Lil Marshal

When a neighborhood kid shows up to arrest me, I get into more trouble than I bargained for.

Filmed in summer of 2009 this skit was filmed so we could learn how to do L-Cuts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L_cut). Many lessons were learned on this project. In no particular order...

* It's always good to have a wind sock (they go by many names, wind sock, dead cat, blimp, etc.) The wind wrecked more than a few good takes.
* When doing dialog it's generally better to run through all the lines from one camera angle. Then re-frame everything for the new angle and just go through the whole scene again. (By contrast we moved the whole camera setup each time which is why I jump around all over the frame between cuts.)
* The standard def camera & it's compression had major issues with the railing and the grass in the background. This was the first time I had witnessed artifacting that was impossible to work around by tweaking the camera and filming conditions.

After this video it became clear that if I wanted to do anything serious it was time to retire the trusty but aged SONY DCR-TRV140 in favor of a newer camera.

This combination of problems ensured this short would not be watchable fullscreen.

It's worth noting that we attempted to refilm this 3 times in HD but we were never able to match the energy and charm of this first shoot. The next year we shot "Free Lemonade" a spiritual successor to this short. Free Lemonade became an instant favorite.

Free Lemonade:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qJ1_ftL9Bg&list=UUCOHiLFheqsSYh2ndpZE4cg&...

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• marshal
• vincelette
• dashv