Armageddon

STOPPPPPPPPPP

So yesterday I went to pick up equipment from BECON. I say this with all the love and respect in my heart for Jim Guarasci, but if The Purge was real and all crime was legal for a day I'd be raiding their camera supplies.

I don't know the exact model names for everything I got, but; RGB COB Light, Softbox, RGB Cam Light, 2 light stands, omnidirectional mount for light, headphones, Sennheiser boom mic, XLR cable, XLR adapter, boom pole, slider, Sony A7III, 28-70mm zoom lens, F1.8 50mm lens, ND filter, and probably some other stuff I'm forgetting.

It's a lot of equipment, but thankfully I've had experience using all these different types of equipment, though I generally haven't used any of these specific items. I have two days until the shoot, so I'm going to just mess around with everything until I fully understand it all.

I asked two people to help me out for the shoot. I wanted to shoot it solo at first, because I get some weird feeling when other people see anything behind-the-scenes of anything I do. But I'd also get incredibly stressed and have a mental breakdown if I tried to do this myself (which has happened many times before).

So yeah, two people. I wanted them to be people that I've worked with before, and therefore have already seen how stressed I am on-set, so I asked the two nincompoops pictured below, Mateo and Santi.

(Left to Right): Me, Mateo, Santi

They're both really good at pretty much every role on set, and I trust them to get the job done. To my teacher, I have one warning for you. Santi is planning on taking AS-level next year. 

Run.

Script

I wanted to change the script a bit. It felt like it wouldn't be long enough, and the first draft is never perfect anyways. If you see an updated version attached to this blog post, then I finished it and edited this to include it. If not, I either forgot to come back and update it or I'm doing it tomorrow.

But another reason I wanted to change the script is because of Final Draft's Big Break Screenwriting Contest.

I've had Final Draft for years and have been wanting to make something for this contest for about two years now. However, you need to be 18 in order to submit. By the time submissions are due, I'll have met that requirement, so I want to finally have something to submit.

I think INCANDESCENCE has potential. I've never written a full-length film (my highest page count is like 5) but I want to try. And if I feel like it's too daunting, they just opened a short film category, with a maximum of 20 pages, so maybe I can go for that.

Who knows. It's both really scary and really exciting to think about; the prize is obviously a huge incentive for me, but I also just want to see if I have it in me to produce a large-scale story. I feel like this is a test for whether or not I have it in me to be a writer.

Megiddo

uhhhhh

So I was going to make another post about this, but having two in one day makes it seem like I'm just trying to meet a quota. Let the record show, I may not be the best student, but I'll be damned if I half-ass something I care about.

I tested all the equipment and it works perfectly, thank goodness. This is a photo I took of the camera. You can also see the backup mic, slider, headphone cord, and some other stuff.

The mic in the picture is not, by ANY means, bad; it's just that the other one is so good. The XLR converter lets you hear to both audio inputs side-by-side, and it was surreal to hear the difference in quality.

As of this moment I haven't tinkered with the lighting equipment, but maybe in a later part of the blog I will have.

They really need to change the "Colorist" job title

While I was rendering another angle of the black hole I decided to watch some more videos on cinematography/lighting. I first watched this video by Film Riot, but Film Riot's videos are always iffy. They do an alright job at covering techniques but half the time it just feels like they're advertising their or their sponsors' products.

So after that I watched another video by YCImaging, which is so good for so many reasons. It's only 4.5 minutes, and covers so much. The first thing I took away from it was the term 'bokeh', which refers to the level of blur on the out-of-focus aspect of a shot with shallow depth-of-field. YC also explains that depth can be achieved even with smaller f-stops, and also pointed out that focus is harder to maintain at wider f-stops.

I don't know how accurate that is, so I plan to test it out with the two lenses Jim gave me tomorrow. I've had many shoots where I [F-WORD]ed up on the focus, so something like that might really help in the long run. 

Another thing YC discussed was motivated lighting. I've heard and read about it countless times, but I never actually remember to motivate the lighting in my projects. This time will be different. I have two light sources; the window and the laptop.

The last subject in the video is negative fill. I've heard of it maybe only once or twice, and he didn't do the best job of explaining it, but I'll give it a try tomorrow during the test runs.

The last video I watched was by Color Grading Central, and it was amazeballs. It broke color grading down into seven steps and showed how to achieve each step on Premiere, Final Cut, and DaVinci. I'm gonna go back to it during the final edit.

The fourth step to his process was teals and oranges. It's a very common color combo in films, and I even mentioned using it in my last post. The most traditional application of it is orange subject and teal background, as seen above; but I think I want to invert that.

The opening takes place at night, and in film moonlight is typically portrayed as blue. I mean, take a look at this still of the movie Moonlight where they use a teal background to portray night.

The reason I want to invert the color scheme is because the black hole is orange. I want it to kind of "bleed through" and start effecting how Noah perceives the real world, shown by the orange haze that begins to envelop Noah as The Voices keep whispering to him.

To imply that he's still grounded in reality I want the teal moonlight to illuminate his body while the orange gradually consumes everything else. Hopefully it turns out fine.

Something I've also noticed is that, with the orange/teal combo, actors are costumed in neutral tones; whites, blacks, browns, etc. So I'll have to rethink the costume. Probably just a white tank top and a more neutral pajamas. If I need to do something more boring, then I'll rely more on set design to display Noah's eclectic personality.

Also, in case you couldn't tell by the title, I've been reading Good Omens. Fun book.