“Alright everyone, on the count of three, start throwing spoons!” Clang. Thunk. Bong. Ping. Splat. Plastic spoons fly everywhere while the camera operator tries to stay out of the line of fire. “Okay, cut!” Clink. A stray utensil hits the floor. The director comes out from a safe corner and begins collecting spoons. “That was good! Let’s try it again from another angle.”

I wonder how many other filmmakers can claim to have been through a day like that? It’s not every director who can put “safely directed a spoon-flinging ice-cream-sliding action sequence” on their résumé. Or for that matter would even attempt such a feat. We did, and we survived. It wasn’t that hard, either.

We started the morning with the balance in our favor. All of the heavy set-up had been done the night before so we didn’t have to move furniture around. All we had to do was lug our enormous batch of fake ice cream out of the freezer, scoop it into bowls and top it with real chocolate and cherries. (That was a mistake. We hadn’t reckoned on spoons getting pulled out of the ice cream to be flung. Several costumes ended up with chocolate stains.)

Three very good friends had come to our rescue as miscellaneous party guests. We got everyone in costume—even though we had some trouble with rivets popping out of their holes—and set to work.

While the actors shoved bowls across the tabletop, Ruth maneuvered the camera all over the place to get the shots we wanted. At one point she was even balancing the tripod on some stools! Thankfully neither the camera nor the actors got hurt during the section. (I had this mental image of the classic “bowl upside down in the lap” happening to one of the extras.)

With the ice cream shuffle out of the way, we moved on to the fun part. Spoon Wars. While the main spoon flinging didn’t have to be rehearsed, we figured we’d need to practice the part when the spoon sticks into Stelen’s ice cream. Of course, the thrower nailed it the first try and the camera wasn’t rolling. It took several more tries to get anywhere close to what we wanted, and it still didn’t look as good as that first throw. We filmed a couple more shots, then unleashed the chaos! The basic rule was, “Don’t aim for anyone’s eye. Other than that, go for it.”

This was quite simple to direct and film. We just let the actors have fun throwing spoons at each other while we tried to get all the shots called for in the script.

We did end up having to cut a section that called for Kitty Cone to swing from a chandelier with a spoon clenched between his teeth because we didn’t have a chandelier. Not to mention Kitty Cone’s lack of teeth. The shot of Marelac firing multiple spoons made it in, though.

After we filmed, we cleaned up. There were surprisingly few ice cream spills (aside from the afore mentioned chocolate stains) although there were spoons everywhere. Then we all had real ice cream sundaes to celebrate and drove off into the setting sun and chilly winds for more filming. (That was an experience and half, I can tell you.)

Later Jordan added in the clinking noises that transformed our plastic bowls into crystal ones. Then he decided that the spoons sounded too much like plastic, so he and his siblings had a spoon fight with metal spoons to get some better sounds. (I’m rather glad I wasn’t caught in the middle of that. Sounds painful.)

Here’s a video of some of the things that happened while we were shooting the shuffle scene:

Behind the Scenes of the Ice Cream Shuffle from Phantom Moose Films on Vimeo.

iSundae II: Attack of the Cones - Part 2 of 10 from Phantom Moose Films on Vimeo.

You can also watch the video on YouTube.

Be watching for a behind the scenes article this week. We’re going to tell you about how we did one of the biggest scenes (set and actor-wise) in the movie.

The quickness of the hand deceives the eye . . . or camera in this case. The Castle Attack Scene is full of little tricks; well-executed and otherwise.

Let’s start a little after the credits. A mysterious person come out from behind a pine tree in the dead of night—wait a minute, how do you know it’s night? We shot this during the daytime with a slight adjustment to the camera settings. We told the camera that yellow was white. This automatically pushed everything toward the blue side of things and gave us a night look. We also primed the pump a little by the cricket and owl noises during the credits, and that lovely shot of the moon over the trees.

Alright, now we have Norse sneaking around behind some sort of wall (Here’s an article about the walls.) and another villainous-looking person in a helmet. More Norse! They’re everywhere! They’re six people. Hold it. Six? Yup. You may observe that while we have multiple shots following each other you never see more than six Norse at a time.

Okay, the battering ram and doors. This is where we could have done better. The audience at this point has no idea what kind of building is getting bashed into. We’ve shown those wall thingies, and a pair of doors, but what is it actually? If we had worked in a full shot of the castle at an earlier point in the movie the trick would have worked a more smoothly. By the way, the doors are leaning up against a wall so the battering ram won’t break them.

Another bit of dialogue which reveals whom the badguys are after. We use that as the perfect segue to the wielders who are as yet unaware of their plight.

A couple shots of the badguys coming, again using different locations to suggest more Norse than there actually are.

Then we have an over-the-shoulder shot of Alyah, the Wielder of Sugar Cones. Why is this shot here? So the audience knows where the doors are. That way it will seem more natural when the badguys storm in.

Oh, and one more thing. We filmed the Cones playing the chess game and reading on a different day than when we filmed the Norse and badguys. We simply cleared half of the room at a time and shot the two sections separately, then spliced them together. Now, the trick to this is that if you’re not careful it can look like you filmed them in two completely separate locations and the scene looses some of its realism. We combated this by two shots. One is the over-the-shoulder shot; the other is coming up.

Badguys come in while our mothers hold up the doors. (Hinges aren’t really practical for cardboard.)

Cone reaction. (Filmed earlier)

Here’s a fun shot. We have the servant girl’s reaction, then we show the badguys. Pause there if you can. Notice anything odd? Jordan’s in there twice. He used some blue-screen to multiply the Norse again.

Alright, here’s the other shot. We show a badgal and one of the Cone Wielders. (We “established” the badgal’s positioning earlier when she walked in and stood by the guy with the helmet.) The problem with this shot is that the actor who plays Alyah also plays the badgal. How did we manage it? I dressed up in the badgal costume and we dubbed in the voice. Much better than risking a blue-screen job.

The messenger runs to a door and hurries through. Good. Nice shot. A little tight, but not bad. Know why it’s tight? The door is standing with its edge on a wall and the other edge is jutting out into the middle of the room. We created a door in a wall that isn’t actually there.

We blue-screened the sunrise thing to give you an idea of the time of day.

The servant girl runs through the woods. The arrows are animated for that. (Like I would let them actually shoot at me for the take. It was bad enough falling down and getting grass stains. Have you ever tried running through the woods with your glasses off?)

Here’s a little video showing the progression of some of the effects for the scene. It also has a few of our mistakes.

 
Behind the Scenes of the Attack from Phantom Moose Films on Vimeo.

And there you have it. Hopefully at some point you thought, “Wow! That was faked? It looked real to me.”

Alright, tell me frankly, what would you do if you were confronted with the problem of creating an army of extras that serve the badguy? If I had to start completely from scratch I would probably flip out. Thankfully, I got lucky on iSundae II’s “The Norse.”

The concept of the Norse had been in the script since I don’t know when. Maybe it grew out of a scene in an earlier version, or maybe it got thrown in randomly. I can’t remember. But I do know that design concepts for their “look” are all over some pretty early sketches. There’s an axe with a symbolic icon right next to a costume sketch for Emcracy and a cloak clasp next to Cone armor. I got pretty fancy with some of the sketches and concepts, but one thing I didn’t think about: These were background characters. Extras. A generic “set-dressing.” Thus, no fancy costumes or props! Awww, man. Here’s what we ended up with.

For costumes—Oversized, white, long-sleeve t-shirts with the ribbing on the sleeve cuffs cut off. Simple, cheap, and you can dirty them up all you want. Or cut holes in them. (We didn’t do that.) Then we topped them off with raggedy vests, cloaks, and coats made from whatever we had available. We used everything from an old plaid blanket to a sleeveless polo shirt. A little cutting, a very minimal amount of sewing, and you’ve got it! We didn’t even hem most of the cut edges. These were Vikings, not fashion statements. Oh, we also threw old belts on some of them. Thankfully we weren’t going for historical accuracy, a general look sufficed.

Of course, we had to throw in some axes. Store-bought ones. (Guess who was planning to make all the axes? Cough, cough.) A bow and arrow set a la Stelen from the first movie (re-use your props; they come in handy!) and a few swords. The Norse had to look semi-fierce, after all.

I did get to make some fancier props, though. There’s a rather ornate horn.

And the battering ram. 

I also made some Celtic-knot style clasps for the Norse with cloaks, but they never made it on set more than once. Which is probably a good thing, because the “Celtic look” was strictly for the Cones. And who wants to add ten minutes to the movie length just to explain what Cone stuff was doing on the Norse? 

We discovered that the mix-and-match abilities we ended up with lent themselves to a plethora of Norse really, really well. It also allowed us to create more Norse than we had extras. (More about that later.) But let me just say, if you’re going to have a specific Norse (or anything) show up in more than one scene, write down what his costume is like. In detail. What color is his helmet? How about the thingies holding the horns on? What size is his shirt? What else did he have on? Was he wearing a blue or green shirt underneath? Etc., etc., etc. Trust me, it saves a whole lot of time. You don’t want to leave the film site, run upstairs to turn on the computer, launch your editing software, find a clip that has that Norse in it, run back downstairs and forget what he looked like. Things can get messy.

iSundae II - Part 1 of 10 from Phantom Moose Films on Vimeo.

You can also watch the movie on YouTube.

Stay tuned for behind the scenes articles coming this week. Also, you might want to check out the iSundae II page. See you next week for part 2!

iSundae II Trailer from Phantom Moose Films on Vimeo.

You can also watch the video on YouTube.

You will most definitely want to check out the iSundae II page, where you’ll find links to all the fan sorts of things you can do to get ready for the release.

The Two Big Ones

Let’s start out with the two best transitions you could ever use. The cross dissolve and the fade in/out dissolve. Both of these transitions have certain meanings to movie-goers:

A cross dissolve tells the audience that the scene has changed.

A fade in/out dissolve means that time has passed. It can also be used to show a scene change, but generally a cross dissolve is used for that.

In the early days of film, the goal was to make the movie look as much like a play as possible. So when the scene was over, the film editors would use cross dissolves to replace the curtain. Watch an old movie from the 1930s or early ’40s, and you’ll see what I mean.

What use do these two have today? Considerably less than they did back then. Nowadays, our goal is not to create the feel of a play, but to draw the viewer into the story. Watch a recent movie and notice the difference. Try counting and comparing the number of transitions between a movie made in the 1930s, and a movie made in the 21st century.

Putting these to use is pretty easy. Not! Fight the urge to use them every chance you get. Do hard cuts first, then use a short cross dissolve to soften the cuts that are too hard. Most of the time, you won’t need a transition at all. Part of this is good scripting and shooting. 

The Cheesy Ones

Take a look at the list of available transitions for your editing software. I see things like wipe, stretch, slide, and 3D simulation. Here’s a short video of a few of them:

Cheesy Transitions from Phantom Moose Films on Vimeo.

Pretty awful, aren’t they? “No,” you say, “I think they look cool!” At what price? Your job as a filmmaker is to draw the audience in, not snap them out of their enjoyment to think about that cool transition. Save “cool” for the special effects that drive the story. 

Plain and simple, don’t use those very often, if at all. “But I’ll never get to use them then!” you complain. Hold on, stay with me. They have their place.

Put the Cheesy Ones to Good Use

While cheesy transitions don’t work well in movies, TV shows use them all the time to spice up some of the more boring content. You guessed it, I have an example.

Watch a few episodes of Good Eats on Food Network. Don’t worry, it’s a great show. Notice their fancy use of fun (and cool) transitions, such as the radial effect to show the passing of time. Also, watch for the unseen transitions. I know, that sounds crazy. How can you see something unseen? I’m talking about the transitions that happen when Alton Brown’s frying pan fills the screen, only to be set down again in a different setting. They do all sorts of variations on this one, so keep your eyes open.

I’ll leave you with a repeat of something I said earlier in this post. Make all your cuts hard cuts, and then watch the whole movie. Don’t add any transitions until you’ve seen a cut without one first. Then think about it carefully before you try a transition. Remember, a little goes a long way.

 
iSundae Bloopers Reel from Phantom Moose Films on Vimeo.

“He’s right, Somindeo…”

We did this scene on a stool, because Malfhok had to float down from the ceiling. I’m wearing a green box so that I can’t wave my arms around, and so we can key it out for the floating head effect. Well, it’s really hard to step off of a stool with a box that comes down to your knees! Needless to say, the box got the worst of it.

Clocks

This was one of the worst interruptions we had while filming iSundae. Normally, it’s perfectly lovely to have a clock that chimes every quarter hour. But when you are trying to finish a scene ASAP, a chime every fifteen minutes is quite annoying. We learned our lesson and ran the clock down before we started shooting iSundae II. My advice? Think carefully about what makes noise in a location before you decide to shoot there, and if you can, silence them.

Weather Conditions

Man! We had such a hard time on that day. The place where we were filming was right next to the road and right out in the open. Plus, as you can tell, that day was windy. So we shot in between cars going by and gusts of wind. However, it was fun to watch all the people in their cars turning to look at us while they went by.

Sword Belts

This was a recurring trouble. The belts were made of cardboard covered with fabric, so they tended to spring open a lot. For iSundae II, we used real belts.

The Garage Cave

Yes, we know. That scene was shot in a garage. Shocking, isn’t it? Now you know why we darkened the scene so much.

“Have you seen my DVD collection?”

This is what happens when you tell your actors to have a conversation, and then tell them that the audio won’t be used. Consequently, I’m the one with the remark about the DVDs.

iSundae: The Way of the Wielders (Part 7 of 7) from Phantom Moose Films on Vimeo.

You can also watch it on YouTube.

Here are some posts on Phantom Moose that are related to part 7:

• Somindeo’s Costumes
• The Chocolate Box of Your Dreams
• Sword Sheaths

And some that are related to the whole film in general:

• Music of iSundae
• Fun on the Set, Part 1
• Fun on the Set, Part 2
• Movie Making Tips

So, what did you think of iSundae? We’d love to hear from you. Just leave us a comment.

 
iSundae: The Way of the Wielders (Part 6 of 7) from Phantom Moose Films on Vimeo.

You can also watch it on YouTube.

We’ve broken the movie into seven parts for faster download, and we are posting a new part each week. So be sure to check back next week for part 7 and the exciting conclusion.

Here is a post on Phantom Moose that is related to part 6:

• Somindeo’s Costumes