Today was our first full-equipment crew rehearsal.
Tom, James and I, along with Production Assistants and Stand-ins Travis Bennett and Virender Dogra filmed two scenes: one a tracking shot and the other a dialog scene.
Immediate observations: firstly, the combination of 24p and cine-like gamma on the Panasonic DVX-100A is stunning. Secondly, use of a track dolly adds incredible production value.
All three together led to the most professional, film-looking shot I've ever done in my time as an amateur digital cinematographer.
After dinner, James and I went through the script and did a shot-by-shot breakdown. For most of the dialog scenes, we've planned a fairly standard combination of master shot plus tight and wide shots in both directions for good coverage in five shots per dialog scene. For some of the more action-oriented scenes we have some more fine-grained shots planned.
As both the cinematographer and editor, I found myself having to be strict about separating what we wanted to film for coverage with how I would eventually edit it. Sufficient coverage will be crucial.
The original post was in the categories: filmmaking alibi_phone_network but I'm still in the process of migrating categories over.