The Atheist Movie Journal: November 2007

The Laura Ferreri Tritube Video

Ladies and gentlemen, Laura Ferreri... enjoy.

Finally some internal shots!

After so much shooting outside, having to configure the iris, filters and so forth, nothing like a totally light and atmosphere manipulatable internal shot.

These are flash back scenes Jeremy is having while in his apartment. Craig Graham was very kind to support us by allowing us to use his apartment.

The epiphany of the evening (: a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience. Webster's Dictionary.) was Laura discovering for the first time that she had been brainwashed in believing her eyes were brown when in all reality, they are green. It was a shock for the whole cast/crew.

Click on the eye to look deep inside it. Window to Laura's soul...

This eye made me think for a minute, back to a fantastic book I read last year entitled "Darwin's Black Box", by Michael Behe. Mr. Behe is every atheist's nightmare, and they try very, very hard to discredit him as a scientist, but the facts are in: he is a professor of biological sciences at Lehigh University and taken very seriously by his colleges. Point is, he coined an interesting phrase, "irreducibly complex". What this means is that biological systems are much too complex to have evolved from simpler predecessors. A classic illustration he gives is a mouse trap. You look at a mouse trap and you see all of its components. The board, the spring, the bait holder and so forth. The mouse trap works as a whole. If you are to take one part out of it, the whole mechanism fails. Without the spring, for example, it's not a mouse trap anymore. Well, how could these parts have "evolved", little by little, by time and chance, and lots of time and chance, to get it working perfectly? Which came first? In a living organism, which came first, the lungs or the veins? All biological systems are much too complex to have evolved, yet this is taught in classrooms as science and not a "not yet proven" theory. Yes, I know this is a bit controversial, but the human eye is one of the most irreducibly complex biological systems in the universe. One part cannot work without the other, or have "arrived" in a functional sense without the other. Just by looking deep into this picture, I am amazed at how intrinsically and wonderfully made Laura's eye is. It keeps me in awe.

November 11, 2007

This was a very technical shot, scene number 14, the internal ambulance shot. Let me first lay down some stills and then I'll talk about our shooting experience.

This is the "before" shots, with color correction, bleach bypass and contrast added.

I guess the very first thing to say is about Laura's make up. Unbelievable. It was so realistic, and so well done, that some of us that were there at times would ask Mike if he was really all right. The reason is because he had a neck imobilizer on, was lying down in character the whole time, never smiled or anything like that, and just lied there, with his eyes rolling up. At times Grace would ask, "Mike, are you alright?" It was a freaky experience. Laura was amaaaaaaaaazing. Don, our DP, gave some ideas for lighting, and stood by the lights raising up and down a reflector to give the idea of the ambulance passing under bridges and whatnot. That looked really sweet as well. Grace gave the idea of a slight camera shake to give the illusion of a moving vehicle, so it all came together extremely well. I'm very pleased with the results!

November 3, 2007 - Day 1

The very first thing I want to say about day one is that I had a blast. It was loads of fun, the energy was extremely high, every one was working high paced, and the actors were cool and performed brilliantly.The day started in my apartment at 2:45 pm. Mike arrived and we went over some lines. Then Laura arrived at around 2:45 along with Josh, the script supervisor, and started putting make up on Mike. The whole make up process took about 45 minutes.

Laura working on Mike to make him look a week after the accident.We arrived at Waikiki around 4 o'clock p.m and started to set up everything. Don (DP), Mark (sound), Josh (script supervisor) Grace (prod.) and I set up for the opening and closing scenes of the movie.

DVX100A with Brevis35 adapter and Nikon 50mm lenses on tripod and dolly over PVC tracks. Setting up LCD screens.

Laura: final touch ups.

Examining her work, which looked pretty good.Setting up the first shot.

Mike was prepared, delivered well:

Action!

Preparing the crane shot:

Either James or Traci took this extraordinary picture of our crane shot. It really looked great! We were just waiting for the sun to hit the perfect spot.