Thank you to everyone who volunteered their time and made this film look the way it does.

Become a fan at: facebook.com/Alreadygonethemovie

Featuring
Shawn Ashmore
Harry Shum Jr.
Robert Craighead

Officer 1: Al Burke
Officer 2: Mario Martin
Men at the table: Sam Puefua, John Epperson, Serhiy Shkunda, Malcolm Williams, Albion Sabani, and Justin Vancho

Directed by Ross Ching
Written by Bill Balas
Executive Producer: Joel Mendoza
Producer: Peter Katz peterkatz.net/
Producer: Don Le
Associate Producer: Mario Reyes
Director of Photography: Nate Fu
Production Designer: Biran Formo
Post-Production Supervisor: David Adametz
Camera Op: Martin Gradek
DIT: Jason Poon
Gaffer: Rowan Byers
Electric/Swing: John Ngo
Driver: Bryan Shim
Key Grip: David Keton
Best Boy: Jeff Godshall
Set Decorator: Robert Platzer
Set Dresser: Avery Ota
Set Dresser: Greg Vargo
Stunts Provided by: Xin Wuku / EMC Monkeys
Stunt Coordinators: Devin White & Yoshi
Wardrobe Stylist: Roxy Flores
Wardobe Assist: Raquel Flores
Hair: Michelle Win
Makeup FX: Amanda Travers
FX Makeup Provider: Kaylie Tran
Makeup: Tina Ong
Mixer: Andrew Mendoza
Boom Op: Andrew Rahimi
Key PA: Lily Vi Pham
Production Assistant: Kevin Chhann
Production Assistant: Justin Vancho
Special Effects: David Nicholson
Prop Master: Timberly Matonic
SFX Assist: Robert Klepzig
Editing and VFX by Ross Ching & David Adametz
Original Music: David Adametz
Sound Design: Andrew Mendoza & Andrew Rahimi
Camera equipment provided by tonacitran.com
BTS Photos: Melly Lee
BTS Video: Nam Luong
Location Manager: Giordanny Orellana
Catering: Dos Chinos
Weapons Handler: Al Burke
Special Thanks: Matt Anderson, Glo O., Chirstian Moya, Moya Fine Art, Tonaci Visuals, Thuy Huynh, Cactii, and Dos Chinos

When creating something for the internet, people’s attention span is VERY short. Think about how you look at other videos on YouTube and think about the how long it takes you to either skip through the video or click the back button. Our main goal as a video creator is to get the viewer to watch from beginning to end without skipping or hitting the back button. If they’re able to do that, they’re MANY times more likely to share the video with a friend — and that’s how seeds of viral videos are made. So let’s look at the elements to do that.

1. Must be short — 3 or 4 minutes or less. I’ve got many other tabs open and my pot of water on the stove is about to boil.

2. The 10 second hook — Probably the most important aspect. We need to WOW the viewer right off the bat. That means either showing them something they’ve never seen, or some kind of filmmaking technique that’s really unique. Whatever it is, if your friend doesn’t say WOW when you tell them the first 10 seconds of the concept, it’s back to the drawing board.

3. Sustainability — Once you have them hooked, you need to create a device that pulls them to the end. Some examples: a story, beautiful cinematography, creative art, exciting visuals that are rarely seen. Anything that will get them interested in seeing what happens at the end.

Now that you have your elements, figure out how to make it without breaking the bank. I made Little Bribes for about $100. I just took my still camera and began filming whatever that could spell out a word.

Now, go create an awesome concept!

Behind the scenes video

Enjoy!

Behind the scenes video

PRE-PRODUCTION

Planning was fairly easy compared to other jobs, since the crew and equipment list was small. We would be shooting entirely in the daytime, so that negated the need for big lights and generators. The compact size of the camera & crew also meant that changing to multiple locations within 1 day was easy.

PRODUCTION

We filmed the project over the course of two days since there was 4 locations we needed to get to. Filming was very basic; to the point where we just moved the camera wherever we liked and told Tara to run run past the camera a few times.

LEFT: Tara and I discuss the under the bridge shot and how she was going to run RIGHT: Framing up the shot where she emerges from underneath the bridge.

Like I wrote above, working with the Red Epic was a breeze. It was almost on par with DSLR filming, just because of the size and weight of the camera. Just 10 years ago people had to shoot projects like these on film with a 60 pound camera. The amazing thing is that the tonal range of the camera is nearly comparable to film.

LEFT: getting the shot of her shoe as she runs across the path RIGHT: Filming on West LA Community College’s track

POST-PRODUCTION

Post production was done entirely by me mostly because we wanted to save as much of the budget as possible for production. Editing was done in Premiere Pro and the effects, titles, lens flares, color correction, etc. were all done in After Effects.

CREDITS

Runner Tara Erdmann

Executive Producers J.P. McMahon & Tristan Drew
Producer Don Le
Director Ross Ching
Director of Photography Bobby Lam
Editor Ross Ching

Watch the Behind the Scenes here

PRE-PRODUCTION

When I first heard of the project, there were only two things to keep in mind — 3D and DTS’ “Neo-X” (AKA 11.1 immersive surround sound). I LOVED that I had a nicely groomed sand box to shape an idea from. I remembered seeing Canon’s Pixma commercial and I instantly knew I wanted to do something like that.

But what if we took it one step further? What if a regular orchestra had been replaced by a series of speaker heads with paint atop them? It was definitely the most agressive idea I had ever come up with.

PRODUCTION

What we would need
40 paper tubes ranging from 3″ to 15″ diameter about 4′ tall
40 speaker drivers
A roll of latex to cover the speaker heads
30 bottles of tempera paint
2000′ of speaker wire
A Pro Tools system with 40 channels worth of outputs
A mixing board with 40 channels worth of inputs and outputs
40 channels worth of amplifiers
200,000 watts of tungsten light (compare this to a typical 60 watt household bulb)
2 high speed cameras (for 3D)
A 21st Century 3D rig
And a Technocrane

To add to the mix, we were shooting at 500 frames per second (1 second translates to 21 seconds when played back at 24fps), so the paint needed to fire within .02 seconds of each other. To eliminate as much human error as possible, we made a series of 20-100hz tones in Pro Tools and lined them up to within .001 seconds of each other. This way, we could time precisely when each speaker would “fire”. The tones would go from Pro Tools to our mixer which would route the tone to the correct amplifier which would then amplify the signal enough to vibrate the latex film on top of the speaker and send the paint shooting up.

LEFT: My audio assistant Justin looking over the mixing board RIGHT: My production designer Paul Dove applying paint to the speakers

Our 3D camera was another beast that had to be tamed. What we were doing had never been done before. The synchronization of all these variables had never been done before. It felt like we were pushing the limits of physics.

LEFT: If you look closely, there’s two cameras buried in our rig RIGHT: The 80-100lb camera was mounted on a Technocrane to make it easy to maneuver around set

From the wireless follow-focus system not synchronizing with the two cameras to speakers getting too hot and overheating, we had to roll with the punches on the one shoot day we had. Luckily I had an awesome crew that knew exactly what needed to be done to fix the issues.

LEFT: After we took each shot, everyone huddled around the one monitor to look at it RIGHT: Our stereographer checks the 3D convergence and parallax for every shot

POST-PRODUCTION

Once all the footage was captured, we did an in-house offline edit in Final Cut Pro. This gave us precise editing instructions to take to the post house, Brickyard, so they could do the finishing on their Autodesk Flame workstations. I must admit, their post facility is THE most amazing office I have ever seen.

Brickyard added the concert hall background, the coloring, the clean up of some shots, and they were even able to make some speakers that didn’t fire, fire. All this, in 3D. I was truly amazed at their expertise and willingness to work with us.

Before & After Brickyard had their way with the footage

LEFT: Inside one of their finishing suites RIGHT: Brickyard’s main entry way. They have a full bar!

The music was written and performed by Diego Stocco and Patrick Leonard, and mixed by Fred Maher at DTS’ awesome mixing studio. When I stepped in that room, I think that was THE best audio I’ve ever heard.

CREDITS

Conductor George Shaw

Client DTS – David Blasucci
Agency One Plus Two, Inc. – Jim McNutt
Executive Producers J.P. McMahon & Tristan Drew
Producer Carl Hampe
Director of Photography Jim Matlosz
1st AD Paul Yates
Editor Ross Ching
VFX Brickyard VFX; Jeff Blodgett, Mandy Sorenson
Post Music Mix Fred Maher
Music Composers Diego Stocco & Patrick Leonard
BTS & Still Photography Don Le & Bryan Shin
Location Panavision, Woodland Hills, CA

Special Thanks to:
Darren Roark

Watch 3 Minutes on Vimeo here.

CAST
Harry Shum Jr.
Stephen “tWitch” Boss
Katrina Law
Thaine Allison

PRE-PRODUCTION

When I initially wrote out the concept and showed it to Don he said, “This would be perfect for Harry Shum.” I replied, “Yeah, right. There’s no way he’d be interested in working on our stupid no budget piece.” Then Don introduced me to George who took the idea to Harry and his manager. Needless to say they were actually interested! Harry was awesome in his willingness to make this thing a success. He even called up tWitch to see if he’d be interested. He jumped at the opportunity.

We were initially going to shoot the piece at this strip of railroad track in downtown Los Angeles, but because of safety and security, we decided to move to a granite slab yard. Before we moved however, I made an overhead drawing of the area.

Don and George knew lots of people who jumped at the opportunity to work on this film. I was amazed at the level of talent we had on our crew. And they all volunteered their time to make this thing as good as possible.

PRODUCTION

We shot the entire piece on the Canon 5D Mark II and the Canon 7D in a 12 hour day from sunrise to sunset. Our Director of Photography, Nate Fu, even had his own grip and lighting truck that he lent to the project. That helped us greatly.

We even had an American Gladiator help us out with the fight choreography.

LEFT: Harry as seen through the steel pipes RIGHT: On-set rehearsal

POST-PRODUCTION

When we shot the piece we knew exactly how we were going to comp each shot in post. All the visual effects were done in Adobe After Effects by my good friend from high school, David Adametz and I. We learned how to do the sword glows from Ryan Wieber’s website and everything else from Video Copilot. Ryan was also cool enough to let us borrow his replica hilts and blades too! He actually has a Saber Shop now too.

To make tWitch’s head fall off we had to accomplish a few things.

1. Take out his existing head
2. Replace the background his head covered
3. Track in a fake head and make it roll off screen
4. Add fx (blood, blade glows, smoke, etc.)

All these elements made for one long and time consuming shot. But since it was the climax of the movie, it had to be flawless and amazing.

LEFT: tWitch’s head double RIGHT: We covered tWitch’s head in green to mask it out in post

For the gunshots, we didn’t use any live ammo on set. All the shots were done in After Effects and Harry was just holding an Airsoft gun. The muzzle flashes we pretty easy — they only exist for 1 or 2 frames, so we just threw in a picture of an explosion and made it small. The bullet hits and shrapnel were a bit more difficult David had to motion track them onto the slabs of granite to make them look realistic. He also took clips from Video Copilot’s Action Essentials pack to make them look more realistic.

Coloring was done by me with Magic Bullet Colorista II. It is THE best piece of coloring software I’ve ever used. Apple Color can go suck it. I watched a few of their coloring tutorials on the site and instantly got a grasp of how to use it. It’s so powerful, and the fact I can integrate it on After Effects AND Final Cut is a god send.

LEFT: tWitch getting some big air while I film them on the camera sliderRIGHT: This is how we filmed the running scenes

LEFT: Katrina Law posing for the camera RIGHT: Harry added to the mix

LEFT: Most of the cast & crew RIGHT: Katrina, Thaine, George, me, Don, and Harry

CREDITS

Producers George Wang & Don Le
Director of Photography Nathaniel Fu
1st AD Danny Do
Editor Ross Ching
Music Composer Paul Dateh
VFX Supervisor David Adametz
Stunt Coordinator Xin Wuku
Stunts (Add’l) Malay
Special Effects Modeler David Nicholson
Effects Fabrication Timberly Matonic
Gaffer David Keton
Key Grip Paolo Ongkeko
Best Boy Grip Justin Vancho
Boom Operator Evan Lee Dahl
Sound Add’l Paolo Ongkeko
Sound Design David Adametz
Stylist Roxy Flores
Stylist Asst. Raquel Flores
Makeup Jennifer Luna
Hair Danielle Starkweather
PA Katie Soo
Stills Photographer Nick Acosta
BTS Add’l Giordanny Orellana
Craft Services Adrian Zaw, Tiffany Nguyen
Location Manager Mike Yamamoto

Sponsors
Marshall Monitors
Selective Stone

Special Thanks to:
Mark Fisher
Ryan Wieber
Marissa Upchurch
Christine Chen
A Common Thread
Selective Stone
Nelson Diaz