Behind the scenes of a 12a Production : Part 3. Steve talks about the time leading up to the filming of their most recent romantic drama. In this part it’s the final rehearsal before filming on Saturday.
The lesson learned here is that Jeff and I work really well together. After the last rehearsal I knew I wanted to film this with a two camera setup. After our podcast record that Tuesday night I found out Jeff wanted the same thing. We both came out of the rehearsal realizing that would be the only way to sell this story.
Here it was Tuesday night, and by night I mean late like 10:30 because we just finished recording our podcast, and we were talking about camera setup. Over the holidays we purchased a GoPro and thought this would be the perfect time to break it in. We also threw around some names of people to help me on the technical side. All of our years in doing short films we’ve found three guys who we knew we could rely on, Esteban, Sam and Justin. All had some lighting experience and we had a good relationship with them.
That Wednesday I started making calls to see which of the three guys would be able to film Saturday. I began playing with the GoPro to figure it out. Made sure we had a mount for the tripod. Etc. By end of the day Wednesday the only person who could help us out was Justin. He also offered to be there for our final rehearsal on Thursday night. Perfect.
Thursday night came quick. As Karly worked with Jeff and Courtney on scenes Justin and I setup the cameras. The idea would be to film this in the same room. That way Jeff and Courtney could be looking at each other for interaction. We had Courtney on the couch and Jeff on a chair across from her.
At this point we were using the GoPro and a Sony camera. The two different camera’s were not a worry – it could be sold as two different web cams. We mounted the camera’s on the tripod a little higher than the actors eyes. To give the appearance that the camera was a webcam on the top of a laptop monitor. Jeff and Courtney looked under the cameras as they talked to each other.
It worked. On camera it looked like they were ‘chatting’ with each other online. The rehearsal that night went well. I wish I could remember the exact sequence of events but we finally had an ending to this short film!
With the night finished the only thing to prep for was the actual filming on Saturday. We wanted to mount monitor’s below the camera on the tripods. This way the actors could naturally act with each other even in different rooms.
Filming was Saturday morning. And we only had the one day available to film with the actors. While I was confident of our abilities I was worried about pulling off the technical aspects.
Next up: Behinda the Scenes of a 12a Production : Part 4 : Filming Eve.
About Steve Mastin
After hitting the 30 mark Steve realized he needed to cut back on the amount of stunt work he was doing for Jeff. So he spends more time binge watching TV on Netflix then rolling off cars now. Still in love with creating movies, writing and entertainment Steve will never say no to Jeff. Add a wonderful wife, 2 cute kids and round it out with a black coffee.
