Poor Man's Process

Last week "The Notes" took some time off. It's been spring break, which is much needed time, even if most of us were still working on school work, films, and working our days jobs, night jobs and hustles! As previously mentioned, the film makers and producers making these Mayhem films are also working on everyone else's sets to help them put their films together. I had the honor of running a poor man's process on Jeremy Pether's "OUT" set this past Thursday.

What is a poor man's process?

Poor man's process is a film making term for creating the look of a car driving on the road without actually driving on the road. Generally, when you're watching a film with driving, the vehicle is being hauled on a process trailer, which is large enough to put the camera on so the actor doesn't need to drive(unless you're James Cordon, wink.) In a poor man's process you rig up lights and do multiple effects to create the look of passing lights.

The Breakdown:

I went to youtube for advice, since all I really knew about a poor man's process was that it can be difficult and requires a team of coordinated people. I found a great video. Feel free to check it out. I used most of the concepts to my best ability from this video. https://youtu.be/Nwwdx6l7Ib8

Location: We used a large, 2 bay garage out in the middle of nowhere(great for sound). Special thanks to Garrett for supplying the location and huge thank you to Garrett's Mom for the support and welcoming space! And the lunch!

Gear used: We used a 3 point hot light kit which included a 650watt, 300watt, and 150watt light. We also used one LED and along with the lights, a bounce board. We used apple boxes, lots of extension cords, and a WHOLE LOT of duvetyne and gaff tape!

The Setup

For our key light, we used a 650 heavily diffused in front of the car in order to light the dark scene. The scene is on the highway, so not a lot in the way of ambient lights, unlike if we were driving downtown at night. Ohh, did I mention we were also shooting day for night? We had to black out all of the windows. This was about 20 yards by 5 feet of duvetyne. Next we used the 150 in front of the car to emulate passing headlights. To the right of the driver, we setup a 300 facing the garage wall and bounced the light off a reflector to emulate more passing cars. Lastly, we setup a projector onto a make-shift screen behind the car with previously recorded highway road footage. We spent about two hours moving and rearranging devetyne and other elements to block out reflections on the windshield. Lastly, we set an LED on the passenger side floor to light up the actor's face. Shout out to Connor, who sat in a car doing nothing for nearly 4 hours. Considering how difficult this setup is, I am proud to say that we executed the lighting and we filmed a (very short) scene in about 5 hours.

Once the camera was rolling, Mathieu rotated a light 360 degrees with a bounce board, reflecting light passing the car. Madison was moving a 150watt light laterally on a c stand to show passing headlights.

We took to the backyard to find wood to prop under the vehicle so we could rock the car to show some movement in the vehicle, like bumps.

We taped the projector(thanks, Grant) to the back of the car and projected the image onto the wall behind the back window.

I cannot wait for everyone to see the film! Since I missed last week's blog, please stay tuned, I will be releasing another blog this week!