Haven’t posted in a while, but I figure it’s about time I got around to updating my site a little. I’ve added Magicdust to my work page, having started there in June. I think I have this site partially to thank for getting the job, so I might as well acknowledge it!
I’ve also changed the font on the site. I’m using Lato, designed by Łukasz Dziedzic and available on Google Fonts.
I’ve added a new item to my work page for the work I did for ONE20 on their BMW video. Check it out here.
I’ve finally added Mayia’s Dream to the Videos page. You can watch it right here or below the break.
A short video showing how I graded Mayia’s Dream.
I used Final Cut Pro X for this, and I have to say that for the most part I love its colour tools. Would like curves though.
Music is “NICE AND EASY” by Jason Shaw.
“Never work with children or animals” so the saying goes, but if my experience on Mayia’s Dream is any indication, Mother Nature is the one you want to avoid.
In September 20111 I worked with Global Animal Solutions to produce a short film showcasing their work with horses. The film was to be about a young girl who found herself lost in the forest, where she encounters a wild white stallion, only to wake and realise it was a dream. It was a simple premise but was designed to show off a variety of actions that Global Animal Solutions’s horses could perform, including rearing, running into frame and performing at liberty, all alongside a young girl.
The script was written, the horse (JT) prepared, the star cast and a date set, and when the date came the weather appeared manageable. We were shooting at Samarai Park, and while JT was being prepared and we waited for sundown I spent the afternoon shooting the waking scene.
The young girl was being played by Mayia Dalby, who despite a complete lack of experience performed extremely well. She responded very well to direction and was very understanding of the needs of the production, such as the need for multiple takes, and the occasional long periods of time where she had nothing to do. Working with her was a pleasure and she really helped the production along.
So it turns out working with children, at least in this case, wasn’t at all a problem. So what about animals? Well working with animals turned out to be the least of our problems. Once the sun set the rain started to fall. What in the afternoon had been a slight drizzle had become a torrential downpour. This delayed the production for hours, but we kept an eye on the Bureau of Meteorology radar and break in the rain allowed us to get out into the bush and do some shooting.
We managed to get a bit of the scene done, including JT running in and rearing, as well as some scenes of Mayia interacting with him. To their credit, everyone was coping just fine in the still quite heavy rain, including Mayia and JT, however once the rain picked back up the risk to the equipment got too high and I had to call off the shoot and get everyone back under cover.
While we got some good footage, it seemed like we wouldn’t be able to continue, but we decided to take the shoot down to the stables and improvise the rest of the story. Instead of taming the horse in the bush we changed the story so that she would instead lead him back to the stables and where she would fall asleep and wake back home in bed.
Once in the stables we had to devise new scenes and shots that JT hadn’t been prepared for. Thankfully Global Animal Solutions had done such a fantastic job training JT that he performed all the scenes without issue.
We managed to get all the footage we needed to complete the film, and JT and Mayia performed admirably, despite just coming out of the pouring rain. We even managed quite a difficult shot where a barefooted Mayia had to lead JT down the length of the stables completely at liberty. Mayia was very comfortable around horses and JT was incredibly well trained so they made a fantastic team.
So while we ultimately weren’t able to get exactly what we had originally envisioned, we did get something that turned out quite well, and what issues we did have had nothing to do with working with children or animals. In fact, working with both was a wonderful experience on this production, and I’d happily work with Mayia and Global Animal Solutions again.
I’ll have more posts coming soon on the gear I used and post-production, including my experiences with Apple’s controversial Final Cut Pro X. For now you can watch the final film on Global Animal Solutions’s new website (which I also created) here.
