Storyboards

I've been working on some storyboards for the first scene. I think that if these work out we may use these instead of the (rather tedious) written camera movements. There will still need to be some written descriptions, but not nearly as many.

I have slightly simplified and re-written the first scene to make it quicker and easier to film, as well as being easier to follow. (always very important!)
 Remember, the script is not locked yet, so feel free to put in any changes you think would help (always commenting, so we know what you changed)

Here are some of my first attempts:

O.K., so it's not great, but you try drawing in a moving 15 passenger van!

Feedback wanted!

Celtx vs. Google Docs

I've tried Celtx and I've tried Google Docs. Celtx doesn't work nearly as well when multiple people are working on the same thing.  So, we'll probably leave the script in Google Docs. Celtix can be useful for making lists, and possibly some other more in depth scene breakdown, but for now, nothing major is going to change.

Scene by scene details

The script general overview is finished, (at least for the most part, we will probably continue making minor, or major tweaks until we start the actual filming) and now I've started the long and intensive (but still interesting) part of detailing each and every camera and actor movement for each scene, plus what they say. We're thinking that the script will be mostly open, people will memorize their lines, but all they have to do is get the idea across that was intended. If they want to say exactly what's written they can, but I'm willing to have the flexibility for people to just say their own version, as long as it comes across well. The other advantage is that it will probably add some good bloopers! We intend to have a full complement of bloopers! (hopefully not in the movie itself though!) The other day I was filming some short presentations with our soon to be cameraman, and we got almost five minutes of outtakes from four 30 second presentations!. (Mostly because people forgot their lines and had to start over, but not entirely)
By the way, did you know that when you're about to film it's not a good idea to suddenly throw in an extra kilowatt of lighting? It's very impressive, and you'd better hope that your computer isn't on the same circuit breaker. It was quite exciting, "ka-chunk" The switch for the lighting is thrown, there is a brilliant flash of light and heat, and the whole room (downstairs with only one window too!) goes black! We already had about 1 KW of lighting on, and that much load at once was just a little too much for the circuit breaker.

Until next time,

Scheduling

So, right now we have two main actors, (one of them me!) and one says that weekends would be O.K., and the other actor can only act weekdays. Hm. Well, I'm hoping that we don't have to postpone until summer because summer is always busy, but that may be necessary. I'm hoping that we can get the filming done in two days, excepting the car chase, but I've never done this before, so I don't really have any idea of how long things will take. (Yes I know, two days for a 15-30 minute film is terribly optimistic) Right now the general overview takes up about three pages, and the word for word version is going to be many pages... I am also planning on making scene breakdowns for each scene detailing camera motion and angles, sound FX, visual FX, props, cast, and atmosphere to name a few!

Script overview

The general script overview is finished! This is a big step forward. I still have to work in one more actor, but it doesn't affect the plot very much, so it shouldn't take too long. It should add some humor too, which is always good. I'm unsure how much of the plot we want to reveal before the movie is released, so for now I'm keeping it to a minimum, but keep watching, we may release some of the script later! (Not to mention test scenes, trailers and such ;) I've started some test videos, so I'll post some periodically, so people can see what some of the issues we might run into would be. Here's one below:


Some of the problems you can see if you watch closely. The main one is rolling shutter. We can't do a whole lot about that. It's going to be tricky to minimize it, and it becomes more pronounced at higher shutter speeds. Since we will be filming at 60fps, the shutter speed can't be below 1/60 of a second. That's not too bad, but the other problem is blurring. This clip looks pretty blurred, and is somewhat painful to watch. That being said, the white balance looks pretty nice, not perfect though, and the rolling shutter isn't very pronounced here. In the car chase scenes (oops, I gave another scene away ;) we're going to try to film from around 45 degrees, not 90 to minimize rolling shutter. We might have some shots that are straight on, but that probably wouldn't be as interesting, so probably not too many.