A couple of stills from Sunday's shoot.

Here are those stills I promised yesterday...



As you might guess, this thing is a period piece.

My only regret--we didn't have any blue gels to cool off our "moonlight." Still, I'm happy with the lighting. We managed to set it up so we could get wide shots and close-ups without moving any lights.

Also, I'm noticing that Apple changed their video gamma settings for Mac OS ver. 10.6 ("Snow Leopard"). Arrgh.

Trying out the new gear.

Trap and I helped Chuck shoot a little trailer/commercial thing last night (starring Kyle Holman and Rod Robinson from Interplanetary and Hide and Creep). We got to put some new gear to work, including the soon-to-be-infamous Trapdolly, the Britek lights, and the Zoom H4n audio recorder.


I think everything worked pretty well. If Chuck doesn't mind, I'll post a still from the shoot later this week.

My mom is awesome.

Regular readers of this blog know that my mom is awesome. She's always been supportive of my creative endeavors, recently sewing many of the space suits featured in Interplanetary. Now she's made some sandbags to help keep the Trapdolly tracks straight.


Stylish sandbags at that--dig those pinstripes. Thanks, Mom!

Four degrees.

I was in Hide and Creep (uncredited cameo as a dead guy) with Kyle Holman. Kyle was in was in Alice's Misadventures in Wonderland with Kevin Wayne. Kevin was in Under Siege with Eddie Bo Smith, Jr. And Mr. Smith was in Stir of Echoes with Kevin Bacon.


I guess that means my Bacon number is 4.

1080p x 2.

I now have two 1080p monitors in the living room: the Samsung LCD TV and the all-new iMac. And both are, to some degree, Mac-powered!


Yeah, I'll admit it's a bit decadent.

Pre-production.

Man, I'm beat. It was a jam-packed weekend of pre-production for the anthology movie. Trap and I scouted a location Friday night, and Chuck and I (and Kelly Marshall and John) held auditions on Saturday.


On Sunday, Trap and I fine-tuned the awesome dolly he built. I also played a show with one band on Saturday night and had rehearsal with another on Sunday, but I guess that's neither here nor there.

Here's a little camera dolly test footage, via Vimeo. First shot features Trap as star and dolly grip, me riding the dolly and keeping an eye on the camera. Second shot features Trap as star, me as dolly grip, camera riding with no operator.

UPDATE: Embedded version of dolly test footage...

Lights! (Finally.)

I somehow managed to produce two low-budget feature films without owning a proper light kit. For lights, I did a lot of the old "relying on the kindness of strangers." Friends, actually. You know what I mean.


Since I have a short movie coming up really soon (and maybe a feature shortly after that) I decided to break down and order some Britek lights from Rostronics. I have fired up the 200W, 300W, and 600W, and they're looking to be pretty awesome lights for the price (so far).