"Going Up"

You can check out all the behind the scenes footage from the shoot here (including construction of the set). Just wait for the first video to finish and there should be some thumbnails on the bottom to click through. Enjoy!

The battle of post-production. We spent some time working out the kinks to the RED workflow. Finally have it in a pretty good place. We transcoded to ProRes HQ and will finish on that. Editor David Feinberg did a great first pass. This film requires a lot of additional sound that couldn’t be recorded on set. So we are making and tweaking those effects. It is a slow process.

Wrap! We were hustling towards the end to get out on time, but we managed. We knocked out the first 5 scenes and even tore down most of the set. A huge thanks to the tireless crew, especially Abe, Manny, Paul, Kyle, and Josh who were there from the beginning and helped me get this thing done. Guest appearance by Garrett Hardy Davis today as gaffer. Having him on set makes me feel at ease.

A very busy day. We had some big scenes to cover today and it all took a while to light and block. I hadn’t anticipated the time it would take to relight individual scenes and perhaps our lighting design could have been more effective, but we got through everything including a scene with a baby, so I’m happy. Xavier Illa was “Baby Jim” and couldn’t have been cuter. I could have done 20 takes of his setup, but we had to move on.

Wrap on Day 1. I can’t believe we got through it. I’m realizing now how ambitious it was to schedule the whole shoot for three days. But I think we can do it. We got everything except one minor scene today and we’re in good shape for tomorrow. Day 3 will be tough. More later when I’ve had some rest.

We finally found our material for the walls after searching about six different fabric warehouses. We are on a tight budget.

We got the fabric to Ben at the last minute and he skinned about ten flats in no time. What a guy.

Manny is a perfectionist when it comes to set design. Who knew? The woodwork is stained properly, the cabinets open, the elevator panel looks awesome!

I wish I had a closeup shot of this. We found our panel at an elevator repair shop in Astoria. About the nicest guys in the world. They offered us a model used in a Woody Allen movie, but it didn’t fit the bill.

We had them completely rewire the panel so every button was independently switchable, and we fabricated the numbered buttons for the higher floors. Apparently not a lot of buildings in the city go to the 73rd floor. Surprise, surprise.

A large part of our set is came from Build It Green in Astoria. So far I’ve made about four trips there this week. It is a mecca of used architectural materials. I could spend hours wandering the aisles looking for the perfect green sink (I found it).

Today we move into Bond Street Studio. 3 days to construct an elevator with working doors, a kitchen, a bedroom, a bathroom. At least we don’t need running water. We like to make it easy on ourselves.