Hand-held Beauty

I've been thinking about making a movie for the past couple weeks and last night I finally got the chance thanks to some big help from some friends and my brother. They had to think I was crazy, but they helped out a lot.

Lately, I have become obsessed with hand-held camera movement. I just love the chaos from using a hand-held. It is amazing how camera movement can make the situation that much more intense.

The hand-held camera does not have to increase intensity as it can be used to showcase the lifestyle of a another culture of a different culture. I write this about my new found love: Mexican filmmaking. Directors like Alfonso Cuaron, Alejandro Inarritu and Guillermo del Toro.

These guys can create amazing worlds through the use of the hand-held camera. It really is beautiful how they can create these lifestyles. I cite Cuaron's "Children of Men" (such a great movie) and "Y Tu Mama Tambien" (despite the subject material, Cuaron's Mexico is delicious), del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth" and Inarritu's "Amores Perros."

These guys really know how to make movies. I had been wanting to test out my own use of the hand-held camera, so I came up with a quick, lame plot just to test out different methods. I also love nighttime in an empty downtown, so I decided to shoot the movie in an empty downtown at night.

The car shots in the movie are great, but I got into some trouble when I sent my characters down an alley. I knew I would have some trouble with the lighting, but my goodness, I didn't expect the lighting to be that bad.

I was shooting with a crap, Wal-mart camera that refuses to pick up night time shots. So my run down the alley is really dark. I was kinda disappointed in this, but we'll see how it turns out when we edit it.

We also have a major sound problem that I can't seem to figure out at the moment. Luckily, there isn't much sound to be used in the movie other than screams and hits.

My hand-held work is decent, but I think at times I was too aggressive. My problem was I shook the camera and ran with it, so I had double the shake. If I had just let it flow naturally and tried to maintain a steady balance while I ran, it would have been better and not as drastic.

There is definitely an art to this form of cinematography and I commend anyone who has mastered it. Each movement is planned to a T and they really know what they are doing. Their presentation is so beautiful, whereas mine is sub par.

I need a lot of practice.

Production for "Dig"

Goodness. It has been so long since I have jumped on here and it disappoints me greatly. The last couple weeks have been really busy and exciting, but I wish I could have kept up with the posts.

For a while, I thought I had slipped into a trance of writer's block. It was awful. I tried to log on several times and even wrote entire posts, but I was at a point where I felt that every writing needed to be better than the previous one, so I deleted the posts.

Anyway, I'm back now and I am not going to kill myself if my writings are not the best ever, every time.

The last two weeks have been incredibly crazy and amazing. My roommates and I had been working on a short film script for the past couple of months. The movie finally came to fruition over the weekend of Feb. 8 and 9.

It was an incredible process that I will surely never forget. We loaded up in Brad's two 4-runners (and looked totally ridiculous driving around in near identical vehicles) and drove to the salt plains in Jet, Okla. early Saturday morning.

We couldn't figure out the directions, but eventually we got on the right track. We came across the perfect gas station for filming our station sequence. This took us a couple hours, so we had to load up and book it to the salt plains (we hadn't planned on the station).

We found the state park and shot the scene of the two characters walking across the sign with their shovels (they were going to dig for crystals). We got in the cars and headed to the dig site only to find it closed for the season. Apparently, there is a certain season in which you can dig for crystals. We got on the flats anyway to shoot our film.

This place was absolutely incredible and wonderfully majestic. I was blown away by the sheer vastness and total whiteness. We hurried through our scenes (and they were really hastily and crappily made).

Hopped in the car and sprinted to the Gloss Mountains (pronounced "glass") to shoot our scene of the guys going off the cliff on their homemade hang glider. We got there just in time; I was afraid we were running out of daylight. We shot our scenes incredibly quickly and finished just as the sun set.

We hit a diner in Longdale on the way home (it was the best meal of my life, maybe because I hadn't eaten all day). We wrapped that evening and got back to Stillwater at 10:30. It was a long freaking day and we planned on starting even earlier on Sunday so we could get everything done.

Left Stillwater at about 8 a.m. Sunday to shoot our opening scene and various drive shots around Stillwater. We limited our filming to Stillwater and Guthrie. The first scene went great and may be our best of the film.

The drive shots were good and then we luckily got into a junkyard for our scene with the two characters and the homeless "Marshmallow." We had to severely jerry-rig our hang glider and barely got it to work.

Then, we proceeded to drive around Stillwater looking for a broken mailbox for one of our scenes, and we eventually found one. We shot that quickly and filmed our final scene inside a gas station as the sun disappeared over the horizon.

Wow! What an incredible weekend of shooting. I have never experience something quite like that. The process was so fast-paced and exhilarating. It was incredible. We all seemed so professional. We had a sound bag filled with everything we needed to adjust the recording of sound. We had a camera, tripod, two professional lights and umbrellas to diffuse them. I also built a homemade dolly on a scooter that kind of worked (I guess). We looked incredible!

Our appearance seemed legit enough for an amateur production, but our quality was not the best. Basically, the first movie is an experiment and now we know what we can do differently. We know how to fix our problems and the best approach for certain shots. It was great experience just getting out there and doing it.

Had the time of my life and could easily see myself getting into this kind of business. It would be incredible to make movies either as an amateur or professional in Hollywood. I would love that so much. I need to figure out a way to do that for the rest of my life. Such a great joy.