HERITAGE - Geoff Reisner

Geoff_R

Geoff_R

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This film, like all others in the fest, is best enjoyed with a pair of good speakers or headphones. :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

A Dark Drama...

I'm a little late in the game this time... shooting on and off over the next week and a half. Post shouldn't be too difficult as I'm not dealing with any VFX. Very short script, extremely small crew and zero budget :)
 
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Reserved for BTS & UPDATES.

SCREEN GRABS - Shooting Day Two

SCREEN GRABS - Shooting Day One

BTS PHOTOS - Shooting Day One

02.14.07 - 720p H.264 version up
For those who care to check it out, I rendered out the final cut as a 720p H.264 file, it's about 210MB.

http://www.rawimagefilms.com/qtmovies/heritage/720p_heritage.mov


02.10.07 - Mailed it to 'On The Lot'
One of the other reasons I made this film was in order to submit something to 'On the Lot'. I didn't feel confident submitting a 5-min cut of Project 47 (my horrorfest entry), it didn't work well as a 6 min film (current final version is 13 mins), it'd work even less as a 5 min film. I don't have any other films so I needed to shoot something new... I cut a 5 min version of Heritage and sent it out Saturday morning. So many talented people have sent stuff in, so I'm not going to get my hopes up or anything, but fingers crossed.

02.01.07 - Uploaded
Finally...time to sleep.

01.31.07 - Post-Production...
I finished the color correction early this morning and sent a picture cut over to my composer. He said he'd have the score ready by 7PM...I apologized for giving him less than 12 hours to do the music. I then remembered he had to work until 4PM....so really I'm giving him 3 hours to do the music...but he sounded very confident, so I'm excited to see what he comes up with.

I'm working on sound design right now and trying to get my actors over here for some last minute ADR work. I'm not satisfied with the sound recordings for the dialouge scenes. I haven't heard back from them yet, so there's a chance I'll have to stick with what I've got for the fest.

01.30.07 - Post-Production...
Almost done editing...just opened another can of 'Monster' energy drinks... this film is unofficially endorsed by Monster Energy drinks...

01.24.07 - Shooting Day Two
Started early in the morning, packed camera, tripod and high hat in the car and headed downtown to grab a few simple scenes and one complicated one. I used google earth a few nights ago to track down locations I wanted to use within the city for the scenes. It was much easier than location scouting on the ground.

Our one big scene took longer than expected and I lost the lens cap to my SLR in the snow, that was very irritating! We got back to the suburbs and shot all of our night scenes with my two main characters. We were so behind, we didn't stop once to take pictures of any of the setups... but the footage itself and the performances came out very strong, so I got what I needed for the film. I've got a few quick pickups to shoot today, mostly establishing shots and some B-roll if time permits.

01.21.07
Started putting together a rough cut of the elements we've already shot. The footage and performances so far have been excellent. I shot some b-roll elements this morning, not sure if they'll make it into the final film. I'll probably shoot more train footage tomorrow, back to editing...

01.19.07 - Shooting Day One
Started shooting today at 9:30 am, even though I didn't get much sleep I was wired. My friend Wes, (a Director and DOP himself ) helped me out tremendously by gaffing and even booming sound. (Tomorrow we'll be reversing roles as I help him on one of his shoots, a film he's submitting for 'On the Lot'.)

We had a few interior shots in the house; took a little long with our first setup...I kept tweaking lights perhaps a bit too much, but once we wrapped first scene, things picked up and we maintained a good pace.

In the afternoon, we did the exteriors we needed for the day. It was fairly cold, in the 20's I believe, but the wind wasn't that bad... I've been on plenty of shoots in far worse conditions so I can't complain.

We finished up at a train station and got some footage on the train as well which came out really nice. I was worried we'd get kicked off the train but no one seemed to care what we were doing and the conductor never noticed the camera. I boarded with a back pack which carried the HVX. Once we were moving, I took the camera out and immediately started rolling. I knew I only needed a few moments of train footage and didn't want to risk any problems with train officials. Chicago has very strict rules and regs when shooting on their trains.

I'll be shooting some establishing shots throughout the weekend, but my next major shoot day isn't until Wednesday of next week. I'll post some BTS shots and some grabs soon.

01.18.07
Almost done casting, need to re-arrange a few scenes in the schedule, trying to keep things as simple as possible. Got all my gear for the shoot, very small lighting package, no kino's or HMIs, just a few tungsten heads. Wish I had the manpower to use a dolly but realistically, it's a two man crew so there's no time for those kinds of setups and there'd be no one to push the dolly either. While I op camera, my gaffer will be booming sound. Ran around and got all the props I need. We start shooting tomorrow at 9am.

Also, just received my DVXuser battery today. I was afraid it wouldn't make it here in time for the shoot. I've managed to get by with one battery so far but for this shoot I have a lot of exterior Chicago shooting and some shooting on a train, so I can't risk running out of battery power.

01.17.07
Locked in supporting actress while finalizing the shooting schedule. Managed to get the last and final draft of the script complete. I'm very satisfied with the script at this point!
 
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Thanks Jason!

Thanks Brandon, yea, I am cutting it close this time... I should be done shooting on the 25th if all goes as planned. It was a last minute idea of mine and I really love the script so I'm going to do everything I can to get it done by Feb 1st.

I was getting ready to shoot a short called 'Fade' but the script was running 10 pages long and I didn't want to deal with the hassle of cutting two versions again; plus the title 'Fade' was recently grabbed up! :)

You busy editing 'Truth of Life'?
 
welcome to the game! Looking forward to checkin' out your film. (even though I'm sure you'll probably still put in some vfx shots. :) )

/j
 
Hah, we'll see about the VFX....maybe one or two will squeeze their way in... There's bound to be some idea that'll pop into my head during post that'll require it!
 
Hey Geoff, Glad to see you aboard!

Wow! No FX, huh? You must be jonesing after your horrorfest entry!

Best of luck to you!!!

-Ted
 
Great. The thing that is slowing me down a bit is ALL OF THE FOOTAGE! Wow. We have so much b-roll!!! (I guess I shouldn't complain.)
 
Geoff_R said:
You busy editing 'Truth of Life'?
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Actually it's cut... just need to shoot the flashback footage this weekend... it's also my bro's wedding this weekend... so that'll give you a guess as to what the flashback's contain :)

Good luck my friend!
 
Ted, yea sometimes having excess footage can be difficult. I know for editing' sake, it's best to have all the coverage you could ask for but it's sometime a double-edged sword.

It's hard to pick and choose amongst all that footage when so much of it looks great! I've run into that problem a lot, especially when editing music videos. There's always an abundance of coverage and I often find three or four competing shots for a moment that all look good...and I hate having to make that decision on which to take and which to cut out.
 
Yeah, for Smuggler's Ransom, we ended up having around 13-14 hours of footage... lol. But for the feature doc I worked on a year or so ago, we ended with over 75 hours of footage. hehe.
 
Brandon Rice said:
Actually it's cut... just need to shoot the flashback footage this weekend... it's also my bro's wedding this weekend... so that'll give you a guess as to what the flashback's contain :)

Good luck my friend!
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It's like Rodriguez's 'Rebel without a Crew', you've got to use what's available! It'd be expensive as heck incorporating a full blown wedding into a short just for films sake.
 
Brandon Rice said:
Yeah, for Smuggler's Ransom, we ended up having around 13-14 hours of footage... lol. But for the feature doc I worked on a year or so ago, we ended with over 75 hours of footage. hehe.
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75 hours! Who was the lucky editor on that project ,hah :)
 
Geoff_R said:
It's like Rodriguez's 'Rebel without a Crew', you've got to use what's available! It'd be expensive as heck incorporating a full blown wedding into a short just for films sake.
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Absolutely! Kind of like I put in the "goals" thread that we wanted to try and think on our feet on get something together.

Geoff_R said:
75 hours! Who was the lucky editor on that project ,hah :)
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HAHA! I was actually! Drained 2 years of my life! I was able to do some shorts on the side during that time though! And the project really helped me in many ways as well. :Drogar-Happy(DBG):
 
Brandon Rice said:
HAHA! I was actually! Drained 2 years of my life! I was able to do some shorts on the side during that time though! And the project really helped me in many ways as well. :Drogar-Happy(DBG):
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If you got something out of it, then you're right, it's worth it! Projects like that are necessary. True, you learn a lot from those experiences... but more importantly I think it tells you if you've got the guts and drive to work in the film business. I think you find out real quick whether you're serious or just looking to have fun.
 
Geoff_R said:
I think you find out real quick whether you're serious or just looking to have fun.
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You got that right! This stuff is a LOT of hard work... and even moreso when you're not 100% excited about a project, but you are serious about the job, so you press on... :)

Sorry for the off-topic... now back to Heritage. (Which is a cool title BTW)
 
Yea, I'm glad I finally got a title for this (thanks to my gf for coming up with it)... I hate pitching actors and crew people on a shoot and telling them, "well, it's untitled for now...but I'll have one soon." No matter how well I say it, it comes off a tad bit unprepared & unprofessional. Which brings up a funny point...

Project 47 was just supposed to be a temp title for horrorfest...I couldn't think of anything new and finally decided to leave it be, hah. I've justified the title by now with made-up back story but the truth is, I just couldn't think of anything good at the time.
 
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