Making: Chapter 04

Having used my vehicle for the movie already, I was in need of a unique vehicle for this chapter.  Mike Leavitt had a cool red car, and my plan was to coordinate with two brothers I am friends with.  However, Mike received an offer to sell the car, so I needed to advance my timetable significantly.  The brothers I had in  mind weren’t available on short notice, but I had made a short sketch with Nathaniel Warren and knew he had a sister, so they were a good casting in the end.  The Siren though, I had a friend in mind but she wasn’t going to be available in the window I had.  I was working at the Renaissance Festival over the weekend, so my dad made a post for an actress in various mermaid groups on Facebook.  Isabella Griefer responded, and we coordinated when we would shoot.

Before the shoot, I was able to schedule an hour to go around the car to figure out angles, and even pick up some small shots I thought I could use.  I made a rough animatic, but having the footage became very useful later on.

I met Nathaniel to look at the location and figure out some logistics.  Afterward, the plan was to meet up the next day and he, his sister, and Isabella would all act as both cast and crew, either acting or holding up the Green Screen outside the car.  We scheduled some time in the morning to the afternoon.  I would shoot some scenes with Isabella first, then Nathaniel and Talitha would arrive after their previous commitment.  However, they were severely delayed by traffic, so Isabella and I shot all of her part without the Warrens.  Without someone to hold up the greenscreen, I shot her interior parts twice:  once laying the greenscreen on top of the car, and once without any greenscreen.  In retrospect, the shots without the greenscreen worked best because the lighting was more natural, but I chose to edit to performance over VFX cleanliness.

I should note, because I found it useful, that greenscreen is useful for compositing for daytime shots, and bluescreen is better for compositing nighttime shots.  So for when the sky turned black, I flipped the greenscreen around to the blue side, and parked the car in the shade to lower the light levels.  Knowing I wanted at least one shot of all the characters, the last thing we recorded of her part was leaning forward with her cell phone to capture a selfie.  Then Isabella went on her way, and when Nthaniel and Talitha arrived, their first shot was the selfie, and I composited them together.

Nathaniel would be available the next day, but Talitha would not, so we opted to shoot all of her parts first so if we ran out of time we would be able to finish the next day.  She would read her lines in a few different ways while Nathaniel held up the greenscreen outside the window.  Then we did her night shots, and got a few shots with her and Nathaniel together.  At this point, the sun was quickly setting, so I used a portable ring light to light the scene.

The next day, I messaged Lucas Westmoreland and he was available to help out.  Lucas held the screen while Nathaniel read his lines, and afterward Lucas recorded wild audio while I directed Nathaniel to drive the car around.

I had mic’d up all the actors, but even though we recorded in a dead plaza(the same one we used in Chapter 2), people still used it as a shortcut and it was next to a road, so the noisy ambience made the dialogue unusable.  Mike let me use his studio to ADR the Siren’s dialogue, and Nathaniel and Talitha were able to come to my house to re-record their dialogue.