KEEPER OF THE LOST - Flyin' Monkey Films & MattSpat Films

Gaffer and Grip extraodinaire Anthony Ranieri has just agreed to come on baord to help us make this movie. Luckily for me he has a light weekend with nothing planned, so he's going to come out for the good food and to make sure we get this looking good.

Anthony has worked with me in the past on a music video shoot as well as a spec commercial shoot for "Mr Ricochet". He's also very good at making sure I don't electrocute the hell out of myself. Or the cast...
 
Just called in another favor. :grin: I'm helping out some friends next week with a couple of short films, so they'll be helping me out this weekend, particularly with the city shots in downtown Toronto. Aaron Peever and James Dalzell with whom I worked on "Tomfoolery" almost a year ago will be assisting Tony Ranieri with grip work. Most likely one of them will be manning the boom pole if Jake's sound guy Shaun doesn't get back to us soon about the gear he's managed to snag this weekend and is looking for a short film to use it on. Fingers are crossed for that connection.

Walkie Talkies are charging, adpater is charged up, batteries good to go, although I should pick up another 12v battery for the monitor, and gotta go make arrangements for the generator. Also supposed to meet Jessica and take a look at costumes this afternoon.

Busy, bsuy day. Maybe I'll actually podcast some of it...
 
It's official. We're going to be shooting over the course of 2 days. I'm definitely not going to rush this shoot and although we could conceivably get it all done tomorrow, I'd prefer to have more time to focus on the main set pieces.

The alley shoot is going to take place tomorrow at the University and we're going to work up to that through some other "wandering" city shots. We wont be shooting in order like we did for "Falling Up", so the schedule is a little scattered because of locations.

The other main set piece is in the Garage/Storage room and we'll be shooting that on Sunday along with any pickup shots. We should be able to get the garage set up on Saturday night after the main shoot and go over the shots that we need. One of the shots I envisioned, had the door wide open and outside completely blown out, so we'll need sunlight for that effect, since we don't have the amount of light we'd need for that scene.

Tomorrow we'll be all over Downtown Toronto and shooting some fairly iconic and beautiful buildings and scenery... as well as down Queen St for the grungy side of things. So it should be a full day, doing a bit of run and gun with a couple of nice set-ups on location.

No snow yet. You won't even believe it's winter.
 
Met with Matt, Jessica and Robert last night for beer and wings. Had a bit of a conversation and general get to know you. I thought we'd do the whole getting-to-know you a bit more privately, so did not podcast it. Podcasts however resume today.

Today we shoot. Off to do last minute pickups of equipment.
 
Day 1 is wrapped. Woo hoo!

We had a full day of shooting, but not as much podcasting as I would have liked. The photographer bailed on us completely, so we're not too impressed with him. I did a little at the beginning, but once we got going it was hard to keep track of the camera since it was constantly switching hands.

I picked up Tony at 7:30 and made it back in time to intercept Matt so we could load up his car. Headed over to the Don Mills sunway station to meet Jessica, Robert and Aaron and suss out the location a little. Now this was a little after the sun had properly risen so it was kinda peeking out from behind the buildings. As predicted and feared there was no snow on the ground except the few random spot, so scenery was mostly nasty looking. After sussing out the steps on the subway we found a good spot and Matt went over some blocking with the actors. A little nervous but who wasn't on their first directing gig, especially under the intense scrutiny of me.

We got through the initial scene and got the shot all wrapped up and with a bow. All coverage completed. And I didn't even have to look at the shot list yet. That would come later.

From Don Mills, we headed around the corner to a park just down from my house and after wrestling the toy dog from my son Evan, (and my wife's disapproving gaze) we got the first shot in the script off. It was kinda cool to see how well that shot played and how well Robert was playing the character. Next up was the wide shot with my wife Allison and son Evan (gotta ue my own kid in here, right?), and we got that done along with close ups. The sun was playing up around this time, so Tony and I built a quick 3x3 silk out of Ikea curtain rods, some copper pipe corners and light white curtains that had been kicking around for a bit. We DIYed the hell out of that and totally killed the glare. So into the trunk that went, in case we has any other issues.

Walking shots, down some street were next and then we headed down to the University (which will go unnamed) for the alley shoot. Once again the sun as nice to us, and was behind the buildings as well as totally overcast, so we had AWESOME even light all day. I took direction of this scene since Matt was in the scene and got all the shots we needed, including coverage, in about 3 hours. We did have one incident where this dude walks right past us, right THROUGH the scene, and as he's gone in the distance (I'm thnking it adds a little reality) I call action. We start to roll the dolly and Matt and Jessica start their little fight scene, she goes down and Robert is doing his thing... and in the camera, I see doofus headed right towards Matt like a guided missile. Right into the middle of the scene.

Now there is my big ass HVX + Brevis + Mattehbox, on my dolly, which is being pulled across 10 feet of track with me sitting on it, and Aaron pulling, while Anthony is standing at the side. So it's kinda obvious what we're doing. Especially since he'd just walked right through the set!

Dude demanded to know what was going on and if Jessica was okay. We say :"uh, were shooting a movie", and he nods and exits. Maybe he wanted a closeup. Whatever.

Anyway, we wrapped that scene and moved on to Casa Loma, then down to Chinatown, me whining about wanting to shoot infront of a one of the murals, all the way down.

Lunch sucked. The chicken was very suspicious and about 3/4 of the way through the meal I admitted that despite my best efforts, I hated my meal. And that it was quite possibly NOT chicken. At all. Seriously.

I shoulds taken a picture of that.

Anyway, went and shot the mural and while we were there got a little inspired and shot some more street walking shots, 2 of which we're particularly proud of...

Will post pics later and get the 2nd podcast up sometime tonight. 3rd podcast will deal with the shoot, but tonight I'll be editing to make sure we have enough coverage.

Oh I gotta go back out: left 2 of my P2 Cards in Tony's bag. urgh.
 
puckthemad said:
Now there is my big ass HVX + Brevis + Mattehbox, on my dolly, which is being pulled across 10 feet of track with me sitting on it, and Aaron pulling, while Anthony is standing at the side. So it's kinda obvious what we're doing. Especially since he'd just walked right through the set!

Dude demanded to know what was going on and if Jessica was okay. We say :"uh, were shooting a movie", and he nods and exits. Maybe he wanted a closeup. Whatever.
Click to expand...

Ha ha, now I know, if you want to assault a woman in public, just make sure you have an HVX with an adapter and a dolly and tell everyone it's a movie! :)
 
Grabs look good. Watching your podcasts and detailing the time and effort you put into your films is making me change the the way I do things when I shoot.

Thanks for taking the time.
 
Looks like things are going pretty well for you Mr. Smith. Can't wait to see this come to. I expect great things, don't let me down or the dolly gets it...

Rogan
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top