December 14th, 2008 Rich
You know those bargin bins of DVDs? My wife found some movies for a Black Friday sale of just $.49. Yes, that’s 49 cents. And among the ones she brought home was “Nim’s Island.” What a deal!
As I watched the movie for the first time, I kept saying to myself, “That looks like Jodie Foster.” I didn’t think it was really possible because she always seems to be in big budget, big name movies. I had never heard of “Nim’s Island.” And the character wasn’t some beautiful, glamorous woman. When the credits rolled, there she was. Jodie Foster. And a check on IMDB.com said it was a made in 2008. How could I have missed it?
I enjoyed the movie. It was a great family movie. Then I listened to the commentaries by the directors/writers and leading actors Jodie Foster and Abigail Beslin. Foster said one of the reasons she did the movie was to have something she could watch with her kids. The movie also starred Gerard Butler who was the star of “300.” Quite a change of pace for him.
The commentary by the directors/writers is worth the cost of the DVD (whatever you pay for it). This was their first major motion picture and it was done on a low budget. Their comments explained how they were able to make the movie for such a low cost. For example, they used more than 450 special effects using some computer graphics, models, and lots of compositing.
This should be very instructional for independent producers/directors (DV Rebels) working on small budgets. Most of the FX could be done on a personal computer.
Some cost cutting techniques were very simple. Child actors are only allowed to work 9 hours. To reduce shooting days, a double was used whenever Nim’s face (Abigail Breslin) was not toward the camera. For example, there was a close-up conversation with Foster where she turns and walks away. The shot walking away was done by a double.
One of Nim’s friends on the island was a seal. Two were actually used when one of them became unresponsive. You can only feed them so much fish. But putting seals on the beach risked having them swim away. So all shots where you see seals on the beach were composites using green screened seals.
I highly recommned this movie just for the commentaries. It will help you improve your film’s production values without a big boost in costs.
– Rich Pulham
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October 31st, 2008 Rich
Just recently watched the last film in the Star Wars series, Episode 3. I wasn’t really impressed with the movie. The first half reminded me of watching a cartoon except they used live actors. I hate it when the effects become more important than the story.
However, the great part of this movie was the extra features. One was the story of shooting a special effects scene. I would recommend owning the movie on that basis alone. If you want to see in detail how it is done, this will show you the entire work flow.
You may not become a special effects expert after watching it, but you’ll learn how to do a lot more than you thought you could do.
– Rich
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August 6th, 2008 Rich
Today, I watched a commercial offering financial services.
A young woman was sitting at her computer taking care of finances. She gets up and walks toward the camera. Now it is obvious that she is pregnant. As she steps outside through the doorway, we see the bare framing of a roof line for a room that is being added to the house. Nearest the camera is a worker on a ladder holding a nail gun.
This would have been fine if this was a still photo. But the guy with the nail gun is shooting the middle of the board over and over again. He must have put 6 or 8 nails into the same place.
Come on, guys! If you are going to have an actor in the shot, give him something to do. Filling a board full of nails looks stupid.
– Rich Pulham
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August 6th, 2008 Rich
While watching part of “Dead Men Tell Tales” on the Dead Zone TV series tonight, I saw a great technique for creating one-wall sets.
By purchasing textured plastic, the kind that fits over office fluorescent lights, you can reproduce great windows that add life to your sets. Here are two examples.
The first one was a hospital room. There were only two angles used. One was on the hospital bed. The shot was tight enough that all you saw was a high tech background on the wall. The bed was low enough you could only see the lower portion of it.
And there was the “across the room” shot. The top half of the wall was the frosted plastic. But it was covered with a lattice that divided it up to the size of glass blocks. It looked expensive. And best of all, you couldn’t see anything clearly through it except a pattern of light.
The second shot was of an office. The men entered through a doorway but you never saw clearly into the room. Next, one of the men sat down at a desk. You never saw any other part of the room. The back wall was divided by a vertical window that looked like frosted plastic with two-inch wide frosted tape on it in a wide grid pattern. A couple of sheets of wall paneling and the plastic “window” was all there was. There were men standing in front of the desk to give the room depth. Add closeups of the men and you’ve got the shot.
Now there could have been more to it than that. I was seeing the shots how an independent filmmaker would have done it.
– Rich Pulham
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August 5th, 2008 Rich
I watched part of “Dead Men Tell Tales” on the Dead Zone TV series tonight. And I learned a great way to film a car scene.
Shots in moving cars can be difficult, especially when shooting through the windshield. You have problems with sky, etc., reflections. You interfere with the vision on the driver increasing the risk of an accident. And their is a problem with anchoring the camera and the cameraman.
Normal procedure by the big boys is to shoot the car on a trailer. The camera is mounted to the back of the tow vehicle. The bed of a truck gives a place for the crew (though in some states, riding in the back of a pickup is against the law — like Utah). You also have the opportunity to put a shade over the windshield to cut reflections.
In the episode I watched, all this trouble was avoided by shooting the car while parked.
A character was driving someone in a fancy car that had venetian blind in the back window. When you can’t see out the back window, it’s hard to see the car isn’t moving.
It was supposed to be at night so it was fairly dark inside the car. The lights for the characters had someone waving their hands in front of them so they flickered as if passing other cars and street lights.
To add to the effect, the camera moved slightly up and down and side to side. It wasn’t much. My guess is that camera was on a tripod with a fluid head. It was just enough movement to look like the car was moving. But it wasn’t.
The next time you want to shoot someone in a car, maybe the car doesn’t have to be moving at all. It’s a lot simpler.
– Rich Pulham
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