Shooting "The Board"

Here's my long-overdue update....

It's been a crazy last few weeks actually shooting the movie. The crew was huge... there were at least 25 people on-hand every night to assist with food, make-up, moving large walls and equipment, and whatever else was needed. It was quite the team effort, and I really had a lot of fun while learning a ton at the same time.

To give you a sense of the production flow... I was behind the camera the whole time (except on camera crane shots). My dad was watching the monitor, giving direction on both photography and acting while the director (Brett) was actually acting in the scene. I had a helper named Mike who was in charge of moving the Fisher Dolly that I and the camera rode on. We had two microphone operators who held the boom mics above the actors heads and just out of the frame. The video from my camera and the sound from the microphones traveled through long cables to the closet where Brice and Neil and the audio mixer were seated. They were responsible for capturing the video into the Mac computer system (that I put together the previous week). All of it went directly into a huge 3 terrabyte harddrive, which streamlines the editing process because we won't have to handle any tapes... the video is all ready to edit :-) Neil made notes about every shot, regarding whether it was "ok," meaning acceptable, "bad," meaning we would never use it, or a "print," meaning it was the take we intend to use in the final film.

So for every take, this is what was involved:
1) position the camera
2) position the microphones
3) rehearse the camera movement with the actors' dialog and actions
4) record on both the Mac computer, backup video tape, and DVD for the audio
5) record the "slate" clapper with the scene and take number
6) call "action" for the scene to begin
7) record the scene, attempting to make it flawless
8) call "cut" to end the take
9) watch playback on the video monitor in the control room and on the set
10) determine if the cut was no good, ok, or a "print"
11) re-shoot the scene if myself, Brett, or my Dad felt it was necessary

...that whole process was repeated an average of 5-8 times for each of the 200+ scenes in the movie. We usually left the set by 1am each night.

The final day of shooting, we arrived at 8am and stayed almost 24 hours... until about 7am the following morning. Luckily, we were able to get every shot we needed, and re-shoot a few scenes we wanted to change. The big finale shot was done on the camera crane and required a lot of special effects with lighting and fog. We spent the most time on that shot, capturing it from different angles in slo-motion and fast-motion so we have some choices in editing.

Here are some pictures from behind-the scenes:Inside the Board Room, Dad is working on setting up our backup camera.

The lighting grid in the boardroom, complete with 25 lights controlled by dimmers and switches on the outside of the set. I labeled and mapped each one so we could access them quickly between scene changes.


Me operating the Panasonic Varicam. Behind me is the monitoring station so we could watch the live picture while we were shooting and also watch playback once we completed a take.


The control room in the maintenance closet just off the set. This is where Brice and Neil sat to record the video and sound from the camera and microphones on the set. The sound mixer sat at the back table to monitor microphone levels.


The view from the Mac computer system where the video was recorded.


"Spaghetti" as we call it. These were all the cables I ran in order get everything connected from set to control room and vice versa. This is the view from behind the Mac computer.

The green screen set-up where we recorded the hologram characters in the movie. The green color in the video will be replaced with transparency, so the people will appear to be "floating" above the board room table.

Me operating the camera on the J.L. Fisher dolly, which was a critical piece of equipment. It allowed the camera to be moved around the board room in virtually any position quickly and easily. We also mounted it on rail-road type tracks for shots that required a tracking movement.

Now we move into post-production, or editing. I went back to Channel 6 last Wednesday to help Dad move all of his equipment back into the station. I mounted the big high-definition plasma screen in his edit suite where Brett and I will cut everything together. Brett won't be involved until after his honeymoon in the next week or so, but I will be going in to do some preparation work before that. The film will be getting a custom music score and authored on to Blu-ray hi-def DVDs (something I've never done before!) once we're done editing.

You can also check out the movie's official blog at: http://theboardmovie.blogspot.com/

Hope all is well, and I will keep you updated as editing gets underway.