Prior to that, we also did a second location scout to Riverside, to re-examine some of the locations found last time, look at some new ones, and most importantly play with our camera.
Our 1st A.D. Brad recently acquired a Black Magic Camera, which is what we've decided to use for the shoot. He has been shooting little video's around Los Angeles with it, and the results have been blowing me away. And bear in mind, these were all done without fancy lenses. Check it out.
Santa Monica Pier - BMPCC from Brad Jones on Vimeo.
I wanted Joel and myself to get as familiar with the camera as possible. This is because our initial D.P Brian had to take a long term job back in NYC (I can't blame him - the guy's gotta eat!), and Joel and and I will be taking over Cinematography duties. I'm not to worried, as 1)I'm not looking for anything terribly slick, and 2)both Joel and myself have plenty of experience as cameramen, and should make a great team. I have my own particular sense of composition that I can bring to it, and Joel is much better at lenses and their various functions than I am. Whereas I might say "Can we get that lens that has a really short focal length makes everybody closer to the camera?" Joel would actually be able to say "We need to put the 85mm on here". I'm working on trying to catch up. As all of my work up until this point has been super low budget, I've never had the opportunity to play with more than one or two lenses per project. Joel is bringing a whole kit, and the possibilities for visuals have now grown much wider.
When Brad unveiled the Black Magic camera to us on Sunday, I was taken aback at how unassuming it looks. I have a friend who claims that the term 'future' is now redundant, and refers to everything now as the 'super future': this camera gives credence to his logic. It's tiny, as in fits in your back pocket tiny. On seeing it, I thought about a Fisher Price toy gone industrial.
And yet, the images it captures look astounding - very close to film. I'm very lucky that Brad decided to buy one of these, or else we'd be renting it and our budget would have shrunk a little bit more.
While in Riverside, I wanted to take a look at a location Joel had suggested a few weeks ago for the film; a desolate flatland where Al takes Greg towards the conclusion of 'The Ride'. The area is right behind his house, which is incredibly convenient as we'll save lots of travel time.
It's actually a bicycle/hiking spot, and is bordered by a residential neighborhood, that extends right up to the entrance to the trail; while passing through the gate, Brad pointed out a backyard that housed an airplane which had been converted into a trailer.
Although it has a paved road that winds throughout it, the grass is high enough that this could be easily covered (I had imagined a dirt road - think the ending from 'seven'.), plus it contains some scenery I hadn't considered: great, gnarled dead trees, whose branches are mostly black from a few recent fires.
All I have on hand right now are the pictures I shot with my CanonT3i (including a demo of one of my favorite shots, a tribute to 'Creature From The Black Lagoon'), but both Brad and Joel shot plenty, which I'll be posting here soon, including video done with the Black Magic.
We then proceeded over to Brockton Avenue for lunch and to speak with the proprietor of the pet food store there, where I would like to shoot a small scene. Although we may not get the location (at least not the interior), we did find some good, inexpensive food at 'Little Green Onions' across the street.
We also went out to the parking lot I thought would be put to good use as a place to get most of our car scenes done, but the lot proved to be rough terrain and would be very, very difficult to get smooth shots with.
I'll go into more detail later, as we have lots of video from the 2nd half of the day that I'll be posting as soon as I can get it, but it appears to be coming together with time to spare, as we're not looking to start shooting until March.
This coming Sunday, Adrian Marcato and I will be shooting a Special Effects test, which of course, I'm very excited about. I'll, of course, be posting the results here once they're all cut together.
Until next time,
Waylon
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