FEATURE: DEUCE OF SPADES - How I made a period full feature film all by myself on ZERO budget

The fourth and fifth ones in post 179 loook *really* nice...especially the 5th, with the sun splash on the guy looking at the car in the gas station. Really nice composition there, and beautful light/contrast.
 
Ted Spencer said:
The fourth and fifth ones in post 179 loook *really* nice...especially the 5th, with the sun splash on the guy looking at the car in the gas station. Really nice composition there, and beautful light/contrast.
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Thank you :)... It took thousands of watts to produce this beautiful effect, lots and lost of HMIs pointing all at Tim... Several thousands of dollars worth of HMIs....

:)

Really?

No, not really. We simply were running out of daylight and his close ups ended up coinciding with the sun being at the perfect angle. No artificial lights, flags or devices were used for that one shot. Simply the sun. Same with shot #5, which was filmed right after Tim's close up.

Go figure :)...

One of the reasons we got so far behind schedule is because I was told by gas station owner that the station would be clear of his shop's modern cars. But when I got there at 5AM that mroning I found about 4 modern cars parked in the middle of the set, no keys and no way to move them.

:kali:

This threw a HUGE wrench in our schedule. Try to film an entire 50's period scene which primarily happens right outside the station's office, while hiding 4 modern cars parked right there. And not being "prepared" for it.

"where's my stick of dynamite??"

Blowing the modern cars (I call them: "shi* cars") up was my first plan LOL... But we ended up going to Plan B (slightly more boring and a whole lot less satisfying LOL) which was to cover them with anything we could find and make them "blend" into the background. We also parked a couple larger classic cars in front of them to hide some of them...

It was pretty nerve wrecking... We had to redo the "camouflage process" every other shot, cause of angle changes... All the hotrodder there that day landed a hand to help with this.

And considering I got the station for free, I was not about to *****. I am very grateful the owner was willing to hae his friend open for us on a sunday and allow us to film there all day free of charge. He just forgot about his cars...

Looking at footage, even at screengrabs, I cannot see any of them. Guess we did a great job at hiding them.

Tim's great back lighting on his close ups were a wonderful byproduct of our misfortrune with the **** cars that day.
 
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Ted Spencer said:
The front lighting on him is great too. Just the right amount of glow in his face. Was it lights, bounce, or...?
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Mmmmm.. I can't remember.. I'm sorry, but I have completed over 76 shoots to date, for this feature alone... If it wasn't for my keeping a record in my weekly blog, I don't think I would remember ANYTHING...

I know I did use artificial lights to supplements natural light in some of the shots such as:

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And flags for this shot:

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But I can't remember what we did on the JOHHNY close up shots. May have been a 1K light or a bounce or both...
 
Been working on the behind the scene footage and almost done editing a cute little clip showing some candid moments on the set. Looking forward to sharing it.

Meanwhile, here are a few screengrabs from a swing dancing flashback scene, shot "run and gun". I did have permission to film but did not have the chance to light or even organize my shoot, since I was filming amidst a real swing dance which I could not interfere with or interrupt in any way. Low light conditions were bad and I had to use a very slow shutter speed, resulting in blurred motion, but the swing dance moves are so cool and the kids there look so fifties it compensates ten folds :). I was honored to have the world champion Lindy Hoppers show their moves for the film. I had to single handedly coordinate the wardrobe, hair and make up of about 50 dancers. And film, all in 4 hours.

CRAZY!!!

At the end of my shoot, an old man walked up to me and said: "I was a star dancer in the 40's and 50's in Hollywood. When I looked at your monitor and saw what your were filming I could not believe my eyes! You nailed it. You brought back my youth!!!!"

Then he gave me a big hug and simply said "Thank you for making this film"

I was touched.


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Looks great, Faith. And like you said, the "retro" nature of the footage will probably cover for the light-challenged circumstances. We should all be so lucky : )

The old fella was right - it really does look like it did back then. So cool...
 
Last night I finished my little behind the scene clip. I just need to add a couple sound FX and I will render it and upload it on U-tube.

As I watched the clip, it really hit me just how much of a BLAST this all has been, despite the hard work and difficult work conditions prevailing on our no budget set...

This is guerilla film making at its best LOL! One filmmaker and her camera against the world: Gritty, crazy and most of all FREE of corporate constraints. I call it kamikaze filmmaking :),

YEAH! THIS is LIVING.

:thumbup:
 
THE BEHIND THE SCENES VIDEO HAS BEEN UPLOADED :)).

http://www.dailymotion.com/deuceofspades/video/x7n0r3_behind-the-scenes-of-deuce-of-spade_shortfilmshttp://video.cardomain.com/Clip.aspx?key=929F8517A5532361

Please note that this is home video footage from my lead actor's little portable SD camera, and he shot it himself at his spare time. Footage looks like home video (well... IT IS) but the content is still fun to watch and you get to see me battling my battles on the set.

Clip was edited to music and is 3min long. Packed with action :).

Note that while filming my front wheel spinning, a rock flew at his lens and chipped it. You will notice the chip in a good portion of the footage... Live and learn LOL.


Enjoy!!
 
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Using a 35mm adapter with hvx lcd and Marshall HD monitor with no AC.

- - - - R E S P E C T - - - - - G I R L - - - -

Hope all be great !!!! Congratulation !
 
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LuckyStudio 13 said:
Using a 35mm adapter with hvx lcd and Marshall HD monitor with no AC.

- - - - R E S P E C T - - - - - G I R L - - - -

Hope all be great !!!! Congratulation !
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Yeah... I like living on the edge LOLOL...

TOMORROW I FILM MY LAST FLASHBACK SCENE !!

I bought a small HD Sony camera today to keep filming behind the scenes. Since Tim is pretty much wrapped, I dont have access to his camcorder anymore...

I will film us filming the last flashback scene, for posterity :)... We finished the set yesterday at midnight. It looks very convincing. the biggest prop house in the world (Omega cinema) donated all the furniture for that scene. That was so cool! It was probably a good $600 (or more?) worth of rental stuff.

:thumbup:
 
If you don't mind me asking, is this your paying, daytime gig and did you buy all the hardware? Just curious because it's a professional-looking production yet you mentioned not having a budget which made me wonder if you are a commited amateur that bought her stuff or rented. Either way, it's a major financial undertaking and I hope you recoup your investment.

It is beautiful...........
 
Your outdoor framegrabs are great! I'd imagine with the cost of gas going down, it's helping with your budget on this- I can only imagine the gas costs for the races you've filmed.
 
Bobonli said:
If you don't mind me asking, is this your paying, daytime gig and did you buy all the hardware? Just curious because it's a professional-looking production yet you mentioned not having a budget which made me wonder if you are a commited amateur that bought her stuff or rented. Either way, it's a major financial undertaking and I hope you recoup your investment.

It is beautiful...........
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I am not a commited amateur, I am an amateur that needs to be commited LOL

:)

Yes I bought my gear. If I film the sequel, the cost of it will be near zero cause I now own all the gear I need to make films. Although I may want to add a few goodies such as a steadycam setup for my next film - if I can - oh and a crane too. (add this to my christmas list LOL).

I know, I am insane for financing everything myself. I am not rich by any means. Want to hear more insane? I turned down investors. Some industry people came to me before I started filming and wanted to become partners on this project. They were taling about a half million dollars...

I thaught about it for 3 days.

I walked away from the deal. I knew they would end up taking control and my film would no longer be my film.


What it would cost them a half million to film, it will only cost me 60,000.00 or less. And it will come out exactely how I WANT IT. Giving partners 51% of my film (which is what they wanted) meant they would take the driver's seat. And God knows where I would end up. Maybe nowhere at all. At least this way I know where I am going and it is my vision, done my way.

Besides, it makes for a heck of a lot more interesting, and inspiring story, don't you think ?

Everybody is donating stuff to help me. And I am doing everything myself so the cost of production is minimal.

The accomplishment however, is tremendous :).
 
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Lost Skies said:
Your outdoor framegrabs are great! I'd imagine with the cost of gas going down, it's helping with your budget on this- I can only imagine the gas costs for the races you've filmed.
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We got SOL because the price of gas was at its highest (over $4 / gal) when we filmed most of our flashbacks. My hotrods does only about 10 miles per gal and my truck about 14 to 15 mpg. Each round trip to the location woudl cost me about $100 to $200 in gas... but I did try to camp on location to save money for sunday shoots. Come back sunday night... Still was murder.

The car owners are all hotrodder friends of mine and they call covered their own gas. They believed in the project that much. Cost of filming the dry lake racing was ZERO except for my own gas and feeding my actors and crew.
 
IT'S OFFICIAL - AS OF TONIGHT I AM DONE FILMING THE FLASHBACKS.

The shoot went very smoothly. Some fo the shots came out even more beautiful than I was hoping. The glass wall we built was worth every penny and all the trouble we went through. It really made the scene!!

I will post screengrabs soon.

When you see them, remember that this was shot IN MY GARAGE. And is actually simply the jail set, flipped around and re-arranged.

They say poverty is the mother of invention LOL
 
I have a few questions for you, Faith.

How much did it cost you to build your jail cell/waiting room set? How long did it take? And what sort of materials did you use?

I've been trying to get my own no-budg' period piece off the ground, and we've had no luck finding a location, so I'm seriously considering building a set. And your sets looked great, so I was curious about that whole process.
 
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