Chelsea Pickens' "Myling": Building a Forest in a Stage

Archive article, originally written May 13, 2009

The 10th of May saw the wrap for principal photography of Chelsea Pickens' "Myling," which follows a party-bound high schooler who is tricked into escorting a ghost child back to her grave. While much of the script was easily accomplished on location as day-for-night, the demands of a few choice scenes saw us working out the logistics of photographing a forest on a sound stage at Marion Knott Studios.

Production Designer Katy Echols pulled together the materials from Los Angeles greens provider Green Set, and with a wrap of duvetine 20 feet tall walling in the perimeter of the set we began to see the forest come together.On a tight budget the selection and quantity of trees was limited; few of the trees were of a height comparable to what we found on location. Luckily Katy Echols was able to use the shorter trees to our advantage, loading the end of the set opposite the camera with shorter trees to patch up the black backdrop and imply a falloff of foliage in the distance. While this demanded frequent adjustment of the forest and ground cover our shot organization allowed only two major rearrangements of the space, accommodating for the addition and removal of a graveyard space. The graveyard set was put together with one end saved for camera, the set being redressed to acquire the reverses for each scene; a bluescreen was assembled and lit at the end of the set opposite the camera, where a 20x20 solid could be swung in and out as the bluescreen was needed. A battery of 10k tungsten fresnels were hung on each end of the set and were fired up as necessary to create the hard day-for-night light which we would need to match our location footage. The Marion Knott's self-climbing Desisti hoists allowed for fast adjustment of "moonlight" position as needed by the particular shot.As far as the color photographed on set, we opted to retain a full spectrum of color on set to later drain in color correction with Autodesk Lustre. While the foliage on location was mostly in the range of greens and browns, Katy brought yellow and red foliage into the stage forest to push a sense of separation as the characters progress into the most fantasy-driven portion of their journey. Our tests in preproduction and with a basic color correction with the uncut footage has proven to imply just the hint of extra color we were hoping to capture.Part of the decision to shoot in an artificial forest was driven by the extensive makeup necessary for the scenes we were shooting: through a series of tests Makeup Artist Jenny Hou streamlined a workflow to put actor Michael Sasso, young actress Danielle Soibelman, and the legendaryDoug Jones through transformational prosthetics each morning of stage photography; the process was smooth and never held up production, by the benefit of Jenny's craft and the facilities available at Marion Knott.It of course bears mentioning again that Doug Jones lent us his considerable talent for this show; an incredibly pleasant presence to have around whether he's in front of the camera or not, we all had a great time working with Doug even after our blinding explosions of geeky bliss had subsided. Just that Doug took the time to come out and join such a small production based on his interest in the script says a great deal about the quality of his passion and character.While principal photography is wrapped, we went into things understanding we'd have a sort of prologue segment still left to photograph once we were done with the scheduled shooting; we're working the schedule for those pickups this week.1:2.35Panasonic HPX-3000GFujinon HD Cine-Style ZoomShot to Panasonic P2 in 1080pRentals from Panasonic, Clairmont Camera, Green Set, Wooden Nickel LightingDir Chelsea PickensCam Op Michael Nie1st AC Daniel SchadeGaffer Matt Perez, Jorge Andres Moore CocoKey Grip David LandonProduction Designer Katy EcholsMakeup Artist Jenny Hou