For instance, there are lots of invisible sets like that shot at the biker rally that had hundreds of people in it, was a matte painting. Of course, you are going to spot the big ones, like the CG bikes or the big stunts, but there are a lot of tiny matte paintings and wire removals or the blending of two shots. Or doing something simple like shooting a master shot in a small space, then cheat the whole set back about 30 feet making it look twice as big when you shoot the reverse angle.
In terms of the crew, it is like shooting a 250K music video without the music video crew; film crews work a lot slower. During an average shooting day on a music video, I can get up to 40 shots. But on the feature film I would story board 15 shots for the day and the guy there from the studio would say, “you can’t do 15 shots, you can only do 10” and he’d scratch out 5 of my shots. That is the experience of doing a movie! I had to learn how to work with the crew as opposed to them having to work with me. |
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| I did have a wonderful line producer, Mike Rachmil, who knows how to spend the budget in places where it’s really needed. For instance the opening scene, which is the first big action scene, has two fast and furious cars racing a motor cycle. It establishes the whole action tone of the movie. The studio gave me one day and I said I needed 17 shots. They scratched out 7 and said you can only do 10 shots. How the hell was I going to put together a minute and a half sequence out of 10 shots? We did not have any money, so the whole sequence was a bunch of pictures that I drew and we split in units and shot little pieces here and there, like two cars driving by, or set the camera on the road and shot cars passing it. But when you see it all put together, it looks like some gigantic action piece. |
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