I was leafing through Richard Pepperman’s new book, Setting Up Your Scenes (Amazon) the other day. The book does not have much to recommend it, but it made me realize one thing: how little coverage I get compared with the examples mentioned in the book. When I declare my intention to shoot half a dozen set-ups the cast and crew collectively roll their eyes. The films in the book, by contrast, routinely employ twenty set-ups. I wonder how many takes and how much time they spend to do that. I feel that a lot of time gets wasted between set-ups. Time that perhaps would be better spent doing more takes rather than new set-ups.

If I had the means I would use another camera (too many would give me a headache) to get reaction shots. That would allow me to use more set-ups. For now I average about ten takes and five set-ups for each scene.

The benefit of getting more coverage is principally to increase editing options, but I think it also lends visual appeal. I think it would be boring to watch the whole scene from a master shot, unless you use a lot of ingenuity (say, by using camera movement to effectively get different shots).
What is your approach?

This is off-topic (except to the extent that it exposes my taste in humour), but Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan premieres this Friday (if you live in the U.S.A.)! I have been a fan since a Kiwi friend of mine turned me on to him, about five years ago. Be sure to see it, or at least find out what you have been missing. You can “befrend” him on “myspaces”, or watch his idol Korki Buchek perform Bing Bang.

The only people who are not laughing are the poor Kazakhs. They were so concerned that they took out a four-page color ad in the New York Times and commissioned a promotional video. A news article estimates the cost of the insert to be $300,000-$400,000. Given that the GDP per capita income is $8,300 (for 2005, and coincidentally the same as Turkey), approximately fifty people had to give up their year’s earnings. I did not expect to be entertained at Kazakhstan’s expense literally. You might say that taking out an ad was a foolish thing to do, that the average viewer is bright enough to realize that Kazakhstan was adopted as Borat’s nationality simply because most people are not familiar with it. However, when people only hear negative things about a country (even in jest), it is difficult for them to form a positive opinion, if they can form any opinion at all. The same thing happened in Turkey three decades ago when Alan Parker directed Midnight Express, expect that time it was not meant as a joke. The prison system has since been reformed, under pressure from the E.U., but the film exacted its toll in many years of curbed tourism.

Baron Cohen claims that he based the character on a Russian doctor he once met, but Borat bears an uncanny resemblance to the Turkish Internet celebrity Mahir Çağrı. I wonder what Turkey’s response would have been if Turkey had been substituted for Kazakhstan? Probably the same as Kazakhstan’s!

Reviews: NYT, New Yorker, Salon, BBC (audio).

Long time no post! OTWOTW (as I affectionlessly like to call it) is coming along nicely. In fact, it is almost finished; just a day or two of shooting
left. I was busy this month with shooting so I could not post any updates. Take a look at the recent schedule.

Of course, you do not know what scene is what, but you can guess when the movie comes out. There are fourteen scenes altogether. I do not remember how many there were in TFII, but I think OTWOTW is going to be about the same length. This time I have done a lot more planning, and I think it is going to show (especially in the editing).

After principal production, there is a scene at the Turkuaz grocery store in Brighton that needs to be overdubbed due to adverse sound conditions (i.e., half a dozen fridges that could not be turned off). Other than that, it has been smooth sailing.

We are using an XL-2 in 16:9, 24PA mode, and honestly I have to say I love the camera — especially the lens. As good as anyone can ask of DV (admittedly, not saying much). The film looks pretty good for a no-budget production. The greatest technical difficulty that we faced so far, in my mind, was getting smooth dolly shots. They look fine shot wide, but reveal every little imperfection in close-up. I may have to investigate digital stabilization options. Easy to do when the camera is supposed to be still; not quite so otherwise, but I’m not afraid after all the rotoscoping I did in TFII.

A quick picture from the set, courtesy of Eugene: