26 march 2007 ~ Principle Photography_Toronto

Good News: the Voice Over script is under writing development~ Phew.

We have had two sessions of principle photography in the Toronto location (ext). Since the script calls for a snowy landscape, with a vanishing horizon, we had to rent a car drive as far north into Ontario as time would allow.

We were navigating back roads not on the map trying to find a good farm or field to shoot. And the fact that the snow has all but melted didn't help! But we shot the plates for that character---preliminary review shows that they are good, usable plates.

We will be roto'ing the character out of many of those and comp'ing him back into hi-res stills. We also were able to shoot most of the plates for our second of three characters. Her location is in an older neighborhood in downtown Toronto.

Most of these plates are going to remain DV resolution, so they had less freedom in terms of background. The script calls for a handheld shot following her out into the middle of a street lined with mixed use 3-story structures...this was tough! We battled the traffic and randoms for hours...before turning our attention to a similar street in a wearhouse district.

We now plan to MatchMove and replace the background with our own designed streetscape etc. The focal range for depth of field on our cameras is proving to be a bit of a pain...but with the magic of post production, I think we will be fine.

Despite some chewed up fingernails, freezing fingers, muddy jeans, snow covered clothes, much fast-food, 3 DV tapes, 20 GBs of space, 2 rental cars, 2 rental tripods, one rented wide angle lens, and countless takes...I think we got some good footage!