Los Angeles: Act Naturally

In Act Naturally / Production Notes / Screenings / Tech Talk

To help spread awareness, we launched the film’s official website, which I designed, on September 11th (this wasn’t a political statement, merely coincidental). In order to work around crew/actor availability, we planned to shoot our first leg at the ranch from Sept. 26th – Oct 5th. Weeks went by and the production staff increased and started to gel when we got derailed by big news: JP is hired to direct a huge movie shooting in Pennsylvania. We pushed our shoot indefinitely with the belief that this would give us even more leverage for cast and hopefully get some more investors on board. The cancelation also allowed me to head to Miami, Florida on September 19th to shoot a two day music video that had a budget similar to that of our entire feature.

JP’s Pennsylvania project kept getting pushed and after several months waiting, we decided to go ahead and focus on Act Naturally again. The silver lining: we now have the talented veteran, Christine Sheaks, to lead our producing team and she got our film in front of great talent. In December, we locked ourselves into shooting at ODR in March of 2009. Everything happens for a reason, right? If it weren’t for Christine’s valliant efforts, then we wouldn’t have the amazingly talented Susan May Pratt, Alan Cox, Rob Roy Fitzgerald, or Sadie Alexandru in our humble film. The remaining key casting choices were easy because they had worked with JP in the past: Josh McVaney, Katie L. Hall, Liz Lytle, and Courtney Abbott.

After much debate, JP and I decided that having two cameras the whole show will speed things up (at least while shooting scenes outside those tiny little cabins, which somehow didn’t always stop us). Given our tiny crew and the cost of renting a second rig, it was a tough call. In the end, shooting mediums and close-ups simultaneously saved our asses in post. Gotta love the two-headed monster! We got our second package from Jay Ellison at Shadowcast Pictures. His set-up boasted a more robust hand held rig from Redrock and we also rented his Zeiss ZF SuperSpeeds. The change in glass could be explained story wise because we were now at the resort where the girls would forever see the world differently. Can you notice any difference optically between the start of the film and the rest of it? To complete our package, we added two 7″ LCD monitors to make operating and focus pulling easier.

Just before leaving for the Ranch, we had what seemed like an offer we couldn’t refuse appear: a friend of mine was selling his used HMI 1.2K fresnel for only $400. It seemed like a steal. In hindsight, it was a great mistake, which further cemented my personal creed to never purchase used items from friends (thankfully our relationship wasn’t sullied). Aside from the cost of repairs (it had to get fixed on multiple occasions), losing such a key light on such a small package was detrimental to my lighting plans. The craziest instance occurred while lighting the scene in Ned’s cabin where the girls go through his personal belongings: a moth flew onto the lamp’s lens and exploded on it! The trauma cracked the fresnel lens and rendered the light out of commission until late the next day when we were able to get a replacement brought in from LA (Colton is about an hour east of town). Let’s just say that the wide shot is a lot darker than it would’ve been had I had all of my instruments intact! In fact, I’m kind of shocked and embarrassed looking back at the microscopic electric order:

1 x 1.2K HMI PAR
1 x 1.2K HMI Fresnel (that super reliable one I mentioned)
1 x 4′-4 Bank KENO
1 x 2′-4 Bank KENO
3 x 1K PAR cans
1 x 750W ETC Source 4 LEKO
Various household globes, sockets, china balls, and squeezers

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Dustin Pearlman Dustin Pearlman is a plant-based Cinematographer. Aside from film, he's passionate about the environment, music, and cycling. He's a member of IATSE Local 600 and lives in Los Angeles with his mini-schnauzer Iris.