Doug's Production Diary 18

Monday, June 13, 2005

Tonight was a shoot we'd been waiting to do for sometime: Axe-In-Head! Pre-shoot involved me pouring blood down my head while the axe prop dug into my temple. It would be close to 3 hours of this thing on my head. On top of that? Sweltering heat in the apartment (location). Especially with the windows closed and no fans for sound purposes. Most of the shoot involved me slumped over on the couch.

Shooting was smooth and fun though. Christian gets better by leaps and bounds - he is incredible. He, along with Brett (Gina and Brandy were kinda just eye-candy) ate up the scene. Awesome! Once again, thumbnails proved indispensable. I don't know about everyone else, but when I'm in a scene, directing and coordinating as well, I get quite confused. So having those takes a lot of headache away and gives a nice solid game plan.

Christian and I discussed how we do so many angles and how that helps so much with pacing and keeping things fresh and moving along.

I overheard he and Brett later on talking about future projects. Things like "I can't wait till we can do this as full time jobs" sort of stuff. It was really heart-warming to hear that, because it made me realize this project is giving something back to all the great people involved: hope for something bigger and better. We're actually inspiring people!

On a more technical note, our shots themselves are becoming much better. We're doing a lot more pans, zooms, tilts, tracking shots, and so forth. I'd like to try starting a scene with a pan.

For instance: focus on something...you hear audio (dialogue) and pan to the speaker. Some slower stuff would be nice too. Break up the oft-frenetic pacing and linger a bit at times. I'll keep that in mind when we shoot next.

Until then, Dan and I will keep hard at work planning it out.

It's weird - the more we get done, it becomes progressively more unbelievable! Probably because it's so amazing to even think about!