Shooting Wizards in Staff Entrance

At the beginning of the summer I was shooting a short film that brought together a colourful bunch of characters. Recently I came across some snapshots of the shoot, so decided I should share them and some of the experiences of the shoot. The setup: In a scenario men are mostly familiar with, a group of famous wizards are lined up outside of a nightclub trying to work their way in to get jiggy with the hot, young ladies that keep skipping the queue.

We used the Westmount location of the Red Brick Café for our night exterior setting and arrived plenty early during the daylight hours to start setting up lights so that we wouldn't have to fumble around in the dark. The wizards required a bit of wardrobe and makeup so we knew we had time to wait.

One of the tricks we had to employ was shooting at two different locations to make it appear as one. At one point we see a limo pulling up along a downtown street and we see a group of foxy ladies step out. Next we see them walk past the line of oggling and frustrated wizards straight into the nightclub.

The problem with this sequence was that the location we were using for the nightclub exterior was on a suburban street and had a stretch of green grass and shrubberies that did not belong in a downtown setting. So we shot the girls exiting the limo at a completely separate location. We were able to plan the shots ahead of time so that the edited sequence will bring both locations together.

Right now the project is finishing up in post-production. I'll be handling a few visual effects shots that I'll bring up in a future post.