Makin' Movies

So this camera, the Red, has changed our industry. We are shooting in a large house in Placer County, Ca. Bob lives in the basement. He’s so cool. Bob rules. Anyway, we shoot throughout the house or on our stage (the garage). At lunch, we transfer the footage onto a 2TB drive (takes about ½ hour), and we’re instantly editing on a Mac laptop in the closet upstairs. The image looks like a processed 35 neg, and not just a one-light work print, it looks color corrected, even though it’s simply what the Red gives us raw. The monitor trips me out as well. It shows exactly how the Red sees the world, how the raw image is actually going to look. I must say, not used to that. Even on things I’ve shot with Panavision – my last project, I shot on the Millennium XL – the video out to the monitor looks nothing like what my color corrected film is going to look like, but with the Red, even our crew moving around, setting up the shot in front of the camera, looks like a movie. It’s impressive and exciting to say the least.

So, Bob lives downstairs, Ryan shoots everywhere in the house, make-up and wardrobe are in the basement, art department/set construction is in the driveway in the alley, our edit suite is in the closet upstairs, and our production office is down the hall from editorial. I currently reside at an antique school desk from the late 19th century. It’s the perfect laptop desk. We have three shoot days left, and who wouldn’t miss this tight-knit, family style of production? It’s truly a grass roots effort. I can already feel relief coupled with the post-production anxiety sure to accompany the less than 18-hour days next week.

Anyway, the cast and crew have been great. We’ve got a fun movie forming in the closet down the hall. It looks so beautiful, well acted, technically sound, great story, well light and directed, yep, all it’s fingers and toes intact. The dailies draw us all in because the raw images from the Red feels like a movie already. I’m not working. I want to grab the popcorn, sit back and enjoy…soon enough though. We do have post to complete, sound design, marketing, distrib, the whole enchilada, but so far, so fun, what a ride!

~ Eric