The Making of "Starfishing" - A Behind the Scenes Blog: Part 2

"Go make your movie."

~ J.J. Abrams

I love this quote.  It is literally four extremely simple words stuck together into an extremely simple sentence, but it encompasses so much more than the simplicity could ever imply.  Filmmaking is all about passion, and if you don't have it, it will show.  In the context of the interview, JJ was asked, "Do you have any advice for young filmmakers?" to which he answered, almost dumbfounded by the question as if the answer was obvious, "Go make your movie!"  He then began rambling on about how easy it is for the kids of my generation to pick up a video camera and start shooting movies, whenever they possibly can, and how that will build the passion that you need to succeed.  This concept was in the back of my mind throughout the entire production cycle of "Starfishing"; this wasn't a student film that I was making for a grade, this was my movie that I was making because I wanted to.  Treating it that way is the first step to becoming immensely passionate about your project, and it's that passion that will drive you (as it drove me) to stay up all night in the lab, to put in the extra hours in the color suite, to do your own foley sound recording, to properly mix and master your soundtrack, to edit and re-edit your film five, six, seven times; having passion is the first step in the production cycle, everything else is all just sticking to your guns and following through.

PRODUCTION

The policy at FSU for F1 production is that you get one 12 hour day to shoot with a one hour break at the halfway point for lunch, totaling to 13 hours.  The faculty are very strict on the schedule, meaning that not only are you done shooting by the 13th hour, but that you are completely packed up and disappeared by the 13th hour, as if you were never there in the first place.  This obviously creates a time crunch, but once preproduction is complete, the actual physical production of the film is a relatively straight-forward process.  Assuming you did your homework in preproduction, what you do on set as a director should feel completely natural and, in theory, everything will run smoothly.  This isn't to say there aren't any snags - on the contrary, you will always, ALWAYS, run into problems on set.  In all the sets I've been on in film school, something has always gone wrong.  During the filming of "Starfishing", one restaurant bordering the alleyway had their septic tank pumped, so for about two hours we couldn't use the alley; another restaurant was having their grand opening, but their kitchen wasn't finished yet so all day chefs and construction crew were coming in and out right by our set and making A LOT of noise; we filmed the third scene of the film - when Hope is running around like crazy - first, but then it started pouring rain, so we filmed the whole scene again in the rain; our extension chords weren't long enough to reach our set during the night shoot, so we had to move the whole set down the alley to a backup location that wasn't ideal (but ended up working really nicely); and finally, filming in a city by a crowded city street meant noise, and A LOT of it - a lot of really great takes were ruined by car horns or street noise or passerby's.  All this goes to show that when filming a film, expect that nothing will go right.  I mean this honestly: if you do that, you will remain mentally stable when nothing does go right and become mentally awesome when things do go right.

As I mentioned above, the physical production is a relatively straight forward process.  So what I will do is talk a little bit about some of the directorial decisions I made during production, but mostly just show a lot of photos from the production.  The photos are fun and they capture what the essence of the production was like much more than my descriptions can.

WORKING WITH ACTORS

The hardest part for me during production was remembering that the performances of my actors are worth a lot more than the frame they are staged in.  That's why a black and white movie from the 1930s can still hold merit today, even without the amazing technology we now have.  This was probably the single biggest thing that I learned during my first semester at film school, and it was very difficult for me to hand off the camera to my crew and then walk away and work with my actors.  Trusting that they were going to set up the scene the way I pictured it in my head was difficult to do, but the detailed storyboards and floor plans from preproduction made it easy for them and the results they got were incredible.  While working with my actors, I would always walk away from the set and then just let them rehearse the scene.  I would give my input and then they would go again.  From my classes, I was encouraged to never read a line to an actor.  "We want inspiration, not imitation," my professor said.  This was difficult for me - it was a new way of working.  But I trusted my professors and the result was outstanding.  By giving my actors motivations, stakes, and objectives - as opposed to where I desired various inflections and pauses and changes in volume - I was truly able to mold and shape their performances to help them jump off the page.  Once we did get back to set to start shooting, I would do the same thing: after each take, a little praise, a little critique, and then right back at it.  And on the note of praise, I can't stress how important that is.  No actor likes to sit there and be critiqued all day.  Besides, odds are your actor is a much better actor than you!  Praise your talent for every good thing they give you.  It really improves the morale of the set and helps their performances reach the next level.

Working with actors away from the set was an important part of the process.

Ryan, truly focussed.  Nikki... uh.... 

Big shout out to Nikki for being a trooper through the freezing, wet day. 

Ryan waiting for us to finish building the set.

Performing a scene.

Working with Nikki.

It really was a wet day.  The umbrellas were super helpful.

"Ryan you do what I tell you or else!"

CHOOSING THE FRAME

Despite the fact that I trusted my crew to set the initial frame while I worked with my actors, the frame was still very important to me.  The frame to me is much more than the relative positioning of actors and the camera on set though.  To me, the frame involves all the technical aspects as well, ensuring that I can have the best possible image quality and color to support the feel of my film.  Something I brought with me to set from my background in shooting DSLR filmography was the importance of proper exposure.  We shot our F1's on the Canon XF305, which is a broadcast quality camcorder.  From my understanding, it is aimed primarily at news crews.  The XF305 would be absolutely fantastic for documentary filmmaking, but can really be hard to work with on a film set, especially when coming from a DSLR background.  Some key functions we are used to like ISO, Picture Style, Color Space, and interchangeable lenses are entirely gone.  Others like aperture, shutter speed, and focal length are present but entirely different.  However, a bright side to the XF305 is it's picture quality.  Unlike DSLR's which shoot in the messy h.264 codec, the XF305 shoots its own MXF format, which is a wrapper for some from of MPEG-2.  I'm not entirely sure how it works but the bottom line is that the clarity is AMAZING.  You don't get the pixel dancing on the XF305 that we might be used to on the Canon EOS DSLR series, including the 5D Mark II at times.  But the downside to this is how slow the lens is on the XF305.  If you turn off the lights you just aren't going to see anything.  Period.  My solution to this was to shoot my film at a completely neutral exposure, drop the camera gain to the lowest possible setting (even lower than the default "Low" setting), and to use tons and tons of on set lighting.  This kept my actors bright even in the even of having to underexpose a shot to keep detail, kept all noise out of the shot, and kept my colors as neutral as possible for leeway in post.

Another decision I made about my frame was to shoot in a 2.35 widescreen format.  The downside to letter boxing 1080p video to appear to be shot in anamorphic widescreen is the loss of data: by doing this I effectively cancel out about 33% of my frame.  But I chose the widescreen because I believe that widescreen can greatly add to the feeling of isolation and desperation when used properly, which I believe really paid off in my third scene.  I also believe it lends itself to tension more than a full frame.  When you look at a square and a rectangle side by side, which appears to have more action?  I believe that narrower frames add an inherent dynamic to the composition that seems to imply complexity mores than a full frame.  Finally, I believed that by cropping a third of my image out of the frame, I would help to hide the shortcomings of the XF305 and thus help keep my audience interested in the story as opposed to being thrown off by poor quality video.  Shooting on the XF305 meant overexposing a lot of skies to keep my actors bright.  Cutting out those skies threw my audience's focus completely onto the characters - which is what is important - on top of placing them in a medium they are more accustomed to seeing (most films are shot widescreen), all adding to what I hope is an increased immersion in the film.

Finally came the actual composition of the frame, which is the most important part of all.  My storyboards were very helpful during this part of production, and for the most part my director of photography, Victoria, nailed the framing every time.  I simply handed her my board, showed her where I wanted the frame on set, walked away to work with my actors, and when I came back it was done.  This also applied to lighting.  I would tell Victoria what kind of look and feel I wanted and when I came back the lighting would be almost spot on.  As for lighting though, I had a very specific plan in mind.  I really wanted to stress the depth of the alley, so I threw really cool blues into the background while keeping he foreground warm.  I also really wanted to showcase the grittiness of the world while staying true to reality.  This was difficult, because in real life alleyways have soft, overhead, tungsten lighting but I wanted a really hard lighting feel.  It was a difficult balance between finding my light source and applying just the right amount of diffusion, but my gaffer Grace Colley did a great job.  Obviously, there was a lot of tweaking throughout the day, in both the framing and the lighting.  No one can exactly match my vision without being in my head, it's not philosophically (or physically) possible.  My general on set workflow, therefore, went a little something like this: at the start of a new setup I would show Victoria the storyboard and light plan and explain to her what I wanted.  Then I would walk off set and work with my actors while Victoria would work with the crew to set up the set how I wanted it.  When it was done, my assistant director Justin would come and get me and the actors and bring us to the newly built set.  I would then place my actors where they needed to be and do some rough blocking, then tweak the camera and lights until they were perfect and start rolling.  At the end of a setup we would tear it down and start all over again.

My Director of Photography, Victoria Cragg

Boom Operator Elangie Pereda works with Victoria.

Checking the frame.

Elangie booms a wide shot from far away.

"Who wrapped this cable grrr..."

Ta Da!

A wide shot of the set

Victoria filming a shot.

Cinema?  I direct dat.

Grizzly.  Et Syder y Razza.

Getting ready to roll!

You can see the 2.35 widescreen bars farming Ryan.

Cool DIY dolly rig.

Victoria goes hard.

The start of the night shoot.

Directing at night.

Deeply thinking... I'm sure it's about dinner.

Shooting into a light always looks cool.

•         •         •

I hope you guys enjoyed this post and that it didn't get too dry with some of the technical stuff there in the middle.  I know in my last post I said I would touch on post-production in this post also, but I think this post just reached a point where it got too long.  I never want my posts to dry out by the end, and if I am reaching that point please let me know in the comments!  Finally, I just want to make one remark about all of the pictures: one crew member who is missing from all of my pictures is my gaffer, Grace Colley, and that's because she's the one taking the pictures!  So a huge thanks to Grace for taking all these awesome pictures for me, I really do love all of them!  On that note, keep checking in for my next post on the post-production process and then what will be my fourth and final post in this BTS Blog which will touch more on the personal side (the -losophy) of the film for me.  Thanks again for reading and showing your support :)