It's been a pretty busy week, busy enough that I was ready to sleep on the apartment floor the moment we returned from work. But no, we're not overworked. Here's what we've been up to:
1. HarvestFest 2013
The very first project that we started working on the night after we touched down on American soil, Halloween was celebrated as the HarvestFest, a carnival and a safe environment for little kids to play in.
The short film, interview, and motion graphic-instructional clips that we helped to produce were finally brought together in a DVD and screened to all in 15-minute intervals at the event. So that's one major event off the list.
2. ThankFullness
A project still in the works, this project took up an entire Saturday with 15 hours of filming down in Pacifica. With Wind and Kenneth at the helm with the help of our boss, Harry who kept things going and on schedule, we've wrapped up production and are moving into the post-production phase soon.
Preparations started before the actual shooting date of course. Debbie and I went along with Harry to pick up some rental equipment, and to move everything we need for the production into his car, along with a Christmas tree prop. The fully-loaded car looked like this:
Who needs a grip truck when you've got a car that does everything?
It was hilarious trying to load everything in and shifting around so that we could close the car door. Harry says it's like playing Tetris.
How many cars are able to do that with extreme flexibility back in Singapore? Definitely not the flashy BMWs, Porsches and Audis flooding the highways these days.
Production started on a foggy morning. Like this foggy:
Silent Hill, anyone?
In terms of visibility, the fog here beats the haze in Singapore hands down.
Here are some production stills that I took while documenting the production of "ThankFullness":
Being on set with 1LightMedia's crew so far, I guess the thing I've learnt (or am learning) the most has been about lighting, the way the stands are set up, how to make sure whatever we mount on the stands stay in place and/or not tip over, which lights to use for which kinds of scenes, etc etc. I'm still observing, there's much more to it when it comes to lighting techniques. After all, the only place where I've used lighting the most is in my 3D softwares, where I add as many and shift as many lights as I want. Clearly, we dont have that luxury in real life :P
And oh, a cheat code for white balance to make a scene look warmer on tungsten setting - Simply place a half-blue gel over the white to be balanced and viola! I think the number was... 3700k, if memory serves.
In the last scene, we set up a doorway dolly in the living room. Tracks, sandbags, lights, wires, they were everywhere. Here's a photo:
But the real highlight was when we had an actress mimic a hilarious cooking video on youtube.... nothing to show here... gotta wait till the final film is out.
Anyway, we were tired after the shoot no doubt, but thanks to daylight savings, we could gain an extra hour of sleep that night. And then the next day...
3. ChristmaSing
Another shoot in the afternoon! Zombie crew on set, really, because of the tiring shoot for ThankFullness the day before. It was a green screen shoot, part of a musical for Christmas. It took longer and ended later than expected, but it certainly was much less draining, and much less of moving things around.
I operated the Tricaster, and used it for live keying and recording for the shoot. It was a different experience, since I've only used vision mixers for live concerts in the past. Apart from the basic previewing and cutting/crossfading between cameras, figuring out which button to press on the entire panel for graphics and additional material be confusing at times still. Slowly digesting the information in my head.
Here are some productions stills:
Allll is well, except for a swollen foot and a deep cut on my finger received from an accident I had. Missed a step while climbing up the stairs carrying a speaker, and injured myself while protecting it from damage. Wound's recovering well, and I should be back to 'fully functional' in no time. Haha.
Coming week's mostly desk work, we're going to be busy churning out what we need for Thanksgiving, which is coming up real soon.
Alright, signing off.
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