Titan pickup day

I had scheduled a day to grab some location shots for my Titan teaser trailer and finally got some time this last week. My DP for the first day was on a job in Texas, so I shot this myself. Having sold off the RED Dragon I used on the first part, I opted for a Sony A7s with some old Olympus glass and an EF adaptor for this stuff. The lenses had some nice flare and I'm pretty happy with the organic edge they added to the Sony. The Sony was shot in Slog-2 (Picture Profile 7).

The plan had been to mount the A7s on a DJI Ronin M for some super smooth, match cut follow shots to contrast with the handheld nature of the spaceship footage. The Ronin, however, ended up having a major issue and wasn't smoothing out the shots. The Sony has major rolling shutter issues if trying to walk handheld, but I did my best to walk smoothly. It wasn't perfect, but for my no-budget trailer I'm shooting, the footage got the job done.

My friend Jim Zicree also came out with his DJI Phantom3 drone. With the sun going down, we knocked out a couple quick shots that ended up working well. We all wish we could have had a bit more time to play with the drone, but the Ronin gimbal issues at the beginning of the day ate up a lot of time and set us behind schedule. Fortunately, we got all the shots I was after and they're what I needed for this trailer.

Great aerial shot as the sun went down.

Sort-of-a-match-cut shot #1.

Sort-of-a-match-cut shot #2.

Sort-of-a-match-cut shot #3.

One more drone shot as the sunlight was dying.

A few more Titan shots

Here are a few more shots from the Titan teaser trailer. I have a rough cut assembled, but still have a few locations shots to grab. I'll be re-grading everything, as I just built an initial quick look to get a feel for it.

Titan teaser trailer

Yesterday, I had a change of pace and directed a teaser trailer as a proof of concept for a short film (though I have additional story elements already in place so I could easily turn it into a feature). My friend had built a set for another movie that I was set to shoot when the production suddenly shut down and the movie was canceled. Since the set was due to be dismantled at the end of this month, we thought it a shame it hadn't been used and decided to shoot a small project on it.

With little warning that we had access to the set before being taken down, this shoot was kind of a last minute thing, so rather than having auditions for casting, I went with some actor friends of mine that I knew would be great. I wrote a short trailer script based on an idea I've been tossing around for a while, and got my actors all on board. Then I spent this past week tracking down wardrobe, generating character breakdowns for the actors, and drawing up storyboards. Nick Forte, my usual 1st AC (and sometimes camera operator), does DP work as well and we get along great, so I brought him on to shoot this for me.

We had a good time, got some great footage, and even finished out the day early (just barely). I had sent Nick some reference screengrabs from Aliens and Prometheus as the look I was going for, kind of an old, run down look with pools of light, and he did a great job giving me the dark, oppressive lighting I wanted and he got it done with a two man crew and minimal G&E kit. When I wasn't busy working with the actors, I also pitched in a hand with lighting.

Shot on RED Dragon, 5.5K WS @ 6:1 compression. A set of T2 Sony CineAlta PL lenses let us make the most of the limited lighting available. Screenshots have a quick grade on them, but may not be the final look.

Anomalies teaser

A friend of mine was working on a sci-fi/action webseries idea and needed some help developing it a bit further.  I gladly agreed to help and we got to the point where we decided to shoot a teaser trailer to help potential investors get an idea for the look and feel we were going for.  So we put together a one day shoot and shot a bunch of little scenes.  The short teaser turned out pretty well and should be useful as my friend pitches her idea.  The working title is Anomalies, though the actual title may change down the road. I directed the trailer and shot on RED Epic MX with Canon EF lenses.