Backblog #2: A Little Piece of Heaven

Last time I went home, one of the key activities planned was the filming of a "test of concept" for Elysium. Basically, my friend and I were going to try and film a scene from our affore-mentioned feature script.

The challenge in this seemed somewhat daunting. I was going to breeze into town for a week, girfriend in tow. My friend and I were going to produce and shoot the whole thing in a few days, and I was going to breeze out again, raw tape stock in my clammy, film geek hands. All of this in the little hamlet of Bemidji, a rural town not exactly known for its production resources. The biggest challenge we faced: production sound. Who in town has a boom mic? Just behind that: lighting equipment.

A few days in to my trip, we sat down to tackle these issues. We first decided what scene would be feasable yet interesting to shoot. It take place indoors, as the film takes place during the winter and this was mid-june. We finally decided on a brief, talky scene in the first act. At this point, all of the other seemingly daunting tasks fell right into place. Between the two of us, our connections were sufficient to wrangle camera, sound, lighting, actors, location and crew with surprising ease. Two hours later, we had the whole thing locked down. I was amazed.

The shoot went equally smoothly. It was just great to get behind the camera again, and I couldn't have asked for a better group of people to be there with me. My GF settled into the position of script supervisor, which was especially handy, and my folks acted as runners and grips, which was a hoot to see.

In the end, we were able to shoot a great little night-for-day indoor scene in about four hours for less than $20. If that sort of efficiency could be scaled up to fit the rest of the film, I'd be able to shoot the whole feature for a thousand bucks. Unfortunately, flipping cars and exterior night scenes will probably work against me in that regard.

As for the final product, I can genuinely say that I'm very happy with it. The editor and I were chuckling as we went over the final cut together, and I knew we'd nailed the tone of the piece. It got laughs in all the right places at a recent SOSO Collective screening. Laughs! Out loud! I couldn't have been prouder.

So, without further delay ladies and gentleman, I give you Elysium: The Screen Test!