Note: Everyone’s pre-production metods are different. This is just a little insight of how I go about my process.

 

About a few month ago I was given an intriguing short story titled “Waiting on a Train“. It was written by the VERY talented David Joyce, a writer/director I’ve worked with in the past. Upon reading I could tell there had been thorough care taken in every single action. I know it sounds a bit on the corny side but the writing feels a bit like poetry in motion. So much is said without having to say anything. I love that.

 

The location described in the script was of a busy train station with a working steam train no less! A very daunting location for a short film to pull off but the challenge is what makes things so interesting. After reading the script and making a few notes about any ideas I might have, whether they be story based or visualy based. I take these notes and then compare them with what the director has in mind.

The Western Maryland Railway station that we'll be using as our location

 

Establishing Visual Language with Director

Color Palette. The first order of business was to meet with Dave and get his feeling for the aesthetic and look of the film. After some initial discussion we came to see the color palette he’s after; a neutral-grey variety, de-saturated but with cooler tones. Establishing a color pallete is one of the first aspects I try to establish. All wardrobe and production design need to have a understanding of this same in order to go any further in their work.

A great example of this can be seen from the site moviebarcode. What they’ve done is taken some of the most acclaimed films and combined every single frame to make it into a giant image. Impressive how some films stay within certain borders while others will have some scenes that are scorchingly different. It gives the films a feeling of consistency, that the filmmakers are in control of what their making. All the while laying visual tones for the viewer to get an understanding of the environment the characters reside within.

 

MovieBarcode for "The Social Network"

Lighting. “Waiting on a Train” will be very natural through heavy diffusion and little kicker lighting. We’ll be able to achieve this through most of the action taking place under an overhead that’s part of the location. Since it’s an exterior the weather will dictate the harshness of the shadows. For example an overcast day would result in very soft shadows, if any at all. On the other hand a sunny day will lay harsh shadows across a subject.

 

Influences. Watching movies with future directors is easily the best way to figure out their likes and dislikes. For establishing our color palette and light we watched “After Life” a film made in 1998 by writer/director Hirokazu Koreeda. The film’s naturalistic, diffused lighting is incredible because of soft the shadows that are still able to holds such a contrasting look. BIG fan of that. When looking for contrast with diffused lighting the most important aspect is the angle of the light in relation to the camera. I know that seems a bit obvious, but a light moved two degrees in one direction could be the difference of being brilliant or inexperienced.

Screen grab from the film "After Life"

 

Camera Blocking. The other visual element to this film will be long, elegant camera moves. In order to give the film a feeling of timelessness our track and dolly will be crucial. It will be a VITAL part of telling the story’s subtleties. Giving meaning to every single move. (Take note all of you slider hounds… I’m guilty myself) The film Dave used as an example for this was “In the Mood for Love“. Well acclaimed for it’s use of movement with slow motion and timed with incredible blocking of  it’s actors. Make sure to watch the video below, it’s one of my favorite scenes in the film.


 

 

Frame rates. With that in mind we also needed to be able to shoot in variable frame rates, i.e 24, 48, 60, 96 etc. In order to give that feeling of a slight alteration of time slowing down. This is definitely story oriented first, but for filming people going through natural movements I prefer 48fps. This also allows you to still have the higher frame rates still available in your back pocket if you need them.

 

One of the big visual elements that I was concerned with was how much the train itself impacts the look and aesthtic. The story is written in a timeless fashion and from that Dave wanted to use a steam powered train. An idea of steam coming off the train will be an important look to encourage the feeling of a bustling train station.The location, wardrobe and props are going to be the some of the most important elements in making the setting a believable one.

 

The steam train that we will be using. Scary. I love it.

 

Location. After confirming an appointment Dave and I road tripped it to Cumberland, MD (far North Western part of Maryland) to visit. What a terrific location it is. On top of how dynamic it looks, its also functioning, but only for historical train rides. Perfect. A local company has a real steam powered train that take people on rides for a murder mystery trip. (That sounds like so much fun). So that’ll be the train that we’ll be using. It really is a gorgeous and frightening machine. Massive in size. (pictured above)

The gorgeous Western Maryland railway station

 

Color Palette Tests. I used my 7d and zeiss primes to take some stills, check focal lengths, and test colors. Used RAW format to push the image negative around a to see how it can relate to the RED’s image. I also wanted to see how much the natural light looked under the location’s overhang. Below our some examples:

Director David Joyce standing in for some framing

love this place

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So many angles to be had at this location

Director David Joyce looks on in confusion

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Camera and Lighting Packages

After the location scout I wanted to start putting an equipment list together for our proposed budget. In the end I decided to go with RED one over HDSLR and Alexa for a few different reason. Unfortunately the Alexa was ruled out because it was just too expensive compared to renting a RED one. There were three main reasons I ruled out the HDSLR:

1) We want to shoot in several different frame rates. (i.e 24, 48, 60, 96)

2) Aliasing, the location is COMPLETELY covered in bricks and that’s a problem I don’t want to fight. Also, the main character wears a suit, most likely it’ll have a tight design pattern so that could give us trouble. I know the RED aliases, almost all HD cameras do. It’s no where near as bad when shooting 60 fps on the 7d. The camera goes haywire. We’ll be doing wardrobe tests previous to production in order up make sure this problem doesn’t arise on shoot day.

3) Color Depth in the shadows. The lighting is going to be naturalistic which means a lot of light will fall of naturally in to the shadows. What’s impresses me about RED footage compared to HDSLR (I know, I know, it’s apples and oranges) is the amount of color depth within the darks and shadows. The HDSLR footage just goes to straight black in the shadows, a lack of information from the h.264 format. So your having battle your highlights and shadows. While the RED plays quite nicely in that range of dark.

 

Here is a look at the camera package:

Pretty basic RED rental list

 

Set of Zeiss Ultra Primes. I like.

Lenses. This is a pretty standard RED one camera rental. But the two items I didn’t want to skimp on were the lenses and the head. The lenses that I was considering were between the Zeiss Super Speeds, Cook S4s and Zeiss ultra primes. In the end I went for UPs for their cool, sharp, contrasting look. With that in mind it’s important to note when shooting to add a little more fill light with zeiss. You want to do this to help retain enough light in the shadows and not have the opposing side of a face fall to far underexposed. Lastly, the markings on these lenses are some of the best out there. This will be vital for all of the different marks we’ll have to coordinate with our dolly moves and actors. Here’s a link to a VERY in depth lens review on RED user.

Like Butta.

 

Head. I also wanted to get a proper cinema head for the dolly. In my experience I’ve found O’Connor heads to be the best, putting others to shame. I was considering a geared head for this because of the seamless camera moves needed for this story. I decided against it in the end cause I don’t quite have enough man hours with them to feel confident in nailing every take (It’s no fun to be the one who failed the take, especially those who live behind the camera). The O’Connor 2060 and the RED go together good so hopefully I won’t muck up any takes.

IR/Hot Mirror Filter. These filters are incredibly important piece of kit when using NDs (Neutral Density) filters when shooting exteriors with the RED one camera. ND filters block out most colors of the spectrum except for Far red and InfaRed. We begin to see this affect our image negatively because only this spectrum is getting through untouched.  This starts to effect the color representation and begins to muddy up the image. The RED MX sensor is far better at handling the IR light but it still needs a filter as well. To learn more about this theres an incredibly thorough test on different IR/hot mirror filters. Check out ProVideo Coalition to see more.

IR graph courtesy of Pro Video Coalition.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Working with gaffer. Everyone has a different way or working with your gaffer. The way I deal with it depends on how knowledgable they are, if they know their stuff I let them have full control of their equipment and crew. After establishing the look of the lighting I like to go over the visual language with my gaffer. Show him location stills, let them pick out their lights and grip. Luckily I was able to lock down Drew Louis, one of the most knowledgable gaffers I’ve had the pleasure of working with. In the end we decided on two 1200 HMI pars as our main source with a few other HMIs for any fill, edge or background lighting.

 

Here’s a look at my grip and electric order:

HMIs are a thing of beauty

 

Since PARS have more concentrated light it allows the subject to pop off the background. Centering the viewers attention.

LIGHTS. Another area of concern that my gaffer and I shared was getting a soft enough light for our actors while still having enough foot-candles for the wide shots. Most often HMIs are the best choice to represent daylight and pars have a great ability to punch through sunlight. Our main source lighting will come through an 1200w HMI par (pictured left), and the 3 different 8×8 diffusions will soften the light to varying degrees in order to match the possible weather conditions we might have (i.e cloudy, sunny or slight overcast). That timed with some bounce boards will be enough to give the actor’s opposing side some fill light.

JL fischer 10perfect mix of size, strength and options to fit the bill

 

Track & Dolly. For this it was an easy choice, the JL fisher 10 (pictured right) is the best  when using a skilled dolly grip. It has a self-dampening hydraulic arm that allows small jib moves. They can sometimes be a bit rough to handle in small spaces because of their weight. On the other hand their much easier to handle than their big brother JL Fisher 11. We have some fairly long dolly shots planned so we made sure to be covered in that department with straight and curved track.

 

She's a real thing of beauty

Fogger/Diffusion. Last thing on the list of note is the DF 50 Crack fogger (pictured below). We want to continue to give the feeling of a bustling train station. Having the fogger on set will help give the train’s steam a consistent look. When we go to visit the location I’ll be testing the color temperature of the actual steam that comes off of the train. After that I’ll match it to the right hazer fluid in order to get the same matching temp. That timed with a fan should give it enough aim and speed to move across the frame. Hopefully the wind will cooperate.  In general I’m not a fan of “fog machines” from party stores for interiors because unlike a hazer the fog tends to sit in clumps and not spread evenly. Which doesn’t allow it give an even level of diffusion. Which just looks odd instead of cool. It’s all about looking cool ya know. In THIS episode of Shane Hurlbut’s blogs he talks about the difference in smoke/fog diffusion and how important it is for the aesthetic to feel right.

 

 

That’s it for the initial pre-production stages. But there are a few more steps that I have left to finish in my pre-production.

-Figure out camera blocking with Director

-Work on lighting diagrams

-Schedule Test shoots with wardrobe and props

-Meet with Editor and Colorist to figure out best settings (i.e aspect ratio, compression settings)

-Break down script shot by shot

My next post will cover the rest of these pre-production items. Our production is scheduled to shoot April 9 and 10 (perfect timing for NAB, so we’ll be celebrating the shoot for a few days) We’ll be having a detailed behind the scenes video of the whole process so that’ll be fun to share. I always enjoy those as much as the actual movie itself.

 

I think that’s enough babbling for know. We look forward in sharing this process with everyone. Hopefully I can get some other departments to guest blog about their part in the film. Until then let me know of any areas about the process you’d be interested in and I’ll hope to answer them.