Photo by Chris Eller Photography

On New Year’s Day, Russell, Cindy, Chris, Meagan, Bryan and I sat down to watch the rough cut of The Babbling Banshee. Not all of the re-shoots were incorporated back into the rough cut yet and the film still lacks audio/Foley, color correction, and animation; however, it was gratifying to see everything put together. Progress!

In the new year, we push forward with post-production on Banshee. We have set a very ambitious completion date but, as almost everyone is working on this film part-time, we’ve had to admit to ourselves that our projected end date is flexible. Animation will probably be the most time-consuming aspect of post-production. Fortunately, Russell will be able to work more or less full-time on animation. Our editor, Ben, has a number of tweaks on the rough cut to work on before beginning work on color correction. As aforementioned, Nick has already done the majority of the ADR and will be doing some more in the next few weeks. Nick will also be composing the score for Banshee once Ben is done tweaking the rough cut.

Chris will be working on a trailer in the near future and we hope Russell will somehow find some time to do some posters and lobby cards. Once these promo items are ready, we will finally go live with a Banshee Facebook fan page. Fear not, we will post details when we have new content ready for your perusal. Keep an eye on the Starrynight Productions’ Facebook fan page and our Twitter account for future announcements.

Happy New Year!

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

A Banshee’s First Year

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

• Locations (all Southern Indiana): town of Gosport, bridge on private property near Johnstown, Rose Hill Cemetery, and Jug Rock in Shoals.
• Some local color happened in front of a bar in the streets of Gosport after filming was done. Otherwise, the residents and town police were very supportive. Thank you, Gosport!
• Roy is acrophobic and wasn’t thrilled about crossing a high metal bridge with open slats on the foot path. However, because it was too dark to really see and the crew put down some ply board, he didn’t have to much trouble with that scene. I did hear that Roy couldn’t move well in his leprechaun costume and that he was asked to jump off of a fallen tree over and over. Poor guy!
• I heard that the Banshee was awesome and that Shani completely nailed it, even if she was virtually blind during most of her scenes (I’m blind without my glasses too, my sympathies, Shani!).
• Austin got stuck in the mud when leaving the bridge for the next location, which got Russell stuck. And then Chris nearly got mud in his face when he pulled up to render assistance.
• Russell and Chris procured top soil for the interns to recreate a simulate a freshly-dug grave at Rose Hill Cemetery.
• Russell was very happy with the work done but was understandably exhausted after being awake for over thirty hours straight (as was probably the rest of the hard working men and women of Banshee).

That’s all I’ve got. Any more rumors? Confirmed stories?

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

Things Overheard About Yesterday’s Filming

"...when one side of the house was thatched, the horsemen would go and seek more feathers and, when they returned, not a feather was on the roof."

Russell created two models for Banshee, the house with the unthatched roof and the trio of faery wells, both from the Cormack MacArt tale. This entire sequence will eventually be animated and the models were created for reference. They’re quite detailed for something that won’t even appear in the final cut of the film but, then again, Mr. McGee doesn’t do things by halves. In fact, the faery wells really work. The three heads are hollow, the two above funnel water into the one located centrally below. He actually tested the water flow before firing it in the oven. The model could be placed in a base and rigged as a fountain.

Russell wondered aloud where the models would end up once filming was completed. I looked around our tiny apartment- already over-stuffed with props, costumes and hundreds of DVDs- and mused that my philodrendons had finally rooted and needed to be put in dirt soon. I turned to Russell.

“Wouldn’t the faery wells make awesome plant pots?”

Blink. Stare.

Clearly, he was not impressed.

I tweeted the picture of the faery wells @starrynightprod.

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

How to Repurpose Your Models, or, Green Screen and Philodendrons in the Faery Wells

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 tape survived security scans and Russell seemed happy with the footage.

Many thanks to Ryan for doing a little filming for us while he was vacationing in Dublin!

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

An American in Dublin

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

Existential Jessie, signing in…

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!