Extending Screen with Green Poster board.

Seattle Shooting Begins

Setting up the Lights to get the best blue screen.

Questions Comments?

If you have any questions or want us to talk about a certain aspect of our film, just click on the comments. You can also e-mail us at b40f@hotmail.com

Production Day 8

Production has been slow but steady over the past few days. Dave is spending time up in Tonasket helping Grandpa on the ranch. He was putting in new irrigation pipes for a pasture that Grandpa is preparing.

Meanwhile I am back in Spokane doing several production processes. One very important, but also very boring job is transcribing. I took our 40 minute interview with Kong III and typed up every word. It is actually a very necessary task. It helps to have the written interview when we are trying to storyboard for the shots we need. Usually we would be using the script as material to draw story boards from, but as the interview is a major part of our script, it needed to be typed.

I have also been looking at behind the scenes footage that I will be needing to use for Kong III. Each shot that we place Kong III in will take hours of work and they need to be planned very carefully. We need to make sure we know what angles to place the cameras on the blue screen set so that they will match the behind the scenes footage that Kong will be placed into. All very fun, but time consuming.

Production Day 5

Time is ticking and some things have happened in the last two days. We made a quick stop in Omak on our way up north to see our Cousin Derek and watch Star Wars III. It sure is nice to have closer on the Star Wars movies. It really cleared up some things and answered several questions I had about the Old Star Wars. It is a little darker than most of the other films, but that is to be expected since Anakin turns into Darth Vader.

One of the DAT recorders was giving us problems and not powering up for us. Dave took it apart and trouble shot it for us. It turns out that a wire in the power supply was busted. Oh, good. That's a piece of cake to fix. :) I brought my soldering kit and re-soldered the wire and it has been working just fine ever since.

We set up a recording studio in a bed room at Uncle's house and began our interview with "The Kong." What a blast. Dave was the "interviewer" and was asking Kong questions related to family expectations for Kong, along with normal actor questions. Uncle really got into character and we were able to get a really good interview. Uncle really made the interview. He can just come up with stuff that sounds funny, with out even trying.

After a good recording session we moved outside for a 5 hole round of golf in on lawn and a BBQ at the fire pit. The weather was fantastic, with a bright sunny day and a blue sky. God sure spent some extra effort to make the that part of Washington beautiful.

The next order of business is to make a shooting script for the blue screen Kong shoot.

The Great NW Plains

Pioneers

Getting ready to film with Dave's Super8 Film cameras.

Pre-Production Day 2

Today has been a busy one. In the morning we made several phone calls trying to track down equipment and contacts. I pretty sure that we were able to secure a DAT (Digital Audio Recorder) for our shoot. We really want to record all of our audio with the DAT because it is a very high quality sound. DAT is a professional standard and has been for a while, and is still used on many Hollywood movies.

Audio is a huge part of our short and will be key. Our short is an interview with the grandson of the original King Kong from the 30's classic. We have cast our Uncle as the voice for Kong III because of his intricate knowledge of the classic movies, and well, because he is great with coming up with totally sweet speeches and sayings on the spot. Perfect for improvisation so it doesn't sound like a script, but more like an actual interview.

Because of the technical aspects of making Kong III look huge and as big as we all know he is, we will not be able to shoot the the Kong suit and the sound at the same time. The actual video of Kong III will be taken at 911 media's blue screen in downtown Seattle.

Pre-Production Day 1

Dave made it safe and sound with Super8 cameras in hand. The script writing is continuing to develop our short and fill out our week spots. Dave rented the old King Kong movies today and we are going to watch them for ideas. Yep, that's right. Our short has something to do with King Kong. But what could it be? I am supposed to borrow a DAT audio recorder tomorrow to so we can record our voice actors on Saturday or Sunday.

The main thing that we are working on today is ideas. Brainstorming for wonderful and fabulous ideas that will blow our minds. Hmm, That doesn't take too much, but the process is fun. The program that we are using to type up the script is call Sophocles. http://www.sophocles.net/
This program allows us to easily put our thoughts down on the computer in a standard script format. We have found it to be a very useful tool. I would highly recommend it.

Pre-Production (Day 0)

Here we go. Official Pre-Production on our newest short is beginning to heat up. Dave (Director) is flying into Seattle today and I still have lot's of work to do in preparation for him coming. I'm in the process of putting together a prodution folder that will contain everything from meal schedules to production story boards. We still have location scouting and a few items yet to pick up.

It is really a pleasure to work with such great people. David is directing the short, Angela and I are producing, and we all will be gaffers, set designers, costume, makeup. We will just stretch to fit in where we are needed.

We will be releasing information on the short, like actors, locations, and hey even what it is about, through out this Blog, so keep checking back. We will also post production pictures and other fun stuff.