48 Hour Film Production, "Dance Again"

This past weekend we produced a film for the 48 Hour Film Project titled "Dance Again". It is about the stress of the mundane items of life and how chocolate cake makes it all better. We had a shoot of only eight hours, followed by twenty-five hours of editing. We had a great crew headed by Christian Parsons, and everyone did a great job. We got the film turned with four minutes to spare... damn, I could have gotten in one more cut!

Above are a few screen shots from the film.

Some people have asked me about how we got the look for the film. This is a very simple short film that takes place over six minutes at one small table. We do have one scene from the kitchen to help the "fantasy" aspect we needed to get in (one of the festival requirements). Anyway, we had set out to do a very simple film, but shoot it as beautifully as we could.

I had put a lot of thought into the look I wanted to achieve, and even before we arrived on the set, we did some critical work to achieve a clean image. A few days before the shoot, we brought all of the shoot monitors into the edit suite and calibrated everything as closely as we could. Here is a photo of that process. Then, our camera rig consisted of an Panasonic HPX500 - this is a 2/3 inch camera that I have spent a lot of time tweaking and setting up looks for. On the front of it, we used a Letus 35 adaptor with Canon zoom and prime lenses and a Chrosziel matte box. The lighting is a mix of soft window daylight, HMI, and tungsten lighting.

What this meant for post-production was that the color, contrast, brightness and overall look were achieved on the set. There was no correction done in post, except on the shot in the kitchen. This is big when you have a short deadline and need to edit, not spend time fixing exposure and color issues. I am coming to the place (perhaps it is back to the place) that we should create the look in-camera on the set whenever possible and change "fix it in post" to "enhance it in post".

Call me if you would like to know more about this process at 336.854.0406

Here are some production shots from Elizabeth Lemon.

These photos are from Bert Vanderveen.

And, from Tom Lassiter.

Inauguration Day

    January 20th 2009, Inauguration day in Greensboro NC. A small bit of snow had fallen over night in Greensboro, for me it was a cleansing and a sign of a fresh start. While I could not be in the city of cherry blossoms for the big day, I was happy to see it arrive none the less. It was a great day!

    I had seen small hand painted signs surrounding  Cheesecakes by Alex with the word "HOPE" painted on them while I was downtown over the weekend. I knew I wanted to photograph this visual symbol of the change our country and the world were about to experience. After shooting the signs and having a bit of crumb cake Alex said that the kids had a great time painting them all. It was time to head over to The Green Bean and see what was going on there. People were coming to sip some of the black medicine and watch the large screen TV set up down front. The atmosphere was excited and very upbeat. I hung out with my friend and fellow photographer Christian Parsons , had some coffee, shot some pix and headed home around 11AM.

Lynn and I watched through most of the afternoon. Now off to work and save the country.

Time-Lapse Greensboro

One afternoon in May  I stepped out of the studio and a heavy cloud cover start rolling in from the southeast. I knew then that the shoot for our movie "Camelback Bridge" had to be cancelled. Now with a free afternoon I thought I would go downtown and shoot a time-lapse of the clouds. This is the outcome.