Cause and Effect

As the start date for my new short flick looms ever closer, I find myself torn in millions of directions whereas even a week ago, it was only a hundred or two. I'm not a fan of the Producer part of this level of filmmaking. This one is far more complicated than anything I've taken on before, even as just a camera person for my friends's flicks. I'm talking about the effects. The digital stuff. I prefer practical effects, but at my level, there's just no affording such a thing. I hope to have some practical effects on this one, but I'm not counting on them as I only know one local effects artist, but I don't have his number and one who is a friend of one of my actors is busy with a zombie flick in Tampa. As a zombie fan, I say, "ZOMBIE FILM MORE IMPORTANT!!" Thus, I'm learning how to do some stuff digitally.

If I can, I will be doing some of the practical effects myself. I'm no professional, but I gotta try. However, for everything else...I have to go digital. I have one character who is barely going to be on set except for actual interactions with other people. For him, I will be doing greenscreen work. (see my test for greenscreen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=340Dg2uiHcg) Several of my characters have special eye effects. Two of the characters aren't complicated, but two of them are massively complicated and I've been doing a series of tests involving the eyes (all of which can be found on my youTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/KimyooFilms).

I'm getting closer, though, going by a test I did today.



This is getting pretty close to something I can be happy with. Originally, I wanted something more organic and was going to try to recreate the replicant eyes in Blade Runner. I know the theory behind how, I've read snippets of what the late Jordan Cronenweth, ACE, has written about the eyes, and I've tried it several times, but so far I haven't done it. Even after I finish the film, I'll keep trying because it looks so darn cool, but I don't think I'll be able to figure it out in enough time for the shoot.

Meanwhile, I keep going over in my head how I want certain things to look. My storyboards are...lacking in that department because I use stick figures. Once I'm in post, I'll put them all up on my Flickr account so people can point and laugh (I know I giggle every time I look at them), and I'll do a special storyboard-to-scene comparison, too. I always see these amazing storyboards for movies, it'll be awesome to offer up my stick figures!

As for the practical side of things: actors, locations, my crew, I've adopted a strangely serene attitude. If it happens, it happens. If it doesn't, it doesn't. One can't force Ka, if one were as geeky as I to reference Roland of Gilead. I'll take my geekiness one step further and quote him: "There will be water if God wills it." I just have to try and apply that to my feelings about the effects.