Hovering Lights

So there was I, with a rough idea of what events would take place in the story, and where the characters would be/go through. One thing we learn in film production is “never put all your hopes in one option”. For our projects, we also had to have backup locations and more than one available spot for our reels to take place. For almost three weeks I wanted to go out and start shooting random places, back alleys, empty streets, parking lots, my friends’ apartments, everything I could. I was feeling desperate for not shooting anything yet.

Finally I sat down and wrote down what I really needed. My key locations would be an apartment, where the story begins, and a back alley where it all ends. Features to look for in the apartment would be a decent view so I could place spaceships outside the windows, ease of access at any time of day or night and freedom to move practical lights around for good looking footage.

For the back alley I wanted it to have a clear sky above, without any large buildings nearby, no electric wires too (I’ll have enough trouble with tracking, no need to add extra roto to the mix) and some sort of trash bins around to provide cover for the characters in their desperate escape.

A couple weeks back, May had a morning class on a Saturday (right after Halloween) so I decided to wake up early as well and explore a couple blocks around, armed with my bike and camera. During this expedition I found a really nice spot between Haro // Robson and Thurlow // Burrard, which is also good because it’s really close to Nicko’s place, which (if he allows) can be used as headquarters for (minimal) crew and gear. I actually got the idea to head there because I remember seeing an empty parking lot from his window the last time I went there.

The second spot was much closer to home, some sort of loading bay/parking lot for restaurants and clubs between Thurlow // Bute and Davie // Pendrell, which caught my eye on the way back. My hands were almost freezing, but I still shot some tests aside from all the pictures. While I was at this alley, a really happy, drunk and tired dude was walking down the street and saw me taking pictures of (apparently) random stuff. He came in closer and insisted that I took a picture of him as well. It was a very unexpected situation which still makes me laugh just remembering.

Between these two, I like the first one better, specially because it doesn’t have any drunk people wandering around. Just kidding, it’s because it’s not the back of any commercial buildings and it doesn’t have any trees nearby. Trees were also a red flag, much like the electric wires.

From there, I went on a quest for the interior environments. My apartment would be a good option, of course (who doesn’t want to shoot at home?), and I called a friend who lives in the same building, a couple floors up, so I could also try his apartment that has a much wider view than mine.

The apartment felt way too rich for a couple of students, and the view was way too good to wreck with spaceships, so I ended up going downstairs to my place and shooting my second option there, which turned out pretty good. I also did some test plates which will eventually show up here, on future posts.

After this very productive shoot I was also able to define clearly the time of day I wanted to shoot: 7am, because of the natural light, which is bright enough to make the picture look good, always really soft and cold, things that also help me achieving the final look for the film. Forgot to mention: all the pictures in this post are color corrected with a test grade that should look like the final result. One thing that gives me a lot of freedom to play with is how bright the reds turn out, even though almost everything else has a strong blue tint.

Some days later, I added a garage scene, which made me go downstairs and explore the different levels of this garage (it’s way bigger than I ever imagined). Since I’ll be shooting on Sunday mornings, won’t have trouble with cars and lots of movement.

As a former film student, it’s really hard to think of a story without a proper script. For the first weeks it was really hard nailing down exactly how things would go. This happens every time I need to write a screenplay: I kind of know the core moments I want to have in there, as well as an average idea of how things should play out, but getting to the very specific dialogue lines and action sequence can take me some time even if I’m staring at the script on the computer. This “time” has a lot to do with internally processing and thinking about what I would do in those situations (we all hate scripts where the characters make really stupid/non-real decisions, right?) that would not only make sense but keep the story moving forward too.

For this one I knew I wanted something around 3-4 VFX shots (two of them being a major challenge) and knew the characters I had to work with (me and May, my girlfriend). There hasn’t been a lot of change from the first version to the one you see here, so I’m not posting the older ones.

Unless something goes terribly wrong, I’m happy with what I got now.

The path taken by the characters has a lot to do with Cloverfield’s The Statue of Liberty’s Head sequence, where they start in a rooftop, something weird happens, they go to the street and the wreckage continues. The main difference here is I don’t have a “party scenario”, nor lots of extras and major city destruction in my plot! Let’s keep it simple for a demo reel.

This is the first post (of a series) regarding the everything that goes into my demo reel project at Vancouver Film School. The chosen idea, at the end of last term was Hovering Lights (the title will probably change), a (very) brief story regarding some people experiencing a UFO sighting over Vancouver. The original concept is right below, and it’s a brief story involving an amateur cameraman and his girlfriend who find themselves in the middle of a major event and keep shooting. The whole thing won’t be more than two minutes long, and will have just a couple of shots, not all of them loaded with VFX. The main idea is to make it look real footage and fool some youtube viewers.

It’s not hard gathering good reference on the track I want. The hard part was compiling the whole lot together in less than two minutes. Seriously, six feature films and one short, packed together to set the mood for my own idea, took me a day to cut through. Cloverfield and Dark Skies are the main references, but I also have a lot of elements coming from Chronicle, District 9, Project X and just a few ideas from Signs and War of the Worlds. From the gaming side, a great deal of camera style comes from What’s in the Box, which is heavily inspired in the Half Life universe, and, since we’re talking Half Life, the soundtrack comes from Black Mesa Source, composed by Joel Nielsen and one of the best game soundtracks I’ve heard recently.

The goal is to reach a 30 seconds video near the end of the term. So far, we’re around 1m20s, but I’m sure we can shrink it some more. The main flow of images, color and situations kind of follows what I have in mind for the script. It just won’t be as apocalyptic or chaotic as all of this (no exploding buildings, crowds or huge wide-shots). Even though I have plenty of reference, it’s kind of hard to find an alien themed movie that doesn’t have too much “epicness” in it. Independence Day was originally in the list as well, and ended up kicked out because everything was too huge (even the ships).

The best thing I noticed while I worked on this mood reel was how clear the plot was becoming, over the hours and according to my doubts and questions around “how do I edit this together and it still makes sense?”. Before this, I had the idea, yeah, but it was still in the realm of free-ideas, too perfect and with too many holes in it. Now it’s gathering shape and form, and soon will be ready to shoot!