Super
Originally published at shanefitzsimmons.com. You can comment here or there.
I’ve had an idea for a webshow I plan on filming for a while now, but I’ve sort of let it incubate in my head while I gather up some decent equipment to make it at least good enough that it doesn’t look like a home video.
But eh, I’m sort of getting restless, and Amber really wants me to start up on this as soon as possible, so I started working on the script last night, and I guess I’ll get ready to film as soon as I get the shotgun mic and boom pole, which should be within the next two weeks or so. I’ll start off just by shooting on Amber’s dinky $400 camera, which will be fit for the web and maybe (if it’s lit well) DVD. I don’t know, I’m still a pretty big n00b to all of this stuff, Super would be my real first attempt at the whole Director/Producer thing (not to mention the whole writer/cinematographer/actor/editor/everything imaginable thing), so Super would really be my own personal learning experience rather than ultra-serious attempt at making movies, though I do intend to take it very seriously.
At anyrate, Nic and Sarah have more or less agreed to be a part of it (emphasis probably on the less, but I think they’ll do it anyway), and I know Amber will, but beyond that I’m not quite sure who’s willing. I’ve got a part I’m writing specifically for Charlie, but I ought to ask him if he’d even do it before I get too far in that because I really have no idea if he’d actually do it. I don’t really know any actors who live in NC (though I seem to know several back home), but I don’t really know that I want to use actors anyway. People who are familiar with doing this shit would probably expose the fact that I really don’t know what I’m doing, and while I’m more than willing to accept that I’m pretty much as low as you can get in knowledge about this, I really don’t want anyone to try and tell me how to go about doing it better, so getting a bunch of other people who have no idea what they’re doing too would make that a lot easier on me, I imagine.
I’m going to try to make the first episode (webisode?) with as few people as possible, and work up a script that’s somewhere in the vacinity of 20-30 pages. In terms of non-actors, I intend to do the camera work pretty much the whole time, except obviously when I’m in front of the camera myself, which probably won’t be much, especially during the first episode. Aside from that though, I’ll really only need somebody to hold the boompole/microphone for me. I intend to shoot the whole thing freehand, and move around a lot, so a mic stand wouldn’t work for this. I mostly intend to have whoever’s not on camera to hold the boompole, but if anyone’s interested in lending a hand but doesn’t really want to be in front of the camera, and doesn’t mind holding a semi-heavy stick over other people for several minutes at a time, let me know.
I don’t exactly know when this would start. I’ll probably finish the first draft of the script over the weekend, and then I’ll likely start asking around for anyone who’s willing to help me out with this, and once I’ve figured out who my actors are going to be I’ll tweak the dialogue so that it’ll sound more like the actual people saying the lines, so that they won’t have to stretch any acting muscles they may not have and hopefully the dialogue will come out more naturally that way. Then once I’ve done that I’ll probably work with the actors, do a rehersal or two just so they can get familiar with it, and have them tweak the dialogue so that it sounds better to them, and then I should be ready to shoot.
Still need to buy the boompole and mic though, which might take another week or two. I’ll see what my finances look like, I might be able to order them off the internet as early as tomorrow, we’ll see.
The goal is for this to be a genuinely funny comedy, without it being so hilarious that all you can expect from it is that it’s funny, and without being low brow with a bunch of people slipping on banana peels or getting punched in the nads or whatever. Most of the comedy’ll fall along different beats, you know, the kind of joke that’s funny more because of the way it’s told rather than what the actual substance to the joke is. The reason being is that jokes like that require good editing, and I really want to work on my editing skills. Every aspect of this project I’m hoping will help me grow as a filmmaker, but hopefully it’ll actually turn out to be a decent product too.