Set Photos from "The Burden of Choice"

We shot The Burden of Choice about a month ago, but for the last few weeks post-production had to be put on pause to do some festival Halina work. Today I wanted to post some of the behind-the-scenes pictures taken from our set photographer Vanessa from both days of the shoot.

We start with a pretty picture of Elisa in hair and make-up...

Here's Mara the Assistant Director and I.

 Cool camera shot.

 On set with Tarion and Elisa (and resisting the urge to eat the cookie props).

 Crew guys - the team behind the magic.

 Little man Dane in hair and make-up.

 Adorable picture of Dane and Jessica on the set.

 Our "band photo!"

 Pooya posing on the set during her scene with Elisa.

 Cramming a decent-sized crew into a tiny room.

 Jessica and Pooya give us their "tough girl" pose...

 ...then Elisa joins them for a superhero pose...

 ...then it goes full-on Charlie's Angels...

 ...and finally they're joined by some handsome guy.

Post-production will be resuming so check back for updates, clips, and maybe even some poster art in the near future!

On the Set of The Burden of Choice: Day 2

I didn't get to snap many photos during day 2 of the shoot, so we'll all have to eagerly wait for the set photographer's pictures to be delivered before we get the really good pics.

Day 2 focused almost entirely on Elisa and Pooya and the interaction of their characters. We shot in a pretty small room, but DP Marc did a fantastic job of making it work with multiple angles and some creative dolly work. Since the majority of Halina was two people sitting across from each other talking, we came up with a new look and set of angles to differentiate this project more. For example we did some profiles shots, like this screen grab below:

I really liked watching the conversation in this scene play out because there is a wide array of emotions in Elisa's character, and she jumped from one to another with ease. There's a part where she has an outburst that pretty much spills out my personal feelings more than I've ever scripted before, so seeing her do that monologue was magic. Then there's Pooya, who is just a fascinating character actor and so much fun to watch.

I plan to start editing this week. As usual I'll log the footage first - which is the more time-consuming part - and then I should be able to get a rough cut done fairly quickly.

A few notes in case anyone's wondering: I don't cameo in this one (boo!), and there are no actors in here that appeared in Purgatory Comics or Halina. However, there are hidden references to both of those films. I'm not trying to create an expanded universe; I'm actually trying to create an expanded multiverse. I'll explain what that means...one day.

On the Set of The Burden of Choice: Day 1

Now that the  dust has finally settled, I can do my customary blogging on the production days for The Burden of Choice. This was a 2-day shoot and probably one of the smoothest shoots I've ever been a part of. A big factor in that was the location, which was my own house. No comic book stores, no giant castles...I had an environment completely under my control for the entire shoot, and I felt that relief every second of the project. 

Another big reason this was such a relaxing and enjoyable shoot was the crew. It was mostly Halina people, and it was a bunch of good people, there to make a good movie. No egos, no cynicism; just a team that wants to make it happen. As with Halina, equipment came in via Elefant Films who made a special delivery the morning of the shoot.

Then there were the actors. How many nice things can I say about them before it's weird? Seriously, how much can I gush before it stops meaning anything? They ruled.

For day 1 we shot all of Tarion's scenes, most of Jessica's scenes, half of Elisa's scenes, a fun cameo, and all of Dane Peevy's scenes. Dane is our child actor who now holds the record for the youngest actor in the WM Production universe. He came in with high energy that absolutely reminded me of myself as a kid...but then when I called "action," he performed like a champion and stayed focused (unlike I would've been able to do as a kid).

All-in-all, this was probably one of the most relaxing shooting days for me personally because I was able to just enjoy it.  Yet another reason for that was Mara, my amazing Assistant Director who did a lot of the heavy lifting

I can't wait to get some footage up. I can't wait to you guys see Elisa, or the scene with her and Jessica together, or the hilarious cameo. I'll try to blog about day 2 tomorrow. Until then!

"The Burden of Choice" Cast Rehearsal!

This weekend it was back to Ripley-Grier Studios for The Burden of Choice rehearsal. Because this script is so short, we were able to work through it multiple times, try different styles, and really hone in on the characters. I can't believe the shoot is a week and a half away already!

More "Halina" Poster Variants

Back in February, this blog introduced you to the two variations of the Halina poster. But in actuality, I had originally made a total of four posters! Now finally, I'll post the "Ms. Avery" and "Mr. Crane" versions of the Halina character posters.

Click for hi-res!

Variant C (Ms. Avery Version)

Variant D (Mr. Crane Version)

New "Halina" Behind-the-Scene Pics

Just for fun, here are some new behind-the-scene pictures from Halina, courtesy of Cheryl the production manager who had just put these online today. I'm happy that some are from the fifth shoot day, which didn't have a set photographer.

"Halina" is Finished!

 Look I just like classic cartoon animations okay? GET OFF MY BACK. *ahem* Anyways...

Tonight I took Ken's final sound mix for Halina and matched it to DP Mike's color corrected video to create the final, finished cut of Halina.

It feels like just yesterday I tested the waters with this post, and here we are: with a completed short film on our hands, and one I'm damn proud of.

But we're not out of the woods yet - a reason I pushed to finish the film by this date was to hit a few festival deadlines that I really want in on. And, truth be told, I'm a bit rusty on exporting/converting videos (and I've never authored a Blu-ray before).  I found this tutorial to be very helpful so far.

Keep checking back because I really do want to get some type of teaser trailer up in the next week or so, and I'm (hopefully!) going to have some festival news too.

Color Correcting "Halina"

On Saturday, DP Mike stopped by and we kicked off color correcting Halina. We started with a lot of issues; the biggest being that the Adobe CC kept locking up after applying an adjustment layer to the whole film. This problem also occurred on Mike's machine at his home so it's something specific to the project that we can't figure out.

Things seemed to work a little better when adding one adjustment layer at a time to each clip (as opposed to laying them all down at once). We were able to do scene one together to agree on an overall "feel" for the film. 

The Adobe plug-ins we're using are Film Convert, which is able to provide digital footage with color and grain of film stocks, and also Impulz and Osiris from Vision Color. Mike is continuing to work on the project from his machine and making incredible progress.

Meanwhile at Sound for Indies, Ken and I have scheduled the final sound mixing approval for March 10th, which means that's about when the film will be completed (if all goes as planned)!

The Last Shot of Halina

Today I finally managed to shoot the elusive quick shot I mentioned in this post, which means that now, Halina is officially 100% wrapped.

We met up at a boat dock for this shot, which features my friend's hawt corvette pictured above. But unfortunately there was still snow and ice and slush just freakin' everywhere. I spent at least an hour shoveling as much of it as I could to create a clean area. Then, a really nice fella named Denis drove his plow over and helped us clear some more of the area. What luck.

So after all the shoveling, and plowing, and more shoveling and so on, we finally nabbed the shot. The shot which which will be 2-3 seconds in the actual finished film. It's good to have all of the footage now, and I couldn't have done it without Denis the plower, Chris and his corvette, and of course Patricia and DP Mike who came out just for this.

Seriously though, look at that car. HAWT.

"Halina" Posters Revealed!

Here you go, two variations of the official "Halina" poster! Halina is expected to be completed mid-March 2015 and currently 31 minutes and 11 seconds long. Web site is in the works.

Click for hi-res!

Variant A (Halina Version)

Variant B (Mischa Version)

Snowstorms and One Missing Shot

The recent snowstorms on the East Coast have been a blessing and a curse for this production. The blessing came last week, when we received so much snow that offices were shut down for a couple of days. This allowed me some unexpected time to work on the second cut of Halina and map out a timeline of completion.

The new timeline moves up the expected completion to mid-March; much sooner than I had previously guessed. Also the new cut is even longer than the original, so I never really trimmed it down like I said I would. Basically that last blog entry was an entry of LIES.

Now the downside: there's actually one shot missing from Halina. It's an outdoor shot that's only a few seconds long, but involves a nice looking car. 

This has been a challenge; originally we were going to use a car that William owned and grab this shot on the fourth shoot day, but that day brought heavy rain. Then I was going to use a car that belonged to a friend of a friend, but she was only available Saturdays, and every Saturday has had nasty weather. 

The latest plan is to shoot the scene this week, between storms - wish us luck. It's amazing how the shoot was relatively pain-free (we even had unseasonably warm weather during the other exterior scenes), and yet this tiny shot has been so challenging. January and February in New York are just horrible and unreliable months for exterior shooting.

In the spirit of keeping positive, I am excited with the new timeline. Steve is composing some new tracks this weekend for the score, and then the film is going to Sound For Indies for final sound mixing.

Still Shots From "Halina"

Here are 5 still grabs from Halina before color correction. If you'd like to see 5 more, simply check out the new album on the Halina Facebook page (and "like" it while you're there).

Halina Rough Cut Done!

The first cut of Halina is finished, and it clocks in at about 29 minutes, 30 seconds (without end credits). Going by the screenwriting rule that one page should equal one minute of screen time, it shouldn't be a surprise that a 30-page script became a 30 minute film . . . but for some reason it's always a shock when this works.

The end credits won't be long, but they will be a couple of minutes. Now, me having a bit of OCD, I'm going to want the finished film to be 30 minutes or maybe slightly shorter . . . so I may have to tighten some things up or outright delete some lines for time. But fear not, I won't delete for the sake of deleting; there are some legit sections I'd like to smooth out a little more.

I should mention a slight upcoming delay that will come from me breaking apart my editing suite and putting it back together for a move - hopefully it doesn't slow things down too much.

Thoughts on first cut: holy crap this thing flies by. I can honestly say this movie feels like it's 10 minutes long. I guess if it leaves you wanting more, it's not such a bad thing.

I leave you now with another track from my Halina inspiration playlist - a cover of the INXS song "Never Tear Us Apart," sung gorgeously by Tashaki Miyaki. My God I wish licensing costs weren't a thing and I could use this for the film's trailer. Stay tuned for more updates!

Halina Editing Update

As of this writing I'm a little shy of halfway through the first rough cut of Halina. Most of the last couple of weeks has been spent logging and labeling all of the footage and sound files - now that that's all done, the initial editing is zipping along pretty quickly.

This is the first project that I'm editing on Adobe Premiere CC (I usually use Final Cut). One newer feature on Premiere CC that is amazing is the new masking and tracking feature. This makes it easier than ever to apply a filter to just a portion of your shot - like a license plate - and then have that filter track the plate through the rest of the clip. Back when Purgatory Comics got picked up for distribution, I had to apply de-focus filters to all of the licensed logos and then reposition the filter manually each frame. If I had this tool back then, my life would've been a lot less stressful.

You're not going to see this in the above picture but I set the film's aspect ratio to 16:9 widescreen. There are a few ways to do this is Premiere CC but after trying them out, I really like the method presented in this YouTube video. It gives me full and easy image control with no hassle.

I'm really happy with the edit so far and trying to be an absolute perfectionist. When I'm satisfied with my cut, I'll have to bring this elsewhere for sound mastering and color correcting because I'm pretty weak in both of those categories - so right now it's hard to predict when this will be finished. I believe I can comfortably finish before May if I keep up this pace - I'll provide more thoughts on that down the road.

I leave you now with this downtempo track from Zero 7. Sometimes in editing I need to temporarily stick a song into a scene to get the pacing right. Last night that song was "Somersault" which I've been listening to a lot lately to match the film's vibe. Enjoy!

On the Set of Halina: Day 5

Even though December 11th was the last day of the shoot, it was Tyler's first day on the set. We shot in two locations - one being my house - and above you can see Tyler tuckered out on my very popular beanbag chair (from sumolounge.com - free plug).

Here's Rob the sound guy on the same chair. SumoLounge, now with free shipping! Seriously SumoLounge, pay me commission.

So the bad news is that I didn't have Vanessa the set photographer for this day, so I only have a few pictures I took myself to share. I also didn't have my brother Paul acting as PA so the crew was a tad lighter than usual. But all in all, it was a very good shooting day.

We started the shoot at the Coffee Nut Cafe, where they were extremely gracious hosts and very accommodating. Even though we filmed while the store was open, we were able to shoot with few sound interruptions. In fact surprisingly, this coffee house was probably the nicest and (second) most ideal location in the entire shoot.

Following the coffee house, we finished off the shoot at my place. After four days at Oheka, it was nice to have a completely controlled environment.

So I'm going to say that a highlight of the day includes two easy, controlled filming locations. Another highlight is finally getting Tyler on camera, and him flawlessly bringing the character of Aaron to life. Challenges? Actually not a whole lot I can remember this day.

After the shoot I grabbed dinner and drinks with Marc the AC and Rob the sound guy, and it was a great chat. I was riding an extreme high from wrapping the shoot. That feeling - that's not just the highlight of the day; it's a highlight of this entire production.

And just like that, after months of planning, the Halina shoot is wrapped. I know I tend to gush a lot in these writings but the thing is, I'm probably never going to be that artsy filmmaker who takes this all so seriously and acts super cool about it. I love writing stories and making them come to life more than anything in the world, so it's impossible not to constantly feel so happy about it. This cast and crew became like family to me and I miss them already, and now I want to impress them all by making a great short film. This is never a job for me. It's never work. It's the greatest form of communication I've ever discovered.

Check back for more updates, pics and stories - we're just getting started folks.