FORGE: A Feature Film by 500 Cuts

Co’s pretty much correct on both images below. In an early screen test, we shot at Tom’s apartment and realized that it has some very beautiful natural light. Very often it seems as though there’s an inclination to light everything. Sometimes even though natural light looks beautiful, actually lighting a scene makes more sense for continuity, controlability, etc etc….In the case of Toms apartment, we knew that we wanted to shoot with the natural light, and so we did! We weren’t there for very long, and so continuity wasn’t going to be an issue. There was plenty of light in there, and we were stopped down to a 2.8 on the 50mm lens. An added bonus is a shot where Paul (played by Luke Clements) is in silhouette at the window looking out upon an element that will be added digitally. Coincidentally, the silhouette provides a very clean edge “live matte” that will make it a lot easier for the FX people to add our digital elements in the background.

Co and I scouted the kitchen scene the night before we shot, and I pretty much decided that I would supplement the lighting that already existed in the kitchen- and for the most part, we just went with the existing light! We had two 4′ 4 bank flourescent fixtures with 5000k tubes, and those provided all of the additional light that we needed. We shot the screenshot below on the 50mm, and we were wide open at f1.4. Normally, I try to not shoot wide open because I feel the image loses sharpness, but in this case I felt that the existing light worked so well that we just went with the wide open lens. and brought in light where we could.

In the end, I feel that the scene has exactly the look we wanted, and a nice side effect of using natural/existing light is that the scene looks “un-lit”. As I thought about it, I also realized that the natural light of the apartment provides a nice transition state from the unnatural, manmade kitchen light to the very earthy feel of the cabin.

A small tangent about our camera setup- When shooting film, whether it be stills or motion, the sensitivity of the emulsion is referred to as the ISO. In simple terms, the higher the ISO number, the more sensitive the film is to light. You might say well, so what? Films with a higher ISO tend to yield more “grain” in the final image. With modern film stocks, this has become less of an issue, but often times in the “olden days”, movies were photographed with effective ISO’s as little as 25! To put it into perspective- your mom probably took photos at your 8th birthday party using 400-800 speed film. Now, as time went on so did advances in film but even so, it wasn’t too long ago that motion pictures were still being photographed at 100 ISO. Essentially, this means you need a ton of light to expose your subject! When outdoors, this isn’t so much of a problem since the sun is ridiculously bright, but when you consider lighting a subject that would otherwise be completely black, you really have to pump in the light.

FORGE was shot digitally, but the rules of ISO still apply, and the factors that go into lighting an image captured on film or on digital are exactly the same. Through testing and reading about other experiences, we pretty much surmised that the effective sensitivity of the HVX200 is around 320 ISO. Not too shabby! But here’s the hitch, we weren’t just using the HVX alone- we were taking advantage of the Letus Extreme 35mm adapter. A large part of the “look” of the film is thanks to the 35mm adapter we were using, but it does come at a price. In simple terms, this device allows 35mm still lenses to be mounted on the front of the HVX, that would otherwise have just a fixed lens. Without getting too much into the physics of light and optics that go on inside this adapter (you can read about that HERE) I will just say that it steals a lot of light that would otherwise go into the lens. Long story short? Our 320 ISO camera becomes a 160 ISO camera.

This isn’t always a problem, but it does have to be taken into account ALL of the time. The amount of light needed to get proper exposure is exponentially increased compared to a faster camera. By the way, “faster” in this case means more sensitive to light, “higher ISO” if you will. It’s a constant battle. Bigger lights take more power, and cost more money. In the case of this shoot, we took advantage of using HMI lighting. HMI lights are about 5 times more efficient per-watt than tungsten lights. So, our little 575 watt PAR really pumps out a lot of light for not much power draw- very important when filming at a practical location without the luxury of a big generator.

Please stay tuned for more screen grabs and technical discussions of the scenes!

Paul isn't handling unemployment well.

This was shot at Tom Roback’s condo on the West side.  Pat can confirm the stop, but it’s just natural light and a 50mm lens.

Paul did what he could.

This was shot at Cassidy’s in downtown Portland.  My all time favorite place to get a cocktail.  Pat can tell you what the specs were on this.  I’m thinking the 50mm and wide open, but I think he was trying to go for a f/2.8 for most of the movie.

The restaurant shoot went great yesterday with one minor hitch.  The Letus Extreme lens adapter we use is designed with a small UV filter just inside the lens mount.  A few days ago, ours fell off its mount.  Turns out the mount is just some glue.  When the glue dried out, the glass disc came loose and rubbed against the little motor that vibrates the ground glass.  If it weren’t for the noise, we wouldn’t have noticed anything was wrong.  Incidentally, the weighted motor that vibrates the ground glass is the same exact thing they put in the handle of a game controller for vibration feedback.

So, the glass disc fell out again (super glue isn’t great for bonding glass to aluminum, btw), so we thought we’d take it out.  Turns out it has everything to do with proper focus in the adapter.  For future reference…

But that only affected our last shot, and it only kept us from getting deep focus so it still looks pretty kick ass.  It was just that thing where we were literally on our last shot of the movie after two weeks of smooth sailing and we were all scratching our heads saying, “Why won’t this effing thing focus to infinity???”  Oh well.  Lesson learned.  I’m certain much of the delay in troubleshooting the problem had to do with the fact that we were just anxious to finish.  And it was the only day we got up early.  And we didn’t have any of Clara’s muffins.  I could keep going, but even with that problem, spirits were high after the shoot, and the footage looks great.

A big thanks to everyone who helped and donated!  By the way, if you have five bucks (or more) lying around, send it to us!  Now that we’re heading into post, we’ll need funding for hard drives and render hours.  If you’ve already given, thanks!  If you have or will be donating time and resources, thanks!  If you’re just sitting there, send us five bucks!  CLICK HERE!  And thanks!

We may still have a few pickups afterward, but tomorrow will be the official last day of principal photography.  We’re shooting at a restaurant in downtown Portland from 6am to 9am.  Early, but man, it’ll feel good to have it done.

By the way, when people throw around the term “prinicpal photography,” they mean the main chunk of on-set and/or on-location production.  In most situations, once the editor works on the footage for a while, the filmmakers will realize they don’t have everything they need so they go out and shoot some more stuff.  The extra shots are called “pick-ups.”  

That’s the theory, anyway.  At our level, we know as we shoot that there are shots missing because in production we have to say, “we’ll grab that later” for one reason or another.  It’s usually because of time constraints or weather issues.  We had both!  We’ll also need to fix things like incorrect eye-lines or awkward blocking or weird cuts that need cutaways.  But even with all that stuff, I think we’ll have a pretty good rough edit by early June.

We techincally have 1/66th of the movie left to shoot, but I’m feeling VERY good about what we accomplished in 11 eight hour days.  Even though our schedule was set for 9am to 7pm everyday, we often finished our scenes before 5pm.  I realize it’s a risk mentioning this because many filmy-type people (by that I mean, people who watch a lot of movies… not people who never shower) will look at the finished product and say, “They should have taken more time.”

Yes, we could have pushed the actors harder.  Yes, we could have set up more complicated camera moves.  Yes and yes and yes.  We are aware of all the things we could have done to make the movie better with more time, but the point was to finish this project in a very short time frame.  And we succeeded.  I’m not saying this in a boastful way like, “We’re the best of all times!”  I’m saying that we had a great cast and crew who knew the score and made it happen.  It was a great experience for me.  I’m proud to know everyone involved and even though the sentiment is always idly tossed around at the end of a show, I truly hope we can all work together again.

- Co.

Check out a scene from the lab set.  Again, super rough.

FORGE Sc30 Temp from Colin O’Neill on Vimeo.

Just testing a video clip of scene 32.

This rough assembly isn’t color corrected and only has production sound.  The purpose of posting it is to give a little look at our cabin location, and to streamline my workflow for posting clips in general.  The link above is one that I made, the one below is from Vimeo.

FORGE Sc32 Temp from Colin O’Neill on Vimeo.

Feel free to post comments to this and any other blog entry.  Thanks!

Today was a very important day in the shoot, not only were we able to wrap on a couple of characters for the shoot (Robert Blanche, Tom Roback), we were also able to shoot the entirety of the longest scene in the film. Even though the scene was pretty long, it went really well and we kept the pace up and got everyone out of there at around 5:30.

One of the good things about being on this set has been the consistent lighting. Luckily the plan that we put into place is working out really well, and we haven’t needed to make any changes which helps us move very quickly from setup to setup. In fact, other than out overhead fluorescent rig, the only other light that I’ve put to use is a small LED panel manufactured by Rosco. The unit was lent to us by John Ashlee. He’s an amazing cinematographer, and a really great person! He’s contributed a lot to this project both in terms of gear and knowledge.

The LED panel makes an excellent fill light, and in this case it’s seen a lot of play to simulate light emitted by LCD screens onto faces. It’s the first time I’ve ever really used LED lighting before, and I’m sold! I can’t wait to shoot a night time driving scene so I can plaster an entire car interior with these things!

Since the lighting is relatively constant in the lab, one of the main variables for me becomes camera operation. Throughout the shoot there has been a mixture of handheld and fluid head operation. One of my favorite parts of shooting anything is actually operating the camera. Cameron did a great job pulling focus today- there were some really great shots in there that he pulled off extremely well. By the way, for those that don’t know, “pulling focus” is essentially the act of adjusting a manual focus lens to keep the subject sharp as that subject moves closer or farther from the camera.

It was a great day! Tomorrow will be a little lighter, but still just as fun! Stay tuned for more.

Today was our first day shooting on the lab set that Jack Shay built. We spend most of yesterday evening prepping it to shoot, which included rigging lights, dressing, and arranging various props. It doesn’t sound like much work, but some of us were there until midnight making final tweaks.

As you may know, the set is designed to be a clean-room lab. After discussing the look we wanted to go for, Jason and I settled on an overhead lighting scheme. A combination of clean-room reference photos and the ease of practical motivation for the light sources convinced us that overhead lighting was the best approach- not to mention the dilemma of where else to put your lights when designing your secret underground nano tech lab! The lighting in the set is provided from a rig we built containing 11 4-foot flourescent shop lights with high color-rendering tubes. The result of this rig is a soft even overhead light. It plays really well off of the white interior walls, and the monochromatic design of the set creates an interesting juxtoposition to the warm earthy tones of the cabin and exterior locations.

Anyhow, on to some photos!

After a final trip up to our Brightwood cabin location to load out the remainder of our gear, the better part of the day was spent in the Goldsmith building in Chinatown finishing up our lab set. The lab is totally incredible. Some real labs don’t look as much like labs as this lab looks like a lab… Lab, lab, lab, lab. But seriously, everyone has been working super hard, there hasn’t been any slack to pick up, and I’m confident that the final product will speak volumes to the talented folks contributing to this project.

The first week of shooting was a really great time. I’m super stoked about everything we’ve got in the can. Aside from some serious rain, like absolutely remorseless rain, the shoot went swimmingly. (Pun only partially intended.) We always had a Plan-B, and were able to get nearly all our interiors done while it rained. Then we spent an ironically sun-shiny Friday with a crew of six, picking up miscellaneous shots with Luke Clements.

Personally I’ve been learning quite a bit about communicating with actors. Arguably one of the most important jobs of the director is to obtain fitting performances from actors in terms of their character, surrounding scenes, and overall context of the story. The director has tools to use in order to try and find an appropriate emotional response from an actor, and one of the most common tools is simply speech. You have to be able to communicate properly with actors in case they don’t know what, “Be like Gary Oldman in The Professional” means. Often, as is the case on Forge, the actors have such great ideas that they just need the occasional nudge or reminder. I have plenty of room for improvement as a director, and being surrounded by extremely talented actors and creatives is invaluable experience.

Week two of principle photography begins in mere hours! Check back soon for updates and more shots of production!

Also, check out the trailer for District 9! Super awesome new sci-fi from Neill Blomkamp. A great example of how CG can be used to immerse the audience in a film, rather than just appeal to thirteen-year-olds who also love Shia LaBeouf.