Monday, September 24, 2007

Full steam ahead at Glass Kingdom

So things in the 21st Century part of the film are moving forward very quickly.
The other day I realised that there is a finite amount of things to do before we shoot in January - here is a brief update of where we're up to.
  • Isadora Suite and Matthiou Pollier who are working with me on the production design and costumes are currently negotiating with Australian Fashion Designers to dress our 21st Century stars. This is wonderful and very exciting.
  • The initial casting is on the way, and just as we did the main character in Poland we are going to do here, we will cast LUKE first, and then match the other 2 main women around him. It's an interesting alchemical process, I have a very strong feeling about what Luke's energy might be like, but someone quite opposite might turn up and be perfect for the role.
  • Clearing copyright, and licencing for some of the music in the film. Although most of it will be written especially for the film there are some tracks which we will be buying, and at this stage we can't reveal who that might be but its very exciting!!
  • Final tweaking of the script is taking place, and also am writing down notes for the cut aways that might be important in the gluing of the scenes together. There are a couple of aspects that get left behind when the heat of the moment during shooting takes over, these are stills (ie photos for and of the film) and cutaways.
  • Location hunting. Sounds ease doesn't it. Just get into the car and look for locations. There are about 30 locations in Belladonna, and while some locations may be perfect they might not be perfect for shooting or lighting. Interiors always need to be bigger then they appear in the film. All that chunky film equipment takes so much space. This is going to be a challenge especially for the scenes at the Naturopaths office. (They tends to be rather small)
  • We are also starting to round up the crew and all the people who could help us, luckily I am surrounded by wonderful friends with abundant heart.
This whole adventure really is an astonishing process. Belladonna is the Glass Kingdoms first feature and although along the way we have collected many of the skills required, now is our opportunity to use all of them together and gather a bunch of new ones.
You certainly have to nerves of steel and learn to trust. Because we are also Co - Producers on this movie so many legal aspects have to be tied and finalised before we shoot. It allows me to really refine my left and right brain skills and realise that all things are equally important.
www.glasskingdom.com.au


Monday, September 17, 2007

What Colour is that?

BELLADONNA as you may have gathered by now is being shot in two seperate shoots, one in Poland and the other in Australia. We are currently in the gap between the two, so we're in post and pre production at the same time. One of the things that we are working on is a couple of simple effects shots for the 15th century section of the film. I'm working on on one of these currently using a combination of Terragen (landscape generating software) and Shake (compositing software).
The shot I'm working on at the moment is an establishing shot of Jadwiga and Jan's house which intercuts with the rest of the sequence shot in Sanok. Even though we are not doing the final DI grade till we get to Poland next year, to complete the post production we would like to do a test grade now of a few shots, for our own reference and to allow us to match the effects shots too. Now this is the first time we have worked on a DI ( digital intermediate, essentially colour correcting the film digitally rather than the traditional process on film), so we are currently trying to find a cost effective way to be able to calibrate the colour, brightness, gamma and contrast we see on our monitor to match what the image will look like once it is transfered to film.
With HD and SD this is easy all you need is a calibrated trustworthy monitor, with a DI the process is not so straight forward. The path these particular images will take is HDCAM (HD gamma YUV) to 1080P rgb 8 bit quicktime files to 2k dpx files to a film recorder outputing to neg stock (processing variations) then printed and projected , crikey! what a twisted alphabet soup path of potential confusion . Now each of these stages inevitably involves changes to the way the image looks, so the solution is to know how the image you are looking at at each stage relates to the final projected image. This is achieved through the use of files called 3D LUT's. These are essentially a calibrated correction the program you are using to view the image uses to correct the image to appear as it will in the finished projected image. The LUT doesn't actually change the file, just how it appears.
The Two solutions for generating these 3D LUT files that we are currently investigating are Cinespace 2.5 from Rising Sun research and 3D LUT cube builder from Digital praxis.
Another use for these 3D Lut files will be in the monitoring of the image from the RED camera. We are going to use of 3D lut 's loaded into a Blackmagic design HDlink pro to view the red camera output on an Apple 23" lcd. This should allow us to monitor onset how the final image will appear. Throught the use of different 3D LUT's we should also be able to view differnt grading options live.
So what colour is it really is really all very relative. One of the things that is immediately apparent is that almost endless digital options invite constant (time consuming ) experimentation, that doesn't necessarily lead to the detailed and instinctive image making control knowledge that can come from using one film emulsion for a long time.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Are we all making thesame film?

www.belladonnathemovie.com
One of the most important aspect of making a cohesive movie is to make sure everyone is making the same film. That sound really obvious but not often the case.
As you can imagine there are alot of interpretations of the past. There is the beautiful almost overbearing world of 'The Girl with the Pearl Earring' or the grittiness of Polanski's Macbeth, and everyone who comes to work on a film brings a whole lot of personal references of those periods. One of the most valuable lessons that came my way was to 'never assume anything' and when someone says "it's not a problem" begin to worry. So at the beginning I had shown the heads of department all the critical visual references, including the colour palette for BELLADONNA as a starting point for discussion and further development. To ensure that everyone understood we were not trying to re-create the most perfect 15th century location, but capture the essence of time before running water. The way I like to work is to start of with the visual references and then see what the heads of department come up with...ideas, inspirations and improvements, to feel they have a creative investment in this collaborative process. But never assume....come costume time and I'm presented with bright purple tights and a 1920's riding jacket, yes the perfect colour just the wrong era. So what happened?

I hear that Poland is bountiful with autocratic directors who don't entertain the idea of collaboration and apparently love to yell. So when this young director comes along and asks for their creative input, it must have been interpreted as 'anything goes,' or just get the job done. Well, a very tense meeting followed. I guess every country has a historical, culture foundation and what seems 'normal' in one is not in another. Polands whole shift from Communism to Democracy has had deep ramification on the patterns and attitudes
of people lives. Interestingly these' misunderstanding occurred only with crew over 50 years of age.
(not all but most)
Regarding ' its not a problem' this is one of the most misunderstood, vague and unhelpful terms you can possibly hear when you're in a foreign country, there is a lot of money involved and enormous amount of work has to be done within a relatively short period of time. what does it mean? "Don't worry I'm taking care of my department everything is going to be OK." But I've seen the bright purple tights so I'm beginning to feel sick in the stomach.
Or does it mean I haven't done my work and by saying "No problem" you wont push me on it, or, there really isn't a problem and I'm a cool cowboy.
So now my responses are. "Please elaborate" "I know there is no problem but how have you solved this?" or " Show me where you're up to, see how I can help"
This sounds really obvious but beware of vagueness.








Tuesday, September 4, 2007

BELLADONNA WEBSITE GOES LIVE

Tonight our website goes live
For those of you who have found the blog through www.belladonnathemovie.com I invite you to read the previous entires, keep in mind we're still hopping from the shoot Poland, to all the pre-production stuff that's happening now in Australia. For those of you who have been tracking our progress have a look at our website www.belladonnathemovie.com



Monday, September 3, 2007

Casting the actors

I knew that one of the first things on arrival in Poland I wanted to get done was to cast the actors. By now another location hunt has been organised this time to the other side of Poland, so with that on the horizon we started the actor search. Before we arrived in Poland the casting director had already chosen few actors to attend the audition, and we had our eye on a very particular actress who I was sure was going to play JADWIGA ( the lead character in the 15th century). When we arrived it turned out that the casting director did not feel comfortable speaking English so the baton was passed onto Marta and me. Casting for me is a love, hate experience. I really enjoy doing the initial part of the casting where you choose the actors from their photos and videos. Its like choosing the right colours for a painting. We made the decision to fly Daryl from Australia to play 15th Century JAN. (Below you'll see some before and after photos of him, lucky he looks good as a blond). Daryl has a very earthy energy I always imagined that Jadwiga would be ethereal. So the actress who we imagined would play Jadwiga did the audition and was great, but she had to come back for another audition against the actor who was going to play PAWEL.
The actresses in Poland are pretty amazing. The down fall of casting in Poland is that acting in film is perceived by far an inferior activity compared to acting in the theatre (which we later find out through a very unfortunate example).
So just as we think we can finish the female casting in walks Katarzyna Mazurek. At first I thought she was too young for Daryl and somehow too small. But as soon as she started acting something absolutely magical happened. One of the things I got them to do was just to chop some herbs ( as Jadwiga does that alot in the film) and my direction was to 'just chop, and not act' Much harder then it appears. She just did it... and then when I asked her to paraphrase the scene with her own words, and she was so present.
Now we had a choice on our hands, but I knew that situation like this always resolve themselves as they very soon did. Malgosia (our Polish Co-producer) warned me that good looking male actors in Poland very rare, but I was pleasantly surprised. As always in audition you get a couple of actors who turn out to be really inappropriate for the role, and as soon as they walk into the room you know, firstly they don't look anything like their photo and secondly they all want to be Robert De Nero. So Robert, after Robert, came in, there were a few Al Pacino's, and then in walked Pawel. Instantly I knew he was right for the part, I was so deeply hoping that he could act. The actors take their craft so seriously they really care which is a breath of fresh air. So he was great and when we matched him up with the women, the choice was obvious. It was obvious because Katarzyna was able to forget about her apperance and just be, and able to listen. Perhaps the beauty of the perviously prefered actress provented her from being 'present' and 'real'. Katarzyna had quite a task of asking her theatre headmaster for time off, to shoot the film. You would think that in your final year of acting, just before you enter the 'real world' the teachers would encourage outside work, especially when its' an International Feature Film.
She ended up crawling on her knees, as he sat in his office chair, with his hands crossed over his fat stomach enjoying the the spectacle of a young actress praying for his forgivess, as she dared to step into the filthy world of film making. Ohhh life!!!