Shooting Wrapped! A Big Thank You to Everyone!

Second Day of Shooting!

Today we shot all day at Reliant Rehabilitation Hospital up in Round Rock. A big thank you to Bill Grey and Ana Marie of Reliant for allowing us to shoot. It was a long, but smooth day of shooting the operation scenes of X. We got to play with the ever so cool jib I rented from Mopac Media. And I finally got to see images that have been in my head so long: Doctors in white lab coats, wearing huge safety goggles and cartoonish gloves, operating on a robot--seriously, what can get any better?

First Day of Shooting!

First day of shooting went extremely well! We ran into a little "authority" trouble in front of the Austin Convention Center, but Drew and his smooth talkin' enabled us to shoot without any further hassles. We had a full morning with Mr. Roberts and X, and Team Beaker got their first real taste of puppeteering the robot.


In the afternoon, we then moved to Painter Hall at UT Campus, and had to work our way around crazy game day traffic. The 1st floor hallway in Painter gave us the perfect setting of Dr. Clark and her assistants rushing X down the hallway. This was the first time that all the doctors got to meet eachother, including Jane, who was cast just last night via craigslist! She was great and so willing on such a short notice. Sophie had a "bumpy" ride as the dolly grips ran her down the hallway. We have proof that our great DP would rather see herself hurt than our beloved EX-1. The cast: Elizabeth, Mike, Jane, and Geoffrey were amazing as they adapted very quickly to adlibs and impromptu lines. We all got in the "ER" zone as we thought up different medical terms to spout out during the scene. I've got one word to the cast . . . . "Contusion!"

X-treme Make-over

Paint Job

Test Footage

Hospital Location

Costume Design

Jessica Lindsey is our costume designer, in talking with her, she referenced J.J. Abrams' new show, "Fringe", where the characters' positions stand in the gray area between doctors, and scientists, just like the technicians in Heart Box.


So, mix the use of lab coats, which provides a dominant white, to bright colors that pop. Here's Jessica picking out colors with photo shop and a tablet. We had a lengthy discussion about what color clothes Dr. Clark should wear under the lab coat, and how that will work with her surrounding characters and colors:

Anatomy of X

Here's an update on how X is doing. He is nearly complete, he's still missing a face and a paint job but other than that he's set to be in the lime light. Here's some pics of his different parts.


The leg has a move-able joint knee, which is kept locked in by a joint and spring.

The ankle is bendable by and locks in place by a spring in front and in back
The fingers are pose-able and controlled by cable ties attached to the finger tips



His chest can now open . . .

to show his guts! (See the Heart Box?)

Stay tuned for more pics as put a face on that head!

Table Reading!

Last Wednesday, the cast met up for the first time to do a table reading! It was alot of fun as we read through the script and discussed each person's character. Here's our current cast:

Elizabeth Bernhedt as Dr. Shelley Clark

Russel Minton as Mr. Roberts

Mike McNulty as Assistant

Geoffrey Kennedy as Assistant

It is an incredibly strong cast and I look forward to work with them on set, and to discover there characters with them.

sweet website

hey guys check it out

http://www.sciplus.com/index.cfm

tiny fans? got it. magnets? yup. led lights? tons.

this website is aaaaamazing and cheap!

--Sophie

Color Accents

I found this 4 X 4 grid of colored lights at a goodwill while looking for robot parts, proving too big to be the light within his chest, I still want it to be part of the set, seeing that it is freakin' cool. It will also be a guide to what kind of colors will pop in our color design.

The Evolution of X

Building X has been an arduous labor of love. Hours upon hours and dollars upon dollars have been spent on the main character for this little short. I'm at about a midpoint with X currently, I have his basic skeleton done, but it still need some more tuned work on all his moving parts, puppetry, and all of his detail work done. Here are a few pictures when I was first gathering materials a few weeks back:






I then found this amazing trash bin at a Goodwill. It was the bottom half of a shredder, and it had this great "Iron Man" type of window which would work great as the chest piece. I then got these two matching desk lamps at Wal-Mart. The lamp heads fit snug into the crevices at the top edge of the bin, which worked perfectly as his arms.





And here is X as it looks currently, his full body is intact, and I can't wait for him to continue to develop into the star of this film:

More on Visual Look

Here's another photo that shows the look of Heart Box. Look at the white that takes up much of the picture, interrupted by those accents of pink from the balloon and strawberry milk.

To show the power that white will possess in this film, here are some clips from other films:


SMILE shortfilm from Macgregor on Vimeo.

This is a clip from a short film entitled "SMILE" and centers around an albino. With such a person being the main character, white is treated to stand out in the palette.

Here's another clip:


Untitled from Macgregor on Vimeo.

Both of these clips was photographed by DP "MacGregor" who I found on vimeo.com. He photographs whites in a very special way, bright, pure, overblown. This is the look I would like to capture.

And here is the famous Bjork music video directed by Chris Cunningham. This really says it all, especially for "Heart Box". The bright sterile white is stunning and beautiful, the skeletal robots are a more sleek and perfect version of what X aspires to be, and the extreme close-ups on machinery during the "operation scene" will be very akin to what we see here:



Color Accents:

Here's a clip suggested by our very own DP Sophie that really uses neon colors to its advantage. Notice the scenes with the two doctors in the lab coats, and how just the smallest neon accent adds alot to an otherwise black and white look. Of course everything else is overblown 80's neon. You can click to see it here!

Here's another clip from a filmmaker named Ayz Waraich. He really takes care to use color in very small, but drastic doses. I look to use color accents in a very similar way:


White Red Panic - SHORT FILM (HD) from Ayz Waraich on Vimeo.

--Geoff

Visual Look

Colors: White, Blue, with bright, neon accents.

White--this color will emphasize the type of environment that X surrounds himself in. It shows the sterile atmosphere of the hospital, lab coats, etc., which to X, feels like home. Thus, he keeps coming back to it.

Blue--light blue, pastel, more in order to supplement and meld with the white, giving the white a cooler tone, thus strengthening the sterile feel. Symbol-wise, blue often emphasizes friendship, and peace, which will support X’s innocent character, and which will clash with him as he violates that innocence in the climax scene.

Bright, Neon Accents--not necessarily neon lights, but bright-colored accents that will be part of the set/props/costume. Dr. Clark for example will wear a neon-green shirt underneath her white coat. Other objects, such as the tools, props, different costume pieces will be brightly colored. This will give little peaks of vibrancy/excitement/life in the sterile white. This reflects the state of X, whose “human” passion is peaking through sterile machinery.
Lighting: Bright, Flat

I usually hate the look of “flat” lighting; it’s like watching a three-camera sit-com, ugh. But bright lighting will help give the color scheme life. For the white, it will give it almost an overbearing presence. It will also emphasize the accents properly. This lighting will support X as an innocent character, and will betray the feeling as he violates that innocence in the climax.

Overall Aesthetic: Fantastic among the mundane
The color scheme supports this overall aesthetic with the bright-colored accents among the plain white. I want to show the world where we live in now, as if it was 2008, perhaps tuned up a bit on the eccentric, and then inject these quasi-homemade robots that is accepted as the forefront of technology. And a robot is nothing unusual to see; hence the reason this “reality” has robot hospitals and robot doctors. Its merely part of society.

--Geoff

Sound Design

Foley/Sound FX
Sound is KEY. The believability of X will be made up of 50% visual, and 50% audio. Every movement of X, however slight, must be accompanied by some sort of mechanical sound, whether a wurr, buzz, squeak or scrape. All the sound effects for X will be used to illustrate his movement. X does not communicate through voice or beeps, this isn’t a C-3PO or R2-D2. He communicates through his body movements, which need to have the sound of machinery working inside of him, little motors buzzing or gears turning.

Music
Music and the absence of music will play a very important role, but not an overly present one. Music will serve the scene, not itself. I hear the music as more a traditional type score—strings, woodwinds, percussion (whether its recorded with real instruments is not important), but underneath these elements would be low, bass synthesizers, along with other “techno” type of highlights--Mechanic within the natural.

--Geoff

Production Blog!

Well, it looks like the production blog is finally up! A lot has happened these past few weeks, and X the robot, just made his first public appearance yesterday to receive a lighting test. This is an ambitious film, but it also has an incredibly talented crew behind it:

Drew Saplin-Producer

Geoff Yano-Director

Sophie Turcotte-DP

Damien Ramos-Editor

Synopsis: A robot, X, falls in love with his technician, Dr. Clark, and continually damages himself so that she will continually fix him.

This blog will serve as a record of progress, communication between the crew, and just fun place to post as the film develops!

--Geoff