We have a locked but but with one shot missing

John Reuben - Confident BTS from Jeremy Hughes on Vimeo.

We shot early this week the final scenes we needed to complete production, except for one and it's proving to be eluding. First though, let me talk quickly about the last day and how John and I changed up a bit last minute which helped out a lot in the editing process. It helped there was a working rough cut already together as well.

We shot the needed flower shop scene and a couple pickups of John running and I have to say it was by far the stuff I was most proud of shooting during this production. Tons of value on the screen, solid shots and the ability to push the acting without feeling stressed for time. We started with the flower shop scenes. Erica prepped John at my place and we headed over where Rebecca was working with the owners of Flowers on High to get everything ready. We also met a friend of mine and his wonderful daughter Colleen there. We placed her as a girl selling flowers outside of the shop. She was GREAT!

A little quickly about Colleen. Colleen is a typical 13 year old girl except that she has been fighting cancer for the last year. For the last 6 months she's been in an intensive treatment program down in Orlando, FL getting proton treatments in what looks like a system right out of a sci-fi movie. She has a huge heart and has kept just what sounds like very outward and upbeat through it all. She took the whole family this month to Hawaii when the Dreams Come True Foundation granted her a wish. When her dad told me she was a John Reuben fan, I originally was going to have her in the Town Folk video but it worked out that she has a very prominent role in this one and, again, she was terrific. She's winning that fight by the way.

We locked the edit a couple days after. It was huge that we shot the extra park scenes in how we were able to shuffle up the story slightly and cut some of the fat of the video off. It flows very nicely! Other than the elusive flashback shot I need that keeps moving back because of rain... did I mention this video is due now mid-next week? We're going to get there though!

Rough cut started - production needs finished

We were rained out our final day of production so the last day is going to hopefully be this Tuesday. It needs to be, I just found out that the currently set delivery date is 8/3. That extremely tight. Especially for how much footage there is on this shoot.

The rough cut was started this weekend and is moving along. At first I was worried about some of my shots not being what I had hoped but I think we'll be okay. The cut is really starting to feel much more solid. That would be something I would say be ready for when you are shooting run-and-gun by yourself more-or-less, shots may not completely match the way you had envisioned them. Performances may be a little different, etc. There are a ton of things that change up. Know that going in and try to control it all the best you can.

Here's a little detail on my editing workflow. I'm shooting with a Sony EX camera so the media comes off SxS cards. Once home, I drop the raw media, that being an exact copy of the card, onto my main drive and a backup drive (I backup to multiple smaller drives in the field when offloading as well). I have a folder I labeled XDCAM where this all goes.

I open up Final Cut, my primary editor, and setup a new project. I set the sequence settings right off the bat to either 1080 or 720 Prores 422 HQ and under the video processing tab, make sure "Render all material High Quality YUV" is selected. Save out and I can close up FCP for now.

From there I open XDCAM Transfer and add the folders I've shot. I used to log everything and short what was good and bad inside of FCP but have found this to be a bad idea for 3 main reasons. 1), you make your project files much bigger, 2) importing only what you need simplifies your bins and 3) you are forced to look for the best takes always. So I run through my footage and label most of it and mark clips as being "GOOD" if I am going to import them. I do this for all folders before I import. It's hard to do too, I always want to try that first cut immediately. Under preferences I setup my media folder inside of Capture Scratch under the project

Once I've imported everything, I can now check the media folders under Capture Scratch and should see tape names for each media folder I imported (i.e. JRC717T1 as a folder - I label by job name initials/date/tape #). Its easy from this point to import footage into FCP and quickly organize it. Once that is complete, there is one last step before I start editing that I always move towards. I convert everything to Prores 422 HQ by selecting my footage bin, going to Media Manager and running a recompress on everything. I want the highest quality footage the whole way through the project. There are other codecs I'll use as well for moving between compositing and editing but I'll get into those later.

I'm ready to get cutting!

Almost there...

We picked up shooting again last night for the final scenes of the video. Very fun stuff but we ran over by a good 2 hours. We really went for some solid performances and tweaked the lighting out to get what we needed. The last scene has to rock as its the payoff of course!

(Thanks to Robin Oatts for the behind-the-scenes photos)

Today we cranked out a number of scenes which leaves us with one final scene tomorrow. Overall it was a great day, but everyone is definitely ready to wrap. We again flipped up locations last minute again which was a very good thing as we were able to use two friendly studios, Spindle and Element, which helped out a lot in having a location to prep in each place. It helped enough that we finished the day almost 2 hours ahead of schedule.

The last scene was a lot of fun to shoot and one everybody was really looking forward to working on. In the scene, John stumbles back out into the main streets and is extremely dehidrated. As he stumbles along, a jogger is passing by and offers him a bottle of water from his fanny pack. RC Nelson played the part with all he had and nailed it. It should get quite a few laughs.




I do want to take a minute and talk about the importance of having a great make-up and wardrobe stylist. Even if you are no-budget - which this is - find someone who has at least a little experience here. It will take your production value up immensely. I'll admit that a year ago it's something I would not have bothered with when doing something on no-budget. But when you have someone like Erica Stewart who is willing to lend a hand as a friend and turn out quality, its amazing how much that shows up on screen.

She has stuck by John and I on all these videos and they wouldn't be half of what they are without her hard work. Town Folk is the best example. We pulled it off on about $3500 which is hardly anything and out of that only a 3rd of it was her budget. She used every bit of ingenuity and planning to pull off those costumes. She did the same for Jamboree and now as you can see for less than $100, she's done some super work - that's she's been able to repeat it day after day.

First Two Days Done

So we finished the first two days of production and it has been both fun and tough. We're trying to keep things to half days but its a lot to manage when its basically myself, Erica doing make-up and Rebecca PAing.

Thursday we started off right away finding out our location for the gas station fell through because of corporate clearances not coming in. We were already using a bathroom to double as a gas station restroom at a local coffee shop so we changed up last minute and used the shop as well as where John walks in. It worked well. Plenty of natural light, very happy to help and the owner even played the part needed. She did great! It was definitely a fairly large change but we rolled with it.







Yesterday we shot the major fight scene at the end. In it we had John getting hit by a car and our bad guy getting out and continuing to beat the living crap out of him. First thing when we met up, John had the idea of adding a sidekick for the bad guy. Our guy was available and willing to do it last minute and it was well worth it! He's going to be a fantastic addition to the story. We choreographed the fight sequence for about an hour and John and Patrick had it down. Quite a relief. We blocked out the shots outside and got going.

I guess we were doing a pretty decent job because about midway through the shoot, two cop cars showed up on a call a guy had just punched out a big man and took off running. These two were awesome. As soon as they learned our first of the 4 videos was on iTunes they had their iPhones out and were buying the single and video - pretty cool!

We wrapped up with the effects shot for the scene where John gets hit from behind. I shot 3 plates. First was a clean plate with no car and no Johnny. The 2nd with the car driving through and slamming on its breaks. The 3rd plate, I setup the greenscreen in the same spot and had John walk past and jump. I'll be able to composite those 3 together and give it a seriously nasty look!

Take a look at the following video, I think the day was a hit

Quick Test Hit from Jeremy Hughes on Vimeo.

Here's a quick test of the results.

I'm "Confident" Production Starts Tomorrow

We kick off tomorrow with production on Confident finally. As I said in a previous post, things have definitely switched up a bit. The budget is gone and we're shooting a pretty aggressive video with less people and no money. I'm stoked! Here's why:

Its getting back to the roots of what makes this all fun. I have always liked to operate small and have the ability to change up slightly. There isn't as much stress in terms of making sure cast and crew are all onboard and in the same direction. There's a little bit of "just wing it" mentality there that is nice every now and then.

Like I said before though, we're definitely prepared where we need to be. Number one, again, is a clean, buttoned up script and detailed boards. Solve your problems before you ever pick up the camera, heck, before you ever drop cash on a single prop - KNOW THE STORY. Figure out the shots that best tell it and move it along. Get away from the idea of in a scene you need a "Wide, medium, close-up" - that's lazy. You can make your life a whole lot easier in post by shooting what you KNOW you need and want. The stray shot will come along and when it does it stands out but dont be searching for them on production days, you'll just piss everyone else off.

With the approach this time though, we do have some issues still up in the air which will be fun to solve. Dates have not completely settled down - no money, work around other's schedules. Locations are still a little in flux as well. We have the majority locked down but several of the big moment's scenes are still not locked. Part of the fun, right? My point here is, as long as you can move the story along just as well, be willing to flip up on a location. We need a flower shop that will put a small stand of flowers outside. Nothing yet. I'm looking at alternatives here though such as using a cart of our own and filling it - not too bad but we may have to buy flowers then. Just be flexible on many issues but keep true to the story and you'll be fine.

Production photos hopefully coming within a couple days.

Town Folk

John Reuben "Town Folk" from Gotee Records on Vimeo.

Producer: Jared Greene
Director/DP: Jeremy Hughes
Wardrobe/Make-up: Erica Stewart
Compositing: Jeremy Hughes/Tobias Roediger of Ravevfx.com
Illustration: Christen Nelson

(I'll look to add a post here soon with a little more behind-the-scenes stuff)

Boards, Locations and News

First off, its exciting to see that the first video for John is officially being released today http://tinyurl.com/jrtownfolk - it's a trippy and funny video I'm proud to have made.

Second, we're going to start shooting this week for Confident. Things have been very hectic the last week or two on all other levels so Confident has gone in a bit of a different direction in terms of how we're approaching it. It's going to be a very scaled down production but still aggressive in scope. I think it will be fun and remind me of why I love filmmaking. It will have a run-and-gun feel with just a couple of us at any given point. We're going to shoot more from a pick-up shot tempo meaning several half-days and not cramming a couple full days together. The goal is to keep energy high and the mood light.

Boards finished up and have been passed around.
Tomorrow we sort out make-up and final prepro planning. I'll look to get some more details up around all of this hopefully soon, particularly locations and how to get them to work for you for... uh, free.