Serial Killer Shoot

Check out that camera! Sara and I spent the afternoon being extras - or featured background artists - on a short film being shot at Wellington airport. The directors are former film school students from Belgium who have shipped over their crew, DoP and a very fancy new Sony F-23. They needed a bunch of people to be travellers, so we arrived with suitcases and change of tops to stand at the luggage carousel next to the real actors. I loved being on set again, even as just an extra, and to see how other sets are run and how everyone does their jobs. Took a load of photos, which are up here.

Animation

This week, while writing the first drafts of our grad scripts, we were given a fun project to keep us entertained: animation. Make a 30 second animation using any technique. I took the opportunity to get into Motion, Apple’s animation program, which is part of Final Cut Studio. Oh, and I used copious amounts of iLife sound effects. See it below or on YouTube (or here).

Editing

Easier said than done. I was overjoyed to see the quality of images we managed to create during the shoot, but working as a director with an editor is hard. For me, since I edit a lot myself, not being able to touch the keyboard and make changes as I see fit has been frustrating, but having a new view on the footage from someone who wasn’t at the shoot has been extremely helpful, too. So there are two sides to this. I have been editing Jake’s shoot, and it has been a complete pleasure. Instead of finding it simplistic, as I did when I was editing fiction footage before, instead I find it a whole new challenge, frame accurate editing to make a smooth flow of the shots one into another.