I called the shoot for 10 AM on March 21st, expecting we’d get everything done by around 6 PM. Wow. In hindsight, that prediction was hilarious. Regardless, even though we had to pull two unanticipated 16 hour days, and Shannon was rather late to day two because she passed out in Penn Station the night before, I think it went well overall.
Of course, had we continued the way I originally planned, it wouldn’t get done because my cast and crew weren’t available for the next 197 hours straight. We did three shots on the film stock and realized that film is infuriating. Fortunately, my director of photography had the foresight to bring her digital camera and shoot those first three shots on DV at the same time. It looked beautiful on the digital display, and the view through the Arri 16mm camera showed that the film might possibly get exposed if we were lucky. So after those first three shots, I came out of my “but I spent money on this film stock”-induced denial and decided we’d go forward on digital.
Oh no, not high definition, how terrible, ewwww. Well, at least it’s a low resolution beautiful image, as opposed to a 1920×1080 pixel image of black.
There were a ridiculous amount of things that made me insane, afraid it wouldn’t get done, afraid I’d smash my head against a wall too many times before it would get done, etc. But we finished the shoot around 10 PM on Sunday. And I think it’s going to be fairly awesome once my head clears enough to import the footage.
Some logistical issues caused two of the thugs to have an abrupt change in casting on the day of the shoot. David Tufano, originally supposed to play Purple Thug, had to cancel on the morning of the 21st because he’d been sick for several days and hadn’t gotten better. Having not known this, I didn’t make any plans for an understudy, but fortunately I had a second David on hand doing production assistance. So with a quick change in character from nerdy thug to burly manly thug, the wonderful David Lanz fit nicely into the role. He was quite knowledgable at how to cough and twitch on the floor as he died, being a forensic science student and all. The second change occurred because Blade Rogers had to go before we ended up taking a single shot of Orange Thug, so I swapped in Dan Clifford, another production assistant. Blade did help a tremendous amount with lighting before he had to disappear, though.
Oh, and one of the plugs for a light socket exploded. Nobody was hurt, but it did mean we had to finish the majority of the film with only two black lights. A third would have been nice for some shots, but we managed.
But now that all this has happened, I have two personal goals: Get a Red camera, and never shoot on film again. We had lights configured so that my eyes were in pain looking at the bright glow in front of me, and the light meter wasn’t even moving. What an incredible waste of my time and money that attempt at film was.
On a more positive note, I have now completely come to terms with the fact that good filmmaking cannot be done by one person. That may seem obvious, as someone has to act in front of the camera, of course, but what I really mean is that if it weren’t for my DP, Claire Ensslin, and my sound guy Gregory Wells, this entire shoot would have fallen apart.
Oh, yeah, and the cast. Them too. I love you all.
Will Rosenberg, who played the Interrogator, set up a YouTube channel exclusively for Bright Black. At first I thought that was a bit redundant, but it’s probably best not to clog my Plankhead account with a ton of different videos; he already uploaded some of the B-roll he took with his pocket camera thing. I leave you with a short clip of our celebratory last shot: Clarisse smashing the bottle on Orange Thug’s head.
In Other Words, Why Can’t Animated Movies Have $1,000 Budgets?
I suppose I should be glad for the publicity on my post about how Pixar is overdoing it. Unfortunately, the nature of the discussion was mostly skeptical; I think that was my fault for explaining it the wrong way. So, how about this:
Pixar has $180 million to spare, and doesn’t mind having hundreds of people manipulating 400 yottabytes to create one film. Good for them. But that shouldn’t scare off the rest of us.
The barrier to creating great looking animation doesn’t seem to be time, money, or resources; it’s the misconception that those, in fact, are an obstacle. Video game developers constantly show us that there is the potential for great looking visuals without an excessive amount of polygons. The reason video game graphics don’t yet rival Hollywood CGI isn’t because there isn’t enough processing power for detail, but that there isn’t enough processing power for implying detail.
Simple depth of field can dramatically improve a low-detail image. By simulating the focus of a camera lens, not only is a more photographic look achieved, but strategic use of it can remove most of the ugly portions of an image. This is possible in Valve’s Source engine, and can look great, but it’s not practical for video games; about two frames of it per second can be rendered in real time. But movies don’t need to be rendered in real time – a three minute high-definition sequence from Final Cut can take up to half an hour to render on my laptop, but after that it plays back smoothly; Pixar, by contrast, produces films that would take a single supercomputer several million hours to render (that’s why they have a ton of supercomputers), and they too can be contained within a smoothly-playable video file. But by taking graphics which could, theoretically, be rendered in real time, then rendering it with realistic looking blur and smoothing effects at two frames per second, an independent animator wouldn’t need to have access to supercomputers with enormous hard drives to make a film.
Perhaps I was too quick to call Meet the Scout on par with The Incredibles or WALL-E. Jenni Chasteen‘s comment about the lighting design was spot-on – Pixar has people who know cinematography, and Valve isn’t nearly as experienced. I disagree that it’s not even close, though; while it’s not great for photorealism, “cartoony” CGI is very possible to do with just a video game engine and blur effects.
Valve’s promotional movies may not be Pixar-quality, now that I think about it, but the technique and technology has the potential to be. In the hands of talented filmmakers, it’s wonderful for compositing onto live action. Is extending it to a full animated film that much of a stretch? I doubt it, myself.