Anne lays sand-shaded veneer pieces into a panelSetting up to shoot. Photo: Lisa Sansome
Last Monday was the first day of shooting on a promotional video for a company in Llandrindod Wells called Aryma. Aryma makes contemporary marquetry – exquisite and intricate inlaid wood panelling, typically for private jets, super yachts and luxury homes. An image is created not through paint of any kind, but by painstakingly building it up from many, many pieces of wood veneer, each one a different colour, and some of them shaded by singeing them in hot sand.
The video marked my first experience of using macro tubes: collars that fit between the lens and camera body to allow the lens to focus on closer objects than it normally can. This was necessary in order to properly capture the fitting of the veneer pieces, some of which are unbelievably tiny. Here is a glimpse of a few of the shots recorded so far.
A shout out today for Blackout, a short film written and directed by James Bushe, and DPed and edited by Gerard Giorgi-Coll, two of The Dark Side of the Earth‘s brilliant behind-the-scenes camera ops. They’ve already shot their film – and damn nice it looks too, as you can see from the video above – and are now seeking funds for post-production. I’ve put in what I can and I hope you’ll all do the same. I can”t wait to see how this project turns out.
Yesterday I was interviewed by RKD Films for their feature documentary, working title: “The British Film Industry”. They had found me through the Midlands Today report and initially wanted to talk to me about crowd-funding, but after visiting my websites decided to focus more on my career history and the support I’ve received from public funding bodies…. or not.
RKD have already shot 30 interviews with a variety of people from indie filmmakers to Ben Kingsley, and they have plenty more planned. Their aim is to build up a picture of filmmaking in Britain today, with particular emphasis on what the government is and isn’t doing to support the industry. It should prove very interesting viewing.
[Voice of Majel Barrett-Roddenberry] Previously on neiloseman.com: I hate 3D.
And now the conclusion: So does everyone else. I was delighted this week to read a very interesting article about 3D on Shadowlocked.com It’s a very well-reasoned argument against the proliferation of 3D cinema, so no regular readers will be surprised that it struck a chord with me.
What particularly grabbed me was the news that audience figures are declining for 3D screenings. To give just one example, 2010’s Shrek Forever After made 60% of its opening weekend box office from 3D screens, whereas this year’s Kung Fu Panda 2 made only 45%. Anecdotal evidence seems to suggest that the headaches, uncomfortable glasses and dimmer projection are putting people off. Many people around the globe are working hard to design and implement improved 3D projection that eliminates these problems, but now it seems there is a real chance the 3D bubble may burst before they succeed.
It’s also worth reading Christopher Nolan’s thoughts on the subject. “The truth is, I think it’s a misnomer to call it 3D versus 2D,” he says. “The whole point of cinematic imagery is it’s three-dimensional. … You know, 95% of our depth cues come from occlusion, resolution, color and so forth, so the idea of calling a 2D movie a ’2D movie’ is a little misleading.”
After Cannes this year I was certain that the bell had tolled for 2D films (I’ll keep using the term for clarity, despite Nolan’s excellent point above) but now it seems the tide might be turning – something I hadn’t dared to hope for. Perhaps 2D might just win this war after all.
DEATH TO 3D! DEATH TO 3D! DEATH TO 3D!
Oh, and joy to the world and merry Christmas and stuff.
A few posts back I wrote about See Saw, the thriller directed by Tom Muschamp which I DPed in the summer of 2007. Today I’m going to share some of the tribulations experienced in the making of this sequence:
The sequence was filmed in the Hamptons, a popular holiday destination at the east end of Long Island, near New York City. The boat was filmed in a harbour, with the camera and an HMI lamp on the dock. I wish we could have put either the camera or the HMI in another boat, because it’s never a good idea to have your camera and your only light source close together; you end up with flat lighting that looks like flash from a stills camera. Unfortunately we didn’t have much choice. Putting the HMI on a boat was too dangerous, and putting the camera on a boat would have rendered the footage too shaky for successful compositing with the other element of the sequence: Katherine.
Aimee Denaro as Katherine
Katherine, played by producer Aimee Denaro, was filmed in an outdoor swimming pool – again, of course, at night. We had been able to get hold of a single black drape, which we rigged half in and half out of the water, to hide the stand for the backlight and to cover the blue-painted pool interior. We originally planned to frame all our shots tightly enough that this drape would fill the entire background, but we ended up shooting off it quite a lot. Fortunately the surroundings were dark enough that we got away with it.
Aside from the backlight there was one other lamp – a key light coming in from the side. Both were 800W tungsten pars if memory serves. As I often do on night sequences, I white-balanced on a red-gelled lamp, fooling the camera into turning everything blue for that classic James Cameron/Michael Mann look.
Director Tom Muschamp
After shooting all the set-ups from the poolside, it was time to dive in – quite literally – and shoot the underwater material. That’s when the fun began.
We had spent the last couple of weeks trying to find an underwater housing we could hire, but nowhere had one that would fit our camera (a JVC GY-HD110). In the end we had to settle for a splash bag designed for ENG (i.e. proper broadcast) cameras. A splash bag is simply a rubber bag with a waterproof zip and a porthole of optical glass at one end. They’re not designed to be used at any depth, but will keep the water out down to a metre or two. So far, so good – this restriction fitted in with Tom’s shot requirements just fine.
But because our camera was too small, we could not screw the filter thread into the porthole inside the bag. This meant there was no way of keeping the camera in a fixed position within the bag. This was, not to beat about the bush, annoying. Oh, and did I mention that the battery adapter on the camera had a loose connection which caused the camera to shut itself off sometimes?
The black drape and backlight set-up
Anyone who knows me knows that I am very quiet. I doubt most of the cast and crew were accustomed to hearing me say much of anything. They were certainly all pretty shocked when, within a few minutes of starting to work with the splash bag, I was cursing and swearing like a trooper. The difficulties of trying to swim, keep the bag underwater (it had plenty of empty space in it so it wanted to float), keep the camera lens lined up with the porthole, prevent the focus ring from rubbing against the inside of the bag and throwing the image out of focus, all at the same time, almost drove me insane. Add to that the battery coming loose from time to time and you can see how I might have been a tad frustrated.
But after a while I learnt to contort my body and the bag into a stable configuration and we got some great shots. By the time we wrapped, thanks to the pool’s automatic overnight chlorination system, we all had red, stinging eyes and Aimee’s top had been completely bleached.
The next time I shot underwater – which I may blog about in the future – rather than trying to hire a housing to fit our camera, we hired a housing that came with its own camera. In hindsight I wish we’d done this on See Saw. If you’re going to try it yourself, I’d recommend getting hold of some diving weights because you’re always fighting the natural buoyancy of the housing. Remember that tiled walls and painted lane divisions are dead giveaways that you shot in a swimming pool; don’t rely on the distorting effect of water to hide these – it doesn’t work that way. Bring drapes or tarpaulins to fill your background.
Okay, that’s all for now folks, but if you enjoy reading this blog then please consider contributing a little cash towards my new short film Stop/Eject.
Katherine clings onto the "boowee" as our American friends like to say
Thanks to everyone who’s sponsored Stop/Eject so far, and also to everyone who’s shared and forwarded the call for sponsors. It’s been a great start to the crowd funding campaign.
Flog It! presenter Paul Martin, a favourite with the senior ladies
The BBC’s Flog It! programme came to Hereford Cathedral yesterday, and since they were looking for stewards I decided to sign up. I’ve been a filmmaker for twelve years but I have almost no experience of broadcast TV, so this was a good opportunity to dip my toe into a different section of the industry.
If, like me, you’ve never seen Flog It! it seems to be exactly the same as Antiques Roadshow only they take your stuff to an auction at the end and sell it. Yesterday was a valuation day, meaning members of the public show up with the tat from their attic and a few will discover they were sitting on a nice little nest egg. Any items whose owners wished them to be sold would then be packaged up and sent off to auction at a later date.
The day kicked off around 7am with the usual rearranging of chairs and tables, unloading of vans and setting-up of the green room. Representing the cathedral was Dominic Harbour, who I last worked with back in 2003 when we filmed a couple of scenes from Soul Searcher in the Chained Library. (Veteran blog followers may wonder at his ever letting me back into the building.)
Filming the queue with a crane
Filming was meant to begin at 9am with shots of the huge crowd waiting outside, but only about fifteen Herefordians had shown up so things were delayed for a while as we waited for people to get up. It actually wasn’t long before the queue was quite impressive – almost as impressive as the jib which was being used to film it and the speed with which this jib’s two man crew could move it and set it up. At this point my job was to stop passers-by from wandering into shot. The very first person I stopped and asked to walk around the back of the jib turned out to be one of the presenters – well done, Neil.
When the doors opened, us stewards had to lead the throng into an elaborate snaking queue which, at its peak, would represent a three hour wait for the dollar-eyed hopefuls. Once that was up and running, my job was to stand at the door and ask people entering if they were here for Flog It! (since the cathedral was still open to the public as normal) and if they were then to hand them an information sheet and apologetically point them towards the very back of the queue. It made me weep for the soul of humanity how many people were dull-witted enough to answer the question “Are you here for Flog It?” with “How much can I get for my wife?” Anyway, this job wasn’t very demanding and I was able to observe the shooting MO.
A view from behind the cameras
The crew had obviously done this many times and they had their system down pat. The front part of the queue formed a horseshoe around three sides of the main open space which was evenly lit with four 1.2K HMIs bounced off large polyboards. (Flog It! banners hid all the stands from the cameras.) This area was treated like a three-walled studio set. The cameras always stayed at the “fourth wall” end, where two or three kinoflos provided extra kick for the foreground tables. At these tables the show’s resident experts were filmed discussing items with their owners. This meant no re-lighting, apart from a bit of moveable fill which was provided by handheld or camera-mounted LED lights. In the background, two further 1.2K HMIs were angled up at the roof and attractive gubbins of probable religious significance around the altar. Job’s a good ‘un.
HMIs bounced off polyboards provided the main light source
I was surprised at the number of cameras in use – five or six split into three units each with its own director and support crew. Two units were constantly shooting valuations at the aforementioned tables, while the third was at the other end of the cathedral shooting other valuations which had been picked out by the production team as particularly interesting.
At lunchtime I got a bit of a shock by how civilised the arrangements were. On low budget films I’m used to half a slice of pizza out the back of someone’s car, but this being a BBC production we were treated to hot cottage pie with steamed veg and bread at proper tables with real plates and cutlery and nicely folded napkins.
Ray Bullock Jnr. during filming in the Chained Library for Soul Searcher
At 4:15pm we derigged in the cathedral to make way for evensong and moved everything into the narrow museum area leading to the Mappa Mundi exhibit and Chained Library. Here several more valuations were filmed and I was called upon to sit in the background of shot to fill up the frame. I was also put on tea and coffee duty around this time. To deliver the drinks to the unit at the back of the museum area I first had to get past the other two units, which involved a wait of several minutes at each one for a break in recording, like city traffic lights.
Filming wrapped a little after 6pm and after helping carry stuff back to the vans and put the cathedral’s furniture back where it had come from I bade goodnight to all and sundry and headed home.
It’s a long time since I’ve been right at the bottom of the crew structure, but it was a great experience – everyone was really friendly – and I was reminded of a few things I learnt earlier in my career about how to make a good impression as a runner. So here are my top tips:
Get the tea and coffee orders right. Write it all down, including names, and then transfer that info to the polystyrene cup when you’re making the drinks so they’re easy to distribute. If there’s any chocolate around distribute that too. It’s always good for people to associate you with receiving tasty snacks.
Your tasks will invariably be boring but complaining about this is a definite no-no. Make use of the time to observe what the crew are doing – but not to the detriment of carrying out your task.
Make sure you’re projecting “keen and eager” at all times. Don’t dawdle eating your lunch and get back to the action as soon as your plate’s clear.
If you have to walk in front of a camera (not while it’s rolling of course) remember to say “crossing” as a courtesy to the camera op.
If there’s an opportunity to stay a bit later than most other people and help load those last few cases into the van when everyone’s knackered, do it and you’ll be remembered with warm feelings.
Open University programming isn’t what it used to be. Gone are the men with tweed jackets and unfathomable beards who haunt your TV screen at 3am. In their place are men with no chins and terrible haircuts who loiter on YouTube 24/7.
This video is part of the OU’s Digital Film School course, which my good friend Rick Goldsmith co-wrote. You can find out more about him, his company and perhaps even his tweed jacket at www.catchermedia.co.uk
Just wanted to share this video I came across on YouTube. A very recent but classic example of a miniature sequence that no-one would ever have known wasn’t done full-scale. Try doing that with CGI!
Additional (26/10/11): On a similar subject, check out Gavin Rothery’s blog about the making of the excellent Moon. Gavin was the conceptual designer and visual effects supervisor on the film, apparently having a creative involvement in the project second only to writer-director Duncan Jones. His blog reveals all kinds of interesting nuggets from what military vehicles were originally going to be used to portray the moon buggies, to how he and Duncan used to lock themselves in the studio overnight, hiding from the security guards, to work on the set. Thanks to Matt Collett for this link.
Aimee Denaro in the stairwell of The Supreme Court of New York
Today I saw “See Saw” again. This is the feature-length thriller I DPed in Manhattan back in 2007, where I met my wife Katie. Amazingly the film is still in post-production after more than four years – enough time for Katie and I to get married and for director Tom Muschamp and producer/actress Aimee Denaro to sadly get divorced. We saw a rough cut a couple of years ago and recently Tom sent me a newer version with some significant changes.
One of my favourite things about the filmmaking process is the power you can wield over the narrative in post-production. Think outside the box a little, perhaps add a little ADR, and you can completely repurpose a scene or change the entire meaning of a film. The changes to See Saw haven’t been quite that extreme, but Tom has still taken the pretty major step of cutting the entire first act. Carl was forever telling me trim down the first act of The Dark Side of the Earth‘s script, and I’m sure it’s a battle many writers and filmmakers face: to set up the world and the characters with the utmost economy in order to get to that end-of-act-one plot point as fast as possible. So why not cut the first act all together?
See Saw actually seemed to get away with it for the most part. The lead character has amnesia, so the lack of set-up enables the viewer to share in her disorientation. There are one or two little bits of plot that probably do need to be re-inserted in order to give the climax its fullest impact, but overall I think this brave decision has worked for this particular film.
Watching it again brought back lots of memories of the shoot, a crazy three weeks in the punishing heat of a Manhattan August, with only two days off. Tom and Aimee secured some amazing locations, including a boat circling Liberty Island, Tavern on the Green (the exclusive restaurant used in the Ghostbusters scene where the terror dog finally catches up with Louis), Central Park and The Supreme Court of New York. I still can’t believe how lax security was at the latter. Seeing the crew approaching with large cases and assorted metal poles and stands, the security guard simply moved aside a barrier and directed us around the metal detector. The actors even managed to smuggle in their prop guns with great ease.
But my main reaction on seeing See Saw again is to cringe at my lighting. Back then I was all about hard-lighting everything with clearly-defined and very black shadows. While this looks great in the nighttime scenes, nowadays I would be much more subtle in the daylight scenes, using kinos and hard sources bounced off reflectors to give a more naturalistic look. This is the problem with feature films, no matter in what position you work on them: they take so long to make that by the time they’re finished they no longer represent your best work.
Well, that’s enough disjointed rambling for now. I’ll be sure to let you know when See Saw’s finally released.
Here’s a look at how I created one of the FX shots in the Wasteland trailer. Tom, the director, wanted to see the central character, Scott (Shameer Seepersand), walking along a deserted dual carriageway to show his isolation in the post-apocalyptic world.
We started by shooting the A50 from a bridge (image 1). Traffic was light, but we were never able to get a clean, car-less shot. (While filming we were interrupted by a couple of blokes from the Highways Agency who wanted to cover their arses in case of accident, so gave us a safety briefing: “Be careful when you cross the road, lads.”)
The next day we drove around looking for a footpath or cycle path with similar tarmac to the A50 which could be shot from a bridge to get the same elevated viewpoint. Having located one, we filmed Sham walking (2).
Shrinking Sham down and feathering the edges of his element into the shot was the work of moments (3), but the illusion wasn’t complete until this element had been colour-corrected to match up the tarmacs.
Next the cars had to be erased, which I achieved partly by overlaying cropped sections from later in the footage (when the cars had moved on, leaving a space behind) and partly by exporting a frame to Photoshop and using the clone tool. The former technique is preferable because using a motion element retains the movement of picture noise; the lack of this movement can be an FX giveaway. Therefore I kept the Photoshopped sections small – just way in the distance where the cars were tiny.
At this point (4) the shot is essentially complete, but I added some extra touches in the form of smoke elements from an FX library, a faint one in the distance (top left) and one on the van which I had left frozen in the picture as if it had been abandoned. I also duplicated the van’s smoke and distorted it to create a shadow for that smoke (5).
