Here’s a BTS video to get you in the mood for the weekend. Ok Happy holiday everyone.
Categories
Behind the Scenes
Author: IJ Duncan
Backers, supporters, friends, fans, we continue to plow along on the film, slow but sure. There are a lot of VFX so progress slows when only a couple of people are working in their spare time on the film versus 30 during the short production in January.
There are hundreds of things to be created and hundreds of shots to composited, editing, sound, etc. It’s seemingly endless, even on something with a short runtime.
Keep you eye on the 11/8/15 date. Something is sure to happen on that date.
Follow the progress on facebook here: You DON’T need a facebook account. All the posts are public. You can follow along with the almost daily updates.
I will try to post more on the site for those that prefer it.
I have to be honest it’s been a long road with a lot of work and it gets me a bit riled up when I see people post that the project is dead, or that we took everyone’s money, or they are going to try to get their money back.
This project never raised anything like the money needed to create what is being done right now. It’s happening because a bunch of fans donated their money and whole lot of time to get it done. You can’t have a quality, film fast and cheap. You gotta pick two and since we had time we chose quality.
Anybody that works in the film or video production industry knows how little you get for the type of money we raised.
It’s taken us over two years to get this far. Thousands of man hours spent on everything from writing scripts, painting costumes, storyboarding and planning shots, to production on set, post production, GCI, compositing, and updating the community.
We are dedicated to this film. I just want to reiterate that.
The production workflow has been in 4k and we have been learning new tools as I go to manage the highest quality film possible.
RAW footage needs a lot of care an attention and although this is going on YouTube it’s also going on Blu ray and it should look like a $100 million film when people watch it in that way. That’s the goal.
A lot of people donated a lot of money and they should get their money’s worth even if it takes longer than we expected. That’s what I would want. We can’t cut any corners or throw money at it to fix it. We have to finish it and find creative professionals to help us do that if it’s beyond our means.
As in pre production when I needed to get all the props and costumes made it was next to impossible to get people to make that stuff for free so I ended up buying everything and doing it myself. I literally purchased a sewing machine to make the suit and then returned it and spent that money to buy fog juice and movie dirt for the production.
I have said this before and I’ll say it again. A good movie HEV suit could cost a million dollars. Sure you would get several and an insane level of perfection like Iron Man or Robocop. Steve Wang perfection. But if you take away the perfection and multiple versions what would it cost? 10 times less? $100k,? $50K? $25k? $10k?
Even if someone could get it done for $10k, that is a very significant portion of the production budget we had to work with. It’s just one thing on the list of hundreds. Then there were things on this film I could not get away with not paying for. Like locations, equipment rentals, insurance, union minimums and the cost of materials.
I will work it out exactly at the end, but I estimate the post production costs for this film (if we paid a Hollywood post house to do it) in the realm of $500k. That’s just for the post production. And the effects would be average.
You will not be getting average. We are close to the end and this is so much more than I ever imagined.
Thanks again to everyone that donated fiscally or donated their time. This is a film by fans, for fans and it will remain true to that promise.
Categories
3 Days of the Freeman – Part 4
On the 3rd day in the morning we did our walkthough blocking for the first scene to be shot. It was a complex scene in a hallway with the miniature Vortigaunt needing to be composited in later. 4 members of the cast were present including Bernhard (Freeman) and majority of the crew.
Getting a chance to set the entire scene for the whole team and do a blocking was the wish of the AD who was committed to getting the film back on track. I think it was a good idea. It set the tone for the day and everyone was in sync.
After the blocking Bernhard went off to shoot a small scene from a flash back with him prior to the opening of the game. It was the only shot in the film done with a DSLR and not in 4K. We had to settle for the 5DMk3 or not at all. So before costume and makeup Bernhard got with the very talented visual effects supervisor and they captured this moment in a storage room somewhere on the set.
For this scene we used a tight corridor that forced the actors to walk single file. I felt this worked well for several reasons. It kept things tight for the shots and allowed us to capture the whole scene from one or two angles, it was tight for the Vort attack and left the actors only one direction to go, plus it looked like it was right out of the game.
There were large windows in the corridor and I knew that they were going to effect lighting as the day went on so time would be limited. The scene didn’t need to be completely dark, but one that was even and dim was preferable. I talked with the DP about it and options for covering the windows but we had a minimal grip and electric package and not really the equipment on man power to do anything about it.
So I settled to get what we could get and tried not to worry too much about racing the light coming up. Funny really because normally it’s the other way around, you race to get the shots before the sunset. We got busy and shot the scene, (shot the fuck out of it actually) and got all the coverage, green screen, plates, etc on schedule.
It wasn’t until a lighting change that I realized that during the morning lighting setup the windows had somehow been covered. When I later went outside I realised that the Gaffer and Key Grip had rigged up some C stands with tarps and whatever else they could get their hands on. It was in amongst all kings of transformer looking electric shit I would have gone nowhere near. These guys were the business.
W
hile we planned the first scene, all kinds of things started happening, everyone was really getting into the groove now. It was day three, the last day and now everyone would soon be going their separate ways. Today was the day that Evan (Michael Thomas Wallace) was going to be having some of his key scenes. Mike is a very happy go lucky character but I felt that for the performance I was looking for I wanted him to remain in character for the rest of the day.
After the Vort scene we had to pick up a run of the main characters and then a tense scene in a locked room. This set of scenes actually ended up being a bit more complex than it seemed in the blocking. I decided that for the second part I wanted to split the cameras again and get a couple of pickups of another scene somewhere else. So we did. This was the last shot before lunch and an important moment for several of the characters.
There was a moment here between Freeman and the other characters that was to be expanded upon later in the story. The performances needed to be solid for the characters and these subsequent moments to feel reel. In truth, this is a short, so there’s not a great deal of time to build characters and arcs. The actors have to be carrying everything coming into the scene and hope that the audience buys into the emotions.
A
nd lets not kid ourselves, most people will end up watching this on youtube on their laptop, PC or phone/tablet. Keeping the attention of the viewer with action, VFX and fast cutting is going to play a part for sure. But we tried our best not to skip on substance and performance, even with a small budget and a short shoot, 30 people who really cared about this movie got together and worked really hard to make it the best they could.
After the tense scene with Freeman we continued with the cameras split. One team went to shoot the opening scene of the film, the arrival of the characters at the power plant and the other went to grab some important pickups from the previous day. Once these scenes were completed we were at lunch.
After a quick bite we moved to the big gun fight we had failed to get in the previous day. Now we had the opportunity to really tackle it with with some awesome shots. And we did. I got the whole scene from several angles and a couple of times at 180 FPS for some awesome tension, action, slo mo moments. Every one had time to focus on the little details and really make this scene special.
We had some more cool air cannon stuff, blood and gore, running and gunning, Freeman, Evan and HECU marines in a final shootout. It was pretty awesome. Steve Wang also made an appearance and gave us the thumbs up on the suit and stuck around to take in the set.
As the light faded we got the last shots of the characters entering the warehouse. This was key for the final moments between the actors before they run into some serious trouble.
After that the final scene of the day in the control room. Unfortunately by that time we had run a bit behind in the schedule. Although the final scene was pre lit and looking great there was quite a lot of dialog and some very emotional scenes from our characters.
Here our male and female stars knocked it out of the park. The level of intensity and emotion was high, the crew although tired from what was approaching a 12 hour day were making a final push to get the film finished.
Time was running out and we got set for the final moments of the final day. Things went down to the wire but when all was said and done it was finished. We got it filmed with brilliant performances.
Thanks to the dedicated cast and crew and to all the fans that made it possible by donating to the process.
Stay tuned as we share stories and content during post production.
DAY TWO
Saturday the 3rd of January
Day 2 presented a new set of challenges. We would for the first time have practical effects during action sequences, running, shooting, and the first test for the HEV suit. Even at the end of the first day the wear and tear was significant. Nothing our awesome costume person couldn’t handle but any severe damage would mean stopping to fix it and time was never on our side.
Call time was at 6:30. We had several scenes to get on day 2 that were missed in the first day. Day 2 was a massive day already so the crew had its work cut out. We had two action scenes, the opening and closing the film plus the G-Man and the films villain coming into to do some HECU bidding.
The first shot of the day was that of two marines watching over the building that the heros have just entered. It’s a big hats off moment to the games writer and the marines are appropriately called HECU MARINE MARC and HECU MARINE LAIDLAW.
The morning started off well but things are hurried on a film like this. It’s like a train going down the line. Sometimes making changes or rerouting can seriously slow things down. Most of the time it’s better to let the train carry on and do the best you can. But in the hustle, small errors can creep in. For example I always imagined the villain wearing a camo T-shirt and a red beret. But on the morning of the shoot it was so cold it would have been torturous to do that to the actor. So the costume gal put him in full fatigues. By the time it came time to shoot his scenes it was more than warm enough for the t-shirt, but by that time we are moving so quick it was too late. In the end it worked out for the best as it looked better with no t-shirt.
I really wanted to set the villains look apart in the episode, but I think you have to sometimes settle. With tiny budgets like this, this type of stuff happens a lot. We did it in other ways anyway. For example, I was not personally a fan of portraying the US military as villainous, so I did little things to make them different from real Marines. Which is funny because worked we so hard to make everything look like legit Marines. In the film the villain wears his beret on the left instead of the right. Like a mirror image, evil twin or something like that. He’s not quite right. Also a nod to any real marines that were not mass exterminating innocent civilians during their time in service. We had a great military advisor on set and he would run around fixing everything to look perfect. I’m sure he probably thought I was a loon, following him around, making it look wrong again.
After we shot the MARC LAIDLAW scene it was followed up with a small scene between Jaegar and some soldiers, next was an action scene with Freeman and Evan being pursued by the HECU. This was one of the first scenes in the movie and it contained some exchange of gunfire, running and explosions. It also has a very small stunt with Freeman that had us very concerned about damaging the suit. In this scene the two heroes are almost blown up and I had this plan to set off the air cannon while simultaneously blowing up one of these C02 grenades to make a huge bang. The purpose being to get a real look of shock from the two main stars. I told all the crew members and the art art FX team rallied to get the surprise effect to go off. The only two that didn’t know were Bernhard and Mike, AKA Freeman and Evan.
The scene had some complex timing, the guys had to shoot at marines then take cover and we had to blow the air cannon, then they had fo fall. It had to be timed out perfectly. I called action, the C02 grenade fired with a hell of a bang and shocked the shit out of the main actor. However the Air cannons that blew the debris were late so he was sort of stunned for a second before debris fell on him. Hopefully there is some way to cut it so that it works. Not sure yet. Bernhard was not so stunned, maybe because he was so deep in character but more likely just so tired and over all the running around in the heat. Either way it worked really well for the moment. Shell shocked, worn down, hopeless. It was pretty awesome.
At the end of the scene, was lunch, the crew directly involved in the scene stuck around to get some additional close up shots and work through lunch. This was the type of people working on the film, guys and gals that didn’t really care about lunch, they sucked down a red bull and got on with the shots. It was marvelous. The close ups made the scene. Fuc#ing Perfect!
After lunch we went back to the same location to shoot the final scenes in the film. We had a big scene with the G-Man and the finale with Jaegar. The sun started to leave us really quickly. This was the firs time it was decided to split the cameras. One stayed to shoot the G-Man the other to Jaegar. I was disappointed because I had to choose which performance to direct and it meant less coverage of each scene. It was a compromise I had to make to get the film. Production is expensive and there was no way to extend the filming or money to do it even if permits allowed. It had to happen Saturday and Sunday.
Splitting the crew helped but it also slowed things down. We had to really simplify the the work with the G-Man and the numerous green screen shot and plates made things go really slow. Not that things were moving slow, most of the time, at least for me the pace was frantic, but its just a lot of shots of the same thing. I was really happy with the performances and moved inside for the final scene of the day.
This is where things took a turn for the worst. The light was fading too quickly and the scene being indoors was relying on external light sources. We frantically tired to capture what we needed as the light faded. It ended as more of a rolling rehearsal as the day closed, I felt a lot of tension and there were some crossed words. It was not a great way to end the day and I was upset and frustrated that I did not get the scene at all.
The first part of the day had gone well and we had captured a lot of stuff, the second part of the day had worked out well splitting the crews, but we needed more light. More money would have meant more crew and lights and we could have been prepared for the lack thereof. But it is what it is. You compromise where best you can and then figure out how to pick it up the next day.
At days end me and Bernhard went immediately to the production office (AKA Cafe 101) and sat down with the script. There was now too much script for the time we had left to shoot. We had to make some decisions. What could we do without? We started the process by combining some scenes that were in different locations. This helped with setup times and we felt pretty good about that. The only thing being lost was really cool locations, and one was particularly awesome. It was underneath the control room and it was very spooky. During the second site visit we talked about even the possibility of adding an extra headcrab scene there. After everything is shot this spooky set appears only in my memory. I dont even have any stills of it. Cut.
The second thing we cut was a small scene with a lighter moment I mentioned earlier. I wasn’t too unhappy to see this go, as I really am going for a very dark tone. Cut.
We made some final cuts to dialog and combined a couple more moments and it was done. We had our last day planned. It was still like two days worth of stuff, but a far cry from where we started.
Up Next the FINAL DAY…
DAY ONE
Friday the 2nd of January
I woke at 5 am on the first day. We had decided to go with a slightly later call time of 7am. It was literally freezing in LA. In all the years I spent there I never saw ice. First day of shooting, windows iced up.
Myself, Bernhard and the cinematographer Clay were able to go to the location a couple of days before and try to plot out some shots, so I felt we had a pretty good handle on the first day.
The first shot of the day was in the control room. It was actually a shot that wasn’t necessary for the film to work, but with the way the schedule had worked out we ended up having a lighter first day, so some control room shots were moved there. 
A lighter first day gave everyone the opportunity to get to know each other and figure out what was going to be happening the next 3 days. The camera, lighting and G&E guys set up the first shot and the art department set up the second location which was turret room. It seemed as though things were looking good.
Prior to filming and a year or more before, Bernhard and I spent a lot of time talking about the Freeman character. This is interesting because there was much back and forth on how much dialog Freeman should have. From none, to that of a normal character. I certainly felt that Freeman would talk, traumatized, feeling responsible, shell shocked, etc. but Bernhard also felt strongly about the challenge of character with little or no dialog.
Bernhard took the role very seriously. If he was standing for a shot or picture he would assume a pose of Gordon Freeman. By that I mean a Freeman pose like that you see in the official valve art work. He would cock his head or pose his arms exactly like Freeman. On the day of the shoot he was so serious about staying in character and keeping the production moving that he drank almost no water. Getting in and out of the suit was not the easiest. About 3/4 of the way through the first day he was starting to pass out from dehydration. What we hadn’t factored in was the about of fluid he was losing in the suit. It wasn’t showing. It was just wicking down to his boots. 
There will be a special bit in the features on where all that water ended up. Pretty nasty. Anyway we decided stopping for a break was better that stopping for paramedics so he had some red bull and we pressed on, it was all adding to the character anyway.
By noon we were running behind. A long way behind. Things were moving way slower than I had hoped. The lighter day was a slow day which was not ideal. It was no ones fault, it was an action movie on the budget of a… well i don’t know. Not an action movie. After noon its a bit of a blur. We shot a lot of coverage of the turret room and then we were at lunch. 
After that we changed a couple of things up to try to make up time. That helped, but by the end of the day we had missed a large action scene in the end of the film and a bunch of flashback stuff. We ended strong with a nice walk and talk but that was not enough. Day 2 and 3 were now gonna be more of a challenge than ever.
Throughout the day everyone hustled the entire time. It was something to behold. The was no moaning or complaining. Just hard work.
The first episode, Enter the Freeman, I had added a few digital effects. All 2D except for one bullet coming out of a gun in slow motion 3D. There wont be single frame in Episode 2 that doesn’t contain some kind of digital effect. Many of them in 3D. Enter the Freeman was shot with one Nikon DSLR at 1080p (around 20Mbps) over two nights, with work lamps from home depot and a cast and crew of 8. It worked because the story and location were simple.
The second episode was shot on 2 Sony F55 motion picture cameras at 4K (RAW around 1000Mbps) over 3 days at numerous locations within a Los Angeles power sub station. We rented gear from several rental houses and vehicles to transport it and had 25 to 30 cast and crew on set.
The production has many times the scale of the first. It shows in the footage. Each person that donated owns a piece of this production.
Just out of interest the Edison substation transforms a quarter of a million volts coming out of a hydro electric power station in the nearby mountains, down to about a quarter of Los Angeles. It’s fully functioning. During one of the safety walkthroughs on the second level the site reps safety instructions were “don’t put your hands up over your head. Reduce the risk of an arc to earth via human being”. Nice.
Also as I write this I have finished syncing the audio and video of the movie and editing will begin.
Day 2 coming soon.