MOVIE PRODUCTION BLOG

After some discussions with the cast and crew – I have decided to film the Sleeping Beauty scene and the defusal scene indoors, with a studio green screen setup.

I entertained the idea of doing it outside – however due to the November weather here in the Midlands, and the scale and detail of the scene, this would have been to difficult a challenge with less rewarding imagery – Shooting this scene indoors will add more scale as I can now have the Sleeping Beauty character sleeping on a bed/capsule/tube, in exactly the way I want, which is more visually akin to how I originally imagined the scene.

The scene is inspired by my love of fairy tales, old DISNEY cartoons, and big classic Joel Silver movies like LETHAL WEAPON 3, and DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE.

We are looking to shoot the scene in the studio with a green screen so we can place a giant window into the sequence showing that they are on the dangerous edge of a mountain cliff-top overlooking the sea – Window shot sequences for this I filmed in Portugal. So the scene will now play out with the sounds of waves crashing onto the rocks as our heroes attempt to save Sleeping Beauty.

Today we filmed the Big Bad Wolf scene in our dystopian fantasy thriller WAITING FOR SUMMER (That’s the working title at this stage only.)

The cast and crew that were present today were.

Fraz Awan (Abraham Khan)
Josh Catalano (Joseph Reeves)
Deepak Vidyarthi (Aaradhya’s Dad)
Little Miss Reeves (Aaradhya Vidhyarthi)
Colenel Aashman Singh (Navdeep Monga)
Grendal Apogov (Shaid Parvaz)
Hansika Pandya (Associate Producer)

We filmed the BIG BAD WOLF scene where Little Miss Reeves is approached by the mysterious Colonel Aashman in the Autumn Forest section of the National Park on the fictional island of Neo Frankfurt. Just re-iterate, the national park on the island of Neo Frankfurt is made up of areas in the park where there is seemingly different seasonal changes.

I am very impressed with work of the actors today – Even though we had not fully rehearsed the scenes, I had listed and planned the shots out already, and the actors were great enough to quickly learn the dialogue. The scene has a allegorical reference to Red Riding Hood . It’s quite a terrifying scene which the actors understood very well, and it tells of events that take place when Little Miss Reeves is lost in the woods and is leaving ring-mints on the floor in a trail so her brother Joseph can find her from the trail she has left.

The second scene we filmed today was a scene where Joseph and Abraham are searching the trail in the woods, and Joseph notices that his sister may have backtracked, she may have gone in a different direction. He tells Abraham to split up and search in a different direction, better chance of finding the child, if the two adults split up and looking in a wider area at the same time. Abraham thinks its dangerous, but Joseph points his powerful gun at him and convinces him to do as he says.

We are heading for November with very few scenes left, but 2 key scenes that need to be completed. Otherwise there could be a major delay. Tension amongst the crew is raised, and exciting.

Today we filmed some shootouts with the characters of April (Julie Phung), and Little Miss Reeves (Aaradhya Vidyarthi). The scenes have the girls alone after they split from Joseph who has to run off to find Abraham.

Julie plays the character of April in a very real way – I tend to take away the emotion in scenes and leave it more to the physicality of the scene setup to tell the story. And when I do add any emotional stuff, it seems more powerful. I believe the actors/characters eyes tell the story more. This is the beauty of movies, something which is difficult to do on a theatre stage (Although I love theatre too) – You can get very close to a characters eyes, their soul.

There was also humour, where we see another lady in the park played by Minakshi Pandya, and it’s a thrilling scene with April and Little Miss Reeves interacting.

These scenes feature the characters of Abraham (Fraz), and Aaradhya (Little Miss Reeves) as they travel to a more colder part of the Neo Frankfurt Island. The elevation is higher, this is visually referenced by the mountainous area and the clouds, and Little Miss Reeves taking her scarf out of her hooded jacket, and wearing it, the scene also indicates Abraham’s caring nature, as he wraps the scarf around her, and they walk on.

Thematically the scenes are exciting as the two characters are looking for Joseph, and are being pursued by Sorea’s employees. The story has her office boys, being sent out after Abraham, during his interview test, the employees are all veterans, with combat experience.

These scenes I wanted to give them the atmosphere and feel of the classic 80s action movie AMERICAN NINJA. This movie featured heroic actor Michael Dudikoff, in the title role fighting villainous bad guys with martial arts, and various weapons. They also featured, beautiful forest scenery, and great cinematography. I have been using the LUMIX S5iiX for these scenes, and for most of the movie, it is a reliable camera, with great dynamic range, and great colour science.

We had Shiv and Navdeep there playing villains that were due to be beaten up by Abraham. Due to the inexperience of Shiv, he was new to filmmaking, we used the services of our on-set fight choreographer Phil to teach him how to act in those scenes. Phil was marvelous, he had previously choreographed a number of fights for RAHANA.

Fight scenes can be fun to do, if done correctly, but they do require an actor to use their skills, you cannot wing it. It has to look right.