Helloooo to our Acting Fans and fellow bloggers, yep, it’s the weekend so that means another blog post - let’s get down to this!
First of all Chris has finally remembered to bring me down his DVD of the Sergio Leone film 'Once Upon A Time In The West' for some research. Hmm, you may wonder, what does a Spaghetti Western have to do with H&H? And why that film in particular? Well, that would be [SPOILERS!] We have also been doing some more playing about with our camera, no, wait a moment before you click on that 'X' button just yet! This time it has been very import!
VERY Important!
We are going out this Sunday night for some test shoots in costume to see how they come out in the night, and to see if we may need some other light source. This lead us in to wondering if we could possibly use the flash on the camera itself as a light, we even checked online to see if we could find a setting which would allow us to have the flash stay on during video capture. We did find some tutorial videos but, alas, we cannot use it that way. Oh, well. We even popped in to Janet Greens, the local camera shop, but they didn’t have any advice or anything in stock that could help us even though they did use to stock video camera lights. So it looks like the test shoot will be a way to find out what we can do with this camera at night by itself and also with a bit of help from a certain everyday item that Chris has had an idea about too.
Block It!
We have also been going over the script with a fine-tooth comb, sorting out some of the finer details of some of the character appearances. Deciding when and/or where certain characters will or will not appear, cutting some of the lines back (so we don't spoil some surprises) and blocking out some the early scenes, so when the other cast member are present we know what we want them to do and where. We even blocked out a dance sequence, yep, we have a DANCE SEQUENCE but that’s all I am going to say on that matter (Yep, you guessed it [SPOILERS] again). Well, that’s all for now folks.
That’s it from me this week, so I'll sign off by saying, "Nan noo nan noo!"
Hello, Acting Fans, and welcome back, boy, do we have some news to report this week. And not just our usual stuff lately of hang-on-we've-got-stuff-in-the-works-going-on. What is it I hear you cry? Well, me and my Acting-Buddy-&-Co-Star Chris had an all planned out shoot for today. We were going to film a major part of the third episode (why the third? And why aren’t we filming the second next? More on these question much later on, i.e. not on this blog entry, mate. No, I'm not calling you a moron!) But, yep, as you may have guessed by the world “were” it didn't go quite according to plan - so what we went wrong? Well, todays attempt at a shoot went something like this:
Not exactly like that, obviously, as no zeppelins or hydrogen were involved (being a Lo-to-No Budget series we can't afford them) it was however like the above in that we had a major technological breakdown! The camera, after being used many times in the previous shoots and working fine, stopped working. In the later stage of the Pilot shoot we had had a few glitches in the footage but it seemed there was a chance that judicious use of a head-cleaning tape would stop the problem. Unfortunately now the heads appear to not be working right at all, the video camera doesn’t want to play back anything we film, although testing the tapes in our back-up camcorder revealed it was actually recording but just heavily corrupted footage. (Man, we just have all the luck, don’t we?) But, hurrah, some good news not all was lost from the shoot we did go out (with our trusty backup Emergency Camera, AKA Chris's Dad's Camcorder) and hung around the Calder Royal Hospital to get some stock footage of an ambulance for the Episode [SPOILERS] later on in the series. As we chased ambulances by not moving we ran through the lines for the episode that we were originally going to film today. Only to then almost miss our cue while doing so, when mid-flow a sirens-and-all ambulance showed up but luckily, thanks to my quick reactions (and the camcorder booting up just-in-time to catch it before it passed us), we got it the can. Groovy. We returned with our prize, and a little additional improvised outdoor stock footage, back to Chez Vern for a cool drink and a final line run - the dialogue's shaping up pretty well. Now we take stock and, yes, plan some more (always with the planning) what to do.
Until next time, which is Friday in case you don’t know,
