Tom Russell and Theater and Media Arts

Shooting motion picture film is a complicated matter. A million things can go wrong and you may never even know it until long after your project it wrapped and you’re sitting at your developed film weeks later. There are so many variables. What film do we use? What company do we buy it from? What speed do we want? How do we light it? The list goes on and on. So we decided to do everything we could to eliminate the possibility that something could go wrong. We decided to shoot testers and get out all the mistakes before we got on set. Because we knew that once we got on set, we knew we would only have one chance.

First we decided to research which film we would try. We read up on the various possibilities. Then we spoke with other filmmakers who had had experience with the types of film were considering. We explained to them our lighting conditions and the look we wanted and we got their feedback. Then we ordered the film from Kodak. They put the motion picture film into still rolls that we could load into our still cameras.

We had different types and different speeds and we wanted to see how they would react to our lighting design. We went out and did a series of experiments where we set up the lights that we would have on set and we photographed all the shots we had planned to shoot. We wanted to see how the film reacted to the lighting conditions and also to make sure that we had lit and exposed everything properly. This was a lengthy project that took several nights and the help of half a dozen friends.

After we shot the film, we sent it off to Los Angeles to be developed. It came back a few weeks later and we took the results over to my faculty advisor to get some feedback. We talked about the look of the film and decided on which type we would eventually shoot. Then we discussed our lighting set up and our exposure. Some up the pictures were underexposed and some were overexposed. We talked about what worked and what didn’t work. We talked about how we could fix certain problems. Then we discussed how the film would look once we got it into a digital format, which is what we will eventually finish to.

It was a very helpful series of discussions. We were able to identify a number of potential problems early on and afterward we really felt ready to go out and shoot the final project. This is a process that is common in the professional world but is I think very rare for students. We have shot the vast majority of the project and so far are very pleased with the results. This research and testing has made all the difference in the world for us. We have a few more things to shoot in 2 weeks and the project should be totally finished and ready to take to festivals by the end of May. We are very excited.