Dark Woods Is Scary

So we went out to the woods as daylight faded. I found a location that I liked for the actual shoot coming up. We cleared out some area for the fire so we could test just what the footage would look like.

See, I'm shooting on my old HD Canon DV cameras. They're still very nice cameras(one of them still sells for over $1000 and it's like 6 years old). But they perform pretty well under low light conditions and have autofocus.

I thought about trying to fake use them, and then just shoot the whole thing with a DSLR but it just seems like it'll be too tough.

Anyway, then we waited for dark and shot some time lapse stuff with our actual DSLRs. Here's my brother's:


https://www.youtube.com/embed/Hk-iEOVWApU 

 Here's mine:

 https://www.youtube.com/embed/xyRNRF7oLPE

See how his is better. He's been doing it for longer. That's literally my first time lapse. He's actually done some very cool ones in the past. Check this one out:


https://www.youtube.com/embed/ChUUkr7ue6Q

Dude's getting good, right?

It got dark. We lit a fire, pulled out some lanterns(like the actors will have) and the camera. I climbed into a clown suit and we shot some video.

It's dark. But I mean, nothing you can't see, and it fits the actual piece. The clown suit isn't so dark that it's unworkable.

We also shot this promo still which I'll use eventually.

You feel kinda dumb standing around the woods in a clown suit and one clown shoe, I can tell ya that.

So we put out the fire, gathered all our shit in the pitch-black dark, and then started down the trail toward home.

Only, you take all these twists and turns in the daylight, and then at night you come to a fork and you're like...was THIS the turn, or is it the next one? It's kinda scary.

We found our way out though, grabbed a pizza, and then went to Mike's to watch Matinee. I'd rented it from Amazon a while ago and hadn't watched it. Really had forgotten a lot about it. Movie really deserves a blu ray release. Lot of fun.

Anyway, that one actor's out because he's union and gives a shit. Now I have two roles to fill, and we're not even a month out. I'm sweating one of the roles more because when I cast her, I have to get her to the FX guy's house fast to have her head cast.

Still working on that complicated FX shot at the end, plus trying to come up with the clown's look with my brother.

Also liasing with the other director about his project and trying to help out on that. LOT to do, and time's wasting...