Doug & Charlie’s Children OR a Green Screen Adventure in Directing During Editorial.
CHI - January 2014. Doug, Sara, and I sat around one afternoon brainstorming for a fun shoot idea. We knew it had to be free, not demand a lot of setup, and I wanted to use my new green screen. From there it became a race to the bottom for the most low-brow concept we could push ourselves to. The result is Doug and Charlie’s Children. Also known as our attempt at creating a children’s show with the worst character traits we could invent in ourselves.
We were also lazy this afternoon and had no desire to write a script. So instead we opted to take the improve route instead. The luxury of a casual setup is you can shoot as much footage as you have energy for. Which is exactly what happened.
Since then we’ve been in the exhaustive process of reductive editing…as in the elimination of footage we don’t like. It’s been a long process because we’ve been moving segments around pretty dramatically as well. In the end this process will distill us to our best continuous narrative that fits with our intentions and stays funny fresh.
After that…well the editing will be a mess since we’re prioritizing dialogue. The up side of low budget green-screen work is the great opportunities to own that low budget kitsch and do something fresh with it. Since it’s still a new visual trope (relatively speaking) we have a lot of uncharted territory at our disposal.
Working with an inexpensive green screen has been fantastic too. The biggest impedance to the setup were wrinkles. Hit the hanging green screen with a spray bottle of water and wait 60 minutes you’re good to go, the problem is getting the screen set early enough to have the time to lose the wrinkles.
We’re still editing and will be for several more weeks, but I can’t wait to share completed trailers and the final project when its ready.
POSITION/CREDIT: Director, Editor, Talent
SOFTWARE: Final Cut Pro 7; PluralEyes; Premiere Pro CS6; After Effects CS6; Photoshop CS6
