By Torey Haas
Before I get into a bunch of (potentially boring) technical info on how we made the trailer, let me just say that I fully believe this play is going to be something very special- the script is hilarious, full of puns and almost sickeningly clever at times. However, it goes beyond simply being funny since it presents a compelling story that could've easily been the basis for a classic 40s-style film noir. Please consider donating to the Kickstarter campaign (even $1 helps!) since this play needs to be performed!
Anyway, when actor/playwright Greg Garrison first approached me back in January to shoot two trailers for The Red Herring, I immediately agreed because a) I thought it would be fun and b) I still owe Greg after the infamous butterfly shot in my short First Date, in which he tried for at least an hour to raise a tiny butterfly necklace into the precise focus point of a wide open 50mm lens on a Canon 7D... way easier said than done, and I'm convinced Greg still has nightmares about it to this day. Whenever we have a deceptively difficult rack focus shot on one of my sets we call it a 'butterfly' in honor of our misspent hour trying to get that shot.
This first trailer presented several challenges because it's pretty high concept- one long take, timed to a voice over with characters appearing and disappearing in flashes of lightning. In an ideal situation we would set the camera on a motion-controlled dolly and shoot the actors in their respective locations on different takes while mimicking the lightning with very powerful (and expensive!) lights situated outside. A few carefully hidden cross-dissolves could then be used to easily composite the whole thing together in post. However, MonsterBuster Entertainment is an extremely low budget operation even in the best of times, and our budget for this trailer was exactly $0, meaning no dolly (let alone a motion-controlled one) or expensive lights were available to us.
I taught myself compositing and visual effects when I shot my student film Troll Picnic back in 2008 because, well, I wanted to have a talking troll in my movie and couldn't think of any way to do it practically. I've since become an industry visual effects artist and compositor, and I pride myself on finding DIY ways to pull off complicated visual effects. For this trailer I decided to shoot the long tracking shot with a flat picture style (Cinestyle) on a glidecam; the extra latitude granted by Cinestyle would enable us to darken and overexpose the picture in post, thus simulating the lightning flashes, and the glidecam would theoretically be smooth enough that it could mimic a dolly after some post-stabilization courtesy of After Effects CS 5.5. Well, I was right about the former but not the latter, since despite the valiant efforts of my super-talented DP/camera op Nick Lauinger (who must have ran through the shot at least two dozen times, and yes, glidecams do get heavy even with just a T2i) the shot really doesn't resemble a dolly at all... thankfully it still looks pretty cool though!
 |
| Seductive Vesper Kind (Melissa Oulton) strikes a pose against our very professional green screen. |
As for the actors, everyone was shot straight-on against a makeshift green screen. The glidecam footage was tracked using SynthEyes (I swear this software is magic) and the resulting camera data was then imported into 3D space in After Effects. The footage of the actors was then keyed and placed at the proper coordinates in the composition, creating the illusion that everyone was really standing in the shot. As for the Sin City-style splotches of red on each, let me just say that I'm a huge fan of Rotobrush.
Overall I think the trailer works quite well visually, and I'm happy with it. The approach we used would fall apart if we saw the actors for more than half a second though since it would quickly become apparent they are just flat planes projected into 3d space. As it stands now the lack of changing perspective during the brief moments you do see them only lends a surreal look that adds to the already-stylized visuals.
Since the trailer necessarily does not include any credits, I want to formally thank everyone who helped bring this project to life. All of the actors- Patrick Baxter, Corey Bradberry, Sarah Rapson, Matt Bartholomew, Matt Myers and Melissa Oulton- were great and I look forward to working with you all on more projects in the future. I already praised Nick, my DP, but I can't say enough about how talented he is (especially since I'm worried he's going to start demanding a paycheck to keep working on these projects with me). Keyla McClure, my assistant director, was wonderful as always, and sound ninja Quyen Tran did an excellent job with the audio. My three grips- Ricky Hess, Fred Grant, and Jason "J Man" Holloway- enabled us to finish the production as efficiently as possible, and I've got to give a shout-out to Hsiang-ming Wen for having a beer with Fred (somebody has to do it on these shoots). I know I said we had no budget for this trailer, and while that's certainly true Kelly Greene of The Collective Project Inc. did spring up some cash to keep us all well-fed in addition to helping out whenever she could on set. If you look next to the Red Herring in the trailer there's an infamous artifact from one of the most popular film noirs of all time; this is the work of CGI artist Anthony Baker, and I want to thank him for putting so much time into something that five people will see. And while I know it's his baby just as much as it is mine (maybe even more so actually), I do want to thank Greg Garrison as well for all of his hard work... his brother Matt even pinched in too. Lastly, I want to give an extra special thanks to Erica Sato for baking us cookies on Friday night... I know she helped grip and I think she cooked dinner or something after we wrapped, but chocolate chip and white chocolate macadamia nut cookies kinda trump both of those things, don't you think?
Torey Haas is both the founder of MonsterBuster Entertainment and one of its featured directors and cinematographers. He can be reached at torey@monsterbusterentertainment.com
No comments:
Post a Comment