Ace Wonder - Behind the Scenes!

Yours Truly will be working on the set of Ace Wonder as the Behind-the-Scenes (BTS) director/videographer.

I am leaving today and will be gone for approx. 5-6 weeks. I'll try to post some things here on the ReelCast blog now and then, but most of the update action will be in the form of BTS videos on the Ace Wonder blog...keep an eye on the website to know when the blog goes live! (For all you techy camera geeks out there, I'll be filming the BTS with the Canon 7D, we'll see how it goes)

We will be filming in Tennesse and also in Texas. If you are interested in visiting the set, rumor has it that there are supposed to be some "open set days" during the shoot. I encourage you to head over to the movie website and sign up for updates to stay on top of all the latest!

NOT A FAN - Director's Journal 5

Does watching paint dry sound like your idea of a good time? If so, you'll love this latest behind-the-scenes look at the editing process of NOT A FAN. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is the vibe of the day as we assemble this six-episode jigsaw puzzle - but it sure is exciting to see it come together! 

"A Christmas Snow" Wraps Filming

Each day they have been producing a Director’s Diary Video with Tracy Trost the Director of “A Christmas Snow”. Very educational and fun videos!

Lots of interviews with Cast and Crew!

...and great Behind the Scenes info too!

You can watch all the videos on the movie's Facebook page here!
www.achristmassnow.com
www.facebook.com/AChristmasSnow

Another Great ADR Session

"This past Monday I braved the wintry Wisconsin roads down to Nate Sisson's sound studio for another ADR session.  It was great to see Molly Kunz (who plays Kate Carter) and her mom Debbie again.  As I've said before, things are much more laid back when recording ADR so it's fun to spend time with the actors in this less stressful environment."  ~Nathan Webster

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source article

Interview With Filmmaker Jon Erwin

"Dramatic TV series, documentaries, reality television, shorts, music videos and commercials. All of these are regulars for Jon Erwin of the Erwin brothers, a writer/director duo from Birmingham, Alabama.

These young and unorthodox artists are anything but traditional. They focus on new and innovative ways to produce a diverse portfolio of work – from their multi-award winning documentary The Cross and the Towers to the dramatic TV series Life After, to the international short film series God Provides.

Jon Erwin was writer, director, executive producer and director of photography for The Mysterious Islands, a documentary filmed in the Galapagos Islands, in partnership with Vision Forum.

Christian-Movie.com: Did the idea of taking a RED One and a lot of other film equipment to the "world’s end" make you nervous?

Jon Erwin: Very nervous. We’ve named our RED "Elley May" and there were a few times I thought she wasn’t gonna make it back home. But hey, that’s what insurance policies are for! I believe we were the first people to take the RED camera to the Galapagos. It’s very heavy – about 50 pounds. My poor 1st AC had to lug it everywhere. But the final images were stunning and made it completely worth it.

Christian-Movie.com: Your underwater shots required scuba diving to significant depths with your equipment. What challenges were involved in this process? Are you an experienced scuba diver?

Jon Erwin: Yes, I do scuba dive. My father-in-law owns a dive quarry and we dive there now and then. I also love to free dive. Having said that, diving in the Galapagos was extremely difficult. The currents are harsh and the water was pretty cold. But we used the Canon 5D Mark II, which is very small, and that made things a lot easier.

Jon Erwin (right) prepares for a scuba dive

Life underwater in Galapagos is unbelievable. We dove with hundreds of black tip sharks and even a few hammerheads. It’s also incredible that we could swim with marine iguanas and penguins at the same time!"

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To read the full interview - click here

"A Christmas Snow" Christian Movie

"For Kathleen, (Catherine Mary Stewart) Christmas has always been an unwelcome reminder of her father's abandonment almost 30 years ago. Although she has tried to forget her past, it has not forgotten her, and in the days leading up to Christmas an unforgiving blizzard traps her in her own home with two unlikely roommates. Sam (Muse Watson), a gentle older man Kathleen took in for the night and Lucy (Cameron ten Napel), the daughter of her soon to be fiancé (Anthony Tyler Quinn) bring her face to face with the hurts of her past.  Will she be able to let go and grab hold of a life changing forgiveness or will she continue to be haunted by the pain of the past?

A CHRISTMAS SNOW will challenge you with a message of forgiveness and redemption, as the storm of the century...brings the gift of a lifetime."

COMING FALL 2010!

- Watch the Tulsa News 6 interview with director Tracy Trost!

- You can also see Behind-the-Scenes Director's Diary videos here.

- Visit the Movie Website: www.achristmassnow.com

Camping BTS #6

CLEANING UP THE EDIT FLOOR

Here are a couple of things that I do when I am finished with a project. First off, is to go catch up on sleep! Ok, seriously…

I put the finished video on a MiniDV tape and label it MASTER for use later if I ever loose my finished video. Cleaning up the scattered files is another way to make sure the project stays altogether (and of course that starts during production) some people even burn these project files to a CD for use later. Also, I go to the Final Cut Pro program files and delete the Video and Audio Render files for the project along with the Capture Scratch video files – AFTER I make a master first. ☺

I then get ready for the next project…..

Random Notes:
-Be careful when handling a camera around sprinklers
-Throwing leaves on the fire are a great way to make the fire brighter
-It is difficult to resist the urge of blowing out an ignited marshmallow
-Grandma is hilarious
-Camp food is really good (most of the time) and it is a good thing too, cause we like to eat ;)
-siblings don’t like paddling with their hands

That’s it for this project! I hope you enjoyed it. Feel free to let me know if you have other questions or if you have other areas that you would like me to cover in future BTS sessions.

Camping BTS #3

This one is out of order, but I didn’t want to put two major posts right next to each other. So here it goes for audio….

NOTE: I use Apple Final Cut Studio to edit with, so key commands are from the Mac OS.
NOTE 2: You can click the pictures to view a larger version.

AUDIO

CUTTING THE FINAL AUDIO
-First of all I actually finish the edit before I mess with the audio (more on editing in a later post). Sometimes I don’t need to adjust the audio at all, other times it requires a lot of time and work (Joel’s Journey). Since I recorded on two audio channels, I have a high volume audio track and a low volume audio track, and I was able to capture the high volume track without any clipping. I duplicate the high volume track (option-click the track) and then drag it over the low volume track to replace it. I then adjust the volume as needed and sometimes that requires some manual keyframes of the audio level. I didn't end up needing to keyframe for this project though.

Once I am happy with the basic video edit I begin to apply the audio filters. Final Cut has lots of audio filters that I normally use for audio needs. However in this case I needed some extra tweaking control, so I used Soundtrack Pro. Next step is to turn off all other audio layers and export just my dialogue to a WAV file. Importing that file into Soundtrack Pro I am then able to take out background noise and add filters.

SOUNDTRACK PRO
-SP has a “background noise reduction” feature that I applied to this project and I also applied a Low Pass audio filter, which limits the amount of high frequency levels and allows more Low frequency levels. I didn’t apply this filter very much because I found that if I cut out too much of the “high” the dialogue became hard to understand.

When I was done with the audio fixes I exported it back out. Now the default SP audio export is AIFF and for some reason FC doesn’t really seem to like that format so I used iTunes to change it to a WAV format. After importing the WAV file back into FC I was ready to adjust the music.

MUSIC
-The music I used for this video is from the Digital Juice Stack Tracks library, specifically the HOLIDAY and SPOOKY stacks. I like DJ’s music because they allow you to take out any instruments you don’t want. Normally I would have had the Morris brothers compose some music for it, but I didn’t really have the time and they were busy too ☺ (they composed the music for Joel’s Journey)

I won’t go into all the monotonous details of adjusting all the music to fit and match correctly, but you can look at this picture of my timeline and see what I did.

Stay tuned for the next BTS article – [EDITING] coming next….

Camping BTS #1

This is the beginning of the BTS for the Camping 2007 video. I know y'all claimed "uninterest" in most of the BTS sections...nevertheless, I am going to post them in a somewhat video production chronological order. However, I will give more info on the "interested" sections. :)

SCRIPTING

The Idea
After doing a camping video last year, I knew I wanted to do one again this year, but of course I didn’t want it to be the same. The idea of “Camping tips” came to me right before we left, so me and my brother Caleb worked on the script on the way down to the camp spot. Some of my other siblings could hear us laughing and thought we were having WAY too much fun in the back seat (which we were)!!

The Narration
The narration script was written the day I taped it. :P I scribbled it out on a piece of paper and then read off a line to Benjamin and we would tape that section, and so on. I guess it turned out alright.

BTS pics can be seen from my old post.

You can watch the video and outtakes on my website.

[VIDEO AND ACTING] coming next....

WOW, lots of work!

Even if you don't like football this is a very interesting article about how this commercial was made. Greenscreen, extras, 3D....check it out.

I found this on the Camenische's blog.