Spaceland

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Rehearsal Session #4, Scene 4

On Sunday, my sixteen-year-old assistant, Jonathan, sets up the camera for me on the ladder. This kid is good. He downloads the files off my camera into two separate sources for back-up during shooting, and he does other things I showed him how to do now quiet easily.

Tonight, it was my plan to shoot a scene in the film, but it became clear that sometimes being organized is just as important as being flexible (and prepared).

One of the mistakes I've made in the past is being in a hurry. Today, the actors who play the protagonists in the film, Samuel and Adria came, and we went over scene IV, the lines and I even rewrote some parts after they said it. It became a gradual process to understand the scene for them, and fine-tune the scene for the film.

By next week, we'll film the scene, while shooting a short scene on Sunday morning, along with some minor reshoots of scene II (from last Sunday).

By next Wednesday, I'm hoping to begin rehearsing the Therapist scene, which is perhaps the most difficult, and the longest scene. I know that at any point "the suspension of disbelief" can be lost in a film, and this is the place in the film, if anywhere in the film, it can most easily occur.

Scene IV, Spaceland

I started filming scene II of my short "Spaceland" this Sunday. It was my first day of shooting, and there were a lot of things I learned from the process. The biggest challenge in filmmaking, for me, has always been trying to be artistic, logistic and technical all at once.

Once you've made it as a filmmaker, and can afford an entire crew, you can just worry more about the artistic, and throughout this whole process, I am trying to stay focused on the "vision of the film."

I've edited the second scene, though I haven't had time to fix the sound yet. Overall, I think the scene works. I showed it to a few people, and some of them were very taken with the scene visually. It was very interesting to get the emotional response. Some of this is because the way I shot it, the music, and, of course, the actors. This is the first time, I think, my casting in a film has been ideal. I attribute this to mostly good fortune.

I am posting "test" angles on non-shooting days, but I'm not posting any footage that will be in the actual film because film festivals really want exclusivity when the film is shown in their venue. If they know you can watch it online, they don't want it, not matter how good it is.

Later, I may create some sort of "preview" of the film. I may re-shoot some parts of Scene II, depending on how I feel about it in a couple of weeks. I think one of the best things about making a film slowly is that you can learn from your mistakes as you go along, as opposed to making your mistakes in one or two very long days.

The next scene I'm filming this week is scene IV (see storyboard), which I rewrote last night.