BEHIND THE SCENES Here I will be telling you about the making of our latest short film "The Long Drive Home". ©Ron H Bannister Auckland. All photos copyright and must not be reproduced without permission. |
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Here is the title scene for "The Long Drive Home". Titles were done in Premiere Elements.
This is how I did the petrol station
scene.
I already had a still shot of the pumps that I had taken at a
Museum.  .
First we shot video of the car driving and stopping
in front of a car port. Then driving off again. I captured this frame from the video in Photoshop
Then I clear cut the petrol pumps and arranged them to fit over the video frame. and added the lettering "Garage and General Store
When everything looked the right size and right
position I put a green layer behind the pumps.
Saved the still and chroma keyed it over the video
in Premiere Elements.  Here is a frame from the end result. The car is seen to drive behind the pumps and stop. Then we cut to the shot below.
Driver 'Ofa Bannister talks to petrol station attendant . A wireless microphone was hidden at the bottom of the driver's side window. The sound was so good we did not need to replace the dialogue. We had to do some Foley as the real car sounds did not sound real and we needed the sound of a vintage petrol pump. A police car came along and they asked what we were doing. We told them we were making a movie. They seemed happy with that. This was the weekend of the 48 Hours Film Competition. Guess they thought we were part of it. Last years 48 hours caused a police call-out when some entrants were seen running round with guns. Turned out they were toy guns. The Police are probably used to strange goings on during the 48 Hours film competition. |
Here is the stranger walking along a dark country road. Lighting was by the cars two 100 watt driving lights. We kept in touch with the actor via walkie-talkies. It was rather scary alone on this dark night.
Shooting was outdoors at night with a number of PAR 30 spotlights. Various cookies were moved across in front of the lights to create the illusion of shadows from trees, power poles etc. The windows were sprayed with a fine mist of water to make them look steamed up. There was a lot of noise from crickets and vehicles in the area. This was picked up in the mic so it was decided to do "Dialogue Replacement". This was done in Premiere Elements. In the studio 'Ofa spoke her lines again in step with her lip movements on the screen. This is a common technique on Hollywood films.
 Originally it was intended to to turn the head by remote control but later it was decided it would be more effective to animate using the stop motion function of Premiere Elements.  Difficulty doing the animation in the car meant we shot it indoors and keyed the skeleton over an interior shot of the car. One would think a green screen should be used when the subject being keyed is wearing blue. We actualy got better resaults with the blue screen. Superman wears blue and he was also keyed using a blue screen.
Because 'Ofa doesn't have a drivers license she couldn't drive on public roads. She sat in the back seat and pretended to drive. The camera was mounted on a rig suspended across the backs of the front and back passanger's side seats.  'Ofa looks at the glove as the credits roll. Rolling credits were done in Premiere Elements.  |
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