PANDEMIC 1.0 - AF100 in Park City at Sundance

Zak Forsman

Major Contributor
Have been shooting short vignettes for a five day transmedia experience at Sundance called Pandemic 1.0. Since these are shot on the AF100, I'll upload them as the elements are released each day. These don't do much storytelling on their own, but together with other social media arcs, help illustrate the narrative. You can follow the #pandemic11 hashtag on twitter to see more of what's going on.

DAY ONE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_N0w2znJVU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUm7ljBIzgA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9tjR3x7VKI

DAY TWO

http://vimeo.com/19061654

http://vimeo.com/19061244

DAY THREE

http://vimeo.com/19186849

http://vimeo.com/19186814

http://vimeo.com/19061587
 
Damn, I didn't think there was anyone that used the dutch tilt as much as me. haha, I love it, freakin gorgous footage!!! Nice work Zak
 
and that's that! had a blast making these. other people on the team here crafted Twitter accounts for these characters and followed a script to tweet out what was happening to them as though a strange pandemic had swept through Park City during the Sundance Film Festival. It was fun to go through these scripts to find moment we could illustrate in a short vignette, extending the reader's experience of this story. And for me, great practice using my new AF100 in a genre piece. Itching to make another feature-length motion picture now.

characters on twitter:
http://twitter.com/ashley_him
http://twitter.com/damon_him
http://twitter.com/kendall_him
http://twitter.com/filson_him
http://twitter.com/bree_him
 
Well, Lance and Ted Hope had provided a list of potential actors that would be in Park City and whose managers and agents had been contacted about the possibility. Myself, Kevin Shah and Gary King were in charge of producing, directing and editing these vignettes. But they had to tie into the five day arc that fictional characters were tweeting about. So we received the scripts for each character and started going through, looking for moments we could illustrate in a shot or two. Lance really gave us free reign and would just come into the edit bay (third floor of a rented condo) to see what we were working on. But he was insistent that we take the creative lead on them. Which was nice.

There wasn't much improvising by the actors in these as we gave them specific direction as to what their blocking and objective was for the scene. And the actors were great about bringing an authenticity to these moments. I do wish we had more time to conceptualize how things were shot because due to time constraints, we were figuring that out just an hour before the actor showed up. And ideally, like writing a script, I'd like to do several drafts of the selected shots, refining it on paper before we shoot it.

The Dead Car in particular was one I would have liked more time on. One thing I did keep in mind was eye-trace between the shots (even though I was coming up with them on the fly). And for the most part you'll notice I chose the left third (as in, rule of thirds) as the place where I would place the audience's attention. This, I knew, would help cutting from shot to shot, so that the audience wouldn't have a moment at the edit point of searching the frame for where they were supposed to look. They were already there.
 
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