HOME AGAIN: After being out of town for the past month (honeymoon and then 2nd unit work), I'm back and recovering from the jet lag and a flu picked up in France.
The shoot in Dublin went great, despite the previously noted train issue. Thanks in particular to Brian, Brian, Oliver and the rest of the Irish cast and crew. After wrapping on the last day, we finished in proper Irish fashion by closing three pubs in a row before turning in at around 3am.
Overall, the Europe shoots went perfect. Even with last minute script additions (for instance, the nun in La Roche), we were able to make it all happen. The exchange rate nearly killed us and I'll be paying off my credit card for a while yet, but at least we go it all.
GEEK OUT MOMENT: As mentioned in a previous post, a number of different cameras were used. Unlike the rest of the film, which was shot on the RED here in the Bay Area, while in Europe we used the Sony XDCAM EX1 and EX3 for most of the dialog scenes since there were so few European REDs available and they were hugely expensive (double the day rate in the US, at least). These Sonys shoot a hardy HD image at 1080p, which is obviously not as information-rich as the RED's 4096x2304 ("4k") resolution. On top of that, we shot most of our outdoor/street with the Canon 5D, which operates at 1080p (albeit at 30p, not 24p like the rest of what we were shooting) and is phenomenal in low light situations.
Since we won't be cutting between the three types of cameras in a single scene, we aren't too worried about it, except that the non-RED footage will have less wiggle-room for color correction. Overall though, we should be fine.
SFFS GRANT FINALIST: We've been selected as a finalist for the fall 2009 award of the San Francisco Film Society/Kenneth Rainin Foundation Grant, to support post-production on In-World War. This important grant supports narrative feature films with a social justice theme being made in the San Francisco Bay Area.
We know that filmed science fiction has a stigma (thanks to Hollywood's schlock factory) as mindless fun, but smart written sci-fi has a long tradition of addressing social issues: Russ' The Female Man, Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, and the oeuvres of Ursula Le Guin, Octavia Butler and Sheri S. Tepper, to name a few. For movies, the selection is thinner, but still, there's Born in Flames, the Sayles classic Brother From Another Planet, The Handmaid's Tale and even the flawed District 9, among others.
Grants to support narrative features are few and far between -- this is a huge need that the SFFS/KRF initiative is addressing and we're honored to be a finalist despite our sci-fi label. Obviously, we hope to win the award, but we're glad to see our regional narrative filmmakers get this support regardless.
MORE IRISH COVERAGE: The most important film industry website in Ireland, IFTN, ran a nice piece about Vivienne Connolly's appearance in the film.
IFTN: Vivienne Connolly Joins 'In-World War' Cast
