Thursday, September 17, 2009

Pictures from the shoot

Here are some pictures from Monday's shoot of 'The Assassin' to whet your appetite while I assemble the film.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

It's a Wrap!

Whew. We finished our shoot of 'The Assassin' last night. Many thanks to Doug, Andrew, Scott and Caitlynd.

We had a great time, lots of laughs. Lots of surprises too. Doug really nailed the dialogue. Andrew turned out to be a natural at blocking. Scott kept the boom mike out of the shots and Caitlynd saved us from some mistakes as our script supervisor.

Some of the footage is terrific. Most of it however reveals that we are still amateurs. There are lighting issues, continuity mistakes, and several good takes were wrecked because I missed the fact that someone or something was visible in the background that shouldn't have been there.

The sound is incredible. Scott's boom work, my fancy Azden microphone and the DVX100B's onboard 2-channel recording system gave us very good sound. Not quite professional but definitely top of the line amateur.

I'm trying to cut the pieces into something resembling a film. It's proving to be very hard. Some sequences just don't fit together well. The shot of the Assassin looking at the flash drive in his hand is a total write-off, I have no idea how that's going to play out in the final cut.

I may have to cut the film very differently from the script and what we'd visualized, for the sake of making it work.

The good news is, I've spotted many of our mistakes and have figured out how we'd fix them if we were reshooting. That information will be invaluable during our next shoot. I have no doubts it will be much better. Best way to learn is by trying, eh?

I'm going to try to finish post-production on 'The Assassin' by the end of the month. I'll post some stills later to show you how it turned out.

Monday, September 7, 2009

I'm So Excited!

And I just can't hide it! This time next Monday we'll be shooting 'The Assassin'.

I've booked a room at the no-tell Motel 6 in Burlington. I've also rented my dream camera, a Panasonic DVX 100B from Fotovideo for the night. Cost: $150. Ouch. they actually gave me a deal. The normal rate is $250 a day.

I also bought a cool hockey bag and I've been loading it with equipment. I bought some halogen utility lights, a portable flourescent tube light, batteries, cables, electrical tape, duct tape etc.

I found some cheap toy guns at Dollarama. 2 Law Enforcement Play Kits with guns and handcuffs, a bottle of body wash, and a white lampshade. The expression on the cashier's face; priceless!

Next I need some screen door material for creating cheap diffusion filters for the lights. Also I need to paint and detail the guns to make them look more real. Whew! lots of work.

7 more days!