Flying Plates

I've spent the last three evenings working on three shots from "Mother In-Law Zombie". These are the plate throwing shots that I mentioned a few weeks ago. Basically, the scene involves one character throwing plates (and then a bottle) at the other character, who then knocks the plates away in mid-air.

The shots that were taking up so much time were ones where the plate is flying towards the character, but the camera is also dollying towards the character. The effect is that the plate stays the same distance from the camera, until both the camera and the plate reach the character, and she knocks the plate off to the side. We "borrowed" this sequence from "Crimewave", Sam Raimi's second film. I still don't know how he did it, but we came up with our own way.

We shot it by drilling a hole through the plates, attaching a nut to fishing line, and then running this through the middle of the plate and attaching the line to a pole. I then dollyed towards the actress as someone on the side of the dolly held the plate on the pole in front of the camera, matching my speed.

Unfortunately, there were four problems with these shots:

1. The shiny silver nut on the bottom of the plate kept showing up, reflecting back into the camera. To fix this, I had to go frame by frame and paint over the bolt with the same color as the bottom of the plate.

2. Someone's hand shows up in the left hand side of one shot. They were sitting at the table on the side, and weren't far enough back behind the wall. I didn't catch this during the filming, but when watching it in slow motion, it becomes very obvious. So, I had to paint out the person's hand frame by frame.

3. The fishing line shows up a bunch more than expected. So, I had to cut out the fishing line frame by frame, and then "stitch" the empty area together. This was done with a "wire removal" plugin, which is meant to be used in front of a greenscreen (which is how we should have done it originally). Since the "stitch" moves from frame to frame, it ends up being very noticeable. As a result, I ended up having to mask out the sides of the shots, and then added motion blur to the sides to blur together the movement, thus blurring the movement of the stitch. It's hard to describe the final effect of all of this, but it looks cool, and nobody should be able to tell that the plate is suspended by fishing line.

4. These shots were filmed with the Canon GL2, while the shots of the other character throwing the plates were shot a month before with the VX1000. The color, exposure, and grain difference between the cameras is very noticeable, so extensive color correction and grain removal had to be done on both to match them up.

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Anyway, now that those are done, I might have to start working on something completely different. I put out an ad on Craigslist and Brian Dragonuk's list looking for a composer for "Corporate Zombie". I've received a few responses so far, and have realized that in order for someone to do this job, they'll need a locked cut of the section. So, I need to go through that section, finish up the dialogue and sound fx mixing, cut out 5 more minutes out of it, and then put it all together. I'll probably start on this tonight.

Ryan

Successful Screening

The screening at Hondance went very well; we ended up showing it at the beginning and at the end of the festival. Not many people showed up for the 1PM screening, so we decided to screen it again for the bigger night-time audience. Both times the reception was good. People laughed in all of the right places, and I got a lot of nice comments afterwards. A few people who weren't around for the filming just assumed it was shot on film, which was cool.

It's a little nerve-wracking screening or having your own stuff screened. I'm always worried that the DVD is going to crap out, or that the audio will screw up. And my paranoia isn't unfounded, since that kind of shit seems to happen at almost every screening I go to. Someone's tape or DVD always screws up. The worst is when it starts stuttering and then freezes in the middle of the film. It's almost better if it just never plays at all.

I also spent about 45 minutes setting up the projector so that the color and contrast were just right, and I still wasn't 100% happy with it. DVD compression does some funky stuff to film/video grain, and pretty much all other fine details that have any movement; it ends up looking like a bunch of mosquitos are flying around the screen. I'd use a lower compression ratio, but then the file would be too big for a single DVD. Steve suggested using a dual-layer DVD, which might be a good option for the premiere (the burners are cheap, but the disks are pretty expensive). I'll test it out, but if it still looks like crap I'll definitely be getting the film transferred to Betacam or Digibeta for the premiere and subsequent festival screenings.

In all, Hondance was pretty good. We made some money for The Top Floor, and I just about broke even on the food. It was a lot of work again, and my legs and arms are sore from loading everything up the three flights of steps, but I did have a good time. The Dirty Marmaduke Flute Squad performance was cool, we got to meet some nice new people (big thanks to Scott Alexander for saving our asses when someone cancelled at the last minute - and for being a super nice guy about it), and I got to screen a big chunk of my film to an appreciative audience.

However, we didn't seem to get many people in there during the day. Not sure if it was the cost of the tickets or the fact that we didn't get much publicity, but I think next time we should consider just having the festival during the evening. It's kind of sad to screen a film or have a performance when there are only 4 people in the audience. I don't think it's fair for the filmmakers or artists.

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According to Kristen, the "Livelihood" screening at The Creative Alliance will be the second Wednesday in October. She wasn't at all happy with my idea of having the premiere the Thursday before that at The Charles. She doesn't think anyone will show up for the Creative Alliance screening. She suggested we just have the premiere at The Creative Alliance, but since we might be comping up to 80 tickets, I just don't think that's practical. Regardless, she was very adamant in her desire for us to have the premiere at least a month before the Creative Alliance screening.

My argument is this: which will get more press? Will it be a film that is showing twice in a week, or a film that has two screenings a month apart? I think that we have a better chance of getting more/bigger press if we have the screenings closer together. The alternative is to get decent press for the premiere, and then hopefully a casual mention when it screens a month later at the Creative Alliance. I also think that 6 days is perfect for getting a word-of-mouth buzz. Any longer and the buzz will fade. Any shorter and there isn't enough time for people to talk about it.

I'm pretty confident that both screenings will sell out no matter when we have them. People are going to want to see this twice, I think. It's got a lot of cool little jokes and plot lines that you don't really notice the first time through. I also think it's a "feel good" movie, not in a cheesy 90's "chick-flick" sense, but in an 80's "Goonies" or "One Crazy Summer" or "Sixteen Candles" type of way.

The final reason is that I want to give myself as much time as possible to get the film finished, get the website up, and get the press packets out. I want to send the soundtrack to some radio stations, send a screener to all of the local TV stations and newspapers, and really hype the hell out of this thing.

Anyone have any comments/opinions about the situation? I'm definitely not 100% on this, and am open to suggestions.

Ryan