Thursday, August 13, 2009

Sacrificing The Art - Chapter One/Part Two "The White Walled Basement"

I decided last minute as my dream of using the third room was crumbled that I would incorporate hard shadows and dark tones in the scene to try and “cover up” the white wall’s handicapped look. It was my only defense.

 When it comes to shooting there are two kinds of people. “The Purists” and “The Illusionists.” The Purist is an “in camera” person, meaning, he/she wants all the looks and effects of the film to be done in the camera during Principle Photography. If you want your film to look like The Matrix and Collateral then you have to light the scene for the look, adjust your Chromas, Peds, etc in your camera to achieve the effect, (or at least get it close so the Post Production treatment is very minimal.) “Do it right the first time,” The Purists always say. “It will keep you from stomping on your footage so much for the final product.”
Then there is “The Illusionist” who’s basic theory is “we’ll fix it in post.” They think plug ins like Magic Bullet, Nattress, or software like After Effects and Color are the answer to all their Photography problems. Yes, a good Editor and Colorist can do wonders with good or bad footage. But, the misconception “The Illusionists” and most young filmmakers have is that they can just shoot the footage “normally” and achieve or should I say “copycat” the look of another film when they get to the post production stage. It is not that easy. Trust me, I tried many years ago. I’m not saying you can’t do it this way and the look can’t be achieved but it is still easier to shoot the footage right the first time around. Why spend hours and Terabytes rendering that in turn just degrading the pixelation of what you captured? Why spend dozens of man hours creating “fabrications” of what you shot? If you shoot footage knowing you will turn the footage black and white, then you need to light the scene, wardrobe the actors appropriately, and use color schemes with lots of reds in your original set up so when you drop the Monochome Color Mixers when the time comes to get your various grays. Then the footage will look like you shot it in Black and White. If you shoot footage dark and rich in color you can’t “blow it out” in post. If you shoot footage, “blown out” you can’t make it dark and rich in post. It’s a fact. It doesn’t work that way. You’re shooting HD for goodness sake. Utilize your color palette. If you want a scene to look green and seedy, light the scene green, boost your contrast in your camera and shoot it green and seedy. I guess now you know which person I am.

 HERE ARE TWO SHOTS. ONE THE PURIST WAY & ONE THE ILLUSIONIST WAY. CAN YOU TELL ME WHICH IS WHICH?

See the full gallery on posterous

I get asked all the time, “What software did you use to make it look so good?” My reply everytime is, “It ain’t the software, homeboy.” That’s the camera work and lighting. So where am I going with this you ask?”
 
For the basement, I went for dark and harsh shadows to cover up the blandness of the wall. Halfway through the day, I realized it didn’t work but there was no going back. Our schedule didn’t permit me to reshoot this large scene. (Not to mention, I didn’t want to discourage the cast and crew by revealing that the D.P didn’t know what he was doing.) I stayed late after the first day trying to come up with a way to relight the basement for the scenes following without reshooting. I looked at the footage and realized mild color correction would fix what we shot but I didn’t want to continue with that lighting scheme, nor did I want to become an Illusionist suddenly so now I was forced to either, find time in the busy schedule to reshoot the four scenes we shot and redo the lighting which was doubtful like I already said considering we were already behind or come up with something on the fly to justify a change in lighting.
 
Due to my obsession of scheduling sequences to be shot in order even if it inconveniences the actors or production I was able to easily fix it. In Independent filmmaking I feel if you shoot everything out of order you will miss something. Your actors who are all up and coming with many years needed to learn to “do the exact same thing” in each take, sometimes have a hard time finding a momentum if sequences of scenes aren’t shot in order. The performance tend to be uneven from cut to cut, scene to scene. It’s a given. It’s nobody’s fault but it disrupts the flow of the film. So I always try to shoot scenes that take place in the same location yet may be sandwiched by other scenes in order. That little practice would pay off here. The scene shot the first day was the scene in the film where the gang of four brings their first captive to the depths of the basement. They then figure out that they have kidnapped the wrong guy and two of them leave the basement to go get the right guy. The scene following is the two guys leaving the house. That is what we shot the first day. The scene following is the slow kid and the wrong captive having a conversation where the wrong captive tries to talk the slow kid into letting him go. That scene would be the first scene of the second day. A light bulb went off, literally. We had unscrewed the house overhead lighting for the first day to achieve the dark look. I thought what if the slow kid didn’t like it so dark and while the wrong captive was trying to talk him into letting him go the slow kid found a light bulb and screwed it into the overhead to give the room more light. Hence, the change of lighting for the scene following and all the scenes there after. (Again, only able to do that because we shot the basement sequence in order from first scene to last.) This trick worked and although it just added emphasis to the flat white wall, the lighting on the actors’ faces got me to the point of not having to color correct in post which made me a very happy camper. Now if I could come up with a tweak in the script to have one of the boys get furious and tear down the drywall on the white slab, I may have a scene my colleagues may not puke in a bag while watching. Nevertheless, my quick adjustment saved a day of reshoots that we didn’t have time for. Maybe, just my “bare bones” experiences from the past brought me to a quick resolution of adding house light to the scene. Maybe it was just a fluke. Maybe the idea came from my desperation of my word that every frame of this film would be perfect due to my theory that this was my “last hoorah.” That was probably the answer. Yes, I am sure of it.
 
Chapter Two - "The Last Hoorah" continues....

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