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30 days until the movie comes out…
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Wednesday, August 17, 2005
1:29:00 PM EDT
… and Big Seth has got something to say.
Seth Gordon has been on this journey with me and Jeff since we made the short film Manual Labor in Cannes as part of the “extreme filmmaking” leg of the Chrysler Million Dollar Film Festival. A man of many talents, he was the DP and title designer on Manual Labor, the editor and production designer on the presentation piece Living the Lie - the precursor to Cry_Wolf, and is the editor/associate producer/storyboard artist/graphic designer/title designer, and the arbitrator between most producer-director conflicts on Cry_Wolf. Actually, the easiest way to describe Seth’s role in our dysfunctional little triangle is that he does anything, (and almost everything) that Jeff and I do not. Which is a lot. Quite simply, we could not have made this movie without him. And below he writes about one of the many creative gaps he filled… storyboarding.
Seth sent some storyboards from the library scene (which Jeff actually also referenced on 6/9), and I’m also attaching some color “mood boards” that Seth worked on with another very talented artist David Reinsche, as well as a shot of Seth with the cast watching him either do a rough (pre-avid) edit of a scene or check his email…
All the best,
Beau
As the eventual film editor of Cry Wolf, I was lucky to be involved from the concept phase of the script as the lead storyboard artist. Storyboards are like panels from a comic book drawn to help a director plan a film before everyone is on set -- some directors think of them as the first edit of the film. In the case of Cry Wolf, we had so little money to shoot our film that we couldn't afford to ever go back to a location if we missed something. So we used storyboards and camera diagrams to aggressively pre-plan our shoot so we could get everything on the first try.
One of my favorite sequences from the film - the library attack - was almost entirely pre-planned in this way. The creative and original concept behind the tension in this scene was that the light fixtures in the Westlake library stacks would be controlled by timed motion sensors. This happened to have been the case in my college library, so I had some first-hand experience discovering a long forgotten book in some dark corner of the windowless thirteenth floor, only to find myself in pitch black darkness if I failed to move after a minute or so. When the lights are off, the stacksbecome a very scary place, full of thousands of dusty volumes; when the lights are on, it means someone must have just walked by. Hopefully that person is someone you're not trying to hide from.
To accomplish this set up in Cry Wolf, we coordinated with gaffer Bob Spencer and his team of electricians to rig a series of fluorescent lights to turn on (and later off) in sequence as Owen and Dodger first arrive in the stacks. Later, when the two think they spot the killer - and in true horror-film fashion follow after him to hopefully learn his identity - the lights turn off behind them, eventually leaving them in the dark. The pair figure out how to use the lights to their advantage: they wait some time, hoping to spot the oncoming killer by the string of lights he can't help trigger as he hunts around for them. Their plan works, with one hitch: the lights turn on and seem to show the exact location of the killer, but unfortunately he seems to be headed directly their way...
I would like to tell you what happens next in both the storyboard and the email but, um, it'd be best if you go see the movie.
More to come,
Seth
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1:29:00 PM EDT
30 days until the movie comes out…
Seth Gordon has been on this journey with me and Jeff since we made the short film Manual Labor in Cannes as part of the “extreme filmmaking” leg of the Chrysler Million Dollar Film Festival. A man of many talents, he was the DP and title designer on Manual Labor, the editor and production designer on the presentation piece Living the Lie - the precursor to Cry_Wolf, and is the editor/associate producer/storyboard artist/graphic designer/title designer, and the arbitrator between most producer-director conflicts on Cry_Wolf. Actually, the easiest way to describe Seth’s role in our dysfunctional little triangle is that he does anything, (and almost everything) that Jeff and I do not. Which is a lot. Quite simply, we could not have made this movie without him. And below he writes about one of the many creative gaps he filled… storyboarding.
Seth sent some storyboards from the library scene (which Jeff actually also referenced on 6/9), and I’m also attaching some color “mood boards” that Seth worked on with another very talented artist David Reinsche, as well as a shot of Seth with the cast watching him either do a rough (pre-avid) edit of a scene or check his email…
All the best,
Beau
As the eventual film editor of Cry Wolf, I was lucky to be involved from the concept phase of the script as the lead storyboard artist. Storyboards are like panels from a comic book drawn to help a director plan a film before everyone is on set -- some directors think of them as the first edit of the film. In the case of Cry Wolf, we had so little money to shoot our film that we couldn't afford to ever go back to a location if we missed something. So we used storyboards and camera diagrams to aggressively pre-plan our shoot so we could get everything on the first try.
One of my favorite sequences from the film - the library attack - was almost entirely pre-planned in this way. The creative and original concept behind the tension in this scene was that the light fixtures in the Westlake library stacks would be controlled by timed motion sensors. This happened to have been the case in my college library, so I had some first-hand experience discovering a long forgotten book in some dark corner of the windowless thirteenth floor, only to find myself in pitch black darkness if I failed to move after a minute or so. When the lights are off, the stacksbecome a very scary place, full of thousands of dusty volumes; when the lights are on, it means someone must have just walked by. Hopefully that person is someone you're not trying to hide from.
To accomplish this set up in Cry Wolf, we coordinated with gaffer Bob Spencer and his team of electricians to rig a series of fluorescent lights to turn on (and later off) in sequence as Owen and Dodger first arrive in the stacks. Later, when the two think they spot the killer - and in true horror-film fashion follow after him to hopefully learn his identity - the lights turn off behind them, eventually leaving them in the dark. The pair figure out how to use the lights to their advantage: they wait some time, hoping to spot the oncoming killer by the string of lights he can't help trigger as he hunts around for them. Their plan works, with one hitch: the lights turn on and seem to show the exact location of the killer, but unfortunately he seems to be headed directly their way...
I would like to tell you what happens next in both the storyboard and the email but, um, it'd be best if you go see the movie.
More to come,
Seth
Written by wadlowwolf Blog about this entry |
Add to del.icio.us | digg this
9/16/05 2:54 AM