Produced for Colchester Film Festival 60 Hour Film Race
Team: Fifty Oars
Director, writer, cinematographer: Jason R. Johnston
Producers: Randy Garcia, Jason R. Johnston, Herlinda C. Lopez, Max Rojas
Editor, 2nd Unit Director: Randy Garcia
Aerial photography, BTS: Javier Gaona
Grip, television flicker-er: John Hawkins
Starring: Christian Blake, Elyssa Ramirez, Alyssa Gonzalez, Max Rojas
Behind The Scenes
After deciding to compete in Colchester Film Festival’s annual 60 Hour Film Challenge contest, we set about producing a short film. The result is Immobile, a 5 minute short film created entirely over a weekend from concept to completion. Following is the story of its production.
These are the required elements we were tasked with:
Title: Immobile
Dialogue: How do I know what you are telling me is true
Action/Prop: A DVD is scratched and put into a case
Pre-production began 2pm Friday (local time), with the first phone calls and meetings happening after 5pm. After 8pm producers Max Rojas, Randy Garcia, Herlinda Lopez and I met and discussed story ideas. Max came up with what became the main concept. We all then elaborated and expounded the concept. After adjourning for the night I wrote the screenplay between 10pm and 3am Saturday. Call time Saturday was 9am for rehearsal, staging, props and wardrobe. During prep I sat with Randy and bounced ideas as I drew storyboards and got the script organized with a shot list. My apartment was re-arranged for the set after lunch and we began shooting around 2pm. John Hawkins helped Randy and Max adjust lights and was the resident “television” flicker-er operating the bi-color Yongnuo LED-600 lights to create the illusion of the presence of an off-screen television.
To get the news footage, we created Unit B to go to a nearby park before sunset for a more interesting sky whilst Unit A continued shooting inside the apartment. Alyssa Gonzalez volunteered to be the news reporter in one of her first on-screen roles. Max played the interviewee. The second unit wrapped just before sunset. First unit wrapped shooting at 11:30pm and began post-production.
Sunday call time was 6:30pm as we slept in until about 2pm. Editing recommenced at that time and continued until 5pm when we continued shooting pickups with actor Christian Blake until we wrapped him at 7pm. During this time we shot the kitchen scene and DVD inserts as well as his ADR and correcting a mistake where the required dialogue was recorded incorrectly. For the opening aerial shot, the UAV was operated by Javier Gaona.
After wrapping Christian we continued inserts and pickups with actor Elyssa Ramirez as well as loops of her breathing. Max and Javier shot “selfies” with Elyssa for the news story sequence with a cellphone and emailed them to me. We wrapped Elyssa around 8pm. During editing we realized we were missing a shot of the DVD being inserted into a case and shot that quickly with Max Rojas as a hand double for Christian Blake.
To establish the television more clearly I shot footage of producer Herlinda Lopez as she made editor Randy Garcia and I pasta. I then had Randy shoot me against a door for additional footage. As Randy edited the main story I created the news graphics and assembled the shots of Herlinda and myself. I then used Apple Airplay to mirror my Mac Mini desktop as a full screen loop of the rendered QuickTime news story and additional television footage played via AppleTV on our downstairs television which I then recorded with the camera off the screen at various angles. This footage was then delivered to Randy.
Around 10pm Randy had to leave because work the next day. Fighting a sinus infection due to allergies and stress, I took the assembly edit and began making executive decisions on what to cut to make the contest legal running time of 5 minutes. Grading and picture lock happened at this time.
I recorded music between midnight and 1am Monday. Sound mix and final rendering and export happened around 1:30 (two exports were required as LUT Utility dropped a LUT on more than one occasion which required double or triple the effort. In fact, the submitted film is missing LUTs in places that were applied but ignored in the export).
The final exported video was done at 720p for file size reasons and began upload to the contest’s Vimeo channel around 1:40am and completed a little after 2:20am Monday morning. Because the upload began before 2am local time, Immobile is eligible to participate in the contest.
In the end, Immobile was produced across 60 hours on a budget of maybe $200. We shot with a Canon 5D Mark III, 5D Mark II, Panasonic Varicam, GoPro Hero 3 on a DJI Phantom 2, as well as a DJI Ronin for dolly shots. Lenses were primarily Rokinon Cine (primarily 85mm and 24mm) as well as a little Canon 18-55 and 50mm while the Rokinons were on another job. I’m not terribly happy with my insert shots of the DVD stuff, but we it’s a race and we were pressed for time and had to wrap talent. However, I am extremely pleased with the overall film and I hope it find an appreciative audience. More importantly, I had a lot of fun shooting a movie with a lot of restrictions (some self-imposed) and with a group of people I don’t get to collaborate a lot with. I’m proud of Immobile and proud of the people that made it all happen.
Now I’m sick and still have to put the house back together and do the laundry. #60HrFilm
