So what’s next?

A music video, of course. I will be working with the band Test Pattern Radio, making a video for their single “Hot on the Heels.” We hope to shoot in the next few weeks. More details coming soon. If you are on Facebook, check out their page…http://www.facebook.com/pages/Test-Pattern-Radio/16529358842

The Finished Product

Finally finished Bloodsworth and there is a lot I like and somethings I’m disappointed with, but in the end it was a good learning experience.

Rough Cut

The editing process is going slow but looking good. The opening scene is done with the exception of some audio tweaking to smooth things out. The sound design with the cellphone being destroyed turned out better than I had hoped and should hopefully play to some laughs once completely finished.

More to come soon

Busy this week hopefully new update on Friday.

Color Correction

I was playing around with the color correction for some of the Bloodsworth footage. I’m trying to come up with a certain look for the project. I decided on a higher contrast blue. The video below compares the color corrected footage against the raw footage.

The Mr. Thornhill Scene

“My name is Thornhill…”

So this Saturday will be the big “Thornhill House” scene. This is going to require a lot of blocking. I’m trying to break out the script now so I don’t have to do it all on  Friday.  For those who don’t know ‘Bloodsworth” is an homage to North By Northwest. Of all the scenes in “Bloodsworth” this is the one that is structured most like NBNW. The little twist in naming the villain Thornhill  is my tip of the hat to this Hitchcock classic.

This shoot will take the most amount of planning of any of the shoots so far. We have a brief fight scene and two punch out scenes. Not to mention if we have the time we’ll be shooting the interior car scene that we didn’t shoot during Day One. I’m currently trying to whittle down some of the Thornhill dialogue as it is a bit wordy right now. This is a lot of work but a lot of fun as well.

The Best Little Warehouse….

The Warehouse scene looked good, but we did run over by a half hour, which is about how long we ran over during the last shoot. Maybe I should just add 30 minutes to my shoot time estimates. Thanks to all that helped out this past Sunday.

The fake blood looked pretty good, made up of Karo, Red Food Coloring and just a touch of Blue Food Coloring.

The scuffle scene turned out really well and everyone played their parts perfectly. Now lets hope the footage we captured will lend itself to what I envisioned when we hit post production.

Lessons Learned: 1. Notes on the script are not sufficient for tracking the shots you want to capture. A spreadsheet would be more useful as I can then check off the shots as I get them. I totally forgot to get the ECU of the needle in Erdman ‘s back (hopefully we can fake it during the shoot Saturday). I also forgot to get the David reaction shots.  I knew Brian was able to stay a bit later so I was saving them for last and then it just slipped my mind.  2. Jeff is afraid of Karo Syrup.

Location, Location, Location

I’m finding that producing is sort of like spinning plates. There is always something to secure, verify, workout or work around without a break until it’s all over. Everyone is pitching in, so that has helped greatly. As I’m just finishing the last bit of coordinating for the Thornhill House shoot on the 7th, I’m still looking for a bar for the flashback montage shoot.  It looks like the bar flashback will be the last scene shot before the production wraps.

Bloodsworth Warehouse Scene

The warehouse scene, originally scheduled to be shot on the ill fated shoot of 10/24, has been moved to Nov 1st. This works out even better now as we will be shooting in a real warehouse. Thanks to Brian for the location!!

Lessons Learned: 1. Don’t try to fake it in a studio if you have access to a real location. 2. Black shirts on black background will cause what has now become known as the “Harry Potter Effect”.

Also, we have finally got an actress to play Dr. Mann, Mr. Thornhill’s “Fixer”. Thanks to Ryan for all the help with casting!! Now we need to secure a bar for the flashback montage.

To Blog or Not to Blog?

When deciding whether or not to start a blog for my first actual narrative short piece, I was more than a little ambivalent. I didn’t want to seem like some self important douche bag who thinks his student production is the next Scorsese or Spielberg film. I’m just a person who wants to tell stories. My true intention in starting this blog is to document the process and hopefully learn from it, and use what I have learned in each new project. This blog is really for me and if others get some type of enjoyment or entertainment value out of reading it, than that is just a nice, little extra.

I sincerely hope that Bloodsworth is not my first and only project. I’ve been extremely lucky to have so many really talented people helping me on Bloodsworth. Even the cast is pulling double duties, helping with casting and securing locations. There will be challenges ahead but do we ever really get any satisfaction in accomplishing something easy? Rarely.

No guts, no glory!