Notes from October 2010

Work prints returned from the lab

We shot 11 rolls of 7231 and 7222, plus an additional 300' short end. The total film shot was around 130 minutes, or about 1/3 of the total shot so far. It was a very productive period for us. Only wish we could have stayed longer. We found some great contacts in Plush in Lake County, and given more time (and money) we'd gladly go out there to record some film in a little one room school house, but we need to wrap the production and move closer to completion. The results from the lab are great, everything was 30 lights from the printer, so 95% of the exposures were spot on. Lots of useable footage, so we'll be cutting in all the new scenes in the coming weeks. Given the current amount of additional material, we are definitely on target for a 70 minute film. This will permit us to show the film as a stand alone program, which I think will only benefit how the piece is viewed. We'll be doing the final lab work at Alpha Cine with printer Bill Scott. Alpha will process our optical track and make our final composite prints.

October 28, 2010  –  permalink

Wrapping production of Empty Quarter

We returned to Malheur County for ten days of production work. We recorded onion harvest and packing, a bentonite mining operation outside of Adrian, making corn silage, service at one of Oregon's two Buddist temples, the Owyhee Dam, and a number of pick-up shots (open landscape in Succor Creek, agricultural buildings and other structures). It was tough work, probably one of our most productive shoots of the entire production process over the last ten years. The film is now at Cinelab being processed and printed. Very excited to see the results. We have ahead of us an intense three month period of editorial and lab work in time for the premiere which has been moved to late January. Details for the local screening are still in the works. I've used seven different cameras for this production, and it was nice to have the XTR to employ this time around. In recent years, we've also switched over to file-based audio recording, finally moving away from DAT. Pam has a nice audio kit, and I think she is please as well with the transition to better tools for the task.

October 14, 2010  –  permalink