TLDR; a short film I DP’ed is playing tons of festivals, and you can see it stream this Friday!
The Call to Action
In early 2017, my buddy Mark Andrews asked if I would be his cinematographer on a short film. Mark and I met at CalArts and have been making films together most of our lives, on and off. Most recently we collaborated on Brick & Steel, a fake-trailer-slash-birthday-gift for another CalArts buddy of ours.
Mark had been a story lead and a director at Pixar for years at that point, after a fruitful career in traditional animation. He’d won an Oscar for co-directing Brave with Brenda Chapman. He’d also been Andrew Stanton’s second-unit director on John Carter, and he wanted to direct a live-action short to show his range with actors and stunts. So, like, a slightly-grown-up version of the films we’ve been making since school.
I said no.
See, I don’t really consider myself a qualified cinematographer. I love shooting, and I’m happy to DP my own work sometimes, but the responsibility of Mark’s solo live-action directing debut felt like too much.
We were standing in my studio at that point. Mark looked around and asked, “So what’s all this gear for then?”
Damn.
Lining up a VFX shot under a tree while Mark snaps his own PR stills.
We shot in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in Northern California. It was a well-run nine-day shoot, three days of which were devoted to fights and stunts, which were overseen by Allen Jo and Wayne Daglish. Wayne also nimbly operated a second camera. Eric Staudenmaier, who I’ve mentioned here before, was our drone operator. I got to exercise a lot of my gear on this shoot, including the StuCrane.
We shot on a pair of Sony a7SII mirrorless cameras, using exactly the settings everyone warns you against: sLog-3, s-Gammut3, recording those crunchy 8-bits right to camera cards.
Posting About Post
Using Supercomp to add muzzle flashes and smoke. The smoke is automatically backlit by the flashes thanks to Supercomp’s interactive effects.
If you’ve been watching my public appearances since then, Circle of Stone has found its way into some of my work. I used it in the first public demonstration of Supercomp, and it my tutorial for King Pin Tracker. I dove deep into a pair of shots on Adobe's stage at IBC 2019.
Color grading in Premiere using Magic Bullet Colorista.
I’ll have more to say about how we posted this film, but for now, let’s get to the point:
Film Festivals in COVID Times
Circle of Stone has been accepted into many film festivals, and has even won some awards. Film festivals, like all of us, are trying to figure out their place in a pandemic. I love this photo of our film playing in a parking lot in Portland.
As I felt was the case with NAB and SIGGRAPH, the loss of an in-person event can create an opportunity for an experience more people can share. Case in point: the Sin City Horror Fest, which is streaming online. Circle of Stone is part of its Shorts Block 5, which screens this Friday night (Oct. 23). So while I wish you could see it on the big screen, it’s pretty great that you can see it at all.
Find details on the Sin City Horror Fest stream here.
The best way to keep track of COS’s appearances is to follow @juniperroadfilms on Instagram.
