As an actor, it is a joy to work on a film that you love, which eventually is accepted and enjoyed by its audiences. That holds true for COYOTE, a small film with a big heart that speaks volumes to festival audiences worldwide.

COYOTE holds a special place in my heart because I feel it sheds a new light on the humanity behind the immigration issue. This issue is important to me because my parents came to the U.S. from Mexico, where my dad started as a migrant worker. I grew up very aware of this issue and have always looked for ways to share the stories I heard growing up.

Growing up in South Texas, I remember hearing in school about “wetbacks” and “illegals” being caught and sent back to Mexico. As an 8-year old, the thought of having my family ripped apart was unsettling to say the least. I would hound my poor mom endlessly for proof that they would not be taken away. She always reassured me that they had papers and permission to live in the states. This is where I learned of the intricacies involved in permissions, governments and paperwork in order to chase the American dream.

Eventually, my heart went out to those who didn’t have the means to proper channels and risked everything to make a better life for themselves and their families. I thank Brian and Brett for giving me the opportunity to bring to the screen a story and character that tells of these sacrifices, hopes, fears and dreams.

As proud as I am of my parents, I am proud to be part of a film that tells an American story that transcends to a worldwide audience. And, not only has it been well attended at festivals — it has gone on to win Best Feature and Audience Awards at festivals in California, Colorado and Italy!

That’s me on the left with the Coyote crew and our new friends, posing with our awards. Thanks TriMedia!

Along the way, we always hear from audiences how much they related to the characters and story. We have won over fans at every festival where we have been invited to screen COYOTE. One of those fans was Matt Jenkins, whom we met at the Los Angeles Film Festival screening in June of this year. He introduced himself and told us that he was a programmer for a film festival in his hometown of Ft. Collins, Colorado called the TriMedia Film Festival. Before we knew it, we got a call asking COYOTE to be the opening night film for the festival. We were all very excited, especially since they requested that the cast attend as well.

The Ft. Collins opening night audience was incredibly warm and welcoming of COYOTE. We received our first standing ovation, which was a pleasant surprise. Ft. Collins proved itself to have a sophisticated audience and appreciation for the arts, which was reflected in the festival’s line up. The festival directors, Francie Glycenfer and Carol Van Natta, did a fantastic job in organizing the festival and programming the films and theatre showcased that weekend.

It was especially exciting for me because the TriMedia Film Festival also hosted the screening of my short film, Vamonos. It is my producing and screenwriting debut, and TriMedia Film Festival is the first festival to host both of my films. I thank Francie and Carol for the opportunity to be part of the opening night film, as well as for having my short film play alongside some of this year’s best shorts from festivals like Sundance.

The filmmaker bowling competition at Chipper’s Lanes.

The Coyote family also had the opportunity to explore Ft. Collins on Saturday, and found ourselves very much at home in the heart of Old Town. We are convinced that Carley Adams made up half the sales for the weekend at the local Goodwill, where she found some amazing vintage dresses. Devin Colvin and Dave Thompson checked out free bikes at the local bike library (how cool, huh?). And Brett Spackman woke up EARLY to be at the opening ceremonies for the New Belgium Brewing Company’s (Fat Tire brew) Tour de Fat festival, which consists of 8000+ cyclists in costume riding through Old Town Ft. Collins. The parade of bikes ended at a field where we enjoyed musical acts, food vendors, some vaudevillian performances and even NINJAS!! The ninja show was fantastic, check them out at NANDATOWN.COM.

Then it was back to the festival Saturday evening for the screening of THE COLLECTIVE, a feature by my friends Judson Pearce Morgan and his wife, Kelly Overton, and the short film, OUTSOURCE, directed by Dan Trezise, both great films and winners at the festival.

We also made new friends along the way in Ron Noble, director of HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL; Sol Tryon, director of THE LIVING WAKE; David Schock, director of WHO KILLED JANET CHANDLER? and Susie Watson, director of SMALL DARK PLACES – all great films and once again –- festival winners.

Lastly, I am proud to say that COYOTE also won, Best of Festival – Audience Award!! Kudos to everyone on a job well done and continued success!!! Thank you Ft. Collins, Carol, Francie, Matt and all the wonderful volunteers and festival supporters for a wonderful weekend and festival experience.

“Coyote” on the outdoor theatre. Cool.

So on Sat I went to the airport at 5 am and checked in plenty early. While I was waiting, I fell asleep in the terminal and when I awoke, my flight had left without me. I missed it by about 15 minutes somehow. I then had to try and get the next flight to Chicago. I was 7th on the standby list and was literally sweating bullets. I begged her to let me on and I think she saw how desperate I was because there was some guy who checked in late and they told him that he couldnt get on the flight. Then she called me over after he left and gave me my ticket. WHEW.

Then I got to Chicago and there was a rainstorm, (by the way this was the VERY FIRST FLIGHT EVER from Chicago to Milan for AIR ONE) and they moved the flight to Indianapolis. The weather cleared up and it came back to Chicago 5 HOURS LATER…meaning I would miss my connection in Milan no matter what. Oh, by the way, I was carrying the film in my hands and it wouldn’t show if I didn’t make it in time.

I called Chris and Brett at the wedding and asked for some info on the Italian travel guy. Chris was helpful and said he would tell him about my troubles and get something solved. So I hopped on and slept for an hour or two on the flight over. I got to Milan and there were 3 flights in all of Milan that made it to Palermo on time. I was literally running top speed around the airport trying to get back and forth between places. Nobody was willing to help and it was REALLY humid. So finally, Luigi books me a flight on Easyjet since it is the absolute last flight that will get me there on time. Picks me up at the airport and we FLY in the cab to the botanical garden where the movie is screening. People are already in seats and the movie is to start in 15 minutes NO LIES!!!! They put the big digibeta tape in, Gloria, (former Miss Italy who was quite cute and did a good job) announces COYOTE! and the place goes black…nothing. No images. I am freaking and go back and there are two Sicilian dudes arguing and trying to figure out what’s wrong. I hand them the backup DVD and luckily after about 5 minutes it works.

The movie starts and nobody understands any of it. There are a few good little jokes at the beginning that get a little laughter, but nothing. silence. NO LAUGHING AT ALL. I literally am sick to my stomach thinking “I went through hell for this??” I go to eat dinner (lots of fish and octopus) and still feel pretty sick, but when I come back, the vibe is different and people are kind of liking it. They’re into the action and the images and the feel. Movie ends and eveybody claps and smiles and really likes it.

Attempting an acceptance speech in italian.

Relieved I go back to hotel and sleep. Wake up next day, buy underwear, toohtpaste, toothbrush, clean shirt, ride the shuttle etc. (luggage never made it to Italy so I smelled REALLY bad). Nobody in the town really speaks English. Interesting challenge. That night, go to the award ceremony, see some good clips of other films and then the big award comes up for best film of the festival and it is Coyote! Very cool.

Had to go up and have a translator for my comments, but people really liked it. Turns out they pretty much missed all the humor and satire, but loved the locations and the desert and the action and the beauty. Many comments of how beautiful and spiritual it was. Kind of cool to see the reaction like that in the home of Coppola, Scorcese, Fellini etc. They really like beautiful, serious films so the comments were great and the Coyote team should be very proud.

Went to airport about 5 hours after the awards ceremony, made it to airport fine, flew business class from Milan to Chicago since they screwed up so bad and it was pretty nice, that business class. And then back to LA. That’s all for right now. Thanks for sticking around.

• June 23, 7:15pm @ The Landmark - SOLD OUT
• June 25, 4:30pm @ The Regent

Hope to see you there…

Coyote was so well-received by the festival goers that it caught me a little off-guard. The response was enthusiastic!  Yes, the film has gone over very well at every festival it’s played, but in my mind this was really the first time it had screened for a crowd was that wasn’t closely affected by US/Mexico border issues. I was also naively concerned about the fact that for most of the audience, English was a second language. None of this mattered.  The satire brought in big laughs, the thriller aspects had some people using their festival pass to hide their eyes, a woman told me she cried.  One gentleman told me he thought Steve and J’s transportation package options was ingenious and so distinctly American that he was still laughing about it hours later.

My favorite observed reactions, however, were to the story of Steve and J. We received numerous compliments from people who said this story of life-long friendship — stretched to its limits against the backdrop of Illegal Immigration — resonated deeply with them. Stewart Grant, a 6th-grade school teacher in Quebec City, was a big admirer. He said he “felt the pull on each character” as they struggled to make decisions that could ultimately end what was, essentially, their brotherhood. He said he hadn’t seen a film this unique and satisfying in quite some time. Thanks, Stewart.

And it turns out I was wrong to be concerned that a movie dealing with US/Mexico border issues wouldn’t play as familiar in French Canada. Many attendees were quick to remind me that Quebec deals with cross-border issues all the time — both with the US and it’s neighboring province. It’s a universal situation to have friends, allies, enemies, & family on both sides of any border. Crossing that line — literally or figuratively — is, at some point, on everyone’s mind.

View from my hotel. Notice the outdoor screen below in front of the first church in North America.

So…I honestly couldn’t have asked for a better experience at this festival. My only regret is that more of the Coyote crew couldn’t have been there to share in the fun. They missed out on the young woman hailing me from across the room with her French-accented English: “Oh, Mr. Coyote!” May very well have been the cutest thing ever…

We’d like to thank — huge thanks!! — the festival goers who showed up during the snowstorm to fill our theatre. Your response to Coyote has excited us all and made us even more determined to find newer audiences for the film.

A few more Thank-You’s and Shout-Out’s: Program Director Martin Brouard for creating an exceptional line-up of films and for simply being a generous and all-around great guy; David Birnbaum for his exquisite direction of Found Objects - send this guy your script, he’ll make it gold; Scot McFayden for Global Metal - cool guy, awesome movie. He gets to fly on Iron Maiden’s plane. I’m jealous, too; and to Sophie, Hilary, Brian, Kim, Andre, Mia, Stewart, Julie, Yves, Jean-Guillaume, all the festival staff, and everyone else I met — I had a really, really great time and hope to see you all again someday soon.

I got word the day I got back from a trip to New England that everyone was going to meet at Brian’s house for a production meeting.  I arrived a little late due to a flat tire, but I made it.  Once there, Brett and Brian pitched the whole story to the future crew.  I was excited from the get go.  At the end of the meeting, they told me I would be the first AC and that I would be working directly with Robb Hanks, the DP.  I could not believe they gave me the first AC job — I knew right then I couldn’t screw it up. (I still can’t believe they gave me the AC job.)

Some very, very low light conditions.

Within six days of the meeting, I was loading up equipment with Brett and Brian for the long drive out to Tuscon, Arizona.  This was indeed a long drive since the truck I was driving was fully loaded with all the lighting equipment and the truck could only go about 55mph.  The next day, I met the rest of the crew which included producers, location managers, actors, grips, and my boss…Robb Hanks.  That night Robb and I devised a work flow and system of organization that would be perfected as the shoot went on.  My personal responsibilities were charging batteries for all the camera equipment, dumping P2 cards (these were a dream come true. See earlier articles), cleaning lenses, changing lenses, helping with the lighting set-ups, moving equipment, and last, but not least, pulling focus.  

Pulling focus on a feature film that used mostly shoulder mount camera work and natural lighting was fun and difficult at times — especially when we shot at night with the apeture wide open. Action scenes were challenging as well.  I remember something Robb said to me early on in the shoot: "Stay sharp on the eyes."  This was one thing I always tried to do — not only to keep Robb happy, but to keep my job as well.

Because we shot a majority of the action scenes in the first days of production, I began to master (although I’m still perfecting) the skill of pulling focus. In those first days we shot from the back of cars, on the freeway, running, and in lots of low-light material. It was a real demonstration of the "sink or swim principle"  — in which swim was the only option.  I learned to pull focus by noticing slight movements that indicated larger movements. For example, when a person is about to turn their head or start walking each person indicates the start of this movement by a slight turn of the shoulders or a shift in body weight. This helped me know when I needed to be ready to pull focus. Each person is different so this is why rehearsals are so important, but - this being an independent film — we didn’t have the luxury of many rehearsals…so we shot every take. One of my favorite shots in the film is a long 60fps rack-focus shot where J. (played by Brett Spackman) turns his head to talk to Steve. It may seem simple, but that was one of the first difficult shots we did and it was a big confidence builder for me.

What also helped in pulling focus was the fact that we had a small lens package (three Nikon 35mm lenses) that I became familiar with very quickly. As I became more accustomed to using each lens I could more easily determine the focus distance and the minimum focus distance. This helped during scenes that involved lots of action since we were running a shoulder mount camera. We were moving most of the time.

Some cool graffiti on the Coyote set…

Throughout the shoot I picked up from Robb how to run the camera as well as setup various lighting schemes.  This came in handy later when I was needed to do some re-shoots.  A month of principle photography along side Robb helped train me for when I ran camera with Brett and Brian in Tucson, San Diego, and Tijuana for some pick-ups.  I remember shooting at the Tijuana/San Diego Border and in Tucson and really putting to good use the skills I learned during principle — skills like lighting and composition.  I was really happy with the stuff I shot.

I can’t really put into words all the great things I learned on this film.  For my first feature film experience I can’t thank the whole Coyote crew enough for the great experience I had.  I also can’t thank them enough for taking a chance on me.  And thanks again to Robb for teaching me how to shoot movies.  This was an amazing experience indeed.

The essence of ‘Coyote’ was inspired and provided by the desert and the small border towns.  Our luck on the other locations helped immensely on the budget as most of them coincided with the overall look of the film.  Some of the situations were less than ideal, but for the most part, our sets were fairly cohesive. 

Me, resting in a drug tunnel.

Arizona and Mexico were also fabulous sources for many of the props and wardrobe pieces.  What better place to find Minute Man outfits than the thrift stores of Tucson? 

One of our main struggles was our inability to film Border Patrol agents, vehicles, and posts.  I think the whole crew enjoyed mocking the sight of me standing in the blazing sun, dripping with sweat, flies swarming around my face while I tried to change a plain, white van into a Border Patrol Vehicle.  I used the most unruly rolls of self-adhesive vinyl on the sides of the van for the stripes and vinyl lettering for the front and back.  Although the lettering came out beautifully, the stripes were less than satisfactory.  After hours of wrestling with it all, we went ahead and shot the scene.  Between Robb’s careful angles and Brett’s brilliant editing, the van looked totally authentic.  What a team!

The Border Patrol Agent’s uniforms were fabricated from finds at an army surplus store and a security uniform retailer and the post was cheated at a parking garage. 

Looking back on the strange situations, locations and lack of time and budget, I’m quite pleased with what we were able to accomplish. I feel that the look and tone of the film were predominately in sync. 

Between the struggles of a low budget film and the intense heat and humidity, I often thought I would lose it.  I probably did a few times (ask Chad).  Regardless of the many set backs, we were able to get some fantastic footage each day.  We were often amazed at our good luck and were always grateful for every fortunate turn of events.  Each day was challenging yet fulfilling.  I’ll never understand how we pulled it off, but ‘Coyote’ will always be the project that renewed my love of film.  It was truly a pleasure.

***

Shooting a feature film in 9 cities across 2 countries for 5 weeks with over 60 speaking roles is not a recipe for a cheap picture. We knew this going in.  We also knew we really wanted to make this movie, that few - if any - compromises could be made script-wise, and that we were working with a budget well under that of many independent features. How was this going to work?

Listed below are 5 decisions we made that not only helped keep costs low, but also stretched us creatively and technically. A few them may have even resulted in a more rewarding experience in a way that having more money probably could not have accomplished.

1. Shoot Digital

Sort of a no-brainer in this new era of affordable digital filmmaking. By shooting the entire movie on the Panasonic HVX200, "Coyote" never touched any film or tape. Even test screenings were shown by connecting the hard drives to a projector or widescreen television. Shooting digitally also saved us time which, as we know, equals money. For example, the day before exporting to a presentation format for a film festival, we shot an insert, sent it to our colorist where he applied the correction, sent it back, we put the new shot in the cut, then sent it off to the dub house the next day. All via FTP. Not possible with film. Now some might argue that shooting digitally counts as a compromise. Certainly a valid, if subjective, arguement, but read this, then watch this before judging too harshly (but by all means judge — we’d love to hear your opinions).

So…in the end, no tape or film stock costs means zero dollars spent on…well, nothing. For more details on our digital process, read this post from last week.

2. Combine Production/Picture Vehicles

The script called for some specific vehicles: 1) a pick-up truck for a financially-challenged vending machine stocker, 2) a van from the 80’s or earlier, 3) a "new" car, 4) two cars for a young, wealthy couple, 5) a border patrol van, and 6) a rugged, expensive SUV — something that a Mexican drug trafficker might own. The production called for hauling grip, lighting, and camera equipment as well as 12-25 people (depending on the day) on a 1500 mile loop. Now, none of the these requirements are all that extravagant — pretty simple requirements actually — but potentially expensive, and again, we needed to keep costs down if we had any chance of finishing this movie. So here’s what we did:

• Instead of renting a grip truck, we just rented the grip equipment and hauled it in the vending pick-up truck.
• The 80’s van carried people and camera equipment to set in the morning, got used in a few scenes during the day, then took everyone back to lodging at night.
• The "new" car was my 6-year-old Jeep with the best detail job pesos could buy. Seriously, for around $20 they made it look brand new. When not a picture car, we used the jeep (with the top down) to shoot just about every street and highway scene.
• The border patrol van was an art-ed $15/day rental that also carried extras to and from set.
• One of the "wealthy" cars was courtesy of a producer’s (Devin Colvin) dad. They swapped cars for a couple days, so we got some transpo use from it as well.
• The SUV belonged to Devin’s brother, Darin. When not being used as a picture car, Darin kindly used his SUV to drive our UPM and PA’s around on a myriad of errands.

Thousands of dollars saved here, but I must admit that one of the bullet items was only true for the first half of production. The truck broke down mid-shoot and it cost more to fix than it did to buy. Ultimately, we should have shelled out for a better truck, but, in theory, what we attempted is still a great way to save money. More on the epic tragedies of the truck in a future post.

Holy Hannah that truck…(still shaking my head).

3. Write For Locations You Already Have (And Can Maybe Sleep In…)

The initial kernel of the "Coyote" story came as a phone call from Brian — what if a guy gets deported and his friends go get him? I loved the idea immediately. We briefly batted around some ideas then hung up and said we’d talk about it later. We left the phone call knowing only two obvious things: 1) we’d have to shoot in Mexico and its bordering states, and 2) doing so would be pricey.

It’s a crippling endeavour to start a script already handcuffed by production limitations, so when the writing process began we decided to ignore any monetary, geographical, or logistical concerns and just concentrate on telling the story we wanted. Once we had the scenes indexed and outlined, only then did we start thinking about how we could pull it off within our budget.

Our first decision was the biggest as well as the easiet: where does this story take place? Well, I’m from Tucson, AZ. Devin, one of the producers, is also from Tucson, and both of our parents live about an hour from Nogales, MX.  There was nothing in the script that dictated this story needed to take place in Brownsville, TX or San Diego, CA, or any other border town for that matter, so Tucson it was. From there, it got a lot easier:

• Houses we shot in and around belonged to either friends or family. We slept in these same houses.
• The high school I attended as a kid was kind enough to let us use school property as a location double.
• The script called for long walks in desert. The Sonoran Desert - the exact desert many immigrants cross - is within walking distance from my house.
• We needed a base in Mexico to shoot and sleep in…my parents have a condo in Puerto Peñasco.
• We really wanted to shoot at a small location in Phoenix, but were over-budget on lodging costs. So…one of our actresses, Carley, put some of us up at her parent’s house in Mesa, while our Location Manager, P.J., let the rest of us crash at his Scottsdale abode. Thanks guys…
• Etc., etc.

You get the idea.  If a location or setting wasn’t necessarily specific, we modified it to something similar that we knew we could get on time and within budget. And because we were working in very familiar Arizona and Mexico surroundings, solutions arrived quickly. There were, of course, times when we had to pay some high location fees, but we had saved enough money by that point that the fees didn’t hurt as much.

Some locations are worth fighting and paying for, but a lot aren’t. And for those that aren’t…don’t. Many times you’ll find a modified solution that turns out better anyway because it forces you to look at the nuts and bolts of your scene and decide what’s really most important. Is this scene about a Waffle House or trust between friends?

4. Cast Yourself and Your Crew

This doesn’t always work. What if it’s a SAG project?  What if you’re making a musical and none of you can sing?  What if you’re filming an indie version of Cocoon 3 and most of your crew isn’t old enough to remember Steve Guttenberg was a major star?

There are plenty of reasons not to cast yourself and your crew, but the main one, in my opinion, is that actors act…just like sound mixers mix and so on. It’s what they do, and chances are they’re much better at it than most people who don’t do it. So you should always try to hire the best people for the right jobs. Period.

BUT!…this is a cost-cutting article, so let’s go ahead and put the boom guy in the picture! He looks like a regular guy, right? Have him be Regular Guy #2. He’ll probably be glad to rest his shoulders.  You just saved $100, at least.

(P.S. When we pulled in our footage and heard the crisp dialog on the boom track, we thanked our lucky stars for having such quality on-set sound mixers as Trevor and Todd. Thanks guys…and sorry that "Phil" and "Joe" didn’t make the final cut…)

5. Cook When You’re Not On Set

Feeding your cast and crew is, of course, a must. It’s also sneakingly expensive. Most productions can hire a catering service and that works out great. Catering really wasn’t an option for us. This was a run and gun production that moved. We had to come up with something else.

We were very fortunate in that most of the cast and crew were either long-time friends, had worked together in the past, or were just really cool people we got lucky enough to have referred to us. A system sort of worked itself out where the people who weren’t scheduled to work much that day ended up making food for everyone. On days when everyone was needed on set, someone’s friend or parents might offer to make us food or donate it from their restaurant’s menu (props to Pete’s Fish and Chips!). Other days we just hit up some fast food.  In the end, we saved a lot of money on food through the generosity and teamwork of everyone involved on this project.

***

So…that’s what we did. Nothing too revolutionary, but these 5 simple decisions kept the budget in check and contributed to a fun, memorable, and adventurous shoot. There was even an instance where we combined all 5 of the above tips (well, sort of…swap "production/picture car" with "cast & crew lunch/pool party scene" and you get 5/5). Good times.

Don’t get me wrong, the HVX looks wonderful on it own… amazing actually.  But if you are shooting a narrative dramatic piece, the image difference with the M2 will blow your mind.  The depth of field you get with the adapter, in my opinion, is worth any trade offs that may come with the adapter.  And those trade off are small. 

In production on "Coyote" we exclusively used the RedRock M2 Adapter for every piece of footage.  For those who don’t know already, the adapter attaches onto the front of the camera and then you attach 35mm lenses onto the adapter.  You lose the AF feature of the camera and have to focus manually on the lens.  We used RedRocks Follow Focus system which worked flawlessly for us.   Since RedRock did not have a mattebox available we used a mattebox from Geardear.  It worked sufficiently for some things, but we are anxiously awaiting the upcoming Mattebox release from RedRock.

We used the following lenses on our system:

• Nikon 28mm 1:2
• Nikon 50mm 1:1.4
• Nikon 105mm 1:1.8

We would constantly be amazed at the image quality coming from the set-up.  No one would guess that it was video.  In fact, when we would test screen, the comment would often come back, "What did you shoot on?  Was that 35mm or 16mm?"  People were amazed to find out that it was HD, but they were floored when we said it wasn’t the Viper or the F900 or even the Varicam, but the HVX that we shot on.  The M2 is what gave our footage that "wow" factor.

You do lose light with the system.  Our lighting package was very simple (2 4×4 bank kinos and an arri kit), but we managed to shoot interior nights and exterior nights.  Just get ready to live with your stops wide open and testing your AC use of the follow focus!  Exterior days and situations with lots of light are easy to work in.

The M2 does flip the image, so we had to deal with that in a nubmer of ways.

First, for our DP, Robb Hanks, who also operated the camera.  We performed a bit of an operation on our HVX where we tricked the LCD into thinking that it was flipped.  Yes, it was scary to do this operation, but it worked great, and actually is not hard at all.  We go back and forth between the flipped and non flipped trick with the HVX depending on if we are using the adapter or not and we have not had any problems with your camera.  You can find out more about this crazy process at the following dvxuser thread.

What would be great is a firmware option to flip in camera.   Panasonic… are you reading this?

The second adjustment was for our AC, Chad Peters.  He had to pull focus constantly.  We gave him the Marshall V-R70P-HDA monitor.  Mounting this monitor was more trouble that it was worth since we were dealing with SO much handheld stuff.  Chad would simply hold the monitor upside down with one hand and pull focus with the other.

The final adjustment was in post where we needed to flip the images in order to edit.  We did this by using a great simple app developed by Andreas Kiel called Rotate Clips.  This app helped us flip all our footage in a couple simple steps.  While editing in FCP you do have a filter on every single shot, so while this does NOT affect the image quality, it DOES effect what you can playback realtime depending on your system.  We had no problem editing flipped footage realtime, even with color correction, with a 2.0 Ghz Intel iMac with 2GB or ram.  But on my G4 Powerbook, where I can edit raw HVX files in realtime, I was unable to watch flipped footage in realtime.

Those 3 adjustments being said,  you soon should not have to make any of them when RedRocks MicroX comes out.  Also, perhaps Panasonic will offer this option on a firmware upgrade (PLEASE PANASONIC!)

The M2 does have a 9V battery to power it, but it’s not in the easiest place to swap out, especially if you are mounted on the rods.  Thankfully they have a separate power jack.  To utilize this,  we got this battery from global-batteries which was designed to power a DVD player, but it worked GREAT for powering the M2.  We charged it at night and it worked all the next day.  We sometimes even forgot to charge it and it still has the juice for two full days of shooting.

I could go on and on about RedRock’s products and how they helped shape the movie into what it is.  This may sound like a plug, and it is, but I have no affiliation with their company, I do not get any proceeds from sales, I just can’t thank them enough for making the product they do and what it meant to our picture.

THANKS REDROCK!

We shot the film at 720/24pN.  This allowed us to utilize the variable frame rates which we did on occasion.  The 60fps footage looks GREAT!  We were very happy with it.  We only had 3 4GB P2 cards when we shot.  In shooting 720/24pN we were able to get 10 minutes a card.  We also had the Panasonic P2 Store which was invaluable to us.  Offloaded to the P2 Store and rotating between 3 4GB cards, we had NO problems with the technology and we NEVER had to wait for a card.

At the end of the day, we would attach the P2 Store to an Intel iMac (2.0 Ghz with 2GB of Ram) to offload the footage.  We used the great app P2 Genie developed by Anders Holck.  When we were in production, FCP did not have it’s excellent P2 Import box so P2 Genie was a must for us.  Using P2 Genie we would copy over to 2 drives.  One main and one backup.  P2 Genie allowed us to do this effortlessly.  We stored our footage on to the MyBook drives from Western Digital.  Throughout all of production we never had one problem with these drives. 

We shot roughly 1TB or footage on "Coyote."  This translated to 4 500GB MyBooks of data (2 Drives for footage, 2 Drives for identical backup).   We would covert random shots to Quicktime to preview our footage.  If we had a larger crew and more time, we would have probably had someone convert it all to QT and be able to watch dailies regularly, but we just spot checked our footage.

When we returned to LA, we bought another 2 500GB MyBooks, raided them together, and made that our drive for the Quicktime files of the footage that we would then use to edit with using Final Cut Pro (we editied with FCP 5).  We edited the film entirely on an Intel 2.0 Ghz iMac.

Back in LA, we had some reshoots, pick-up shots, and inserts that we would shoot while editing.  The P2 workflow was amazing during this process as we were able to shot, offload, and put into the edit (at full res!) all practically at the same time.  As we would get cuts together we would burn DVDs to so test screenings, but even better, we would bring the iMac into the living room, hook up an HDMI-DVI cable to our HDTV and watch the film in all it’s full HD glory.  All without ever touching a frame of film or an inch of tape!

This is obviously a very condensed view of our workflow and we could practually write a book about all the element of this production.  In future posts we’ll be addressing in greater detail this process, such posts will hopefully include:  The RedRock adaper, our Grip and Lighting Equipment, HVX scene files used, Production Sound, Post Sound, Color Correction, Visual FX, and much much more. 

STAY TUNED!

• Coyote’s IMDB Page
• WireImages from the Los Angeles Film Festival
  • Monday Screening
  • Wednesday Screening
• Wiki: U.S. / Mexico Border
  • A lot of Coyote was filmed in the places described and pictured here.
• RobbHanks.com
  • Photography site of Coyote’s DP
• Tucson Film Office