Patient Zero Day 1

Well hello everyone. Today is day 2 of Patient Zero and I decided to start a production diary to share with everyone my experience on my first feature film. I’m going to be talking about the day to day on set, off set, the problems, the successes, and everything that goes into make a small independent production. So thanks for reading and I hope you will follow me in my quest to make my first feature film.

DAY 1

So many months went by and we worked harder than ever trying to craft a script that we were proud of. I remember thinking about the entire production and not being nervous at all. I felt confident. I had everything lined up, I had my cast pretty nailed down, and everything seemed to be going according to plan. I was ready to take on this project full force.

Then March 4th came. Our first day of production. The night before I was organizing and cleaning all the equipment , getting my shot list together, going over the script, and just trying my best to prepare myself for the day. The next day comes and it seems like hours go by in seconds. The next thing I know I am in my car at 7:15 PM heading to set and I have a million things running through my mind. All the previous months that I was cool headed and completely confident vanished from my mind and I started to get extremely nervous. I thought about all the people involved, all the money that people had donated, the shot list I created, the story , the characters………… It all become a bit overwhelming. I kept saying to myself “Am I good enough?, Is the script good?, Did I cast right? Did I get the right equipment? Do I look stupid?

I sat there trying to zone out listening to music and trying to get my head together. And then I pulled up to the location. I drive up in my car looking out of the window watching grips and electricians pulling cables, my amazing Director of Photography Clayton Moore setting up all his gear, and the rest of the crew getting prepared for the first day on set. At this moment a huge grin came across my face and I knew it was go time. No more messing around. We are actually making a movie.

I get out of my car and look around and it finally hit me. All the years I spent in film school, all the sets that I worked on, all the training I did to improve myself as a filmmaker, all came down to this first day.  All the doubts I had about myself and this film instantly went away. I knew that I had an entire crew that all depended on me and I had to make them proud. I took as many precautions as I could to be absolutely prepared and that finally put me at ease.

As we got off our first shot I could not help but just smile throughout the entire take. It looked absolutely amazing and I was so proud of what my crew and cast were doing on screen. With the little budget we have it was so inspiring to know all these people are here for you working on your film for FREE and they all have enough faith in the story to do some phenomenal work. I felt like the luckiest person in the world at this point and I knew from then on and the next 25 Days that these people would become my family. We were starting our journey and I new it would be long and hard. Thank you again to everyone involved and anyone else that has supported the film. I could not have done it without you.

My Process

So throughout my film I want to share my process with everyone of how I am directing this film. Everyday I want to share with you my insights about the equipment, how I talk to my actors, work with my DP, Wardrobe, Pre visuals, etc.

Today I will be talking about what made me so calm on the first day and that is my pre visuals and shot list.

Pre Visuals

After we had a final script the director of photography Clayton Moore and I decided to make a general shot list for the entire film. We spent about 7 days and around 4 hours a night working on the shot list. At this point we knew some of the locations but not all of them. We just wanted a general idea of the coverage we needed and what shots were crucial in the cinematography pushing the story.

We used a laptop, and Ipad and Skype to work out our shotlist. I had the script on the laptop and Clayton and I talked to each other thru video chat on Skype. This was very effective. We were able to show each other different shots and angles through Skype video and it worked out amazing. We really wanted to have the cinematography push the story forward so we tried our best to think of ways to do our shots and we kept in mind the limited equipment we had access to. We had to get very creative in the sense that we did not have huge cranes or Fisher Dollys so we relied heavily on great composition and also gradually going from static shots to handheld which reflected our character going from a normal person to a zombie.

Once we were finished shot listing the entire film we went to the locations we had locked down and started recording some pre visuals. I had never tried this technique before but I felt that it could work great for us. I purchased an Ipad 2 and we went to the locations we had locked down and starting filming the scenes. I would act out the actions of the main character and Clayton would record all the shots. Once we recorded all of the shots from our shot list, I would take all the footage and cut it together on the Ipad. Avid had just recently came out with an amazing editing app on the Ipad and I used it to cut together all of our pre visuals. Once I cut them together I uploaded them to my Vimeo account to share with our entire production.

Once we got on set I had my Ipad with me and any questions our departments had about the shots, I was able to show them the video I had cut together on the Ipad. So far it has worked tremendously well and its a process I look forward to using and implementing on this film.

I will post some pictures and videos soon but for now I need to get ready to head back to set. Thank you guys for reading and I’ll be posting about Day 2 tomorrow.

Thanks everyone

-Rob