This was fantastic!
The Perfect Frame
Download the trailer here(8.4 mb)
(Running Time: 10:32 secs)
The Perfect Frame was my (and 4 others’) intermediate film project at San Diego State. We spent about 550 dollars on it.
A while back, I showed my professor my time lapse movie, Eclectic 2.0. He was very impressed by the quality and skill shown in it. But then he went on to say that as far as real world applications go, if I could tell a story with that, THEN I’d have something. I really paid attention to that, and I began thinking about movie ideas to pitch to my film class.
Jeff Speed’s film Se Voir really struck a chord with me when I saw it. I decided I would specifically write in a musical number because I really like that genre, and I had to include a time lapse sequence since I had become known as “time lapse boy” around the school. I talked it over with my producer Iris Caffin, and we drew together a basic story; the most complicated, and visual effects intensive story I had ever written.
While shooting the movie, we had to think of everything in terms of post production and how we will composite the shots correctly. The production designer, Toni Comfort, had a daunting task in front of her. She had to dress two completely different sets to dress, one of which we had to tear out and post around 1000 magazine pages for. Then the cinematographer, Max Wheeler, made these sets look beautiful on camera.
As far as post-production goes, it was insane. Dane Tellinghuisen, the visual effects supervisor, and myself spent probably somewhere around 150 hours going frame by frame and editing effects. We probably pulled 5 or 6 all nighters each during this project.
I didn’t think we were actually creating something amazing until we actually finished the movie and showed it to that same professor. He was amazed. He had a few very minor criticisms, but all in all, he was amazed at how well we were able to pull together the story,
We showed the movie at our school’s end of the semester film festival, and out of 95 films entered, it won the main award of the night. All of us were extremely surprised. Because of the win, it will now play in the San Diego Film Festival in September. I’ll keep you posted.
Building the set.
Me and Max on set.
Figuring out how to have Phil put up the pictures.
???
Toni and Alison putting together the 1000 photos.
Developer Room
The shot where these appear took 1.5 days to setup correctly.
Our circular dolly track.
Phil Kruse
Again
Shooting the musical scene
Yay.
Riding the dolly isn’t as fun as it looks.
Ta da!
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