SHORT: ADDICT - my first short

[djbobbyrhodes]

Addict
Tagline: "An addict will do anything to get his next fix."
A short film by Rob Rhodes.

I'm jumping head first into the deep end. Well, maybe not the deep end. It's a short. More like the shallow end. That sounds about right. I'm jumping head first into the shallow end.

I've decided that in the course of two weeks, I will produce, write, direct, shoot, and edit my very own short.


Finally got a big chunk of the script hammered out. Since this will be produced for a class, I'm on a deadline and on a time limit. The scripts pushing 7 pages, and I'm supposed to max out at 10min. This could be interesting.

Also, I say that it's my first short because I mean it's my first legitimate short film. Not some silly video that me and a couple of buddies made so we could throw it up on youtube. I'm doing it for realsies this time.

 

[djbobbyrhodes]

Reserved

 

[djbobbyrhodes]

Production Stills

Location Scouting:

If you walk down the right back alley in Dekalb city, you can find awesome places to film.

---------------------------
I'm pretty impressed with what the little Corn-Town has. Some of these places look just like the city. So cool.

Talked to the local police, and the city clerk. No permits necessary as long as I don't block traffic or the sidewalk.
-WooT small town!

 

[djbobbyrhodes]

Being on a super tight budget and schedule isn't very fun, but you gotta do what you gotta do. I held an open casting call today in my school's studio.

I basically posted a notice on every free casting website I could find. Mandy, OST, Now Casting, Freecasting, etc.

I only had the call posted for about a week, but we had a surprisingly good turn out for a no-pay gig. Out of all the emails and online submission, we probably pushed about 50% no-show.

Amazingly, ALL the actors who came out had a smattering of talent. A few even blew us completely away. I could not be more grateful to those actors who are willing to work for food on my humble student film simply because they love the craft and wish to hone their talent.

God bless 'em because I could never do it.


Grrr...Just realized that I forgot to ask the actors where they heard about the auditions. That would have been a good idea so I would know which sites are acutually worth posting on, and which are just garbage.

 

[djbobbyrhodes]

Just got off the phone with the local arcade. I'm trying to get permission to film there. It seems like it's going to work out. So, that's good.

Currently working on trying to get the hook up on free food for the cast and crew. I've got one meal provided by the local Topper's Pizza. Good deal. I still will need probably 2-3 more free meals. I really don't want to waste the entire budget on food. I'm poor. I don't need to be poorer.

I'm definitely going to feed everyone. I've worked on sets where no one gets food. It's lame as hell. You spend so much time and energy, and you burn your gas to get out there to help someone out. Then you have to go and buy food too? Not on my set!

 

[djbobbyrhodes]

Day one of filming done!

I feel like I got hit by a truck filled with bricks. Six hours in the sun, forgot to buy sunscreen. I'm So Krispy I feel like Kia Shine...

They say that the best place to learn about film is on the set. Boy howdy. I think next time, I'd like to learn on someone else's set. Today taught me a few hard lessons. Who would have figured that it would be such a pain in the ass to set exposure correctly in the middle of a daytime exterior shot? --ALL of today's shots were daytime exteriors.

I was so worried about low light situations, that I didn't take the time to learn how to properly shoot for daylight. I have a decent idea, set up flags, scrims, bounce cards etc. But damn it all, if I didn't think I could get at least one cloud in the sky today. (Nope).

I exposed for the talent and let the background just wash out. Run and gun is full of compromises.

Speaking of, some lady called the cops on us while we were filming in an alley behind some local businesses which also happen to have apartments on the 2nd and 3rd floors. I got permission to film on public property. But, I'm not too sure if alleys are considered public property or if they belong to whomever owns the buildings. So we bailed. I quickly switched the tape with 45+min of footage to a blank one, just in case the cops confiscated it.

I had some really cool shots planned for that alley too...

It's not really a movie until the cops show up.

 

[Richard J. Johnson]

good locales. Keep it going!

And I can't count the times that the cops showed up for my shoots. Luckily I know most of them around here so it was always cool. Once they leave, come back and keep shooting.

 

[djbobbyrhodes]

good locales. Keep it going!

And I can't count the times that the cops showed up for my shoots. Luckily I know most of them around here so it was always cool. Once they leave, come back and keep shooting.

Definitely, I'll be out there tomorrow. I also have another alley across the street that looks cool too. We didn't make it out the both of 'em today, so we'll hit up #2 first and then it's back to #1.

I can't comprehend why some people's immediate reaction to seeing a video camera is to call the cops. We weren't bothering you or anybody. The scene didn't have dialogue or sound at all...

Get a hobby, I got one.

Hmmm...makes me think that I might want to consider the DSLR route in the future. People don't call the cops on someone taking pictures, do they?

 

[Richard J. Johnson]

Definitely, I'll be out there tomorrow. I also have another alley across the street that looks cool too. We didn't make it out the both of 'em today, so we'll hit up #2 first and then it's back to #1.

I can't comprehend why some people's immediate reaction to seeing a video camera is to call the cops. We weren't bothering you or anybody. The scene didn't have dialogue or sound at all...

Get a hobby, I got one.

Hmmm...makes me think that I might want to consider the DSLR route in the future. People don't call the cops on someone taking pictures, do they?

It is a mystery to me as well. And for me, coming from a full HVX/Letus rig going to a DSLR, The cops get called less often for sure.

 

[djbobbyrhodes]

Finished filming day 2 yesterday. Definitely less eventful. No cops, no painful sunburn. But definitely got the shots I needed.

I filmed a scene in an apartment yesterday, sight unseen. I really wish I had more time to scout locations and whatnot. I wasn't prepared for the stark white walls of the place. I would have killed for a painting or a potted plant or something! Damn college kids and their lack of interior decoration skills. :shocked:

Got permission and filmed inside of the retro arcade yesterday as well. I'm glad I was able to get in there. I tried my best to avoid catching any logos in my shots, so I had to sacrifice a bit. But I think it will work out in the end.


After watching the footage, I'm pretty happy with what I got. Whether it meshes into a cohesive story, only time will tell. Definitely learned some lessons the hard way after seeing the footage. Broke the action axis a few times, during an intense dialogue scene. I can make it work in editing if I place certain shots between so it makes sense. But I was so in the moment when filming, I didn't even realize it.

I think if this keeps happening I'm going to hire a guy to kick me in the crotch every time I do it. :nads:

 

[adamrahn]

"I quickly switched the tape with 45+min of footage to a blank one, just in case the cops confiscated it."


when I used to shoot news in college my director told us that the cops can legally take anything except your tapes. she's no lawyer but has been directing, teaching and living video news production for dozens of years, so I assume she knows what she's talking about.


"It's not really a movie until the cops show up."

hopefully to ask if they can be in the movie fo free

 

[Nathyn]

"It's not really a movie until the cops show up."

Ain't that the truth? LOL.

-Nate

 

[djbobbyrhodes]

"I quickly switched the tape with 45+min of footage to a blank one, just in case the cops confiscated it."


when I used to shoot news in college my director told us that the cops can legally take anything except your tapes. she's no lawyer but has been directing, teaching and living video news production for dozens of years, so I assume she knows what she's talking about.


"It's not really a movie until the cops show up."

hopefully to ask if they can be in the movie fo free

I'm sure that laws vary from state to state and even city to city. But on the day I went down to the police station to ask for permission to film, someone was there trying to get their memory card back. They filmed the fireworks on the 4th of July, and happened to film some people walking around the park. The cops took her memory card and wiped it because it's illegal to record people's conversations without their permission. Regardless of intention.

Not going to risk losing a day's worth of footage. But who knows what would've happened.

 

[djbobbyrhodes]

Technology thinks it's so smart...

I'm having some rather annoying hard drive issues over here and I'm forced into a time crunch. Grrr.

I captured my tapes in Final Cut and saved them to a new portable hard drive. Dropped off the footage to my editor. A few days later, I get a text saying that none of my clips have audio. WTF! I'm freaking out. I know they have audio. When I captured the footage, there was audio. I threw together a rough cut of a scene for class, and that had audio.

Luckily, after fooling around with the hard drive and disconnecting/reconnecting we got the audio to come back. I'm not sure how that happened, but whatever. We got everything set. All I have to do is edit the dialogue scenes myself because without audio, my editor couldn't really do anything with it. Now I've got my clips, an exported rough of what we had, plus all the various EDL's so I can hopefully take the footage into AVID and see if I can work with it.

So, I take my hard drive home, and it wont mount. I try everything I can think of, but no cigar. I call up Western Digital and after some time, we figure out that apparently, the drive wasn't formatted properly to be able to move between a Mac and a PC. The only solution is to reformat. Gah! I'm holding out until tomorrow when I can hit up the school's editing lab. Hopefully the drive will run off of their Mac's and I get a DVD out for the class.

It's due tomorrow at 5:30pm. I can't start until 8am at the earliest. We'll see what happens.

 

[dre83]

It's great to see you're learning "the hard way".

Am I right when I say that what you thought was "nah, should be easy, fast done", were actualy the most difficult things ?

I'm also curious for the sound.

 

[djbobbyrhodes]

It's great to see you're learning "the hard way".

Am I right when I say that what you thought was "nah, should be easy, fast done", were actualy the most difficult things ?

I'm also curious for the sound.

So very true. I actually planned for everything to be completely done in two days. Get the harder stuff, the shots that require sound/lights/crew etc. done early each day, and I can progressively send cast and crew members home as we get more and more into the guerrilla style filming. I actually thought that would be the smoothest way to do things because I figured even though things might be a little difficult for the big shots, I'd have the crew and time to handle it.

Well, that went out the window. Day one, only one crew member showed up. Day two: none. The messed up thing is the fact that working on everyone's set is part of the grade. I hold no ill will to anyone who couldn't make it out, but for those who didn't even shoot me a text, email, or call. Man, I don't appreciate that.

So of course, things that should have went down relatively smoothly, were super rocky. Planned for 2 actors, one boom op, one grip/pa holding bounce cards, and one camera op, while I direct. Not so much.

As for sound, we were using a seinheiser shotgun mic wired directly to the camera. Day one, I had a boom op which was so very key. Day two, I put the mic in the camera mount and prayed that it turned out okay. I'm not really sure that it did.

I was planning for a day or two of ADR/Foley/Sound mixing, but that went out the window with the hectic schedule of having to work on EVERYONE's set for the class. Insane.

I hate having these 'false' time constraints for the film based on due dates for the class. Luckily, my teacher is a bad ass and will allow us to add/reshoot/re-edit or whatever all the way until Halloween for a better grade. Not that I really care about the grade, but I do need his signature to rent out the equipment to finish this thing.

 

[djbobbyrhodes]

Well, they say that nothing will ever look as good as your first dailies, or as bad as your first cut.

Ain't that the truth?

I handed over my rough cut to the class. I'm technically done with the project. The grades are in. But I can't be satisfied with that. Like I said earlier, I have all the way to Halloween to resubmit for a better grade. Yeah, a better grade would be nice. But, A better film is my actual goal.

I never claimed to be an editor, or at least I never want to edit my own stuff. Yuck! I was so rushed to get a rough cut and a dvd made that I didn't even have a chance to watch my whole project. I threw together what I had, put in a looping soundtrack under the silent stuff, and hit burn.

Jeez. I wound up with a 12min short, about 6-8mins of it was one painfully long montage of the main character having a tweak out. Sounds, way cooler than it turned out. And, it doesn't sound that great.

Taking a few days off from the film to go to my day job. Then it's back to the editing lab, and then back to the drawing board.

Yeesh. I pray that the second edit makes this thing salvageable. I would hate to start from scratch, but if I have to, I will. I'm not going to let what I turned in today be an example of what I'm capable of.

I'm taking a cue from Team Sconce. Never Settle!