1 more left (part 2)

It wasn't the most awesome sleep in the world but it was more or less sleep.

Right now outside my window there's these two people who have been walking up and down and staring at, going up to the door and wandering away from the dentist's office next door. Some people are really weird.

Anyway, I started porting all the footage from the storage drive over to the computer this morning and I think we ended up with somewhere near 45 minutes of footage. I'm going to assume that means we caught everything.

I was noticing while we were shooting Steve's closeups that he reminded me of someone - not really acting-wise, but he just reminded me of Ralph Fiennes a little. Could just be me though.

We started with Grayson's entrance, which included Rick playing twin security guards. It was a little clumsy at first, I think we got it all though. It was rather amusing shooting with music constantly playing in the background, so when we did Derek's shots of him entering the boardroom the theme from Shaft was playing. I'm not sure if anyone else noticed that.

We then had quite a bit to shoot in the boardroom and a lot to cover considering how very little transpires action-wise in this scene. I wanted to make sure I got all my extras in at least one or two good shots. Steve and Derek were pretty simple to shoot, I just did two basic shots of each to cut back and forth and a few in between on certain lines.

They both did a good job. Derek I never really worry about, he has no problems adjusting his lines if he thinks they won't work - which so long as it doesn't change the plot I have no issues with. It's one of those things where what you write doesn't always translate well to be spoken.

We shot Derek's angles first so Steve could read off the page a few times and get into character - that's not what I told them, but that's why I did it like that - and when it came time to do Steve's stuff he really did a good job. When you take someone who's never really done acting then sort throw them into it you either end up good or horrific. Even more so when you give them 3 pages of lines to remember. Luckily another "good" situation.

I then took some cutaways of the extras doing their thing, to add in here and there and cover up awkward lines or even lines changes when we start doing dialog recording. There were two characters that will need post work, Pete Murphy as Cthulhu Jr, a bit of an H.P. Lovecraft reference and Dan Caseley as The Invisible Man. Any shot with Dan I really had to pay attention to, since in order to make him invisible I had to make sure I had a clean background behind his head and hands. So every shot with him was done twice, once with and once without.

I think I got them all. If not, it's not the end of the world, most can be redrawn, unless he's covering Andrea and Richard sitting beside him - then I'm kinda screwed. Although I was paying pretty close attention to certain shots like that.

Anyway, here's some behind the scenes stuff for a moment:

The ceremonial adjusting of the lights.
Everyone was quite excited by this.

Dan and Rick, this is Dan pre-invisible.

Dan, Wendy, Pete, Holly and Sandy.

Sandy and Holly.
They way Sandy looks with a beard,
he should be playing an Exorcist I think.

Steve and Derek.

And some "Demon Skin Chinese Takeout".

And the Fish Faced Psychic, Myk Hambly.

Here's Rick with his very dangerous prop.
That thing is pretty heavy and very sharp.

And this is pretty much everyone except for Derek.
I had to make sure to shoot around the
Christmas tree in the background.

Dan, Wendy, Rick
(and I think Sandy and Holly are still there),
Pete and Draper.
I think this was around when everyone had to act dead.

And we're done at this point I believe.
Richard, Andrea, Rick, Dan and Myk.

And a delightfull little video of Myk
struggling out of his makeup.

And that was it. We started around 1 doing the makeup and I think I got home at 8:30, there was at least 45 minutes of just gathering ourselves up and loading the equipment at the end. So we were pretty much on schedule.

I'll probably take a closer look at some of the footage today, I might do some quick visual effects composites with some of the shots to see how they'll look. Otherwise that is it, it's lunch time. So thanks again to everyone who showed up, and thanks to everyone who endured makeup and a toasty warm location.

Check back for part 3 coming soon.