Wait, that’s not quite right.  It could be true though, Tape 14 was a banshee in and of itself; the other 27 tapes behaved properly.  Yes, you read that right, there are 28 mini DV tapes in total for this project.  It took me several evenings to get them all captured and logged, but we’re done now!

The Babbling Banshee was shot over a period of several months with a Canon XL2 camera set to 24p mode.  Since DV really is 29.97 at heart, that’s how we captured things.  If we had the luxury of more time, I would have captured each scene as a clip, resulting in several clips per tape.  As it stands, I ended up capturing a whole tape (except for that forsaken Tape 14) at a time to speed the process along.  Log notes included the capture settings and codec used, DVCPRO.

Special note to any and all camera operators; unless you have a good reason, don’t screw with the timecodes.  Please learn how to properly setup and use the timecode functions of your camera.  Decide on a timecode procedure with the DP during pre-production meetings and stick to it.  Consistency is really your best friend.  Most of our tapes had good timecode throughout as the camera was set to Record Run.

We had two or three tapes where the timecode was reset to zeros between scenes.  This means that after the tape has been captured you will have repeat timecodes for different scenes from the same tape.  Not helpful for logging notes and communications between the Director and Editor.

In this project our Director is using a Windows computer and our Editor, Ben McGill, is using OS X.  I looked for a solution for sharing large files between them both and came down to using the NTFS filesystem on our project drives.  For this Ben needed to install NTFS-3G software (http://ntfs-3g.org/) to allow him to both read from and write to the filesystem.  We have a pair of 1TB USB2 drives that the Banshee clips have been copied to, one is with Russ and one is with Ben.  I also have copies of the clips on my home computer, add in the tapes themselves and we have quadruple redundancy of data; very handy if one of the drives were to fail.  We went with NTFS as a filesystem for several reasons, among them are: NTFS is a very robust filesystem, it can handle individual files greater than 4GB in size (FAT-32 cannot), Russ is going to work on this as much as Ben, if not more due to some of the scenes so I favored his chosen platform, NTFS-3G is an open source project and I like FOSS projects.

As a side note, since I have all the clips on my computer as well, I think I’ll take a crack at creating teasers and the trailer after I get some info from Russ regarding what he’d like to see released.

Post from: Babbling Banshee Blog. Content copyright 2008 Starrynight Productions, Inc.

Tape capturing and logging of the Banshee

Post from: Babbling Banshee Blog. Content copyright 2008 Starrynight Productions, Inc.

Banshee Caption Contest, Take 1

First Gosport.  We had cooperation from the local police and were able to tap the community gazebo for power.  We lit a drunk Ryan O’Brien plus Tommy and Shamus on the streets with a 1Kw Broad and a 500W Broad for frontlight and a 500W Broad as a kicker in an ally.  The Gosport Police were a great help and the local tavern provided some on-set audience.

Next, the Banshee Bridge.  About 45 minutes southwest of Spencer is the Banshee Bridge where Ryan O’Brien meets his Banshee nemesis, played by Shani.  We had about four different setups for the filming (which began about 2:30 in the morning) using the 1Kw Broad as well as up to four more 500W Broads.  We were lighting the bridge as well as the actors for this encounter.  To power the lights, Russ was able to secure a 5000W gasoline generator (which eventually started).  Rather than try and use the lightboard and DMX dimmer packs, I decided to go for the full Guerilla Gaffer technique.  I got some more stringers and patched 600W (and a 1Kw) dimmer switches inline near the recepticle end.  So, we were able to power and control all of the Broads with dimmable stringers.

Thus far I’ve been wearing the following hats; lighting designer, Gaffer, Electrician, and still photographer (along with Yvonne).  The shoot on the Banshee Bridge also allows me to add the title of either Stunt Coordinator or Rigger (I’m not sure which would be more appropriate).  Since we had the Banshee hanging around on the edge of this bridge, 30 feet above the fast moving Eel River, we wanted to take precautions.  Shani, being a real Trouper, was ok with doing her own stunts, so I strapped her into a climbing harness and tethered her to the bridge with 4000# test tubular nylon webbing, just in case.

The rest of the shots that day were after dawn and we used available light and didn’t need the reflectors for fill, so we got those shots in the can pretty quickly.

Post from: Babbling Banshee Blog. Content copyright 2008 Starrynight Productions, Inc.

On location lighting; drunkards and Banshees on bridges

We’re planning on using available light plus one or two 300w parcans driven from an inverter plugged into Russ’ car’s lighter outlet. Oh, and some reflectors and or diffusers and interns! We may even bring in the 4-D cell maglite for some extra kick!

Seriously, the morning shoot is going to be an exercise in minimalist lighting and I’m looking forward to it.

Post from: Babbling Banshee Blog. Content copyright 2008 Starrynight Productions, Inc.

Guerilla Gaffering in southern Indiana!

The court of Cormac MacArt. Photo by Yvonne Avery.

Well, weekend #2 had a wild plan and we actually stuck to most of it.  It began with a castle in Loveland, Ohio and ended with a church in Bloomington.  We would have capped it all off with a cemetery in Bloomington if not for a few circumstance out of our control.

The castle, Chateau Laroche, was incredibly interesting.  The ambient lighting was actually rather in character, so I just decided to reinforce the light a bit and hint at a massive hearth out of frame for most of the interior shots.  We used direct lighting with red and orange gels for the great hall scene as well as one other scene.  Never you mind the decorations on the wall, Jason kept those out of frame for the actual filming.

The outdoors filming worked out well with the direct sunlight and some help from a large zebra (gold/silver) reflector for a little help opening up the shadows.

On to the church in Bloomington.  We filmed a few scenes at Trinity Episcopal Church on Kirkwood Avenue in downtown Bloomington.  For the church interiors, I wanted to go with a feeling of the Light of God, if you will.  So, I broke out the 1kW Molequartz Broad (nice, even light) and hoisted it up high in the sanctuary for long shots down the aisle.  We used a pair of zebra reflectors to help direct the light for some of the scenes.

Post from: Babbling Banshee Blog. Content copyright 2008 Starrynight Productions, Inc.

Lighting a Church and a Castle, Wow!

The first big gotcha I ran into as the gaffer was the missing power adapter for our lighting control board.  I have to say that this was a bit of a butt clencher at first, but we’re in good shape now.  The original power adapter was lost after wrapping the stage production of The Rocky Horror Show; this was not discovered until a week before the start of photography for Banshee.

My first thought was to call Stansifer Radio here in Bloomington and check with them for a replacement, they were closed and I wanted to get the board up and running NOW so I could test the instruments and take some guidline meter readings of their light output.  I ended up at the mall and procuring a replacement power supply from (redacted), but it just didn’t work properly at all.

Plan B was to use a slightly underpowered, 300mA rather than the 500mA that the board wanted (yes I know, EPIC FAIL on my part, mea culpa), but it worked pretty well.  That is, it worked well until I had to leave the set before wrapping on Tuesday morning at the Irish Lion and our production manager wasn’t getting any photonic love from the board and pipsqueak power adapter.

That got all fixored up this morning with a quick trip to Stansifer Radio; we got a nice, beefy, power adapter and the board is happy once again!

So, the moral of this lesson is to get the right damn  components, even if you have to wait until the next day because the proper business is closed when you call.

Post from: Babbling Banshee Blog. Content copyright 2008 Starrynight Productions, Inc.

Lighting: Technical Gotchas and Solutions

Light a pub, sure, how hard can it be.  Well, that depends on a few things, like:

• Are there mirrors (oh yea there are)
• Are the practicals useful for lighting and do they look good (yes and maybe)
• Where are the actors going to be (in that little, tiny, dark vestibule)
• Where is the camera going to be ( crammed into that same vestibule)
• Power outlets, what power outlets? (yes, we found some 20s half a floor down)

All in all, the challenges were pretty easy to overcome and some actually led to some creative lighting that looked great on monitor. We used a combination of 300w PAR 34 instruments and collapsible reflectors to create the scenes while using ambient light and practicals whenever available.

I’ll be working with the director to post some behind the scenes imagery over the next few days for your personal viewing enjoyment.

Post from: Babbling Banshee Blog. Content copyright 2008 Starrynight Productions, Inc.

Lighting a Pub is Both Easy and Hard (Days 3 and 4)