Welcome to the Finishing Beanz, post production diary blog!
This section of the blog we have put together to document our ongoing process of completing a low budget Indy movie. Hopefully interesting to people, Beanz has been a very unusual and long project for us. Its a project that has served as a learning process about the serious business of film production - and of course just the fun of doing something creative.
Over the next few months we will try and cover in a little bit more detail explaining exactly why this project, as a film, is so unusual. Posts dedicated to various areas and topics, such as shooting, writing/script, editing, directing, producing, music, sound design and mixing, dealing with DV video media, color and more.
So to start things off, here are a few little facts about the movie itself:
- Beanz is personally produced, directed, shot, written, edited by the "Brothers Mogg". (James and Phillip Van der Reyden) So in effect, while we have received so much support from so many wonderful friends and colleagues, this has been pretty much a fully DIY project. In addition to all the production tasks, Phil also plays as the main character - Angus Peterson.
- The characters and "story universe" were taken from a short 15min movie we made back in 1997 while just having fun/playing around as students. That film was called "The Wrong Side of Bed". Its story was pretty simple - A character named Angus Peterson wakes up one morning only to have a really unfortunate day, possibly one of the worst days of his life.
- We started making Beanz back in late 2000, pretty much for the same reason as making The Wrong Side of Bed - basically to have fun and get a little bit of practice on how to make a film, a feature length film. I remember thinking at the time, "how hard can this be?".
Its worth noting this was at about the same time as us starting at Weta Digital, so it wasn't long before we got an answer to that question.
Trying to write, plan and shoot basically a feature length movie, doing things we have never tried before... on top of a 50hr minimum week at a major digital effects studio - on top of all the other responsibilities of life. This was not an easy feat for anyone. So we always wanted to think of Beanz as our little practice ground. We had no real need to make the thing, no set budget, and no deadline. Relax, have fun, work on it while we can, don't take it too seriously. But at the same time, treat it seriously. Believe that it will be something that will be fun to watch when it is done. And as a creative and learning process, it is certainly a worthwhile thing to do.
- Beanz is shot in DV video. One of the interesting things about making something slowly over a long period of time, especially in an era where digital technology is progressing so fast, is that the very medium we are making the movie on can now be considered antique!
Basically, back in 2000, DV video was the best format that we could afford to shoot on. There was no such thing as high definition back then, and film was super expensive! Thankfully, the style of the movie lends itself to the lower resolution medium. A quirky late 90's story about a quirky character in love with a quirky song. Shot in a documentary influenced style.
Although the movie is shot on DV (720x576 pixels), the final movie will be created as a High Definition 1920x1080 print, where the footage will be treated to look as good as possible at the larger size.
