Greetings everyone!
It’s been a few months since I’ve posted anything because things have been extremely busy. We finished principle photography on Drifter: Broken Road (of which the Cinematography Journals will continue).
We also wrapped principle photography on Diamond Fields Films’ locally produced feature, The Party Planner. Shot mainly in and around Christian County this is a project that Easy Water Films Executive Produced, provided production equipment for, and provided cinematography duties as well as post production guidance. This is the first opportunity I’ve had to even address this exciting project on this blog, or the website. For more information about the film you can jump over to the Facebook page.
Easy Water Films was also approached by a client to create graphics and music for an iPhone game. This was new territory for us, but everything turned out very well. You can learn more about the game here, see it in the App Store, and watch the promotional video that Easy Water Films made.
We are currently handling sound design and color grading on American Wasteland’s horror feature, Left Alone. After that, post production on Drifter: Broken Road begins in earnest, so it’s a lot of time in the editing suite for me!
Christopher Johnson, Director, Easy Water Films, L.L.C.
I fully expected this blog post about Drifter to be focused on lighting and the specific challenges that this project would pose in that area. And I was completely wrong. The exciting (and sometimes maddening!) thing about film production is that you’re virtually guaranteed nothing until the day you show up. All the planing and preparation is really just risk mitigation that forces you to become so familiar with the job and material that you can spin an entire production on a dime and continue shooting regardless of the circumstances. So, when I was planning this blog post we had a brilliant location that was going to look amazing and suit this project perfectly … except it had no available power. Well, long story short, that location fell through and we have locked a new location that is brilliant and is going to look amazing and suit this project perfectly … and it has available power. So, gone is all of the effort I put into researching batter powered lighting. Gone is the possible reliance on reflectors and that great big light in the sky. Gone is the need to really think in uncommon terms about how I’m going to light this project. Instead, we have power. I have my usual lighting kit at my disposal. No worries.
So instead, let’s talk about motivation for lighting.
Easy Water Films is co-producing the new web series Drifter: Broken Road. The promotional trailer for Drifter can be seen at www.drifterseries.com or here at www.easywaterfilms.com. It is a futuristic western in the sense that the United States is now torn apart by a second civil war and these characters must survive in a lawless landscape on what little they can find or forage.
Visually, Drifter takes many of its queues from classic westerns. Sergio Leone, John Ford, etc. With Easy Water Films co-producing and providing cinematography, it is this aspect that drew me to the project. What I will attempt to do in this series of blog posts is describe in detail my thought processes for preparing to shoot Drifter on a six day schedule on locations with no power and with two Canon DSLR cameras.
I hate that question. I really do. I’ve always found it to be a sinister question. Since it’s NAB week, I thought this blog post (nay, rant) would be especially appropriate.
Last week John Hughes passed away at the age of 59 from a heart attack.
John Hughes. Writer / Director of The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Sixteen Candles, etc.
John Hughes, who helped me survive high school by sharing his outlook and his humor through his films.
John Hughes who has influenced literally everything I’ve done or tried to do as a filmmaker.
What do I mean by that? I have never made a film that was overtly John Hughes-esq, true. But as much as I sing the praises of Spielberg and discuss the processes of Coppola, whenever I sit down to write or start to shoot a new film, it’s John Hughes’s work that I’m thinking about.
I wasn’t really movie going age when John Hughes was making the majority if his films. The only Hughes movie I remember seeing in the theater was Home Alone, and I was quite young. Despite this, The Breakfast Club came into my life at just the right time. I was in Jr. High School, at a friend’s house. He told me he had this great movie that we should watch, and put in a VHS copy of The Breakfast Club. I watched it in stunned silence, not even really understanding everything that was happening in the film, but knowing that I was watching something important. From that experience, I walked away thinking that The Breakfast Club was a good movie, but not much else.
As time continued on, I would come back to The Breakfast Club, watching it and rewatching it. Growing in appreciate for it at every viewing. I started recognizing people that I knew in high school. There was the Criminal, the Athlete, the Weirdo, etc. But as I recognized people that I knew in those molds, I also recognized the intent of The Breakfast Club, which is to say that these people are not just these people. They are layered and complex and … valuable.
Of course it’s impossible to watch The Breakfast Club without recognizing yourself in the characters. I saw the best and worst bits of me.
I think about the scripts that I have written, or am writing. When I heard about John’s death, I thought about a few scripts in particular that I’m working on that I lovingly think of as “my John Hughes picture.” What I came to realize is that all of my scripts are my John Hughes pictures. Some just resemble Pretty in Pink or Some Kind of Wonderful more than others.
I may try to emulate the filmmaking power of Ridley Scott, Steven Spielberg, or a handful of other filmmakers that have influenced me, but I think it’s because of John Hughes that I have filmmaking in my soul. His work has impacted my life in ways that I didn’t even realize.
He will be missed.
Christopher Johnson, Director, Easy Water Films, L.L.C.
If you’ve been following Easy Water Films, then you’ve noticed a lot of changes recently. The heart of those changes are based in social networking, web 2.0, and new media. I’m not entirely sure what all of that means, but we’re involved with it now and in a big way.
Well, the new website is up. We’re excited to have the site live and to represent Easy Water Films on the web.
We’ve also got our page on Facebook where we’re publishing exclusive Production Diary Videos for our newest film project Limitations of Clarity.
We’re also working on a few new surprises and will have more to announce soon. Until then, enjoy the new site!
Christopher Johnson, Director, Easy Water Films, L.L.C.
The other day I was browsing my favorite local second-hand DVD store and happened upon a Blu-Ray copy of Baraka.
This was significant for two reasons.
The Dark Knight is an excellent film. Christopher Nolan has essentially made a modern Godfather or Heat staring Batman and the Joker. It is an intelligent film that doesn’t feel the need to spoon feed information to the audience. It deals with complex issues: Duality, justice, morality, terror. All while being confident that the audience is right there along for the ride and capturing every nuance. But this post isn’t just to praise The Dark Knight, rather to talk about the elephant in the room that no one seems to be acknowledging.
Perhaps “new” is a misnomer. The idea of ads that are longer than the typical thirty seconds has been around for some time, but I wonder if it’s making a comeback.
Taking into account the state of the thirty second spot today (some of which we’ve discussed in previous blog entries) the opportunity to do something a little different is presenting itself more strongly than ever before. Enter Jerry Seinfeld. » Continue Reading