Apologies for the lack of updates everyone, things have been very hectic over the last few weeks. If you've been following our Facebook page you may have heard that we're now officially 50% through production. This is a huge milestone for us to reach and it feels amazing to make it this far. We have one more night of shooting this year, then we'll be taking a break from shooting over the next couple of months to finish rehearsing and tweaking the remaining scenes, as well as to raise some more funds (more on that in a future post). In the meanwhile, here's some behind the scenes pics from block 04:
Behind The Scenes: Block 03
Sorry for the lack of updates guys, we've been very busy preparing for Block 04 (which we start shooting tomorrow). Here's a few quick stills we took while shooting Block 03:
Behind The Scenes: Day 04 of Block 02
Block 02 of shooting is now officially a wrap. I'm really happy with how everything's been going so far and I can't wait to get to get into the next block. Here's some photos from the last day of block 02:
Behind The Scenes: Day 03 of Block 02
Over the weekend we had days 03 and 04 of block 02 of shooting Play It Safe. The whole weekend went very well and I am very happy with a result. Block 02 is now a wrap, and I'm looking forward to shooting block 03 in another few weeks. Day 03 was based in the Belgium Avenue Neighbourhood House which is a great little community centre in Richmond. Here's some photos from the day:
Behind The Scenes: Day 01 & 02 of Block 02
We just wrapped up day 01 and 02 of shooting block 02. Everyone put in a stellar effort, and I'm super happy with the footage we got. The actors put in great performances, and I've got to give a special shout out to all the extras who came out to be in the movie (and an extra special shout out to our boom op Tom Campbell and our production manager Shannon who also sat in for a bit).
Behind The Scenes: Day 03 & 04 of Block 01
Last weekend we wrapped up the first four days of shooting Play It Safe. The first block of shooting went very well, and I couldn't be happier with the footage! After a year and a half of development, it's really surreal to be finally shooting this film, and it's so crazy that I can now watch footage from the movie on my computer!
Behind The Scenes: Day 01 & 02 of Block 01
Production is under way for Play It Safe! We kicked off Block One of shooting this weekend and it went very well. Thanks as always to our hardworking cast and crew who pitched in to start turning this vision into reality.
Rehearsal & Gear Test
Just a quick update today. The last few weeks have been very productive and all the pieces are starting to fall into place. This culminated in our first big workshop / rehearsal / gear test on Friday night.
We spent the evening completely going over one scene with sound, lighting, two cameras, and even some costumes. We covered all conceivable angles, from establishing wide shots to extreme close-ups and my next task is to play around with the footage in the edit to work out how we want to cover the scene for the real thing. Jaque and I have already spent a lot of time talking about how we want the film to look and how the film's visual development should support the thematic development. This process of mocking up scenes and then trying things out and edit is really the final stage of defining how we want to execute the film's visuals, both aesthetically and practically.
I was pretty preoccupied operating B camera on Friday night, so unfortunately I didn't get a chance to take any behind-the-scenes pictures. Here are a few stills from the footage though:
Many thanks to Nick, Spencer, Jaque, Maia, and Dan for all your hard work on a Friday night!
2011 End Of Year Update
With only a few working days left in the year, I think it's high time for another update on Play It Safe (especially since I may not get another chance to post again before January). So much has happened over the last few months, and I've really wanted to blog about it here regularly. Unfortunately, a documentary shoot I was on a couple of months ago caused a pretty serious flareup of my tendinitis and I haven't been able to type properly since then (consequently I'm actually writing this post using DragonDictate voice recognition, which I hope to review in the New Year). I'm about to head off for a couple of weeks of R and R before we start production early next year. Fingers crossed this will give my arms some more time to heal and I'll be back to blogging every week or so next year.