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Production Blog Post 11/22

Over the past couple of weeks I have worked through the production phase for my next film. Throughout this time I have managed to complete a majority of what I needed to do to produce the film. With schedules being difficult to arrange properly and the world being a different place, there were some hurdles that I ran into while working. The following is a summary of my production process.

Casting

When I decided on the concept of this film, I wanted to keep the cast very small. It was my goal to only have two characters as to not over-complicate things, however, I was flexible with adding another character should they be needed to make a scene work better. At first I had two people offer to lend their help as actors for the film. Due to problems with getting both people to be available to shoot, I had needed to ask two other people for their help. Luckily, I did find actors who's schedules worked and allowed me to film with them.

Shooting

Originally, I had anticipated needing the help of some friends in order to shoot scenes. Despite this, I managed to shoot almost entirely by myself without any issues. One tool that made solo shooting easier was my Steadicam, which I go in-depth about in this blogpost. Shooting scenes in locations other than my backyard was very exciting for me, as I was finding it difficult to think of ways to use parts of my yard as a setting for films. The railroad tracks where the opening was shot gave me such an influx of new ideas of how to shoot a scene and how to dynamically direct my actor that I never had when shooting in my blank backyard. The most challenging scene to shoot was the finale which took place at night. The way I had originally envisioned the scene to look was not how it was going to look due to the darkness. It then became a challenge to make the scene resemble what I wanted while working on the limitations of being outside and without proper lighting. Overall, I feel that the ending and all the scenes shot went smoothly without much going wrong.
 

Color Grading

With this project, one thing that I wanted to do more of was color grading. With previous projects, I would usually leave the colors exactly as they were recorded. At most, I would do slight corrections to make the image look normal. By color grading footage for this film, I have really begun to enjoy the process. It is an amazing feeling to go from what your footage originally looks like to looking exactly how you want it to look. The photo below shows the before and after of the color grade for the opening of my film. I find it incredible how different a film can look and feel when you just change the way the colors look. While my knowledge of color grading is very basic, I am intrigued and would like to learn more on how to best do it.

What's Next

Normally I would begin to edit together all of the footage that I have following the completion of production. However, I have been editing and color grading each scene as I have shot them, which definitely reduces the amount of post-production work I have to complete. Throughout production I did manage to shoot the majority of the scenes that I need with the exception of a few scenes which were not completed due to unavailability. Theses scenes should not be difficult to shoot and should take the place of editing during the post-production period. Once these scenes are shot, they will just need to be edited and color graded and be put into the final film. With all of that finished, the film should be complete.
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