Jen in the super cool makeup trailer (a rented 70′s vintage camper) getting her ears and makeup applied by the talented Denis Barnes. Everyone knows vat-grown Ninja Kings have pointy ears!
Monty proving once again that if you give a guy a toy gun, he’ll making shooting noises every time he pulls the trigger. In an upcoming blog we’ll talk The Weapons Of Ninja King
Tori stepping out of said makeup trailer. Ready to battle a Hogbeast or three.
The day is finally here. No, not the day I actually post on this site, well that too. But the day that this little crazy short is DONE! that’s right, after futzing around for several months I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to add all those super cool 3D and compositing effects in this lifetime. So I buckled down and decided that it just had to get out the damn door. I’m uploading a secure screening copy to withoutabox and getting set to enter some festivals. We’ll also see about a cast/crew screening sometime soon. In the next little while I will backtrack and fill in some details about the production process and keep you posted on the progress of getting Ninja King: Episode 1 out to the eager public!
Lighting With Home Depot Lights: Part 2.
The amazing Shane Hurlbut, ASC
Now don’t be frightened by that imposing title. If you know me at all you’ll know that I am not dangerously technical – just enough to get things done. Since I’m always keen on learning these things when I see other people’s stuff, i thought I’d talk a bit about the gear we used to shoot NK. First up: The Camera – It’s been an incredibly exciting time for low budget film-makers as new, affordable cameras with amazing image quality are readily available. That same wealth of options however has added so many new possibilities it’s hard to know which way to jump. For me, starting with little money the decision was critical, whatever I bought I was stuck with. I knew I wanted HD, and I am used to using broadcast quality cameras at work, so the entry level hd consumer cameras were just not up to standard. The prosumer cameras cost too much money. I was looking around for a DOP to work with, someone who had his own camera, when I came across the work of Kelowna filmmaker Jan Vozenilek from Copper Sky Productions. I found out he was using a Canon EOS 5d and I was astonished at the cinematic quality of images he was achieving.
The control over depth of field alone was incredible. The colour and contrast! I have worked in video for years, but I started as a still photographer and shot my early stuff on film – Super 8 and 16mm. I have to say that I’ve never been really happy with the ‘look’ of video. It’s come a long way over the years, but even the full size professional HD cameras at the TV station that I work at yield an image that is obviously video. So I read up on the DSLR wave. Oh, that stands for Digital Single Lens Reflex, if you care. Means you can look through the lens that you are shooting with, instead of at a viewfinder. There is a lot of information and discussion online, so I won’t repeat all of it here. What I did learn was that for a relatively low price I could get a camera that was as close to shooting on film as I was ever going to get without dusting off the Bolex.
PLUS you suddenly had the world of incredible lenses available. The other thing about video cameras – they almost always have boring mutli-purpose zoom lenses. With a DSLR you have choice! Frighteningly wide range of choice. Made for the most exacting professional image makers on the planet. Gives me shivers!
Now these are Not Cameras For Everyone. They are, after all, built for still photography. Somebody just thought it would be a neat feature to add video. They are clumsy to hold for video, have way too many buttons to do all kinds of things you don’t want to do in video, and really don’t have many professional options to record sound. But, hey, I started out on that vintage Bolex with a hand held light meter and a spring driven motor you had to wind up for every shot while recording sound seperately on a portable cassette player, so none of the DSLR quirks faze me.
In the end I decided on the Canon 60d – it has a slightly smaller image size than the full frame models, but that meant I could get a better lens, one that would still work if I found I needed to trade up.
I got two lenses – 16-35 f2.8 and 50mm f 1.4 I didn’t think I would need a telephoto as much for my video work. I have been delighted with the stills and the video so far. The more I work with it the more I find myself blown away by the images I’m making.
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Here’s an example: A music video for the amazing Leah West. This was a live performance on a sunny hillside. we shot with 2 Canon 60D’s one locked off and I was operating the other. This is just the way it was shot, nothing altered in post. It’s in SD online, had yet to master the HD for Youtube thing.
Since I am stuck a bit on the subject of locations – here’s two scouting shots of the freezing cold barn we DIDN’T shoot in. Even though it’s Really Cool!
Ah you say? What can this LBLAE be? It’s the stuff you have to change when you can’t change the place you have to shoot in. For example – Ninja King was originally set in a fantasy/Japanese/medieval kind of milieu. BUT when we got this cool (free) cabin to shoot in, well it was just a little too modern. Prefab, Pan Abode circa 1976 I’d guess (http://www.panabodeloghomes.com). So with a few keystrokes out went the smoky fireplace (whew!), we no longer had to lug two fridges and a stove out the door (again, whew!) and suddenly costumes and props became so much simpler – Viola we are now Post Apocalyptic. The beasts are the result of genetic shenanigans and Ninja King gets a cool gun. I couldn’t be happier. Just to say: Work with what you have got be creative within the constraints you find yourself in. I don’t mean you have to compromise, this story actually works better this way, but be realistic. And don’t make sci-fi and fantasy without any money. You’d have to be crazy to even try.
Just up the road from the Old Cabins (see below) we found another little spot. To back track a little, I grew up on the West coast and boats have always been a big part of my life. Now I always was more of a powerboat or rowboat guy, the one time my friend Bruce took me out on his sailboat in Gillies Bay as a teenager I wasn’t that impressed. Maybe because there was no wind. We rowed. And rowed. Jump forward to a few years ago when my oldest daughter, Tori and I signed up for sailing lessons at the South Okanagan Sailing Association (SOSA). They have a little stretch of beach, a dock, storage for sailboats and – ready for it? A clubhouse. Ah ha, now you see where we are going. Since we were shooting in the off season, we managed to get permission to use the building for a weekend shoot. Here’s how it looked when we checked it out:
A small stack of boats in the main room.
An area for the bar and kitchen.
Not sure about the exterior
Finding a location that would let us create the run-down, Bar on the Edge of Nowhere feel that we wanted for NK was a real challenge. I wanted boarded up windows, decay and disrepair. On my regular route to and from work I drive by this place, an old log cabin in the middle of a field in Summerland BC…
Which is pretty frigging cool, right? But in choosing a film location, just like picking a house, computer, or Russian bride, impulse buying can lead to problems. It is likely true that no location is ever perfect, it does pay to have a check list of sorts in mind. A few big things missing from this on-the-face-of-it-ideal location? Electricity – which means renting a generator. Heat – which means freezing. Running water – which makes washing off the blood difficult. And maybe most important – no bathrooms which means, well, bushes I guess. With a partly female cast and crew, and as the father of three girls, I know that no bathroom means no go. Ah well, if at first…
Now if we are going to talk about the process of making a short film, it seems to me we should start at the start. I’ve know Jen for quite a while (long while!) as a performer around town. After not seeing her for some time we met again at the callbacks for a TV pilot shot in the North Okanagan (Yes, I’m an actor too – add that to my list of hyphenates). The show was called LaFontaine and we both wound up with parts! Jen as the female lead and me, well I got to show up in the graveyard (it’s a Modern Gothic Horror kind of thing) in the last scene and lay down the Tune-In-Next-Week-Cliffhanger-Twist. There’s some stills and a clip around here somewhere… Give me a day or two. One day while reminiscing about our shared midnight graveyard experience Jen called herself a Ninja King, due to some spectacular save of valuable knick-nackery she had just pulled off. I asked “You mean Ninja Queen” not to be sexist, but still, she is a woman after all. But she insisted on the epithet Ninja King. It seemed to me that the only way she could be a Ninja King was if she was gene spliced with the King of Beasts – a lion, to give her the cat-like reflexes that she obviously possessed. From there it wasn’t far (in my version of reality at least) to posit a world where genetic splicing had, at least in some part, contributed to the downfall of civilization. And the idea for a post apocalyptic female warrior battling hybrids human/beasts was born. Ta-da!
Jen Viens IS Ninja King… Enhanced, modified and Vat Grown specially to serve and protect the Autocrat.
