You never really know what you’re up against when you take on a new film. On Holiday Heist, I had to light massive rooms, parking lots, front yards….at night — plus we had enormous delays (4 hours?) from unforeseen circumstances…sprinklers going off, generator shutting down, should i keep going?

We had to get done in 13 days with large ensemble of cast….(blocking really does take time). I swear I almost puked thinking how crazy we were to do this.

But we did it! We finished on schedule. Thanks again to the dedicated crew.

Christie Will directed the film starring Lacy Chabert, Rick Malambri and Vivica Fox.

It was an awesome cast. Really funny. Unfortunately Rick had a serious car accident and wasn’t able to bust some Step-up 3D moves for the everyone to heckle him on….fortunately tho, he was fine. just a few sore ribs here and there.

It was a fun shoot over all. Met some really great people and even got myself a hair cut.

And got to clean it up afterwards.

I had a great time filming this comedy. The script and cast were great. Worked with a few close friends and it was fun all 3 weeks long.

Morgan Fairchild was just the easiest to work with and best of all — the easiest to light. She really looks great.

I boxed her in with large diffusion frames and we all went home happy.

At first, I wasn’t sure if this camera would give me any value. So I did series of tests with night time available lights.

Now finishing the edit and the footage is looks good for something so minimal… lighting wise.

Overall, the camera is great. I wish I had manual prime lenses. The new Canon lenses are just imposible to focus. Not to mention how hard it is to judge focus using the 5D’s small low contras screen.

Hand holding the 5D on its own is chaos. Your shot would look like it’s rigged on a drill. So I used a hand-held rig to put most of the weight on my shoulder.

I had an awful start with the editing. I didn’t realize the H.264 Codec 5D outputs works my 8 Core unbelievably slow. So I had to export the footage to Prores and Boom! Editing is a breeze.

Here’s a raw shot from the video: audio sucks cuz we didn’t need it.

Conflicts arise and you need to think fast to solve them. Many times, I just wanted to leave it alone to see if it fixes itself. But that’s not an option. Once the ball rolls, it rolls like a snow ball. Things just keep piling up. So the challenge is to get rid of things in the ball’s path so it doesn’t get bigger….of course, the road ahead is not even, the ball rolls away from its course…

I’m browsing through the raw footage now and extremely happy with the results. I’ve cut 15 minutes of the film and already seeing it come alive.

Looking back to the days of the production. I’m really blessed to have such dedicated and professional cast & crew. Except for a few that (excuse me) should have never been part of it. But over all, the good ones always prevail.

Visit Ecstasy’s official website for more details on the film. Follow it on facebook for up to date news.

Synopsis:
Sweet Heaven is a fast, sexy, glamorous action drama about life in the Miami underworld from the perspective of three young women.

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Just completed polishing this trailer. Starring Devon Sawa, Serinda Swan, Bishop Brigante. We had to rush this so the producer can take in down to AFM. I had to cut down on my sleep hours to 3 hours. yikes!

Filming this one was very difficult although majority of it was shot in one location. Imagine a small size living room packed with 7 actors and 15 crew…..ouch.

I just really love how everyone stepped up on this project. Devon Sawa was really dedicated. He even flew down from LA to make the call time. Elisa King who’s yelling at the door experimented with her character as a psychopath girlfriend. I remember filming that scene. Bishop (the gangster) didn’t know what was coming to him. I didn’t give him his lines and when he opened the door, his girlfriend started yelling at him about some girl. Bishop answered, “What do you mean she?”.

We did some really cheap cool effects on this one. We used the producer’s still camera to simulate gun flashes. To get a shot of two cars colliding, we filmed two separate shots of the car passing an intersection, then combined the two. The dead body sliding down the stairs…is not a trick shot. Lauro was just great at doing two takes and landing in the same spot inches from the camera.

Here’s a behind the scene clip:

We used a still camera flash to trigger gunshot muzzle flash.

And here’s a scene that wont pass the ratings with all the cursing.

We used the 2KSI camera and a small lighting package. I kept everything minimal and soft, cuz the crew was quite small. I wasn’t really sure how the footage would turn out, but after seeing the first shot on an HD monitor, I realized how classical the camera frames @ 2.35:1 scope.

The camera uses 16mm lenses and naturally frames at 2.35:1, so shots tend to have deep focus and wider angle. I then approached (framing and lighting) the rest of the film classical.

Here’s a classic way of faking a car shot, which we matched with wide driving shots. To my surprise, the camera is very light sensitive that it even read moonlight reflecting on the road and gave me a cool rim light around the car.

Check the show time

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