Borrowing equipment to make a short film is stressful for me. It fills me with anxiety.
I don’t want to break anything.
That was a major concern of mine while we were shooting The Climb.
It was bad enough we had to deal with weather concerns all weekend. I know I can’t control the weather but there is something I can control…
I never touch the camera.
What’s the point? I’m not a camera man. Ask me to jump in an edit session and put some clips together and I’m all for it.
The crew continually laughed at me because I wouldn’t go near any equipment. Dominika eventually stopped asking me to hold the camera between takes. I made it perfectly clear that I was uncomfortable holding it.
Here’s why…
I may or may not drop things from time to time. I’m a normal human being after all. I figure the less I hold the camera, the better chance it has to survive the shoot. It makes sense to me.
It was still funny to the crew. I’m happy to entertain.
At the end of the day, we shot everything we needed and I didn’t break anything.
One of the coolest aspects of The Climb has always been our main character’s facial tattoos.
Why did she get them? What do they mean?
The reason for their existence isn’t quite what you would expect. Regardless, they play a vital role in the story.
So they had to be awesome.
I’ve written about Alex Rotundo’s brilliant design several times before. I had a fairly specific vision of what I wanted the designs to look like. The tattoos were not meant to be intrusive but had to be prominent on her face. They also had to look good on camera. Alex achieved everything I was looking for and more.
The whole process took a little less than 2 hours to complete. Alex started with a transfer that outlined the tattoos on Alyssa’s face. From there she filled everything in with an alcohol based makeup so the tattoo wouldn’t smudge if it rained or Alyssa rubbed her face. Finally, she finished the whole thing off with ‘something’ (Sorry I don’t remember what it was called) that made the final design incredibly realistic.
The results were amazing on screen.
We were filming a closeup Sunday morning and a slight gust of wind blew her hair back mid-take revealing the entire tattoo.
It’s a craving that’s been getting stronger since the day I finished editing Playing Through nearly 2 years ago.
Happily, I still get to edit full time in a live television environment but there is something calming and inspiring about slowing things down and building a story.
And now I have new footage to work with!
There’s something incredibly exciting about having 6 hours of brand new footage to mold into a short film. Editing has always been a passion of mine and I’ve been pumped about editing something new for far too long.
The next step for me is to continue catching up on my writing, blogging and graphic design responsibilities. I think it’s important to wrap up as many projects as you can before tackling another one. I’m also delaying the beginning of post production to give myself time to distance myself from the footage.
I wrote, produced and directed this short film. It’s based on a script I wrote almost 5 years ago so it’s safe to assume I’m the right guy to edit the movie. Having said that, we just finished shooting and I want to give myself a week or so to recharge before delving into the footage.
Until then, I’ll be bouncing up and down thinking about dropping our company’s opening animation on a timeline and editing a new short film.
It’s been nearly a week since we started production on our latest short film, The Climb.
Since that time I’ve come up with a list of 22 posts to fully tell the story of how we made the movie. I’m on a bus as I write this post and at first it was difficult to decide where to start.
I eventually decided to tall about the number 1 storyline of the weekend. The single issue that could have killed the film entirely. An issue I wrote about last week…
The Weather
Our schedule was divided pretty evenly over our 2.5 day shoot. However, the forecast wasn’t being kind to us.
It literally started raining the second we piled into the vehicles to head to our first location.
By the time we got there it was a full blown thunderstorm. We spent the next hour trying to figure out what to do before heading to a nearby Tim Horton’s to wait it out.
It never let up and our night shoot had to be postponed. Great start!
The next morning we were all expecting another disappointment. Instead the weather was beautiful and we were able to film all of our morning scenes without a problem. It wasn’t very warm but at least the rain was gone. Things were looking up…
Until we started shooting the most important scenes of the film. It started pouring again… We had a backup plan to film underneath a giant bridge if it rained but strong winds blew the rain in our faces regardless.
It was then that Eric and I implemented Plan B. We moved the production to the tightest nook underneath the bridge and shot another scene that was supposed to take place in the park.
Visually, it was the best decision of the shoot as the location turned out better than the original.
There we were, soaking wet and freezing under a bridge shooting a 7 page dialogue scene with our actors shivering between takes. It was pretty rough.
After lunch the weather brightened up again. It was looking like we would stay on schedule…. Nope.
By the time we got back to the bridge to shoot the final scene it started raining again and again we had to postpone.
Sunday
Let me first start by saying this movie was supposed to take place during a heat wave!
We now had to shoot our normal Sunday schedule in addition to all the the scenes we had to delay. It wasn’t easy and Mother Nature wasn’t finished with us yet…
Sunday morning felt like late November. It was freezing. Our crew was wearing winter coats. Then it happened… Something I thought would be impossible but it happened…
It snowed!
So much for the heat wave…
We still managed to shoot everything we needed that morning but seriously? Snow?
After that the weather slowly began to warm up and we gained a fair amount of momentum.
After a productive afternoon we were once again faced with shooting the final scene.
This time we had the sun to deal with. It was getting later in the day and the shadows were constantly changing. We needed clouds! Was there clouds? Nope. Just sun but we managed.
That night a few of us went back to the beach to shoot the night scenes we didn’t get on Friday. It was still cold but for the first time, we didn’t have to deal with any curveballs.
Miraculously, we actually shot everything we needed despite the weather but I’m happy we had backup plans. I can’t even imagine what would have happened if we didn’t.
If you’re planning on shooting a low budget short film outdoors, I highly recommend a contingency plan or at least a rain cover location to turn to if it rains.
We dealt with rain, thunderstorms, wind, cold, snow, hail, cloud cover and more…
Saying the weather presented a challenge is an understatement but besides the poor conditions it was still a blast.
