Superseeds shoot Sunday January 23rd

This Sunday, January 23rd 2011 I worked on a movie called "Superseeds".

This movie was written and directed by Kholi Hicks. "Superseeds" is a fun movie about a few late teen, early twenties characters who stumble across some pills that give them super hero powers. The movie is an action comedy.

This is a link to the Superseeds facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/Superseeds

Kholi has been in the process of filming this movie for about 6 to 7 months I would estimate, however we only film about 1 day every two weeks or so. Slowly but surely this movie is getting pieced together and is very close to completion (about 6 more days of shooting). It has been a lot of fun to be a part of the making of this movie. Over the course of filming this movie we have filmed in a lot of different locations, and done a lot of fun and interesting things. Each day of filming could be its own blog entry. This is going to be a great movie that I would definitely recommend checking out.

However, this particular Blog entry is specifically about the shoot on the date of Sunday January 23rd.

Kholi emailed me the list of equipment that he would be needing for the shoot. Sunday morning I woke up early and loaded the truck with the equipment that we would be needing, I printed out my directions to the location and I headed out.

This is the list of equipment that we used for the shoot:

1 Speed Rail Slider w/8' Pipe
2 Low Boy Combo Stands
2 Junior Nail on Plates for slider mounts
2 Cardellini Clamps

2 4'x4' Kino Flo
1 Diva 400 Kino Flo
2 Chimera Pancakes
1 650W Tungsten Fresnel
2 300W Tungsten Fresnel
2 Lite Panel Mini Daylight color Temp
2 1K Dimmers

2 48"x48" Floppys
1 48"x48" Unbleached Muslin Floppy
1 18"x24" scrim Set
1 24"x36" Scrim Set

7 40" C Stand w/Grip Head & Arm
5 2 Rise aluminum Lighting stands
1 Telescoping Baby Boom w/Ear
10 25' stingers
2 50' Stingers

10 20Lb Sand Bag



I arrived at the location at 10am. The location was a little club on Peck Road in South El Monte. It was an interesting location for sure, I walked in and noticed that it was a night time hang out, an Asian karaoke bar with dancing, and private VIP rooms that cost upwards of $90 an hour to hang out in. We were talking about what might go on in this location.... Make-up artist Rachel Olson and I agreed that Asian people seem to really like Karaoke so maybe it was just awesome Karaoke that went on there(at night time when we were leaving I started to see some fancy cars roll up to the place). Anyways, there was a bar, and there was a dance floor that had custom intense dance floor lighting. There was also a small stage with some room for the DJ. The decor of the location was eclectic, for instance even though the place was an Asian Karaoke bar, with Asian writing (with its humorous English translation underneath), there were things like a Knight's armor that gave the location an interesting style. I pulled the truck up to front door and we unloaded it. We carried the equipment into a room that we would use as our equipment staging room.



The DP of this film is Matty Garrett. Matty is a very talented, laid back DP. You can tell by the input that he gives and his overall knowledge that he is an experienced film maker. I enjoy working with Matty a lot. Also there to help out is a guy that I normally work for as a Gaffer or a Grip and that is DP Geoff Reisner who is a friend of Kholi and Matty. It is interesting working on a project with Geoff where he is NOT the DP because I am so used to him being the DP. I like working on projects with these guys because they are both knowledgeable and laid back at the same time, yet both of them are very efficient, so together we get some really good work done without exhausting ourselves. On a lot of jobs that I do, I seem to be the senior most lighting expert but it is good to do jobs, where you know that the people that you are working with could put together a beautiful feature film without you even being there! Yet, since you are there, everybody works together to make a great project.

Geoff Reisner is also a pretty funny writer and he and I come up with a lot of ideas on set that we should probably write scripts for and turn into some movies!

The part of the movie that we were filming on Sunday the 11th was a part where one of the characters named Pete Pai, played by actor Keye Chen, is looking for his girlfriend who he just broke up with and he has heard that she is in this sordid club. Pete's ex-girlfriend is played by the beautiful Anna Roberts. Pete shows up in the club to find his ex-girlfriend lounging with a character named "Mark Hardon" played by Cody Deal. Cody is a big guy at about 6'4 220 pounds and he is a pretty good actor who cracked me up with his improv skills. We needed to film this scene from a couple different angles and Kholi also had to manage his extras so that we could make the location look like a happening Club at nighttime. We accomplished what we wanted and we had some great looking footage.



We started this scene out with the camera pointed towards the character Mark Hardon and Pete's ex-girlfriend whom were on the couch. We used a 100MM Sachtler tripod head that we mounted the Red MX to. Kholi wanted this shot to move forwards on the Slider. I set up the speed rail slider and we ended up getting a low angle by setting the speed rail slider up on two Full Apple Boxes. We were using 8' lengths of speed rail pipe on the slider.

This is a diagram of the lighting set up for this scene:


The light that we used as the key for this scene was a 1K Chimera pancake light that was mounted on C-Stand and armed out over the actors with a Telescoping Baby Boom.

http://www.cinemagadgets.com/telescoping-baby-boom-wear-p-2084.html

These Baby Booms are a cool piece of equipment that you can use to arm out larger equipment. AGrip also has these booms in the larger Pipe Boom style. Both are available to for rental in your next lighting package.

The Chimera 1K Pancake space lights are cool because they are made out of good materials so they won't fall apart on you like a paper Chinese lantern does, but they also have flaps that you can roll down, to get control over the light that is spilling out, you can roll the flaps to the desired length and then use Velcro to secure them. These things put out a nice soft light; we hooked the unit up to a dimmer. Because of the way that it was rigged, the stand for it was safely out of the shot. We also slowed down a bit of the light off of one of our actors that was closer to it with a 24"x36" Double scrim that was armed out from a C-Stand. This key light was coming down onto our actors and hitting them from camera left. We tried to see what we could do with the DJ house lights which had some intense settings and different colors, but we couldn't really get what we wanted from them for the scene. The brightness or intensity of the lights from color to color, varied a lot and messed up our lighting ratios and exposure. We still wanted a color hitting the actors from the opposite side that the key light was hitting them from, we ended up using a Diva 400 with daylight bulbs AND, a blue party gel on it. It was dimmed down a little so this light from the unit was very faint on the actors. To back light the actors we used an Arri 650W Fresnel armed out on a C-Stand. The 650 had a Straw gel on it which warmed it. This Backlight was raking the actors from behind them and camera right and High. Next we needed a light to put just a little bit of light on the back side of one of our actors who was going to stand on their mark, we were going to slide the camera forward past their shoulder and we needed some light on them so that we could see them as the camera passed by them, we brought in a Kino Flo 4' 4Bank mounted vertically with Tungsten Bulbs and only 1 tube on.

This scene ended up looking fantastic. One thing that is great about working with Kholi and Matty is that, they are really efficient the way that they shoot things. They make sure to do things in the proper order, so that the minimal amount of work needs to be done in order to get the results that we need. In other words, if they know that they need to do a lighting set up a certain way for a certain part; they will do it at the right time so that the next scene doesn't have to get wildly adjusted, and then wildly adjusted another way for something else, thereby making more work for everybody. When you work with people who are efficient in this way, they tend to get better product on a regular basis, and it is one of the things that separates professionals from amateurs. The bottom line is that if you are taking hours upon hours to get the same footage that somebody else could get in a much shorter amount of time, then the person who got it done in the shorter amount of time is going to be able to repeat this, more often, and get more work. That is one of my favorite things about working with Director Kholi Hicks and DP Matty Garrett.

We filmed a little special effects stuff on this day also. Our special Effects guy was Christian Lau, Christian made a suit for our actor, Cody Deal who was playing "Mark Hardon", in the scene we were filming, the character named Pete, played by Keye Chen, challenges "Mark Hardon" to a fight. What Pete doesn't know is that Mark has taken the same pills that Pete has taken, that give them super powers. Mark's character's powers are that he can turn into what he touches. Since Pete threw a wooden chair at him, Mark turns to Wood, and he punches Pete and beats him up, with his wooden powers. One of the jokes that the Character Mark Hardon says during this part is "Now that’s what I call a woody!" Our special effects guy built a latex suit that looked like wood. The only parts that would be seen in the movie were the arms and the neck, so basically the suit was a long sleeve white shirt, that had latex on the arms and neck that looked like tree wood.



The suit looked really cool on camera. We also did a lighting gag where we took a Lite Panel Mini and put lots of green gel over it, we waved the light and splashed its green light onto the actor when he made his transformation into the wooden arms thing. This effect will be accentuated in post-production.

We did quite a few other lighting set ups in this location and we also did use more of the equipment, and more lights. This was a good day of shooting, in which we captured some really funny stuff, and it looked so beautiful in the camera. That is what movie making is all about. Oh and also, our producer Teresa Decher really came through in a big way on the Crafty. It makes a huge difference on shoots, to have some good food to eat during the day.

Superseeds has been being filmed intermittently for a few months now, but this week it is being shot Tuesday through Friday and then it will be DONE. This would be an excellent movie to check out when it is done! So stay tuned!!!!

This is a link to the Superseeds facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/Superseeds