BEHIND THE SCENES

I shot the short over a weekend.  1 day in the backyard at my house and 1 day at the Hollywood Farmers Market.  I called in a bunch of favors and got lucky with a bunch of gracious and super talented friends showing up to pitch in.

Shooting on the 7D:  I wanted to make a piece that had great cinematography and great effects.  The 7D is a solid DSLR but certainly has its issues that you have to be able to work around.  Yes, you can bolt on great glass but hand-holding the body is not recommended without a shoulder rig.  The body’s CG results in jittery frames that are impossible to fix in post.  In addition, the H.264 compression of the image doesn’t give you much latitude for color grade, so it is important to shoot tests if you want to end up with a special look and dial in a profile while you shoot that will result in the look you want after the color grade.

We built the tent set for the fortune teller in my back yard between my lemon tree, my lychee tree and my peach tree.  It was close quarters, but I wanted to try and control the environment of the interior as best I could before shooting the exterior scenes of the tent at the Hollywood Farmers market where things weren’t as confined.  In this photo, Jason Bistarky (our great production designer), is putting the finishing touches on the tent.  The interior was dressed to the 9’s and the exterior was dressed to let the right color and quality of light in.

A look inside the tent while we adjusted lighting snapped off my cam phone.

Ben, producer, back left.  Scotty running A Cam front and center.  Me on the right running B cam.  Kate sitting pretty.

The matte box rig we had at the carnival shoot kept falling apart in our hands.  Literally.  But we got through itl.

A look at the camera rig.  In the background on the floor on the blue sandbags you can see our 2nd 7D on standby.

Ben (producer) and I on set at the Hollywood Farmers Market.

Here are some before and after stills from the production.  Aside from the obvious vfx work, we did a heavy color grade and lots of skin blemish clean up.