I'm very excited since we've finally completed the shoot! First and foremost, a BIG THANK YOU to Øystein and Stian for their amazing help with cinematography and camera. 12.5 days of shoot spread over June to September for a short film of 10 - 15 min. CRAZY!
We had to re-create a lot of difficult scenes with fake walls, props and miniatures instead of just shooting real rooms and landscapes. Nevertheless, I think the time we've all invested will pay off in the end. The final short film will have a unique visual language.
We're at a point in production where we have at least temporarily exhausted all the budget. We've been feeling this fact during the last two and a half days when shooting the remaining miniatures.
We came up with some interesting set-ups in order to create the desired framing of miniatures and background objects.
A floating mountain.
At first, we considered renting a video mixer to have live view for lining up the miniature shots with the life action shots. For budget reasons, we came up with a different (not necessarily easier) solution. We captured the miniature footage with the RED camera and overlaid/keyed the previously shot footage with the miniature shots in final cut until we got the angles to match up.
No, the film is NOT about zombies.
Stian and Øystein adjusting the focus.
It's amazing to see that miniatures built in a scale of 1:6 look pretty realistic in the final picture.
The final image on the monitor. Angle and position are adjusted according to where the actor is going to be placed in post production.
The miniature seen from the other side. I removed some of the walls and attached others.
Of course there were some pretty tricky bits that had to be figured out. Such as the animation of the door opening and the shadow man sliding into the door frame.
Behind the scene.
The coming weeks will be all about post production. Walls need to be extended, miniature shots need to be combined with life action shots, sky needs to be animated, effects like snow, smoke, or ice need to be added, and and and. The list seems endless.