Forward – Preproduction

Okay, so I should have written this about 2 months ago. Time got away from me so here I am writing this a week before our first shoot.

Sets

We decided to build a set this time different than our last film where we just chose great locations. However, it made the process much more time sensitive with having to move gear around and that all takes time.

On set we built a machine which will be our main set piece. Things people don’t realize about set pieces is they can also be a character of its own right. We’ve been building for about 15 days total collecting free stuff from anywhere we can find it. We did spend some money to modify/kitbash most of what will be seen on film.

I learned early on that if you point the camera at crap your film will look like crap. We spent much time and labor on this project so we wouldn’t be looking at crap. You have to give them something to work with to achieve the immersive experience for the audience. Bad sets are distracting and performance will only take you so far.

Props

There was also a much larger list of props than our last film. I have to say the props we built and collected is such a fun process. That somewhat surprised me. Rather than it being an annoyance like originally thought it has been a highlight. I highly recommend it to anyone in the creative space of film.

Lenses

We will be working Xeen lenses opposed to Rokinon for our last shoot. I love the way these lenses look man. We originally wanted to shoot on anamorphic like all the other cool kids but apparently we aren’t that cool. I have quite enjoyed the process so far but a ton of work has been put in and we haven’t shot anything yet.

Soon and very soon my friends. Until next time…