Fan Films

So what else has there been going on? Funny you should ask.
Now I am not one to do fan films. I leave that to the fanatics but Lucien convinced me to go do one last fall for some Star Trek types, called ST: Phoenix. So I show up with Mark Schapiro and we shoot a couple of separate vignettes at the local public access studio. If you want to see them I will post them below. Both involved some green screen work which I am slowly figuring out. Though the productions never suffered.
About a month or so later we showed up again and shot another vignette and then in January we shot again but this time for the primary photography of the show.
Now the Phoenix universe takes place about 40 years after the events of the last Star Trek Movie that does not have Captain Kirk young or old in it. The Phoenix is a huge ass ship. One of it’s nacelles is about the size of the entire ship from next generation. It actually carries a smaller ship in its hold. Their mission is to hang around the Romulan sector while peace treaties are being negotiated or some such. It follows a core crew and that is about all I really know or can say about it. Now I went in dubious about the project but I have to say that the writing is spot on for the Star Trek universe, the performances are fantastic and the Geek factor is not on the level of say Indian Food night with the gang from the Big Bang Theory. Thought production was rank amateurs at the outset they have been learning and are getting much better at running a professional production. And, truth be told I like these guys.
So the shoot in January was a big day. They had lots of bodies on set and we all had little name tags. Very McMovie.
The set was simply 4 flats of muslin and Florescent lights to be corridor walls. They wanted to light through the muslin for the keys and there was a ceiling to the set. They had a lot of work scheduled that included reconfiguring the set to make a Tee corner. The ends of the set had green screens for adding BG and star fields I guess. They also wanted to do a trailer that included the entire cast and was a completely different setup.
Now I had just bought a few new lights including the 2 K and Tweenie and EVERY SINGLE HEAD worked on that setup.
My call was at 6:00 AM which I made. Turns out the art department was not ready and they had not even started building the sets when I got there. I told them not to screw around with the ceiling portion as we would need to get lights in there but they did not listen. Instead they fucked around with it for a couple of hours before they gave up on the ceiling and I could even start lighting the set. The work basically involved having actors encounter each other in the corridors as an introduction to the characters. All happening at separate times. And we had about 12 pagers of script to shoot not including the trailer. Also the effects guy wanted a clean plate shot of the each empty scene for the matte shots. We finally start rolling the camera, I was going to say tape but this is a digital Red One Camera that uses a hard drive. So we will start calling it Poking Bits.
Anyway we finally start poking bits at about 11:30 when they wanted to start at 9:00. Come lunch time I indicate to the AD that hey it has been 6 hours since first call, Where is lunch? Oh go ahead and take a break and get some crafty. We did not break for lunch till dinner time around 7 PM.
BAD production!
VERY BAD!
SIT STAY!
No I was not too happy about that and once I got some food in me and a break under my belt we agreed that we would not reconfigure the set to the corner scene and simply shoot it as lit.
All told it was about 19-20 hours for me that day.
But the next time we shot, which was in the Darth Vader Building in downtown Seattle they split the work into two days, had lunch on time and we got every thing done. Like I said they are learning.
Come Norwescon which is the Seattle Science Fiction convention over Easter weekend ,they had a booth and screened a bunch of stuff that had the attendees all in a twitter. So yeah, am doing Fan Films and enjoying it.
Now Take a look at some of this stuff.

This is the first vignette we shot called Hollow

Hollow from STAR TREK: PHOENIX on Vimeo.

This is the Second one called Third Degree. Note, this was all done in front of a green screen Cyclorama. Also Snaps to Amanda Cherry who plays the young LT. she did the Technobable in one Take. No shit. One Take

Third Degree from STAR TREK: PHOENIX on Vimeo.

And here is a third one we did on a set. It is called No other Medicine

No Other Medicine from STAR TREK: PHOENIX on Vimeo.

For more information about these guys check this out, ST: Phoenix

Also one of the Actors, Ben Andrews was part of this group that produces this really cool High Def Live Actor Graphic Novel called Night Zero. Check them out here, Night Zero It is the Zombie Apocolypse in Seattle.

How To Build A Coop Light

A Coop light is really just a big wood box with a reflective surface in the interior and some sockets for the bulbs that you are going to use. It can be hung from the rafters of a lighting grid with sash cord or mounted on a light stand. The idea is to create soft light for a flat even lighting effect.
The one I built was made out of 1x4 and 1x2 pieces and will have two gangs of two lights, each controled by a seperate dimmer switch. The cost of building this one not including bulbs was about 90 bucks.

After I cut the main frame pieces I laid them out to make sure they were of the correct size. This box will be 2' by 4'.



The joints are all butt joints but I added dowels for added strenght and used angle and T brackets for added strength. In order to make sure the dowel holes lined up I had to build this Jig pictured.



I then had to clamp the jig to the cut stock and simply drilled the holes. Note I had to take care when drilling the opposite side so that the holes would all line up correctly. It worked out pretty well and though it did not turn out furniture perfect it was good enough for the job at hand



After all the holes are drilled and checked I began the assembly. I started with the two middle pieces. Wood glue and clamped them real tight. I was then able to mount the T brackets with screws.



After the middle pieces dried I repeated the outer joints and below is the finished main part of the light.



The next step is to assemble the side pieces out of 1X2. This is one of the end pieces and it is built so that it will all fit together and be about 15 inches deep



I did not use the dowel gag here as these were small and glue and brackes will be sufficient to hold it all together.

While these pieces were drying I went ahead and started the wiring if the light



As you can see in the picture I got a couple of boxes to hold the dimmer switches.
The power cable is of the same material they use for stingers and I used 12 guage romax for the wiring. Each gang is wired in parallel and while doing the wiring make sure you test with a continuity tester at each step checking the ground, hot and neutral are not shorted and the circuits work. Note that the hot (black) wires are wired though the dimmers and the continuity check will not work form the plug but up stream is fine.

To supply the ceramic fixtures I made a pig tail for the first one and wired directly into the second in each gang. The ends of the pigtails are pushed



through the center holes and then wired into the ground and the fixtures.


Like so


Then wire the ends into the fixtures. Make sure to put the hot to the hot screw and the neutral to the neutral screw.



This is what the setup looked like after I finished wiring it all up



And this is a test. Worked first time. Note that these are just 60 watt bulbs I had laying around the house.



After that was completed the next step was to mount the sides. My original intent was to use hinges and allow it to fold up on itself but after getting the parts assembled I found that that would not work as cleanly as I would have liked. So I changed my mind and decied to use 3 inch machine screws with wing nuts.



This is one of the end sides. I also had to use a screw/nut configuration to hold the sides together at the tops as well. I am glad that I did not toss out the jig cause it came in handy making the holes. Note that I also had to use a 1x2 at the bottom of the end sides to get them to line up with the long sides. This was due to my plan to use hinges and I had already cut the material before I changed my mind. I had to counter sink the screws/wing nuts for those sides so that there was clearance to attach the wing nuts.



And this is the light assembled.



The last step was to line the bottom and sides with foam core. It took less then a full 4'x8' sheet of foam core I got at a local framing shop and I had enough left over for a decent sized bounce card.
This is the finished light.



And a test using the 60 watt bulbs.


Finally it breaks down and stacks up nicely


All in all it was a pretty sucessfull project. I had to send away for the actual photo floods from Lights On Retail which is a film supply house and I got 4 500 watt, 4 250 watt a roll of gaff tape and a replacement bulb for one of my 650s for only 60 bucks which I thought was a pretty good deal.

Once I loaded up the 500 watts I tested the amperage and it looks to draw about 15 amps with both gangs full one. At 7 feet it kicks out about 130 candles dropping down to about 60 at about 12 feet. Inverse Square Law and all that. Not bad.

I also found the 500 watt bulbs (Sylvania) tended to buzz annoyingly so that will be an issue when the coop is used, but I'll figure it out.