Hello Friends and Family!
Veronika Ballerina (a musical I shot for Film 3) is now on Vimeo! Go check it out. It has a slow European old-school start, but make sure and stay til the end for the huge musical number!
Click here for the full short: http://vimeo.com/25200501
Since Film 3 was such an important part of my life this semester, I thought I’d put up all the links in one easy to find location. So here are all the best blogs from Film Production 3:
Saturday was the first day of “Veronika Ballerina”– and definitely the most challenging. Above is a picture of the basic lighting set-up Trevor and I came up with. We used 8 china balls with a mixture of 300 watt incandescent and compact fluorescent bulbs (because we’re shooting black and white, color temperature wasn’t an issue– we were mostly looking to save wattage). We also had three Fresnels (2 1Ks and 1 650 watt) lighting the two opposite ends of the room. In closer shots, we had a 650 watt Fresnel on stand by to fly in and bounce off large pieces of insulation (cheaper than any other white bounce card)– as scene in the background. Unfortunately the lighting scheme wasn’t as awesome or Hollywoody as I would’ve liked, but we had to do FIFTEEN set-ups in 8 hours– so just the fact that we lit it and shot it at all is impressive.
Saturday’s shoot was the entire musical sequence– a dance that takes place to the tune of “Prince Charming,” by Linda Laurie:
Below are some pictures from Jon’s camera, stolen from Facebook for the sake of my readers. I was too busy DPing everything to take any pictures on my camera, so hopefully I’ll get some good ones from Jon and Peter and whomever else took photos on set.
Jon (middle) talks to our 1st Assistant Director (Nina, Left) and I (Right)
I set up a shot on the lovely Arri SR2 camera. We shot 16mm Double X Black and White Negative.
Some of the backup dancers rehearse. You may recognize Tina, center, the Production Designer from “Cowboy Café”
Peter (Left), Trevor (2nd to Right), Jon (Right) and I (middle) discuss a shot. The dancer in the white dress with black striping is Sarah Rish, our “Veronika.”
Veronika and the backup dancers rehearse the final part of the song.
That’s all for now! More about Veronika Ballerina later this weekend (when shooting finishes).
I’m finally getting around to posting yesterday’s photo. Jon and I went location-scouting for Veronika Ballerina, and this is a composite of like 15 different photos I took of our club location– Felt in downtown Boston.
Looks cool, huh? It’s gonna be a pain to light, but it will be great for our musical sequence 
Today I met up with Jon, my director for my Film 3 class. Jon and I met in Film 2 last semester. You can see some of Jon’s films here: VIMEO! The film “Alice in Silhouette” is his Film 2 project. This semester we’re working on a movie called “Veronika Ballerina.”
After we went over basic logistics of the film and had brunch, we headed over to Urban Renewal in Allston to look for some costumes.
I am PSYCHED to be working on Jon’s film for three reasons:
1. He’s one of the only people in the class who is ACTUALLY shooting on Film and not digitally. Funny how’s it’s called Film 3, right?
2. He’s a very visual person and his script is basically a cinematographer’s playground.
3. He has a DANCE SEQUENCE at the end of his film. I’m especially psyched about this reason 
We were looking for dance costumes and found four of these tutu ensembles. They look great in black and white, but believe it or not the tutu portion of the outfit is Singin’ in the Rain yellow… so maybe it won’t work so well in color. We’ll see. We’re still deciding whether we want to shoot in color or black and white. Jon and I both love the black and white film look but color could be very fun for this film too… could go either way. We’ll see.
Jon models one of our prized tutu finds:
Lose the ball cap and he’s the perfect backup dancer! Easy.
