December - Scenes From A Short - Scene 1

Just starting production on a short film I wrote, and am directing, called 'December'. The story is about a guy named Matt in his early 30's who is a little down and out on life. Caught in the ebb and flow of his existence he spends his days hanging out with his best friend Ryan. As a snow storm rolls into town they drive around in Ryan's beat up car and trade stories and one liners that might just be masked metaphors for life.

The first scene we shot was a scene in a diner with Matt and his girlfriend Rebecca. This breakfast date is a reassuring scene in the film, occurring about 2/3rds of the way through the piece, where she reminds him that she loves him, even when he's feeling like he's really got nothing to offer their relationship right now.

Yours truly on the left with DP Brook Aitken.


Actress Libby Arnold


Actor Jeremy Make + Audio Steve Schwedt


Production Stills



All photographs by Kelly Magelky, AD + Producer Extraordinaire

Technical Specs:
HPX170 - no adapters
2.39:1 Aspect Ratio - cropping in post
24fps

Decided to shoot with the HPX170 for several reasons, namely that I own a full package with all accessories, secondly because we plan on shooting some 60fps snow/winter landscapes, and finally because we needed to be able to cram the camera + DP, sound, and me into the backseat of a car for several scenes. Decided against any sort of adapter in an effort to keep it simple.

The light for this scene was a 1K with a Chimera and a 650 with a Chimera, bounce card when we got in close. There was a large window with daylight coming in from the left hand side of the wide photographs and while we were shooting from 2-4:30PM, the light worked perfectly as the scene was a breakfast scene.

I'll be posting some screen grabs soon....

From David Ebletoft

First of all, if you read this blog you should be reading David's blog too.

He wrote an e-mail last night with this story:

'I had a union construction worker tell me a joke while waiting for the freight elevator in Midtown today. He tried to pass off a Family Guy joke as his own. For a few seconds, I thought of confronting him, but that glitter in his eye said, "This shit was so funny while I watched Family Guy reruns on TBS that maybe, just maybe, if I tell it as my own, people will think I'm funny as shit.....please think I'm funny as shit....please."

So I laughed...Merry Christmas you unoriginal bastard.'

It was too good to let it sit in my in-box all alone.