‘Post’ Production – 3for5.org

I’m not doing post for the shoot… Not yet. I expect that I might end up working on it in some capacity, but, no, this is just my “after production” follow-up.

The shoot started off a bit slow, and the young director really struggled with the scale of his production, and probably the fact that he wasn’t behind (and operating) his own camera. So instead, he put himself behind the monitor, far from the talent, and barked out commands and lines over a big camera setup, and an even larger Matthews Jib. It was obvious that the talent was struggling to understand and connect with him. He also struggled to communicate direction to the crew for the first few hours. No “Action” and no “Cut” commands left everyone confused about when to start, and when to end a shot/scene. And camera setups were dismal. “I want a Jib shot…”, okay, where do you want the camera, and where do you want it to move to? “Yeah, great! Let’s do a Jib shot!” What??

After a few hours of semi-controlled chaos, the more experienced crew made a few recommendations, and the kid (the director) proved to be sharp enough to recognise some of his own problems. By lunch time, we were moving along like a well-oiled machine. What originally started at probably 45 minutes for a single actor (25 waiting in the queue) recital of a 1-page script over 2-3 camera angles, was ultimately cut to 5-7 minutes per actor. After canceling one or two of the last scheduled actors, we wrapped by 6:30pm. A few hours earlier than originally projected by the director and his AD. I was hoping to be out by 6pm. Not bad.

The talent was great, and I think we got some good stuff.

My biggest problem at this point, was the Nikon 28-70mm lens that I got for the shoot. Not expecting the best from SLR glass, I was a bit disappointed to see that the focal plane was off in the lens (or possibly the sensor in the camera, but not likely). Looking in the shots below, particularly in the wide shot of all the talent, the right side of the frame is notably softer than the center and left edge. Different shots show it to different degrees, but this group shot is probably the most notable.

~ by kylemallory on February 24, 2009.