"An Orange Rose" by J. Van Auken

thanks a lot.

We took it to a director (fresh off broadway) in Duluth over the weekend and had him take a look and give notes. Got a few solid laughs, which was all I was hoping for.
 
Hans,

How's this going? It looks like you're shooting in a florist shop? My film also takes place in a flower shop.

Did you run into challenges with sound? From the coolers?

Good luck with this!
 
we did in fact, run into a LOT of cooler sound trouble. enough to where im pretty sure we're not taking home the sound design prize. we tried to cover it in post as best we could with a mix of store ambience and elevator music. In the end, i'm happy with it.

The other problem was physical space. It was a small small shop, and cheating wasn't always an option (walls are hard to move) so the 28mm lens became my buddy all day.

thanks for the encouragement, rob. good luck to you too.
 
comedy is one of those tough genres for the camera. It often limits your lens choices and really only allows for to much CC. in contrast, I made a dramatic spot to run on tv here yesterday, and I could go NUTS with CC. it was a lot of fun.
 
thanks duke. Lighting was one area I was afraid would fall short due to the resources we had at the time and working in a confined space. Really had to stretch what I could use a reflector for, but I think it worked. This film was definetly a situation of lighting for the room opposed to the individual setups.
 
So I was looking around at the other lovefest individual film threads and noticed that a lot of them have many times as many hits as mine, and what's more; many have 5 star ratings. Granted, many of those threads have been up much longer than mine, but I still wasn't happy about it.

Then it dawned on me why; those threads offered more than my sparse updates and production logs. They have detailed bits and insights about filmmaking that drew a lot of people into dialogue.

So, in the interest of enriching the community here, I'll be posting a number of times over the next few days going into detail about a few issues that seem prevalent in the indi community here. hopefully this will draw some more hits and help a few people who find themselves in similar situations to mine.
 
Lesson one: So you have to film in a tiny tiny place and you have 2 lights.

This is pretty common among the lil filmmakers out there. You finally got a place that will let you shoot there, and you were able to get some home depot or even *gasp* some smith viktor lights together.

The trouble is, that the place is tiny, like say, a tiny flowershop in the middle of Minnesota. Not only that, but there's crap all over the shop, which REALLY cuts down on places to put stuff.

Here is a pencil diagram of the space we had to work with:
1202162005.jpeg


Our lights were two 1k smith viktors (cause all my Arri's were in Chicago) and a 40" 5-in-1 reflector.

My process was this: it's a flowershop, a place for business, so the ambient light was prettyt much set when we got there. We were fortunate they have tungsten track lights all around. This is good, cause we didnt have china balls or softies at all.

I set keys on the talent based on which side i could physically jam a light stand.

The other concern with such a busy background and varying skin tonalities was separation. Now, in the diagram, you can see that the way I stages the talent, particularly talent H and talent D, each of the two lights served dual purpose: as key for one character, and edge for another. Two lights just became 4. thats money saved. money you can buy legos with.

Another concern in such a small area with little diffusion at my disposal was the intensity of the light. Luckily, most places have some kind of white walls and/or ceiling. thats hundreds of square feet of free reflector. This was most used in the diagram as edge light for talent A with light B at mark 1. Using the walls and cieling let me determine just how diffused I wanted things, and also didn't make me point a white-hot light at an actor's face.

the last major concern was that we needed eyelight. Notice in the diagram there are only two lights used, and a reflector. Most lighting books start you with the idea of three point lighting with three heads. well, 2 is not three. so, by finding the exact opposite angle from the camera's angle on the talent, and bending the reflector convexly, we created a nice eyelight for most of the shots that also provided free fill. That's two lights covered by a $40 reflector. that's legos in the bank.

As a note; in the diagram above, the camera angles were'nt drawn out. This is because the size of the location would pretty much determine our focal lengths and angles. Not showing equipment in the frame pretty much cut down my composition choices.

I'm sure my chicken scratch leaves a lot to be desired, so I'll welcome any questions that the diagram raises.

The next lesson: So you don't have time for a script.
 
Lesson 2: So you don't have time for a script.

Alright, so you've nailed down a place that will let you shoot there, except it isn't exactly what you had in the script. You've also got a few theater friends who're willing to put in an afternoon, except theyre not really what you had in the script. Also, you're script has more locations than you could get, and would take more time than you have. Basically, you have no script.

"No problem" you say. "We'll just improv. Acting's that easy, right?"

No. it's not. The last decade in theater has told me that much.

But you've got to improv, or there's no film. Fine. It can work.

Firstly, you NEED to have at least one meeting, preferably a dinner, where you and ALL the actors sit down and cook up the scene. As a director, it is best to give them a direction to go with (as per your title) as opposed to just sitting there and saying "Make it funny!" or "More enthusiasm!"

Ever watch "Who's line?" every game starts with a suggestion, or character, or direction. Giving the actor a goal in the scene, and a preconceived way of achieving it gives their performance some structure, and you avoid the major pitfall of most improved indie scenes: they suck because they have no direction.

When picking characters and directions, try to play up opposites and foils. Introduce as much inherent conflict into the scene as possible. don't just make a scene with one normal character and a character with a funny voice. Make the normal guy a minority, and funny voice guy a racist. Conflict will drive the story, and keep people from asking what the heck they just saw when your credits roll.

Once each actor has set in on who they want to be and what they want from the situation in the scene, rehearse it. Run it until they basically write their own lines. After a dozen or so times through, their "improv" will become much more uniform, making editing the scene and keeping pace much much easier.

Blocking is an area a lot of beginners fall very very very short on (how many "two guys sit there and talk" scenes have you seen from new filmmakers?) People move. the change positions, they sit down, the wander around. Make your characters move, but make damn hell ass sure there's a reason. character A goes to lift a vase, character B tries to make sure he doesn't drop it. easy stuff. Try to put this under your dialogue to avoid tiring 'proscenium' filmmaking. And while you're at it, move your camera too. If I wanted to see a scene from one static angle the whole time, I'd go get a ticket to Wicked at the oriental down the street. This is motion pictures. It's right in the name.

So there it is: you have a scene with conflicting characters. They each want something. they but heads. they move around. they solve their problem in some fashion. there's a beginning, a middle, and an end, and we weren't bored as hell, and all without a script.
 
Hey, man. Don't know how I missed the thread here. Just wanted to pop in and say that's a purty picture in your poster.

I'm really liking the grabs you've got going on. Both the raw, and CC'd ones. They are nice and clean images. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

Don't worry about the pre-fest hype... :) Once people start watching the films, it'll start to shift to different threads....

Best of luck to you in the fest.

Later,
Jason
 
Hey I really enjoyed what you wrote, especially about the actors. I'm really pumped to see this one now.

Yeah and don't worry about the hype. Once the films are up almost everyone will weight in with praise/critiques etc.
 
Hey, Hans. Glad to see you got everything done. And what Jason said is absolutely right. I was a little overwhelmed in the last fest when I would see some threads with thousands and thousands of views. That just because some of the filmmakers have established good friendships with users around these parts, because of locations, similar interests and respect of talent. These things build over time and I'm sure after this festival experience you'll establish some new forum friends as well. I was part of the last festival and it was a great over all experience.

Good luck.
 
that, my friend kyle, is a straight grab.

The actor is David Horn who headlines in Duluth. He's what we like to call "special"
 
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