AFTER CLASS - snodart & Tim Young

[snodart]

You can download the Drama-Fest entries here:
http://www.dvxuser.com/dramafest/

2/15/2007: After Class can now be viewed here:
http://snodart.com/shorts.php

After Class is the third from the bottom on the list.


Created by Tim Young & Justin Snodgrass (creators of CACHE)


CAST
David Concannon
Jacob Westerberg
Hanna Snodgrass

CREW
Justin Snodgrass (Written by, DP, edit)
Tim Young (Written by, DP, sound & score)
Richard Spencer (location sound, grip)
David Concannon (Makeup)

SPECIAL THANKS
Oak Glen School House Museum
Amy Snodgrass
Amber Young
Mary Ellen Westerberg


SCREEN CAPS








We had a rough start on this one, but thanks to the tremendous effort of everyone involved, we were able to get everything shot.

Tim is currently working on the sound and score, and I am finishing up with the color correction.

[snodart]

BTS PICS

Jacob patiently waiting.



China ball invasion.


David Concannon, the man of many faces. From school teacher to
world leader in seconds.


David gets Hanna ready for her shot.


David Concannon and Tim Young discuss character
motivation. The Marshall monitor (foreground) was
a rental.. and a huge plus for pulling focus with
a 35mm adapter.


Tim Young (camera), Rich Spencer (boom), and
Jacob Westerberg (at desk).


Me with the DVX, indifocus, and Snod35.


Dave and Tim.


Dave and Jacob synchronized snacking.

[snodart]

Me going over the character of Eric with Jacob.


Tim setting up for a shot.


Below is a good pic of the basic lighting set-up that we ended up using.
The first day that we tried shooting, we used one 500W Lowel Omni,
a 500W Lowel Omni with soft box, and one of the small China balls.
It was working okay until the sun vanished. In the end, we ended
up using 3 China balls and one 500W Lowel Omni with soft box. The
500W soft box set-up looked like a night light compared to the
China balls.
You can also see one of the sound blankets that we had to use. The
hardwood floors and flat ceiling made for some nasty echo.


Dave was good to provide motivation as needed. There is a pretty funny
outtake of one of his methods. We will have to wait until after the
viewing begins to show it though.


Hanna at the mic. Tim will have to
break down our modified shotgun mic set-up.


Here we are looking confused as to why the Marshall had a purple tinge.
We never did figure it out. Abuse from being rented I guess.

[Jared Meyer]

Congrats on the entry, it's looking very nice!
The grabs are great; almost looks like a 50's or 60's piece with the costumes and desaturation.

Looking forward to it!

[dvpixl]

LOVE the poster! the china ball lighting seems very effective for overall fill. are those white light bulbs inside?

[Brandon Rice]

I knew you had something up the sleeve Justin! Looking good!

[Mark Harris]

Uh Timur, he has more china balls than we do...you wanna get on that?

[Tim Young]

LOVE the poster! the china ball lighting seems very effective for overall fill. are those white light bulbs inside?

justin designed the poster. i was really excited about it when he showed me. i think he did a great job.

as far as the china balls, we had 3 of them: one 20" and two 30". they worked really well for what we needed: a cheap, daylight-balanced, large and diffuse light source to compliment the room's natural sunlight and fill in darker spots. it also needed to be bright without drawing to much juice (old schoolhouse with old wiring). we made the china balls for about $80 for the large ones and about $50 for the small one. i bought the lanterns here:

www.paperlanternstore.com

the large one was $14 and the smaller one was $10 if i remember right. we bought nylon lanterns so they would last longer and be less of a fire threat than the paper ones. the bulbs were compact fluorescents that i bought at home depot. they're a brand called n:vision, and they're really cheap. they were $9 for a two-pack of daylight balanced (5500k) 23 watt bulbs. because they're fluorescent, they produce the equivalent of 90 watts of incandescent light each. also because they're fluorescent, they produce very little heat, which is nice for actors. we bought 15 foot electric cords, 2-prong to bulb socket adapters (below right) and a bunch of socket Y-adapters (below left). for the small ball we attached the 2-prong adapter, then a y-splitter, then 2 more splitters on each end of the Y. so we were able to get 4 bulbs. we did the same with the large ball, but split each end again, so using a total of 7 y-adapters we put 8 bulbs in each 30" china ball. the china balls come with a frame that lets them easily attach to the cord. here are the adapters (these are actually from lowe's website - the ones i bought look similar but i couldn't find them on the home depot website):




here are the socket adapter and the splitter at lowes.

the bulbs look like this, except they're daylight balanced (5500K). i think the "soft white" was 3500K - it says on the bulb:



so with the 8-bulb 30" china ball, you get a daylight balanced, 720 watt diffuse light source (8x90 watt bulbs) for 80 bucks (14 for the china ball, about 20 bucks for the adapters, 36 for bulbs, and 10 for the cord), that uses less than 200 watts (23x8) of power, and will last a lot longer than incandescent lights. our lowel omni lights are 500 watts (and use 500 watts because they're incandescent) and put out much less light. the n:vision bulbs are also available in 2700K and 3500K.

we had originally bought specialty compact fluorescent bulbs that we found online that were higher CRI (color rendering index), which is a measure of how fully a bulb's light spectrum is. this is important for avoiding tinting of certain colors in your lighting. you want at least 85, and as close to 100 as possible. anyway i found these bulbs that were daylight balanced and had a CRI of 95, which was as high as i could find, that were $20 each. we bought 4, i put them on the splitter setup, we attached it to the cord, hung it, stood back and watched it detach from the cord and plummet to the ground in slow motion, shattering into a million pieces. so if you try this, make sure to tape the 2-prong splitter to your cord with electician's tape. but luckily we found the n:vision bulbs which were a lot cheaper. i couldn't find the CRI for these bulbs but the color seemed good.

we hung the lights from bogen light stands and some old microphone stands i had. they can be hung from anything sturdy you can clamp them to (buy some plastic spring-loaded clamps from home depot). i'd recommend sand bags to prevent your stands from tipping. we'd like to eventually buy some c-stands.

anyway we were really happy with the china balls, so i would recommend them to anyone looking for some nice, cheap, cool softlights. sorry about the long-winded post, but i thought someone might find this useful.

-tim

[FatBird19]

haha. should we just call this contest DAVIDfest?

Congratulations David on landing another film. You deserve it.

-Justin

[jeremytuttle]

Great to see you guys are in on this one. Its looking good so far. I like the look of the color correcting. Thanks Tim for the info on those China balls. I think I'm going to start making some of those soon.