Here’s a yet-to-be-color-corrected frame from A House for Marge!
(Click to enlarge)
This frame illustrates how the action in the script can change when you see how it plays while shooting.
The script calls for Anna and Benjamin to walk together while holding hands. Once we got set up, we realized how difficult it was to get Benjamin (short) and Anna (tall) framed well in a moving shot. So somebody came up with the idea of a piggyback ride and you see the final result.
I think this came out as an utterly adorable shot. 🙂 Thanks so much for posting it!
I suppose that’s what’s known as on-the-set revisions.
It seems to have worked out great. Thanks for posting this!
Not quite. On-set revisions are when the script itself doesn’t work and a rewrite is frantically done on-set while cast and crew stand around waiting.
This was just a blocking decision. We didn’t change any lines or storyline, just what the characters did during the scene. That kind of thing is a common enough occurrence.
For example, starting around 4:53 in Part 5 of iSundae II is a scene where Gwenanda is cooking supper. Originally, Rebekah had a great sequence storyboarded where different cooking things would reinforce the dialogue (such as a food spill when she says, “It can get really messy.”) Ultimately, we didn’t have time or props to make it happen, so we changed to what you see in the final scene.
You really need to post more stories like that from the iSundae films…
That kind of stuff is really fun to hear.
I had thought we’d posted that one in a blog post, but for some reason we never did. If you haven’t seen them all, we did a huge amount of behind the scenes posts for iSundae II: http://phantommoose.com/tag/isundae-ii-behind-the-scenes/
And we also did an almost-daily, month-long production blog: http://phantommoose.com/2007/03/22/isundae-ii-production-day-one/
A lot of those stories are in there. 🙂
Hey Jordan, do you plan to enter “A House for Marge” in the San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival? (Picture looks great. Both technicaly and emotionally)
We’re still working on what we’ll do with A House for Marge once it’s finished. But SAICFF is a definite option.
Hey, you guys know about the SAICFF? That’s awesome!
We’re definitely planning to go to the next one, so I hope we’ll see A House for Marge there!
Yeah, we’ve known about it for several years but we haven’t had anything to enter and it’s a little far away from us. But we might make it over there someday. 🙂
“it’s a little far away from us”
You are located in Alaska, right? .. That would be quite the drive.
P.S. I honestly can not tell if I’m jocking or not.
Not quite, but still somewhat far away.
Oh yeah I’m an idiot. You live in the south. (At least somewhere the biggest monument isn’t a snowman.)
Hey Jordan if you don’t mind me asking, did you shoot “A House for Marge” with Canon’s cinema mode? I’m been studying the enlarged screen and I still am not sure. I do know that the sharpness and contrast are -1.
Actually, I’m in the north and Rebekah and Ruth are in the south. We shot A House for Marge in the south.
We didn’t use the cinema mode. That’s a fake “movie look” mode shot at 30i or 60i and then converted to 24p with some cinema effects. We shot straight 24p with no added effects so we can control the image later on the computer.
Oh, and that’s proxy quality, too. To save hard drive space, we imported everything at a lower quality and then once we get a cut we like, we’ll re-import just the clips we need at the highest quality possible.
Okay, yeah I wasn’t talking about 24p. I was talking about “cinema mode.” (In my hv20 you press menu and then the first option, there is auto, shutter priotery, apeture priotity, cinema mode, and then various other modes like sunset, portrait, sports, etc. I am 96% sure your is different.) I actually like using cinema mode. It seems to make the image not as sharp. To me it looks good. The reason being is that we didn’t have the resources to use make up. Without the cinema mode, our actors looked very bad. But the cinema mode was a lot, lot easier on peoples faces. But the down side was that the image didn’t seem to be as sharp. So, I can definitly understand why wouldn’t want to use it. However in cases where you don’t have the most smooth skin actors, and when you don’t have time for make up. Seriously it works wonders. (You should test it. Try pointing it at your face with and without the mode on. Then try to color grade both images to a place where it looks the same. I tried it, I couldn’t get the same look to it. (The mode does do something with the colors. I made an short action movie, to pratice doing the stunts in your how to videos, at the end there is a clip that doesn’t have the cinema mode, and it is jarring how different it looks. No color grade, but it’s alot different. If your interested in looking at the colors you can watch it here. (Cinema mode all way through, except at 1:28) I definitly not recommend using it all the time. I was just curious if you used it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdGAr4iWlH4(No, script just me and my sister practicing the fighting stunts talked about in your video turtioal. By the way, thank you they were very inspiring 🙂
I unhonestly couldn’t tell it was proxy. I thought it was slighly blocky, but that was when I inspecting the image very, very zoomed in. It would have so much easier if my last full length movie would have been able to use proxies.