Enjoy and happy filmmaking!
Jessica Cunningham and Kourtny Leia
Every filmmaker has a story to tell, that's obvious, they're making a friggen movie! But what YOU miss out on are the the jokes, the bonding, the problems, the heartaches, the moments of brilliance and and "oh crap" moments that are ever so common on a film set. But here I'll be sure to write down as many of those moments as possible. So you can not only follow the story, but come behind the scenes with me and my cast and crew and see what it's really like to be an indie filmmaker, from the conception of a story to waiting for the finished video to render onto youtube.
So Kourtyard Films and I (Providential Starlight Productions) have a very important update about the feature film 'Daniel'. We, after much thought, prayer and consideration have decided that we are not ready to tackle the project. Though Rampage By Definition will, by far, be the best project we have ever done, it still has issues. Now the entire point is to learn how to be better filmmakers so that we can create large indie projects, but we also have to be prepared. And there is a lot of learning that we still need to do before we can successfully tackle a project the size and magnitude of 'Daniel'. So for this summer (2013) we are canceling the feature. HOWEVER we are still going to make films! Our new goal is to make tons of short films (20 minutes or less) until we are confident that our filmmaking skills are up to par. Issues that we have is learning to be planned and prepared at least two weeks in advance. Having locations and actors pinned down and ready to go awhile beforehand instead of a week or a day before we are supposed to shoot. Now you may be thinking "how does that fit into being flexible", well that's a balance we need to learn too. Where to be flexible and where to be rigid. We also want to give all our actors a chance to play different types of characters. And we want to learn how to make different genres of film. There is a multitude of things we can learn and do by doing shorts for the next year instead of a large project. It will overall make us and our team better. And you'll get to see a lot of projects from us! So it will be exciting all around!
Enjoy and happy filmmaking! Jessica Cunningham and Kourtny Leia
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Well that scene that we've been having so much trouble with? It was finally filmed! Boy did we have issues, here, let me list them. First we wanted to film at a storage unit, but after weeks of trying to get ahold of them and get an answer they finally replied with a no. Then Kourtny's friend of her family said we could film at their farm, turns out they were subsidized by the government and thus we couldn't film there. Then Melanie's friend of the family said we could film at his ceramics shop. Then we gave him our release form and he freaked out and backed out. Then the Hickox family came to the rescue! During our meeting two weeks ago Cullen mentioned that the Hickox's had a barn that we might be able to film in. After messaging Alisa she was extremely excited to help out and let us use the barn! And the location was perfect! It wasn't a cold night, but we still got to be indoors, power was easily accessible and they had a restroom and a microwave for us to heat up dinner and they didn't care how late we needed to film. We cannot thank Alisa and her family enough for letting us film there!!!!!!!!!! As far as the filming day, things went extremely well. We met at my house at 5:30 for hair and make-up, we made it to the Hickox's by 7. We were able to film the outdoor scenes while the sun was still up and then we filmed the investigation. We were done and ready to go with the scene that caused the investigation by 10pm. However, it was an extremely late night....or early morning. We were done and cleared out by 4:30am. The reason we filmed so late was because the location let in natural light and it needed to be nighttime. So obviously we have a decent amount of footage of slap-happy and tired actors but people jumped into gear when we started shooting and things turned out really well. By the time we all got home the sun had risen, and after basically a nap we worked on the footage. I'm excited to see how it turns out! The biggest thing that went wrong on set was the shot list got lost. Normally this wouldn't be too big of a problem as Kourtny has gotten good at on the fly camera work. But she was in the entire scene, and I was running camera. And with her acting she was not able to help with camera. Luckily I've paid attention to cinematography and helped Kourtny enough that I was able to come up with my own shots. And a very special thank you to Sarah for helping with directing. With me not being used to running camera and having to come up with my own shots I was focused on camera and wasn't able to give much direction, but Sarah helped a lot at making sure the acting was good. She did a fantastic job, I would like to ask her if she'd like to direct a project in the future! Next week Saturday is our last day of filming Rampage By Definition. It's really weird to be here. Having been working on this project in some capacity since August 2012 and to have been filming every week since January. It's weird and saddening at the same time, to be bringing the production part of this project to a close. I have learned SO much and have so many amazing memories from this project! We had an incredibly, amazing cast and crew! I love you all! Enjoy and happy filmmaking! Jessica Cunningham We had a short filming day two weeks ago, but we got a lot of important segments done. We met at 10:30am and started hair and make-up. Once Cullen and I were ready we went and filmed a car scene. While we did that Sarah did Melanie's hair and make-up. So when we returned Melanie was ready to go and we were able to film her shot. And thanks to Abie for letting us use her car as our stand in police car. Then Brendan and Laura-Beth arrived we got their hair and make-up done and we went down to a culvert and filmed a montage scene. Laura-Beth and Brendan did a great job at helping Faith (Kourtny's little sister, this was her first time acting) with learning fight choreography! We have lots of Behind the Scenes footage of learning fight choreography. As usual the footage is amazing! The picture here is an unedited screenshot from the day. We were on a tight schedule as one of our actors needed to be done by 5 and Kourtny, Melanie and I had a meeting with our composer Jonathan at 7. But we filmed four (short) scenes and choreographed two fights in about five or six hours. But we kept strictly on task and multi-tasked where we could. Then we had our meeting with Jonathan Zuniga about music for Two Below! We had been communicating via facebook messaging and text but there was lots of miscommunication due to not understand each others terms as filmmakers and composers use and speak different "languages". So we brought Melanie with us to "translate" as she understands both worlds. When we first gave Jonathan the Two Below footage we didn't know what we wanted for music as we truly didn't understand scoring a film. But since then we've been paying more attention to music in film and how it feels and affects the film. And the music Jonathan had composed was beautiful and extremely well done, it wasn't quite what we were looking for. So we had a face-to-face meeting where we were very easily able to tweak what was already there. Mostly we stripped some layers and added more silence. So for future Kourtny and I are going to decide what type of music we are looking for and do a commentary on the entire film explaining what we are looking for and that will give Jonathan a place to go from. And our task is to learn what instruments give what feel. Since filmmakers speak in emotional terms (sad music, tension music, etc) and that's not how Jonathan works, he speaks in instruments and more technical things. But as we work together more we'll all come to understand each other more especially as we use each others terms side by side. So overall it was an extremely helpful meeting and I know Kourtny and I learned a lot. And in the end, that is what we are all trying to do. Enjoy and happy filmmaking! Jessica Cunningham So today is Sunday...and usually I'd be telling you about how filming for Rampage By definition went yesterday (Saturday)....but that's not what happened. The record that follows explains the very interesting day we had.
So we had a huge and important scene, one that kicks off the entire plot of Rampage By Definition and sets things in motion for both sides of the story. We had originally wanted to film this scene at a storage unit. But storage units were hard/impossible to get ahold of for filming permission. So we changed our minds and Kourtny knew a family friend that owned a farm/ranch and they had a large warehouse with tons of equipment and all sorts of obscurity that you can imagine inside. We decided it was the perfect place to film the scene. And it was indoors so we wouldn't have to do ADR. So the plan was to film from 10am-10pm. It wasn't a hard place to find but it was really obscure and difficult to get to, so most of our cast and crew was late for getting lost (including Kourtny and I and we had both been there before, it didn't help that there was at least 4 different ways to get there). We are finally all ready to go and people on the ranch are working...and we were told no one would be there. So the sound of a working ranch was ruining our audio (since in the film the place is supposed to be empty). So we decided, after about an hour of trying to film, that this was not going to work. I made the call that we would all go back home, take a nap and film all night instead. So we went back home and just relaxed. We went back to the ranch at 5pm. Again things didn't work and people were late due to miscommunication and getting lost. We finally get running when we get a call. Apparently the ranch is subsidized by the government and the government is putting the ranch under 24 surveillance starting at midnight. And if they catch us or find out we are filming we could be arrested, or the footage taken from us, or the ranch owners would be fined. We instantly shut down the shoot and packed up and left. We went back to my house and discussed options. Obviously not having a location we were unable to film the scenes yesterday, and luckily things worked out (in ways that seemed to be extremely annoying and seemingly unfortunate earlier) that setting up and getting ready took hours longer than normal and we only had about 30 seconds worth of usable footage. Since we are no longer filming there that footage will be tossed. It turns out that the ranch being used earlier in the day was a major blessing in disguise, because if we had been filming the entire time up until we were informed of this we would have been almost done filming the scenes and all the footage would have been scrapped and we would have been devastated. So it worked out that the most that happened was we wasted the day and only a few hours of our cast and crews time instead of having to do the scenes again and still be behind a day. So after all that crazy scrambling to leave the ranch and then coming up with some back up plan ideas we were hungry, so we all went to IHOP and had a fantastic time just hanging out, joking around and bonding. I think we all got a great ab workout. So we are currently looking for a new location to film the scenes, but we have two weeks. And since we have pushed back the starting date for 'Daniel' this set-back isn't devastating. We are just curious what the new set God has in store for us is, we thought the last one was perfect. But we have come to see that God definitely wants this project to happen because everytime something like this happens the "replacement" is always far better than the original. I am in no way worried, more curious. We have an appointment to look at another warehouse location on Thursday at 3pm. And I have other back-up plans for places to contact. Oh, news on 'Daniel'? Well we have a Daniel! We were going to have Tony Pugh-Ruiz play Devon but we decided he would make a perfect Daniel. We are still looking for many other parts to fill in 'Daniel', but I am excited to see who we will be working with. An entirely different cast (same crew), you'll see some familiar faces but also many new ones. We'll be having more auditions very soon, if you are a guy between the ages of 17 and 45 and would love to audition let me know, we have lots of male parts available, all of which have good screen time! Oh, and some behind the scenes news. Cullen Eason is officially engaged as of Friday night! We are very excited for him! The wedding is this July. So those are our interesting stories from set this week, very different from usual, but hey, makes a good story! And that's what we're here for. Enjoy and happy filmmaking! :) Jessica Cunningham This Saturday we had an entire Robert filming day. We filmed our first (in the film) crime scene. And filmed our second Victor vision. And we tried our hand at driving a car...without really driving a car! It worked beautifully! We waited until it was completely dark (since we didn't have a garage we could use to film inside of) and used all available light from the car and purchased four tap lights and placed them on the dash to light up our talent. We had my brothers and their friend stand on a step-stool and move a flashlight at a regular pace (to look like street lamps) and we attached two tap lights to a stick and had Sarah run with it to look like we drove past a stopped car. Those elements mixed with acting and you cannot tell we aren't moving. In reality we are parked in my front yard with people everywhere doing different things to make the shot. The footage is beautiful! And since it was a long day but we weren't in a hurry, we had time to relax and get acting as perfect as we needed.
We've also started working on ADR and things are going really well. Brendan's system of doing ADR works nicely and it makes it much less of a daunting task. And we are no longer afraid of outdoor scenes, we just don't worry about sound and ADR it later...makes for longer post-production time, but also puts less stress on getting sound (when wind always ruins our outdoor shots). On Friday we filmed another short (I know, we are crazy to put ANOTHER project on our already full plate) entitled "Garlic". This Saturday we will be filming a major and intense scene for Rampage, but I must do all the camera work. Kourtny wanted me to have some practice, so other than three shots, I did all the camera work for "Garlic". Kourtny is editing it as we speak. Also, I am proud to announce we have a Daniel for the feature film "Daniel"! We are introducing Tony Pugh-Ruiz into our cast! We are very excited to work with him. Currently he is our only male cast member (its hard finding guys to cast...), but we are preparing to have open auditions for all the guy parts as soon as we are finished with Rampage. Unfortunately Brendan and Cullen are too busy to take part in "Daniel"...it will be very weird to work on a set without them, but we are excited to see who God brings into our new cast. Well, I think that's all the news I have for now! Enjoy and Happy Filmmaking! Jessica Cunningham |
AuthorI've always known I wanted to do something with film since I was at least 14 years old. And now I have my own production company and the best cast and crew I could ask for, and it's still getting better everyday! Archives
August 2017
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