I’m especially excited about the one I wrote because it is also techniqually challenging: it features three characters, only to be played by one actor. A lot of the ‘heavy lifting’ will be done during post-production and I cannot wait to get to it. It’s the last on my list.

The contest offers some sweet prizes, which always makes things much more enticing. I’m doing my best to make these babies shine and at the end we’ll see who brings the bacon home…

Director Honey Lauren carefully reveals the events that came together in California that opened doors for Vietnamese immigrants during the 1970s. With the help of Tippi Hedren, twenty Vietnamese women established themselves as manicurists and unknowingly had set precedence for today’s multibillion dollar industry.

What’s interesting about this doc, besides its subject matter, is how we structured it into layers. When we peel all these layers back, we find not only different people, but also different stories set in different time periods all pointing back to its center: Tippi Hedren and the twenty Vietnamese women.

This was my first collaboration with Honey and I had fun working on the project. Happy Hands is now gearing up for the film festival circuit.

Furthermore, the footage looks great (see above) and the sound is top quality. Everybody did an amazing job and the ball is in my corner now. I know, from what I already have, that I will not disappoint and I cannot wait to plug in the finished piece on its release date. It’ll be right here with a quick update. Very soon…

July 30, 2012 update: Tony Hawk’s Doctor

Still, it was a beautiful day and we grabbed everything I needed for ADR. We didn’t really record much, just some SFX and a few missing lines, but even that took us a couple of hours. Many thanks to Travis Brown and William Stamey for making it happen.

Shortly after our meeting, I received a few reference frames from James. They are pretty rough, but good enough to get things rolling.

As a starting point, I chose the very last frames of both examples. This process seems to work the best for me. It tones down the bright spots and desaturates the colors, which helps us to convey a colder feel. I think it’ll look spectacular, once James starts cranking and I throw some After Effects magic at it at the very end.

Finding talent was the toughest part. I needed an Origami Artist, someone who’s energetic, cute, personable, somewhat fashionable and also comfortable in front of the camera. Ultimately, I was going to be happy with an artist who looked and sounded natural on camera. I knew I could make the rest work. I didn’t have to, because I had only one artist to select from… a friend’s recommendation… and she was all of the above!

I created an outline for the project, along with a few key questions. I wanted her own words, rather then a rehearsed script, in order to achieve a natural and fluid performance. I started to work by dressing a ‘creative corner’ to shoot against. It became her work space, Hannah’s World, filled with office supplies, paper and origami. This beautiful setup had presented us with some colorful shots. We used gentle camera movements to advance the story and to help me create a seamless edit. I wanted to achieve a stylized documentary film feel, something beautiful, sunny and relaxed and I believe that we’ve succeeded. The feedback has been positive and our :60 spot, titled Hannah’s World, is still going through the selection process. I’ll find out in June if Domtar likes our commercial enough to pick it up. It would be incredible if they did.

I knew we couldn’t get the ARRI Alexa again (I’m not that lucky), so I started to search for a Canon 5D. Knowing the shots inside and out, I felt that I could get away with a semi-grown beard and a lesser quality camera. I also felt that color correction will be an additional headache, but we’ll deal with that later. Bottom line, I had to get my shots. We went out early in the morning and shot a bunch of different takes for the hunting and searching scenes. We grabbed some details, shot at different angles, long and medium shots and we also played with the pacing of the takes. I had a list of insert shots for other purposes, such as compositing, so we grabbed those as well. Even I was able to shoot a decent amount of footage, which is always fun and working with a word class DP you tend to pick up cool tricks. The stuff they don’t teach in film schools.

As you can see above, my biggest obstacle is the weather. It looks too bright (again!) for any kind of storm, not to mention a winter storm. It’ll be a laborious color correction process to tone down the sunshine in the footage. I have a few ideas on how to create a cold environment and I’ll revisit the issue soon with a nice little example. Stay tuned.

I employed the branches of the below tree, which has succeeded in carving out a role for itself in the film.

Before giving away too much at once, I must return to the chopping block but don’t forget to check out the Winter Storm Facebook page and hit that ‘like’ button for regular updates. Thank you!

Go to ‘Modify’ and the drop down menu will reveal the ‘Merge Clips’ option. Once you click ‘Merge Clips’ a submenu is revealed with ‘Synchronize using:’ options. We used a lockit box, so I selected ‘Timecode’. (If the timecode is on an audio track, then you have to select use “Aux Track” for the video clip.)

That’s pretty much it. Your synched up files will show up as a new ‘Merged’ clip in your browser. As you can see, FCP had created a new A008C003_120108_R272 Merged clip for me, which now contains the T58 external audio file.

Designed by ibuiltthis, iSlate has been around since 2008, so I was a little baffled as why I didn’t already know about its existence. Especially because there are a few apps out there for the iPhone and iPad, most notably the beefed up Movie*Slate.

I guess the question is: is it the real deal? No, but it’s pretty close and super convenient. iSlate is especially helpful when all you want to have is a sound reference and some basic numbering sequence for your takes. Changing scene and take numbers is fast and easy and now as I’m going through my files I can appreciate it having it on the set even more. I have clean reference frames and iSlate has made the first steps of post-production a lot easier.