#2wkfilm (aka Royal Baronial Theatre)

"Flowers" - After Dream Witch Attack

Here is a scene from my next feature film "Flowers".

Here is an example of what someone can do with a $600 consumer video camera, a laptop, no crew, and no budget.  I am in the scene with Eleese Longino (Cristabel in the movie). There is no other crew around, no tripods/jibs/cranes/etc or lights were used. I just placed the camera on the ground and did all of the camera moves during editing. We took about an hour to shoot it, and it took me about two hours to edit it together (including post-processing), write the music, and mix the sound.

Enjoy!

Royal Baronial Theatre - Episode 11 - Talking about The Head

Reid Gershbein (writer/director/producer), Mattison (producer), and others go to Steve's (editor) house to see the new film that he is editing and talk about production and filming details of "The Head" with people at the screening.

Cinematography Notes (spoilers)

We have now moved away from filming the entire movie in a single shot.

The following contains *SPOILERS* about the story so if you don't want to know too much about before you watch the completed film then stop now.

Here are some of the notes on the new way in which we are going to film "The Head" which incorporates the ideas that came out of looking into shooting the movie in a single shot:

• One of the cameras is from the point of view of Man 1's wife, who is a ghost.
  • This will be shot with a lensbaby lense which produces a warped and strangely focused image.
• The other cameras will be non-standard cameras and lenses.
  • In some of the shots we will see glimmers an glimpses of the ghosts of Man 1's wife and child, but the characters don't see these ghosts. The audience knows that there is something in the room with the characters and this will add tension to the film and make the audience wonder when these things in the room are going to do something to the main characters.
  • The ghosts in the background are fuzzy, out-of-focus, and potentially out of time having rapid and choppy movement, unnatural and scary, mostly hidden and out of reach, supernatural.
• The room progressively fills up with smoke as the movie progresses and the lantern burns making it hard and hard to see and see things in the room.

Notes of Cinematography Framework (spoilers).

The concept for The Head is to shoot the entire film in one continuous shot, without cut edits. There are a number of ideas that I have for the framework that will help guide the decisions and spur creative ideas for how we shoot things, what we shoot, and a cohesive vision for the film.

Here are some of the current concepts that we are developing with respect to the camera and visual focus of the film:

• We are shooting the film in one shot but we will conceptually break the film into many compositional frames that are similar to those of separate shots in a traditionally edited film. Instead of the cut edits that is performed in a traditionally edited film we will use the camera to smoothly flow between the compositional frames of the film.

(SPOILERS) Beyond this point there are story details about the film, so stop reading if you don't want too much to be revealed.

• The camera is from the point of view of Man 1's dead wife, a ghost.
  • Entire look of film, until the barriers are broken later, is distorted and drained because looking at reality from the "beyond".
  • Initially the camera starts of lingering on Man 1 his wife loves and connects with him.
  • Initially, Man 2 and Woman are blurred or out of focus because wife doesn't have as strong of a connection with them.
  • Sounds from the beasts outside are unnaturally loud and present because they are on the same plane as wife.
  • When Woman's brother enters he is already brighter or filtered due to his closeness to death.
  • Entire image shifts or filtered after barrier of ghosts is broken and allows for Woman to see the ghosts.
  • Woman is colored or filtered differently when barrier is broken and Woman can see the ghosts.
  • Camera is observational and really drawn to blood and its vitality with respect to life and death, blood is extremely bright and affected in visual look.
  • When Woman's brother and Man 1 die they look or are colored differently to symbolize going beyond barrier.
  • When Woman breaks through the barrier to the afterlife and sees Man 1's wife and son, she looks directly at the camera when looking at and addressing Man 1's wife.
  • Sometimes the sounds from the main players and reality are muted and we just hear the breathing of Man 1's wife.
  • When the camera looks at Man 1's son it is just as a glow at the edge of the screen and we
    just hear his voice in a more present way than we do everyone else's.
  • At the end of the movie the camera looks down at Man 1 as his wife would look down
    upon him and then the movie ends by the camera floating upwards into the sky as it looks
    down on Man 1.