with keeping camera reports, taking
light meter readings and timing all the shots. The film camera we use only
accepts 100 foot reels, which amounts to 2:47 seconds, so its necessary to keep
an accurate list of all the shots you've done. If had to manage all those tasks
myself, the shoot would have been completely bogged down.
11am
- We start shooting the fight scene. We decide to eliminate a few lines of
dialogue before the first exchange to tighten up the action. Dan and Terry
hadn't practiced any of the fight choreography prior to shooting, but I was
extremely impressed with how quickly they both picked it up. My main concern
going into shooting was we would get stuck in a shot, and waste lots of time. At
the very end of shooting, four was the most amount of takes we did for any one
shot. We get Ijah to take video with a miniDV camcorder from an alternate angle
to check the performances of all the fighting (thanks to Eric Jacobus of
Stuntpeople for this tip). This is one of the unfortunate drawbacks of film,
which is you can't immediately watch what you shot. I feel like some of my
camera angles during the fight are a little sloppy, but I'm hoping the fight
will go by too quickly for anyone to notice.
12pm
- The location where we shoot is adjacent to the police depot on the SFSU
campus. Three cops come by and say they've had a report of fighting. When the
cops realize we are shooting a movie, they leave us alone, and we keep shooting.
For a second, I was extremely nervous because a few days prior, I was talking to
a SFSU Police Officer who told me that we couldn't be shooting any fight scenes
on campus because of previous incidents of fighting. The guy was just doing his
job, but there was no way we weren't going to shoot the movie. After all, we
weren't doing anything wrong, I live on campus, it's a public place, and it's
for a class.
2pm
- Right now, I'm thinking we are shooting at a ridiculous rate. I'm pretty happy
with all the footage we've shot, and we've made very few mistakes. Having to
reload film is a bitch compared to just inserting a tape, but hopefully the
image quality will turn out well. At the beginning of the day I was worried the
light would change dramatically from overcast to bright sunlight, but it stays
overcast pretty much all day. Despite our fast pace, I feel we need to speed up
the fight and should cut some parts out. Dan and Terry are practicing
choreography when Terry nails Dan right in the lip. Dan begins to bleed about
two inches from a giant scab on his lip which is where he got punched a week ago
while shooting Consumed. Luckily, the bleeding stops, and its only a
small break in the skin. Terry begins to doubt himself, despite performing
incredibly well. Accidents do happen during fight scenes, but this motivates us
all to cut out a large section of the fight scene in the interest of time.
3:30pm
-
Dan does an awesome butterfly twist to close out the main part of the fight and
we move onto the chase scene. The
chase scene originally required us to move
across campus to this alley I had
in mind. Unfortunately there are some ominous
rain clouds moving in, and I'm worried we will have little time to finish
everything. This quote from the director of Alien3 (Who is it? Answer at bottom)
should explain our next decision:
"Directing
ain't about drawing a neat little picture and showing it to the cameraman. I
didn't want to go to film school. I didn't know what the point was. The fact is,
you don't know what directing is until the sun is setting and you've got to get
five shots and you're only going to get two."
I
couldn't agree more (except with the film school part. I wouldn't get a degree
in film then decide myself capable of being an astrophysicist. Training is
required no matter what profession you enter). Coming up with shots is pretty
damn easy; it's getting them done that's the hard part. Thankfully, someone
decided to place 10 huge stacks of plywood in the parking lot adjacent to our
present location (check out the picture of Terry holding the wallet; those
stacks surrounding him are what I'm talking about). We decide this is suitably
alley-ish enough and will take far less time to shoot. Dan comes up with an
awesome idea for a shot, but I'm the director so I'll get credit for it. We run
through the shot a few times, and when it comes to shooting it, I mess it up.
This was the last shot we could get on our current reel, so I'm forced to go
change reels then come back and shoot it again. This time I nail the camera
moves, and everything is timed perfectly. This is definitely the best shot in
the movie, and you'll know it when you see it. The next part of choreography
becomes far more dangerous and I'm worried it won't cut together well, but rain
is starting to drop and we have to move. One of the very last shots requires the
camera to be pointing directly at the sky and a drop of rain falls right on the
lens. They cover me with a jacket while I clean up the lens, and by the time I'm
done its starting to rain pretty hard. We improvise and hold the jacket directly
over me to block the rain. We get the last few shots in the can and have to move
locations to get the closing scene of the movie.
5pm
- Dan, Terry, Ijah and Brant move all the equipment across campus while I go get
a hot girl who is in the last scene. You're probably thinking, "ahhhh, the
benefits of being a director." Wrong. Unfortunately, Courtney, the hot
girl, is my ex-girlfriend. She is the only girl I know who goes to this school
and willing to be in the movie. By this point, I don't even care because this
movie needs to be finished. When we get to the last location, its raining really
hard. We all huddle inside a small hut that's in the last scene. As I'm telling
Courtney how to act, this is the first time I stop and realize that we are
making a movie. I don't know why this happened, but there was a short moment
when I'm just totally self-aware. Everyone is crammed inside the hut, all with
different tasks they are accomplishing in order to get this movie made. I don't
even feel like I'm directing at this point, because everyone has committed
themselves to working on the movie, and they aren't just helping out because I
asked them. Even though I didn't know it, I had been waiting for that moment
since about 7th grade when I decided I wanted to work in movies. Anyway, no one
has any idea what just happened, and neither do I, but we just keep shooting. By
now its pouring rain with two shots left. We nail the shots. Then I realize we
still don't have the opening shot of the movie. We can't shoot it now because of
the rain, but it would have been awesome if we could shoot it because that would
have meant I would have only shot 3 reels to make the movie, when I ordered 4.
We are so EFFICIENT. But, I resign myself to shooting the opening shot during my
film production class with the fourth reel, as it doesn't require any actors in
the shot.
6pm
- We are done shooting for the day and all head back to my apartment. Everyone
seems really happy with what we shot. Dan and Terry were uninjured and both had
a great time shooting. Ijah and Brant said they learned a lot during the course
of the day, which I'm really happy about, because it will give them a huge head
start once they get into the film production classes. I'm really excited with
what we shot, and can't foresee any problems with any aspect of production. This
is the first movie I have ever directed, as I've only ever helped other people
shoot their movies. I'm very excited because everyone is happy, we had a great
time, and hopefully our movie will look good. In the end, isn't that what
counts?
CONCLUSION
- The first D.I.K.(e) short is IN THE CAN. How do you like it? There are a few
annoying errors, but overall its a solid short. The sound had to be built
entirely in post-production, so some of the voices don't line up correctly, and
you can barely hear the ambience for some reason. The camerawork is suspect in
some spots, but mostly everything is framed correctly. Again, the sound is a
little messed up, but overall, it works. The editing is probably the best part,
because everything cut together rather well, with no unintended jump cuts. We
hope you guys enjoy it, and our next movie will blow this one away. Thanks for
watching! Tell us what you think on the guest book!
ANSWER:
DAVID FINCHER
