It's been a LONG time since I've done anything creative--nose to the grindstone as it were, and I'm no longer affiliated with Instant Films which essentially forced me to produce shorts several times a year. It took the impetus of a friend of ours, actor Wayne Wilderson who hosts a backyard film festival designed to inspire his friends to get out there and make something short and fun. My girlfriend Amy and I decided to take him up on it. We had 8 weeks notice, so of course we started on this less than a week before the screening...!

It's about a lonely woman who dreams of being the characters in her favorite movies and TV shows. It was a fun opportunity for Amy to play lots of great roles, and for me to duplicate the looks of classic or well-known films.

I shot on the A1 in 16:9 DV mode, because my current computer isn't fast enough to handle HDV and we have no intention of taking this to festivals (let's just say there MIGHT be a slight issue with rights!). A bit of diffusion here and there as needed, mostly clean and with a custom preset that I designed. Color correction and editing in Final Cut Pro. I could have gone deeper with the looks, adding grain and tweaking filters until the cows came home but I let it go at a certain point since this was just for fun.

We shot for 3 days; I had a single helper for 2 of the days and a basic lighting package. Two days to edit.

The screening was a lot of fun. All of the films will be up on the Waymos site (linked via the clip's page) in a few days. Reception to this film was enthusiastic--you couldn't hear the soundtrack over the cheering at certain points!

Here (http://web.mac.com/chupap/iWeb/Films/LivingtheDream.html) is the clip.

Charles, that was a wonderful short. It looked like a lot of fun to work on. The actress had the parts down 100%. Great job, I really enjoyed it.

Regards,

Awesome production..

Very nice.
Keep up the good work

Charles-- love that retrospective piece. Great job. and you can tell that was a hell o lot of work.

Thanks everyone! Glad you liked.

Absolutely fabulous! Only piece of criticism is that the opening shots seamed a little shaky, i.e. the zoom on her talking to "mom". She did an excellent job in all the roles and you did an excellent job on executing the entire production! Editing was great. Fabulous, just fabulous!

Charles,

Absolutely loved it! Thanks for posting it.

Nearly seamless integration of the original footage. I was wondering about the rights, then re-read your post. I suppose if you really wanted you could re-shoot with actors playing Woody and Billy etc. Most of those are such famous scenes that you don't need the actual footage for context. Great concept...

Ken:

I figured the music rights alone would be a major pain and there was no way I was going to go after this without the original tracks. So putting in the actual footage from the film seemed irrelevant on top of that. As I said, we just made this for fun, at some point it will just retire into the archives.

Ryan:

Well, I thought that was a good catch until you referred to the zoom--that was actually a dolly shot! There are two, the first time you see her is a slow wide dolly in and then there is another longer lens at her last line while on the phone. That one is indeed a bit shaky, but I didn't realize it at the time and probably could have just as easily zoomed. I hate the fact that it is very hard if not impossible to feather out of a zoom on these types of cameras without it looking a bit abrupt, hence the dolly (that's the way I'm used to doing it in the "real" world anyway). I was using a Losmandy dolly with the Flextrack, but not in the rideable configuration which tends to make long lens shots a bit dicier as you have to walk along with it.

The second shot of the film (low wide angle of the laundromat) needed to be lower than my sticks could go so I just plopped it on a bag or something--there's just a touch of extra movement to it which always bugs me if its not intentional. Having to shoot the supermarket shot of the Mary Tyler Moore sequence unlit and handheld REALLY bugged me but since it was stolen, I had no choice!

Any hint of shakiness was negated by the overall quality of composition and the great acting- I didn't even notice the movement until I read that post.

You NAILED the looks- thanks for sharing.

That's how I felt too Benjamin...in that I made certain choices based on performance and compromises based on time and the scope of the project. It was an interesting exercise in how much I should or shouldn't "let go"--the perfectionist in me wanted to get everything note-perfect (Amy was the same way with her performances) but we only had so much time, so I had to develop a sense of how much we needed to get just so to properly sell the recreations. Generally it was somewhere between suggesting and duplicating, if it is possible to qualify in words!

Charles, that was fantastic. What a wonderful showreel piece for your girlfriend.

All the best,

Liam.

I had to watch the YOU TUBE version but holy smokes! You matched the commercial footage darned well! I really paid attention to your lighting and although it looked natural and effortless, I can imagine how hard you worked to achieve that look. Fantastic. Thank you for this.

This is one of the more pleasing things I have watched in awhile Charles ! You always have such a tongue and cheek about your work; you don't take yourself that seriously it seems (in a good way) and it shows.

I loved this piece. I was laughing throughout and the trip down memory lane was great ! Simple but very effective. Perhaps a few too many gags, but nevertheless, awesome job !

Edit

I know you said a 5 day shoot; how many days in Pre ?

Thanks John!

Preproduction was largely Amy running around town trying to find all of the wardrobe and wigs etc...much of it was located at thrift stores but she also got a few pieces from friends who work in the biz in wardrobe department. Took her about a week to find everything.

My pre-pro was entirely about collecting the reference clips and making a DVD that we could take on location with us, so it wasn't all that long. Figuring out the various locations took a bit of thought. I didn't make any lighting or camera plans ahead of time, mostly winged it on shoot days.

It was an amazing piece. Well written and executed. It made me smile and feel good the whole way through, and the production values were awesome. The actress delivered a great performance, and you did a super job on editing and camera work. You guys are both extremely, extremely talented!

I shot on the A1 in 16:9 DV mode, because my current computer isn't fast enough to handle HDV...

Ok Chas, color me stupid. What am I missing here? AFAIK, HDV and DV are the exact same data rate and storage requirements. Why would your system not handle HDV?

-gb-

I'm embarrassed to admit that though I know the scenes, I haven't seen half of these films in their entirety; I'm sure it comes as no surprise that someone my age smiled the most at the Office Space, Fargo, Pulp Fiction and Bugs Bunny bits.

That pile of strawberries looked amazing, though a bit washed out (is that the Mac/PC gamma difference rearing its ugly head?), and I might have liked to be closer to the windows, or just angled up a touch more, for the start of the Pulp Fiction scene (no booths, didn't look like a diner to me), but it was all great anyway, so two thumbs up from me!

Greg, I believe the difference between the two formats is in the way those bits are put together: DV uses intraframe compression, where each frame is compressed as its own entity, and can be decoded at a moment's notice. HDV, on the other hand, uses interframe compression, where data redundant across several frames is thrown away in order to achieve the relatively low data rates of the format.

You have a group of pictures (the "GOP" you hear talked about all the time) that consists of I, P, and B frames. I frames are like DV frames in that they contain an entire image, P frames contain only information about what has changed from the previous frame, and B frames (I think that's "bidirectional", but don't quote me on that) contain information about both the previous and following frames.

As a result, it's no big deal to seek to an I frame, but land on a P or B frame and the software has to go all the way back to an I and calculate each frame, up to and including the one you want, one by one. It's not too difficult for newer systems, but it's a pain for those of us with older machines, and can take ages to work with.

Robert:

Good call on the strawberries, I meant to give them another crunch on the color correction (I think the promist was getting flared by the backlight when I shot it) and forgot for the output. If I go back in I will tweak this more.

And of course you're right about the Pulp Fiction cheat, this was the last thing we shot and I had been fretting about location for this--not only are we missing the booths, but the windows had blinds etc. Doesn't look at all like a diner, more like my living room, because that's what it was...it was one of those compromises where I thought it was more worth having that particular clip in there with a halfass background than it would have been to try to shoot anywhere on location and likely failing (tough one to convince a diner owner to let us do!)

Heh heh

I just watched it again AND ALL THE WAY THROUGH THE CREDITS; that was awesome. Man, what a an awesome short.

I one broke down Hitch's masterpiece shot for shot; I would have loved to be on that shoot.

http://img361.imageshack.us/img361/997/annebh6.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Charles,

I watched some of the others on that site and while each has something going for it, yours is my favorite so far. That lady sure looks like she had fun acting those roles and she really got into it, too.

I enjoyed it very much.

John:

That was really interesting to see the Van Sant version of the scene in thumbnails. I had that movie in mind as I was going through our little shoot, perhaps a bit jealous of the production resources available to them!

I did a similar thing with the original version but built the page in my shooting order to use as a storyboard (so I could have the satisfaction of crossing off setups as we got through them), attached below. One of the shots that I loved after having dissected the scene is the attacker wielding the knife with the focus on the water in the foreground, which we duplicated. We had actually forgotten to pick up the remote shower hose until the last second (Amy made a run while I was setting up the lighting!) which made this shot possible--with the camera in the bathtub, we simply moved the spray of water forward. I think our sequence would have suffered significantly had we not been able to recreate this particular element.

Ultimately, we were able to pick up about 85% of the shots that were seen in the original, although I didn't use all of them in the final cut, and I took a bit of liberty with the order in the edit since it was interspersed with the credits. It took us about 2.5 hours to shoot that sequence. I would have liked to have spent more time getting the performances correct, not to mention the fact that the attacker was played by my lone crew member who had come on board the day before, good sport that he was!

The whole film was a fascinating exercise, and these sequence probably the most fascinating of all to reproduce. My respect for Hitchcock increased once again.

John:

That was really interesting to see the Van Sant version of the scene in thumbnails. I had that movie in mind as I was going through our little shoot, perhaps a bit jealous of the production resources available to them!

I did a similar thing with the original version but built the page in my shooting order to use as a storyboard (so I could have the satisfaction of crossing off setups as we got through them), attached below. One of the shots that I loved after having dissected the scene is the attacker wielding the knife with the focus on the water in the foreground, which we duplicated. We had actually forgotten to pick up the remote shower hose until the last second (Amy made a run while I was setting up the lighting!) which made this shot possible--with the camera in the bathtub, we simply moved the spray of water forward. I think our sequence would have suffered significantly had we not been able to recreate this particular element.

Ultimately, we were able to pick up about 85% of the shots that were seen in the original, although I didn't use all of them in the final cut, and I took a bit of liberty with the order in the edit since it was interspersed with the credits. It took us about 2.5 hours to shoot that sequence. I would have liked to have spent more time getting the performances correct, not to mention the fact that the attacker was played by my lone crew member who had come on board the day before, good sport that he was!

The whole film was a fascinating exercise, and these sequence probably the most fascinating of all to reproduce. My respect for Hitchcock increased once again.

Awesome awesome awesome

So ... any insight after shooting from the pages of Master himself ?

Great Charles! Tha's one of the most creative videos i've ever seen. Great work all around and the actress was fantastic. However, my only question was did you composite the tv screens, or did you shoot them as is with the video playing?

Once again great work man!

Hey, here's a quick response (I'm in the office today) for you!

The TV screens are mostly shot practically, either off the satellite or DVD (Tiffany's). The clip from "The Office" which was in there because the gent seen in closeup was the organizer of the screening in which this film played, so it was an inside joke (and got a big laugh, of course); I pulled that episode off iTunes and then composited into the existing footage. Normally for that sort of thing I would do a separate layer with reflections etc. but I felt it was good enough. Incidentally, I couldn't wrap my head around getting the iTunes content into a format that I could work with in FCP so I simply reshot the clip off my computer monitor--since it was being sized down it wasn't an issue (and probably gave it more appropriate presence than if it was the actual clip)!

Also, I shot the main part of the scene under tungsten light, and then when I turned around to shoot the TV I lit that side of the room with daylight balance so that the TV would render properly. Normally I would either prepare the footage to play on the TV with an effective warm correction to photograph properly at 3200K or assume it would be burned in later. Since I was using some practicals in the frame in the main part of the scene and didn't have 5600 bulbs for those, I just found it easier to switch to 5600 for the turnaround.

This short should be made into an instructional video for digital cinematography. I know I'd buy a copy. Too bad the rights would be too hard to get for those clips without spending a fortune.

Okay, how many points does a boyfriend get if he puts his girl in a movie where she can play the parts of a dozen of the most famous female roles ever?

Answer: MANY points, Marcus! Good call!

Regarding your first thought, I can say nothing but point you here (http://www.dvcreators.net/top-secret-first-shoot/)...!

Charles,

As an H1 owner, and a fan of your work, I'm looking forward to seeing what you can do with it. Looks like you're just recording to tape?

That is the case, yes.

OT: I really think that Amy, the lead actress, looks a lot like a young Alice Krige. I've always thought she was rather interesting looking in an attractive way. She also looked strangely appealing in the Borg costume in Star Trek: First Contact. Hey, there's an idea for a Halloween costume!

BTW, Charles, if you read this don't ever compare your girlfriend to an older actress. That is probably something I would do and stuff like that is why I'm single. Even certain types of compliments subtract points.

I'm looking forward to further updates from the Top Secret shoot.

OT: I really think that Amy, the lead actress, looks a lot like a young Alice Krige. I've always thought she was rather interesting looking in an attractive way. She also looked strangely appealing in the Borg costume in Star Trek: First Contact. Hey, there's an idea for a Halloween costume!

Amy has gotten mistaken for a number of actresses over the years...Sandra Bullock being the most frequent (they even have the same birthday!) I've seen people stare and whisper. It's kind of funny.

I worked with Alice a few years back when she was guesting on a series--I think I see where you are going with this (it's something in the jawline perhaps).

BTW, Charles, if you read this don't ever compare your girlfriend to an older actress. That is probably something I would do and stuff like that is why I'm single. Even certain types of compliments subtract points.

Copy that, Red Leader. I know this all too well...!

Oh I forgot--Amy and Alice have another thing in common. A while back Amy played a Vulcan hologram on an episode of "Star Trek: Voyager" (you can see it on her full reel at www.amyjotraicoff.com)

Wow! I saw this amazing movie when you first posted but decided to reserve gushing on about it. Now that you tell me the incredibly talented Amy has been in a Star Trek episode….Wow! She made for a beautiful little Vulcan. :)

I certainly see the Sandra Bullock confusion; on one of the dramatic clips I’d have sworn it was Ms. Bullock. But Amy definitely has her own look, and she does great work.

Not to leave you out here, Charles, but you already know what people like me think of YOUR work! This little movie was inspiring, as your work always is—and great fun, too. Thank you for sharing it, and the details, with us. I’ve learned so much from you.

By the way, I was waiting to get the XH A1 until I could afford a more powerful computer. You've shown that I can get one anytime. Thanks again!

Thanks Lorinda! Great to hear from you.

Yeah, I'm basically done with my 4 or 5 year old dual 1 ghz G4 at this point--I got through the edit of this film but I'm really ready to move on, especially so I can start working in HD.

I really enjoyed this Charles. It's one of those projects you really make just to make, and enjoy the experience of shooting, acting, directing, and editing.

What a fun concept, and it looks great!

Great short...I especially like that you carried the hitchcock straight through to the credits with the South by Southwest kick in there ... BRILLIANT!

Great short...I especially like that you carried the hitchcock straight through to the credits with the South by Southwest kick in there ... BRILLIANT!

Thanks...although the credit styling was from "Psycho" itself (by legendary title man Saul Bass) . A friend did that in After Effects for me.