New Front Design

Things went really well this week! Mother Nature still wasn’t cooperating too well but we managed to come to an agreement. Our original plan was to film in the studio on Tuesday and film outside Wednesday. Then Mother Nature turned into her old vindictive self and the weather man was calling for nasty rainy weather Wednesday. Luckily Tuesday was a fairly nice day even if there was quite the nip in the air so we flipped the production schedule and managed to get a lot of really good footage. I swear to good though it is never as busy downtown as when your trying to film! We had one shot take us at least 25 minutes to get because every time we called action someone would walk around the corner right into frame and directly in front of me thus making it impossible to add in the fireballs I’m pretending to throw. We actually had a pretty funny moment when we were trying to film because I am yelling and running across the street towards this corner right as a group of 4-5 people come rounding the corner from the other direction, They see me right as I am “throwing” fireballs and the reactions were great. I actually had to stop pretty short of my mark because I would have ended up hitting one of them. I can’t wait to start editing today so I can see their reactions again as this 260 pound crazy looking guy  with 6 to 7 inch tall red spiked hair that comes running  towards them yelling about snitches and heroes and apparently fighting someone only he can see.

Wednesday’s studio time went real well too. We managed to knock out a real good chunk of what we had left and for the first time the project felt really collaborative. Up until this point Quentin and I have really been focused on two totally separate and equally important aspects of the video. Him working on sfx and music. Me working on Scripting, Blocking, and Costuming. Even when we were filming for the most part, because I have much more film/theater experience, it hadn’t really been that collaborative. I was more the director and Quentin the actor. Its not that he didn’t have suggestions on how to do somethings, its just we never really had that back and forth. Partially because I am a little guarded about my “vision”  and want to stay as true to the Static franchise as possible because I have a ton of respect for what those guys did and this is my homage to them. Partially because Quentin didn’t have and good suggestions until Wednesday. Just kidding! I was just thinking of this interview I saw some years back with Ron Howard talking about being on the Andy Griffith Show. One day little Ron piped up with a suggestion and the director actually took it stunning young Ron. When asked why he was so giddy Ron told the director it was because he finally took one of his suggestions to which the director said something to the effect of “Well that’s the first damn good idea you’ve had” or something like that. Long story short Quentin had some great ideas especially when concerning aspects of Hot Streak’s flight and I’m extremely grateful because I think the small changes we have made will improve our video immensely.

Now I’m off to edit clips, key out green screens, and try to get as many vfx put in as possible. Hopefully I can make some real headway so I can give Quentin some footage to start matching up audio to.