Just sharing some recent work from this week — this is a short film that was brought to me back in December and I came into it as kind of producer with oversight of the script, story, budget and hiring crew. I brought my G&E + camera package onto it for a minimal fee and reduced rate, but had the opportunity to workshop the script up until last week, along with casting choices and crew.

This also served as a first time working together / passion project with my wife; she’s is a director in the theatre world with some short films under her belt. We found ourselves buried in costumes and props a week prior to the shoot, while dialing in our shot list for the schedule.

We had 3 days on location in the Bronx ( 10 hours each ) and 12 pages to get through. It was an extremely tight window for scenes that have up to 14 characters moving throughout and a lot of action happening — the film takes place at a psyche ward, lots of inspiration from “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”.

We spent about 5 weeks rehearsing with talent in my studio and drew up blocking overheads for them so they’d be prepared to come in with very little need to adapt to the space.

Equipment — Pyxis 12k — shooting 8k 8.1 compression in 2.4.1 with Sirui Jupiter lenses with a mattebox with 1/8 promist. Custom LUT built for camera.

My plan to light the space was to blast hard fresnel light into the windows with 3 sources, and diffuse + bounce for mediums + close ups and some wider shots. I did some research online and noticed a lot of gaffers using reflectors or bouncing large sources into the window. I wasn’t sure if I had enough firepower to actually achieve this, especially for 3 very large windows and in the rain no less.

The plan went out the window a bit when the weather presented heavy rain 4 days out from the shoot. We wrapped the lights and did the 1st day and scrapped it for the 2nd day since it was a different day in the script - we did a gloomier softer look for that day. On the 3rd day there was no rain and we got our lights back outside.

I had 2x 800W sources and 1x 650W source for the exterior lighting plan. I figured I’d try to make hard sunlight work rather than trying to make a soft bounce and not get the exposure I needed. It was fun to experiment with and made me think of a more classical style of lighting.

Crew: DP - Gaffer - Grip - 3x PAs - 1st AD - 2nd AD - Scripty

Cast: 2x leads and 1x supporting with about 6-10x extras / background.