Pick-Ups

With the rough cut complete, the team decided a few additional shoots would be required to patch a few holes, acquire various background plates and collect practical effects elements to use in compositing.

First up was a trip 1500 km west of Brisbane to Thargominda to shoot background plates for Merve’s arrival and the day time pub scenes, originally shot in a quarry with a blue screen. These comprised of mainly digital stills.

Next up was a day of shooting various smoke and dust elements for use in compositing. These elements were shot in standard def on Panasonic DVC pro. Which was more than adequate for these elements. Also shot during this period were extra soldiers and Bushtroopers against blue screen to help fill out the battle scenes a bit more.

As the edit continued the decision was made to drop a whole sequence shot for the rebel camp scene. These shots were shot day for night and involved a few stunts we felt weren’t safe to shoot at night. When edited up against footage actually shot at night, the results were less than stellar. So a small reshoot was mounted reassembling some of the stunt team, but this time shooting at night, but on blue screen.

Further down the track still, an extra scene was added to explain what had happened to Nugget and X4 during the battle. By this time the DSLR craze was sweeping the world, so we shot the scene, which was essentially a series of background plates, on a Canon EOS 7D.

Finally, after the film was finished, the team decided to add an opener to the film which was comprise of macro photography of pouring beer. This would require higher frame rates than available on the 7d, so returning to our good friends at Cameraquip, we were able to make use of an Alexa to shoot some great close ups of cascading amber fluid.