On July 4,5 and 6 our crew of 25 got to work filming "The Parting Gift". It was an incredible experience for me to finally get the chance to do a film with so few limitations. With a 20' movie crane, and a large warehouse converted into a green screen stage - I could literally move the camera anywhere I wanted. The freedom was exhilarating - but it came at a price! Keeping everyone on the same page was a big challenge with so much green and so little actual location to look at!
To prepare I assembled a rough version of the film set to scale in the computer using Blender. Each shot was planned within that computer environment so that on set we could see how it fit in the virtual world. This kind of prep was very time consuming, but incredibly valuable. It was so helpful I think I'll use it from now on to plan my shoots - even if they aren't so VFX heavy.
