TV Ghost log

I thought that the others of you who are wanting to do your own shorts might enjoy this. I will post a log on the progress and events of my next horror short "TV Ghosts". Here is an update:

I have gotten all my camera equipment in. It will be shot mostly with the Canon XL1S and my stunt stuff will be done with my sony that I did my last movie with. I had to get upgrades for Premiere and my DV500 program so that the Canon will work with my computer. That was a little frustrating, but it works now.

I began shooting tests with Wax worms. I am going to be using them for the maggots in the zombie attack. A friend told me where I can get them by the thousands. I have purchased closeup filters for those shots and can almost fill a frame with one of these worms.

A few days ago I began to shoot fall foliage since the climax takes place on Halloween night. I will be shooting the film over the next year and I needed to get these shots to pull it off for a fall setting. We had a foggy morning and it made a nice moody feel.

Today I got my hero vulture footage. I was able to get in a cage with several and got extreme close ups. I also was able to get some great stuff of them in trees, flying, and on a rooftop. I will later matte some of that footage in with the real house. It all came out pretty cool.

My next move is to shoot more stock fall foliage and to try to film a stunt where the lead falls off of a ladder. Once this is done, I will have to take a break, while I work on Dumb and Dumber 2. I will finish shooting that in Jan. and then go back to my project.

More later.....

Yeah, I'll give you all the gory details. I have gone out and bought some silk fall foliage to help with the autumn look. I'll use that stuff on the ground in some shots and maybe floating by a character, etc. I start on D&D 2 today, so there won't be a whole lot happening with my movie, but when it does, I'll keep you all apprised.

Thanks, I may do that.

Yes, this one will be in color. It will be a while before I get back to it do to my current insane shooting schedule.

Well, today I went out and shot footage for the storm at the beginning of the film. There are really severe storms here(Tornado watches as well) but they make for great footage. The story starts out on the same night as the storm hits in "Don't Worry...", so it has to be really rough looking. I'm hopefully about to start my search for the lead soon. Meanwhile, it will all be scenic elements and moving on to shooting our zombie character.

Thanks, that would be cool to talk to these guys. It is pretty much going to be a one man acting gig, for the most part. I do plan to have a lot of little parts for some minor characters. It will be shot pretty much at one location (like "DWIOYI"). Give me a few weeks and then maybe we can set something up. Thanks again, Andrew.

I'm not really sure as to the differences between the XL1 and the XL1s. I have the XL1s and I like it a lot. I will say that nothing looks as good as film yet, but I think that you can get some really good quality shots with this camera. I will fudge around with some of the shots in After Effects to enhance certain visual issues that I am finding. Those issues are not that frequent and I believe that I will be able to achieve my goals with this camera with little forseen problems. I really do think that it is a great camera.

I agree as well. I think that there are no reasons for a great deal of attitudes that I have seen in other forums.
As for the amount of cameras that I use; I use 2. I can only afford 1 of the XL1s's and I have a small sony camera, which is the one that I shot "DWIOYI" on. Andrew has nicely offered to bring his XL1 camera and help out and I might just take him up on that. Currently I've just been using the Canon for my scenics and using my Sony only for more "stunt" type of stuff. It would be good to use 2 cameras for a lot of the shots so that you can get more coverage that will match in editing. Nick brought his camera, which was identical to my Sony, when we did "DWIOYI". He or Carl would shoot some of the scenes that I was filming from different angles and it really helped out. I know that it is not always possible to get an additional camera, but it can be a lot of help.
As for Mr. Wickermanson's question (You guys and your name changes )... I did the 2 different face changes on the statue. The first one takes place when he is on the phone and the shadow goes over the statue. It is much more subtle and was done as a disolve between 2 still shots that I imported from photoshop. I did the 2 versions of the face and imported them into After Effects and turned them into short clips of film. I then animated the shadow in, changing the transparency as the shadow passes, changing the face. As for the more dramatic change. I had multiple layers that I did in Photoshop of just the rock and various versions of the statue's face with different expressions. I then imported that into After Effects and set the images up as short overlapping clips. I then would adjust the brightness and contrasts to create the lightning flashes. I disolved between the different expressions during the dark parts of the flashes, creating a crude animation. I finally had the statue move off camera by simply moving its position out of frame and adding a motion blur. There is a lot of After Effects shots in the film that go pretty much unnoticed, which is really cool. It is a great program to have, if you want to mess around with effects.

Yeah, I blow a lot of time messing around with ideas that I don't even use sometimes. I spent a lot of time for a shot in the movie where our "hero" looks out the back window and up to the sky to see that the storm is almost upon him. He then looks back down to his watch and in the glimpse between looking at the sky and then down to his watch, he sees the statue looking at him evily. The problem was that the speed of the glimpse made it pretty much impossible to see the changed statue. I played with this shot for a long time, trying to work the bugs out and finally I gave up on the concept for this film, (Maybe I'll do it in TV Ghosts). Anyway, that led to the first visit on the porch while on the phone. I also did several shots where I added in rain and lightning and a lot of stuff with flies. It was a lot of work, but when it actually works... wow, what a rush. wink

I'm not really certain about the newer handheld cameras. The one I have, I bought in 1999. There are newer models of the same camera for less money than I paid. Mine is just a sony 8/digital 8 camera. You can get some really good stuff with these cheaper cameras. Just make sure that it has manual focus and manual exposure switches. I always find myself darkening the exposures over what you would get on auto. As for the editing software, I paid around $500 to $600. It is a Pinnacle DV500 plus video capture card with Adobe Premiere . The good thing about that card is that it has a box with it that you can plug your tv into so that you can see your edited footage on tv as you edit. I bout that several years ago, as well, so I'm not totally sure what they have now. If you already have a capture card, you could by Premiere on its own. I hope that this helps.

Thanks, Carl. We'll see how things pan out with my shots and I'll let you know.

PS, I hope that your work situation has gotten better.

I just got back in the door from shooting some more scenic footage. I like to have a lot of that to set the tone. Anyway, I have decided that there is going to be a swampy area behind our main character's house. There exists such a place about 3 miles from my house, so with overcast skys, my wife and I ran out there to film. This will be the location where we first see the vultures. Well, it turns out that there really were some out there. I got some good stuff of them flying around. I also got a good shot of a great blue heron flying into frame. It also started to rain, so I got some of that as well, which is great since the film starts off with a big storm. Overall, it was a really sucessful day.I now have to wait for a foggy sunrise and then go back over there for that. Cool stuff. wink

I did a rough sketch of the zombie for the movie yesterday. I plan to do more coming up. Here is the first sketch:
<img src="http://prod.bsis.bellsouth.net/coDataImages/p/Groups/75/75032/folders/79849/528648zombie-2.gif" alt="" />

It's slow going right now due to interuptions in schedule and my lack of motivation at the moment. I may have a job in Russia, coming up, but I'm waiting to hear all the details. Anyway, I am going to be in Tennesee next week and I'll try to polish off the script then or shortly there after. I want to get it pretty tight. Once I do that, I'll get my cast together and then get into the meat of it.

Last night I stayed outside until 2:30 filming an amazing electical storm that will be part of the movie. I got some really great shots and I also got some great footage of the moon. I will see if I can post some pics later.

I pretty much keep my camera in manual mode and do my own focusing. The problem with the moon is that, if you want the clouds around it to show (like I did), then you have to film it pretty bright. This means that the craters, etc will not show, because of the moon's brightness. You could always add them back in in the computer. If you don't care about clouds, then it is pretty simple to get a good exposure.
I did decide to tie it in with the other film. It fits rather nicely. As for the rest of the film, I am kind of dragging my feet until I get word on this movie in Kazakhstan. If I get it and don't have to leave right away, then I plan to move on and try to get a lot of it shot before I leave. I will pick up the rest of it when I get back this winter. That will work out well for a new character that I have added in. I have a shot that I want to do, when he makes a copy of the computer footage of the woman's soul onto a video tape. When he ejects the tape, you can see his breath over the tape, because it is so cold. I've also added some additional vulture stuff in the film. So far it is coming together well in my head.

Here are some screenshots of some of the scenic elements that I was talking about.
<img src="http://prod.bsis.bellsouth.net/coDataImages/p/Groups/75/75032/folders/89211/594667lightning-1.jpg" alt="" />
<img src="http://prod.bsis.bellsouth.net/coDataImages/p/Groups/75/75032/folders/89211/594668lightning-2.jpg" alt="" />
<img src="http://prod.bsis.bellsouth.net/coDataImages/p/Groups/75/75032/folders/89211/594669lightning-3.jpg" alt="" />
<img src="http://prod.bsis.bellsouth.net/coDataImages/p/Groups/75/75032/folders/89211/594670moon-1.jpg" alt="" />
<img src="http://prod.bsis.bellsouth.net/coDataImages/p/Groups/75/75032/folders/89211/594671moon-2.jpg" alt="" />

I was thinking about large close ups of all the actors filling the frames for the cover art. No really, I will probably do a photocomposite for the artwork, so I may very well use some of those images. It will be the sort of thing that will happen after I shoot the whole thing and see where it takes me. I do think that it is cool how good those came out since I shot them on digital tape. I used the frame mode on the XL1S. It really makes a difference.