Friday, April 16, 2010

Pro. Gress.

I'm nearing the end of the writing phase of my short which means I am entering the ever so important phase of pre-production. During pre-pro I will need to assemble cast & crew, scout & secure a location, storyboard, rehearse, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. One of my biggest lessons in film school was, "Pre-Production is insanely important." It can truly make or break your days on set.

I've already worked ahead a bit with assembling my cast and crew. Here is my line-up thus far:

Cast/Talent
Jessica Sapick & Jonathon Musser
Crew
D.P. Sean Sullivan
A.D. Jackie Gross
Capture Tech: Nitin Veludandi
Some notes on the crew. A D.P. is a Director of Photography and/or Cinematographer. I will work with Sean to accomplish the look of the film. He will decide what camera and lenses to use along with the camera angles/movements and lighting of the scene. The Assistant Director or A.D. is essentially the foreman on the set and keeps everything running smoothly so the director can direct. We will shoot this film digitally and this is where the Capture Tech comes into play. When shooting digitally, all of your footage is captured onto cards in the camera. When said card is full, it is taken out and handed to the Capture Tech who will transfer all the data to a hard drive or multiple hard drives and then he/she will hand the empty card back to the D.P. It may sound easy but it's an insanely important job as the footage that you've worked so hard to get is in their hands. You always want at least one empty card available because if you don't the entire production will come to a screeching halt waiting for the information to be transferred onto the hard drives.
Of course, these oh-so-brief job descriptions are for a small crew indie set and are vastly different on a big budget set. I still have some other spots to fill and hope to wrap that up in the next week or two. Really excited about filming. It's getting closer...
-b