A Tin of Paint

Two days to shoot a Trailer.

The plan was to create a trailer for a movie that was yet to be shot. Set in South Africa in the late 50's this is the story of how the "Struggle" Began. Through a misunderstanding the hero is dragged into events that ultimately change a country's history.

We filmed on RED and this time the idea was to shoot everything in B&W and then just retain the color red so using the RED camera was quite apt, not only because of its namesake, but the CMOS sensor in the RED camera is known to blow out red hues often making them too strong, something that DOPs and post colorists need to watch out for.

The plan is to take the finished product to Cannes to help raise financing to shoot the actual movie.

Acting in the Promo-Trailer is Tony Kgoroge (who played one of the bodyguards in "Invictus") and there is a performance by Zolani from Freshly Ground.

Fast Turnaround - Orange WWW

Just three weeks ago we shot a Commercial for Orange Israel (Mobile Networks). Here, already is the completed project. I don't know if it has aired on TV in Israel yet, but its done.



The Commercial was shot in two days in and around the town of Hermanus (about 125 KM / 78 Miles) outside of Cape Town. The challenge for this commercial was casting. We needed three generations of the triplet brothers (thank goodness they did not have to be identical triplets, then we really would have had a job on our hands).

But otherwise for the most part the commercial was pretty uneventful except for the amount of work we had to do in two days. Oh there was one little thing that happened. In the scene where the little boy runs up to look at his eggs we had trained chickens that he had to run through time and time again. They were so relaxed that one of them laid an egg on set between takes. (I heard somewhere that nervous chickens don't lay - I may be wrong...)

Here's one of the storyboards for the shoot - its nice to be able to work with such well planned and imagined material:

Shooting in space

This most recent commercial, with Plank Productions had an interesting challenge, we had to shoot a scene with our leading man in a space station (Something like the Mir Space Station). Unfortunately we didn't have the money to got the route of some big budget movies (such as "Apollo 13" 1995) where some of the zero gravity sequences where shot in a plane designed for this kind of thing - if you have the money and inclination it can be done (follow this link http://www.incredible-adventures.com/zerog.html).

There are more problems with this plane then just the cost; zero gravity can only be achieved for 25 seconds at a time and we were going to need to shoot sound so there was going to be a noise problem. Not to mention trying to build a set in one of these planes, training the actors and crew to work in these conditions and not to mention that the planes are nicknamed vomit-comets.

So Peter Pohorsky, our director cam up with a far more practical solution. Build the set on its side, have the camera point down (off a crane) and hang the actors on wires. And here is the result...

Above is an image of the set with the camera on a crane, and the other shows the image we where getting on the video takeoff. There will need to be a minor amount of VFX cleanup in post production to get rid of the cables that where suspending the actors, but all in all the effect was very believable.

Plank

I'm getting to work with one of my favorite companies this week - A little boutique production company called Plank. I have a debt to Plank because the people who are Plank (Di, Pete & Karly) where the same team who where the first to hire little old me as a 1st AD. Back then they were working as a team for another production company, but it wasn't too long after that they started Plank. The director at Plank is Pete Pohorsky.

Pete has a knack for taking the mundane and transforming it into something amusing and entertaining. This week we shoot Five Roses Tea - This would usually promise a middle of the road mundane shoot, but after 10mins talking to Pete we were inspired. Pete has an amazing knack for finding humor and something special in the mundane.

We are going to have fun! In fact we may not have enough time to do everything that Pete has in mind, but everyone is on board to see what we can achieve and the producers have budgeted realistically to accommodate for this - ahh I love working with professionals.