Suction Horse Productions

Present:

July '04 Sidewalk Scramble behind the scenes page.

Nathan Voltz as "the voice of Baldor"

On a weekend in July Team Suction Horse competed in the Sidewalk Scramble film making competition!

This version of Team Suction horse consisted of:

We wrote, directed, shot and edited a short film in 48 hours! (with much Red Bull and not much sleep!)

On this page is a chronical of our progress that fateful day and a "behind the scenes" look at what went on.

Title

"The Dungeon Master"

(Hunger, Playing Dungeons and Dragons, Gooey Louy, Magnifying Glass)

- 7.13.04 Thursday 12:09 pm: This page is up!

- 7.13.04 Thursday: an inspiration item is selected for the "pot" on Friday and gear is beginning to be gathered consisting of:
1 Sony TRV-19 (mini-DV), 1 Samsung SCD-20 (mini-DV), a few tripods, windshield car mount, external mics, 2 250W 3200*K floods, 1 250W Halogen flood, 1 75W Halogen Spot, and a P4 1.6Ghz with a Plextor DVD burner, using Adobe Permier 6.0 and Roxio DVD Creator 6.

- 7.16.04 Friday, 6pm: We gather for the Kick Off event, held at Workplay. Over 20 teams show up to start things off. Some strange inspiration items are brought. We bring a "Finding Nemo Straw". We also find out that our inspiration items are: "Playing Dungeons and Dragons", "Hunger", and we must use and show a large magnifying glass and a game called Gooey Louie.

- 7.16.04 8pm: We head out to Best Buy to buy a new SIMA shotgun mic and some filters then head out to my parent's house where all the filming will be done.

- 7.16.04 10pm: Brainstorming and conceptual drafts are done by the Fellowship of Suction Horse. Then we start setting up. 2 coffee tables put together and a white sheet thrown on top to make Louis' gaming table and maps are placed on the table. We then set up a 250W 3200K light under the tables so the sheet would give some lighting from below.

- 7.17.04 2am: Test shots and sound checks are done. We decided that the best location for the mic would be under the table (out of sight!) since Louis (Chris) would be talking and looking down at the characters most of the time.

- 7.17.04 3am: The final plot is finally hammered out and we all get a few hours sleep

- 7.17.04 9am: We all get up and do all final pre-production on the set and scripts and discuss plot points, shots and angles. Josh shoots all the CU miniatures shots.

- 7.17.04 2pm: A ray of sunlight shines through and we decide to film out final outdoor scene with the help of our 2 250W 3200K lamps. Most of the footage ends up getting cut out except the window shot with the three amigos.

- 7.17.04 8pm: Serious filming starts! All the major scenes are hammered out until the wee hours once again.

- 7.18.04 2am: Final shooting is wrapping up and we go into the acoustic chamber (the den) to do ADR.

(that's our "Award Winning" actor Nathan Voltz with the mic)

- 7.18.04 9am: Editing begins at Josh's apartment studio with a major catastrophy. My computer won't recognize my camera! Josh finally does a recovery from an earlier date and it fixes it. But this cuts down our editing time so everything is done hurriedly.

- 7.18.04 5pm: final music and finishing touches are done. We finally got the time down to 5:58 and a burn is attempted but takes longer than expected and we end up leaving at 5:15pm for ROJO.

- 7.18.04 5:40pm: We rush up to Catherine, who is sitting patiently by the door and hand her the package. Whew! just in time! We're in!

- 7.23.04 7pm: We arrive with all the red carpet and pomp to the Sidewalk Scramble July '04 screening at the Carver Theater, downtown Birmingham. The screening packs out and we watch many good shorts (including ours!).

- 7.23.04 9pm: Among other awardees, our very own Nathan Voltz wins "Best Actor for 'the voice of Baldor'"! There is much surprise and rejoicing as Nathan comes up and makes a speech! Then we went out to Sakura for Midnight Sushi to celebrate.

Check out future editions of the adventures of Team Suction Horse at the Sidewalk Scramble.

Thanx to Red Bull for sponsoring!

Even though we all looked like this after it was done!