Monday, February 11, 2008

And so it begins!

Our fist day of filming was on Saturday, the 9th of February. As usual we didn't get as much done as we had hoped, but it was not an unproductive day. A good chunk of the first 1/4 of the day was pend just going over the script with the kids and explaining it to them.

TT and Bebo are back as our Actors (Hosts of the Amazing Map series), we are very blessed to have them. Not only are they good actors, they are a pile of fun to work with. Their excitement is contagious, I wish had taken my camera when we went out to buy their costumes, they were sooooooo excited that they were going to "work" again! 

I am going to talks just briefly about our "studio" set up. We film in out basement, a very small cramped space for filming, the ceiling is only 7ft (luckily we are filing kids so it doesn't come in to play on these projects). I have included a little before and after diagrams, they make it look more spacious than it really is. The main room is 20x11ft. During the week it functions as our TV, living, computer and school room, on filming hay all the furniture gets pushed in to a corner, and we use what little space we have left to film in!
We have a green screen that we hang from the wall with a where and 2 nails, it is quite tall, so we can spread it across the floor for shot where we need feet. We usually spend an hour or 2 sting up ore space the night before, that includes ironing the green screen.

We use a loal starter kit, with 2 omnie umbrella lights for 
the green screen, and one fill light for the kids. They are currently using 500 watt bulbs, and I am thinking that, that may be a bit 
bright (had really hot), so I am considering getting somthing a bit lower, maybe 300 watts.
Our sound is a Rode Shotgun Microphone, that we suspend just above the kids heads. We run the cables along the ceiling to the camera. It picks up everything very well.
Ok yes, an you can never have enough painters tape (my substitute for gaffers tape), you have no idea how fast I can use this stuff!

No comments: