Blog #5

I think if we want to convincingly sell Anthony as a fake stand up comic, we need to be thorough and come up with a believable back story. I think it would be a great way to start the film just before we show the performance to the film's audience. That's what Aedan said he wanted the film to end up like. I think it can work, but it will only work if we are thorough with this character.

We not just trying to fool the Dead Crow audience, but also anyone watching the film later on. How do we do that? Make this character seem real. Obviously marketing will be extremely key in this process. We'll need to have a fake Facebook, fake Twitter, a fake IMDb page (Which is totally doable. Trust me), and anything else. I think it would help by filming Anthony performing stand-up with actual jokes and being a really funny guy and then show those videos to random people to get reactions from them. I was talking to Anthony about this and he thought I meant film him doing awkward antics on stage, but that'll sort of give away what he'll do on Open Mic night. He needs to believably be a stand-up comic and proof of it so we can lure a crowd into the comedy room for his actual performance.

Not too long ago I watched the documentary F for Fake which is primarily about forgery and authenticity. In fact, that film is strikingly similar to what we are doing. Making the audience believe they are watching a documentary until they realize what they saw was complete fiction. I think my group should watch that film to get a better idea of hot to make our own film.

But why am I, the DP, thinking so hard about this? Well for one thing, most of what I need to have planned is already done. I've decided on the look I'm going for, it was decided that I will shoot the entire process of this film, and Aedan and Jack seem to be happy with the footage I've shot so far. So I've got some time on my hands to do a little extra work for this film.

Blog #4

So last Friday we got to shoot in the black box in addition to holding auditions. The overall process of casting was very slow since only a few people showed up and actually auditioned for the role. But I was glad I got to go all out with the lighting and make it look good. I got to shoot with the URSA Mini (finally!) and between that and the lighting it looked pretty good!

I think from here on out I'm going to dial it back and not go all out for lighting because now it's mainly just shooting everything and getting plenty of B-Roll. No need to setup a light to shine through a window for better dynamic range. In fact, I may go with some darker backgrounds, maybe even all black backgrounds, for the remainder of the interviews we do. The reason I wanted to have the auditions look so good is because I wanted a sense that it was staged, but also being 100% real at the same time. I believe we'll show audition clips towards the middle-end of the film, so it'll be transitioning from a false mockumentary into a behind-the-scenes documentary.

As for our next interview, I want to film our actor, who is Anthony, as himself talking about what he expects out of this experience, why he wants to do this, and even what he thinks will happen. Just a very simple interview setup and hopefully after that we can officially move onto marketing his performance and start getting the word around about this "ghost writer" for SNL and part-time stand up comic.