A Gathering of Gamers in Guelph

The time is rolling over midnight on the eve before Day 1 of what will undoubtedly be a rigorous, sanity-testing production. Hmm, shall I call it a night, get some good rest and wake up bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and ready to tackle the day? Or will I blog about it first? Evidently, I chose the latter. But I will keep it brief as each hour of sleep will be invaluable over the next few days.

This feels like the Avengers assembling: Zombie Orpheus has flown many of its cast and crew members (including Scott C. Brown, Christian Doyle and Trinn Miller of Gamers: Hands of Fate, not to mention Ben Dobyns, Matt Vancil, Andy Dopieralski and Tony Becerra) as well as some other familiar faces (Joanna Gaskell, Daniel Johnston, and Vanessa Driveness from Standard Action) into town to work alongside Synndicus Studios (Thomas Gofton, Tom Brown and Aaron Soch, with whom I worked on Mind's Eye: The Series) on two spinoffs in The Gamers universe: Natural One and Humans & Households.¹

That was a long collection of names to list off. And I doubt there are many people who would recognize any of those names (unless you happen to be a fan of web series). But it was worth typing each of them out so that one could see the scope of this production. It unites many different groups of actors and crew members under one tent and is funded primarily (and generously) by a devoted fan-base through Kickstarter.

Some of these faces I haven't seen since shooting Gamers: Hands of Fate in Seattle last fall. Some I'm meeting for the first time (I creeped out Daniel Johnston with the line "I've watched you many times." He didn't know I was referring to both the vfx work I did on Standard Action Season 3 that put his face on my monitor for many hours at times as well as the reviews of the show I did for the Limited Release podcast...and it was more fun that I let him believe I was a creeper). But all are a super talented bunch in their own right, so to bear witness to this gathering gives me goosebumps.

Not since The Expendables have I been so excited.

My roles on set will be camera operator (occasional steadicam operator), visual effects supervisor (consulting on shots that I'll be doing visual effects work for later, ensuring that we shoot what I need to do the effect properly) and otherwise assisting with some lighting and cinematography wherever needed.²

Well, time to head off to bed and rest up for tomorrow. It's going to be equally fun as it will be energy draining.

¹ To know who any of these people are, you should be listening to my podcast Limited Release. Go subscribe and catch up! I'll wait...

² I'm sure at some point somebody will try to ask me to also get them a coffee...key word is try.

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.