July saw my crew and I wrapping up with Summer Campbell, a story of teen revenge and young love. We shot around Los Angeles and Orange County with one night on Dockweiler beach, photographing on a Red MX courtesy of Digital Film Studios.The main challenge of the show was our male lead; Brian Tarkington, (played by David Hudson) who is fated to surpass his platonic relationship with female lead June Campbell, (played by Becki Kregowski) has a twin brother Brett Tarkington, who appears alongside Brian in nearly every scene. David Hudson, of course, does not have a twin brother. Although I'd say the toughest job fell on David's shoulders, switching between significantly disparate characters several times during a day of photography, director Scott Sullivan and I took special attention throughout our planning and previz to tackle the problem.
Principal to both Scott and myself was that we shouldn't deviate from how we would have shot a scene if there wasn't any problem. Scott's work typically calls for a clean Hollywood feeling so we were able to avoid the troubles of compositing a handheld image right out, but there were plenty of other camera movements we weren't willing to compromise. We quoted out a simple two-axis head and dolly motion control system and got a fantastic rate after consulting with Camera Control; unfortunately, although we could have made enough room in the budget to account for the hardware and operator's rate we couldn't make room in our schedule for the addition of technical adjustment and review. Even the most minor of technical difficulties can add up to slow down a show, and several sensitively expensive days such as our Dockweiler Beach bonfire made time a particularly valuable commodity.
Our solution really came together in rehearsals; blocking along the relationships between the characters made our situation easier than it might have been. Because Brian is anxious over secretly falling for June and Brett is a strictly platonic goof, choosing to place her next to Brian with Brett opposite gave a scene a comfortable, balanced tone to contrast with the tension which immediately arose when June was placed with Brett, facing Brian.For camera movement, precise blocking and talent action became integral, finding natural and story driven means to hide the face of our stand in until a frame wipe or a planned cut could allow us to switch characters. In the pivotal moment June is humiliated by our antagonist Zach (played by Jordan Youmans) at the beach bonfire party, Brett comes in first to confront Zach, placing himself between Zach and June. At this point we're already pushing in on June as the moment burns itself in her memory; as soon as we're close enough to June to lose Brett's face, a planned cut allowed us to replace Brett with our stand in and bring David in as Brian, approaching seconds late to console June directly. A move earlier in the film swinging around from looking at June and Brian sitting on a fence to look past them at Brett approaching only required a little help from art department to give us a frame wipe to cut on and switch out the talent. In the end we shot only a handful of true composites; Red's 4K image has us confident and looking forward to seeing the finished composites.
I've since seen a first assembly; to be honest it really only takes a shot or so with the twins next to each other early in the film to drop any question about who is who. David and Scott did an excellent job differentiating the two characters; even with this very early cut Scott is happy to say that it's no longer a concern he's looking at as the cut moves along.
I have to mention a special thank you to producer Jenny Hou and her production team on this one; it was a massive show given the limited personnel and even when the pyro team that was all ready to go backed out 10 hours before call time on our beach night, Jenny found, booked, and permitted another team all before our director had woken up to prepare for the day.
Red ONE
Zeiss Super Speed Primes
Rentals from Digital Film Studios, Ace Generators
Co. Moon Behind the Trees
Prod. Jenny Hou
Dir. Scott Sullivan
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