Our third short film started shooting today at the local grade school. We shot for about two hours and then broke for ice cream. We managed to complete three scenes from our movie titled: Bike Race.
In a nod to J.J. Abrams, we sent out a G+ post of our slate and billed it the first picture from the set of Bike Race.
But the truth is, we’re far less secretive than the Star Wars 7 folks. Below is the slate in action being held by my AC – Spencer.
Here’s the world famous DP doing his camera stuff. We shot on the Canon 60D with our two prime lenses – 28 mm and 50 mm Olympus and went with ND4 and a T stop of 11. The footage came out pretty clear and crisp considering the nice, sunny day we had to work with.
Below is a close up of the camera set up for the opening shot. I was using our French Flag to shield the view screen as the sun was behind my back. The camera is mounted on a pair of offset rods and a cage. We did not use the follow focus for any of the shots as the one we have, won’t work with our short lenses.
The trickiest shot of the day was a hand held tracking shot through the green bars of a fence. I just ran along the fence letting the low, tight shot create the needed tension of a close race.
Our shot list was done a week before using my phone camera and Celtx software. We just printed it out and followed it as closely as possible.
The final picture from the shoot is a screenshot from the film. Both racers are framed by the overhang of the school.
When your crew and talent are all under age 14, there is only so much you can do in one day. We endured fractured egos, inattentiveness, water sprinklers and rain clouds to get our first four scenes filmed. As the only adult on set, I had to be more councilor than director.