Shots that needed the most fx work were the shots that involved the actual wormhole chutes. As first described in the script:
Alejandro moves his hand forward. Olivia flinches as he touches it. It ripples like a small pond around his finger.
ALEJANDRO It feels cold.
When I wrote it, I had no idea how we were going to shoot it or how we were going to create it. I only had an image in my head of how I wanted it to look. With limited resources, we were able to make decent looking chutes so long as the shots were quick. The chutes are going to play a much larger role in season 2, so we will take the basic idea of what we had for the chutes and improve on it. But for the purposes of season 1, here’s how they were made.
Closet Chute
In the closet chute, the initial vision was to have a rippling circle that would almost warp the reality around it. The process was kept simple by doing it all within Final Cut. There’s a couple of layers involved – the original footage layer, and a background layer. A pond ripple filter was added to the background layer and then a mask was put around the hand or arm, or whatever else approached the rippling chute. For the most part, this worked in quick shots, but didn’t hold for longer ones.
When someone goes through a chute, there’s a flash of light. We did this again with multiple layers. One layer was the background of an empty closet. The other would have the characters in front of the closet. When Alejandro goes through the chute, I put an increasingly shrinking mask around Alejandro until he was completely gone. In addition, I added a flare that grew brighter and then quickly faded away as he disappeared. Getting a base layer proved difficult because we didn’t get any while shooting. So I had to pull from moments between takes to match it. If you watch, you’ll still see some wobble around the closet doors, but it also blends nicely with the flash and disappearing person.
First, a mask around Alejandro that shrank as he approached the closet wall.
Then, another layer with Olivia cropped in.
Then another layer with the chute flash.
Final layers combined with static closet layer.
Chute Sound
The chute sound was created from a nearly empty container of honey. I recorded the sound of the honey and then reversed it and added a few reverb filters. There were a couple different takes of the honey and I would mix them together each time, depending on the chute entrance or exit.
Forest Chute
As originally written:
He tries to put his hand in, but it gets forced back. He pushes into the ripples, but goes nowhere.The ruffling of footsteps is getting closer. The ripples move in reverse, inward instead of outward.
Yeah, that would’ve been tough to shoot. The forest proved challenging because I couldn’t simply add a Ripple Filter to it. It would have to interact with each object differently – the tree, the leaves, the ground. A wall is one plane of space, so it’s easier to create a believable manipulation. The forest was different. After many unsuccessful attempts, I scrapped any visual of the reverse ripples at the forest chute.We were able to keep one aspect, and that was the look of going forward in time. As written:
Ripples start to form around the spot.
VIKRAM Please trust me.
ALEJANDRO No. We’re going to save her.
The ripples get stronger.
VIKRAM Hang on. This usually hurts a bit.
Alejandro starts to scream as a glow appears from his mouth and spreads across his body. He disappears.
Again, scrapped the ripples, but we were able to create glows that appear through his body. This was done with a layer of difference clouds with a red hue placed under the original footage layer. I used masks that grew and changed shape to reveal the glow until it blended into the same flashes that were used in the closet chute.
Masks were created in the spots where the glow would originate.
The cloud layer was added behind the initial image.
The final image. The glow areas would increase in size along with a glow all around Alejandro.
The chute effects were actually supposed to appear a lot more frequently than what ended up in the final version. There were two reasons it wasn’t.
1) Early on, I realized how difficult and time consuming the effects would be. We shot a lot of takes with camera cheats.
2) These camera cheats were used in editing, so that as one person walked through a chute, it would cut to someone else. Or the camera would not pan all the way to a chute, or show the chute directly.
As mentioned in the first post-production blog post, there was a constant time crunch to get completed episodes out. Since the effects didn’t add a whole lot of value to the shots anyway, it was much easier to use the editing to cut away rather than show the same flash every time. For the most part, I think it worked.
I’ve broken down the post-production process into three parts – first an overall look at the editing process, next will be a look at the “special effects”, and third will be a look at the color correction process
- Miguel
Chutes & Ladders was edited in Final Cut Pro. The teaser trailer was edited and released on June 25th, 2011. The idea was to release the teaser two months before the season started and then release a longer trailer just before the first episode premiere. Things didn’t exactly work out that way.
Due to several unforeseen delays, editing for the actual series didn’t begin until August. My system wasn’t designed to handle the workload required to edit an entire series, but I had no choice besides push ahead anyway. The first two episodes took the longest (or were given the most amount of time, depending on how you look at it). Most of August was spent getting a locked cut together that I was happy with. I kept tinkering, and tinkering, and would probably still be tinkering if we hadn’t reached out to Koldcast.tv and set a premiere date. The forced deadline was a good thing. Real deadlines provided discipline to the editing process. However, it ended up becoming an exhausting, unrealistic deadline.
We had an agreement that basically allowed two and a half weeks of editing time per episode. Then, as always, things came up. Plus, I kept tinkering with those first two episodes. There were two reasons to spend so much time on the first two episodes – 1) I feared I my editing was rusty, and 2) Most of the scenes in the first two episodes were shot in the first weekend, when I went through the growing pains as director and DP. There were technical issues that made me wince, and coverage that I forgot to get. By the time our first two episodes premiered on September 18th, I had less than a week to finish up episode 3.
The editing schedule pretty much remained that way for the rest of the season. There was never time to catch up or get breathing room. Weekends would be time to get out a rough cut sent over for music. Monday would be edits on the rough cut. Tuesday and Wednesday would be sound syncing. Wednesday and Thursday would be color correction.
Sure there are things we could’ve corrected or punched up even more with extra time, but then again, a no budget project is forever going to have things that could be corrected or punched up. The important thing for us was to get a project out there that could be seen. That we accomplished. The short editing time also forced tough decisions to be made. There was no pixel pushing or worrying about one or two frames – only clear overall goals for each episode. Hopefully the final product did justice to everyone’s efforts.
I believe each episode grew stronger technically over that time. Take a look at episode one, and then check out one of my favorites, episode 7.
I really pride myself on being a DIYer and finding the cheapest alternative for any project. So when I was asked to create a corpse for the big reveal at the end of episode 1, I was up for challenge. While a corpse is more of a prop than strictly makeup, I figured it was close enough. Luckily, I am a huge Bones fan, so I have seen my fair share of rotting and decaying flesh, well the television version anyway. Take a look at some of these rotting beauties featured in NYmag.com.
I don’t like watching gory movies, I don’t even like scary movies, and I don’t like blood in real life either. But I like Bones, ozzy goozy guts and all. I think I appreciate all the work and creativity that goes into all the makeup, props and special effects. So I was pretty excited to get a chance to make a corpse.
I knew Backyard FX had a lot of really great tutorials, perfect for DIYers like me. I was able to find this one on creating a corpse.
I made a quick trip to Home Depot and was able to gather most of my supplies there, and charm my way into getting my PVC pipe cut according to the dimensions in the video. I made another stop at the 99cents store for pantyhose, a cheap barbie with black hair, and wire coat hangers. One final stop at a theater shop for liquid latex, and I was ready to start building.
I just needed to acquire a foam head. They have them everywhere around Halloween, but in March, they are surprising difficult to find. I only had two days, and Latex takes a while to dry, so I started building without the head.
I named him “Frankie” and here he is, just “bones.” The drill I borrowed was too heavy for me, so drilling through the PVC pipe took forever. I enlisted the help of my friend Nahid, and she helped hold the PVC pipes steady. She also helped mold the rib cage seen below.
By the end of the night, I was ready to start wrapping “Frankie” in newspaper to build his paper body, wrap him in pantyhose, and cover him in latex.
Once “Frankie” was dry he was ready for wardrobe. At the end of episode 1, Alejandro discovers his own decaying body, wearing the same clothes he has on now. So Frankie’s wardrobe had to match but look much older. I added a few burn holes to mimic heavy wear and tear.
Here he is with Alejandro on the day of the shoot. I wish I had more time, and more latex, but overall I was happy withe the final product. I couldn’t fit him in the car after the shoot, so I left him at my parent’s house. My mom was so creeped out by it, that he was promptly moved and hidden in the garage. He now resides in my closet, but I can’t wait to put him on display somewhere for Halloween.
I didn’t think I’d get cast. For one, I interrupted my audition several times. “Wait. So I know there’s NO slang, but which accent would you prefer?” Secondly, my preoccupation with portraying an authentic “Latina” character kept me from focusing on my lines. “Are you sure you don’t want anything? I got Dominican, Chola—Rosie Perez?” In fact, I was so certain I didn’t get cast that I re-recorded my audition at home with the help of my Mac’s web camera. This was before I got the news.
Agnes Barrios-Laffitte as Olivia
I was cast to play “Olivia,” a teenage girl in search of her mother. “That’s it?” I ask, but not because my acting experiences have exactly spoiled me. I just have to work extremely hard to play the stereotypical “Latina” roles that are left for me and I want to make sure I am ready. See, I have a problem with bad acting. I want to portray what I know and give justice to the human condition, but what I know is the ivy-league and what I can’t give justice to is a one-dimensional character that doesn’t provide a scope as to why the cocaine smuggler is the way she is. This is not the case with Olivia. In the Chutes & Ladders’ science-fiction reality, anything goes. Even “doubles,” evil versions of our characters, emerge from a director and producer who think larger.
Most times, however, I am not looked at for roles as universal as Olivia. Non-white racial groups –and the actors who have to stand in for them – are too often limited by the narrow characteristics that have been portrayed about them that I find myself wondering if in fact I am “Latina” with all my feelings, fears, existential angst, nerdy tastes, eccentric trends, and educational background; all of which, for the most part, the media and the film industry seem to suggest I possess alone.
Then I met the cast of Chutes and Ladders. Leo, my brother in the series, is in many ways — aside from his early maturity and unprecedented professionalism — just like me. Besides not speaking Spanish, he is an “actor’s actor” committed to tell his (Latino) truth. My web parents, equally, are admirably determined actors from South America, who have had to adjust to Hollywood’s racial framework. Having been given the opportunity to get to know and bond with my cast members, I am thankful that together we share a passion for the work, especially as it pertains to the positive and more inclusive portrayal of Latino Americans.
I have been acting since I was a child and always dreamed of being a big time actor that made it to the big screen. That was my dream for the longest time. As I grew older it had become altered to match more of a reality. I said to myself “I would really like to make a living doing independent films.” Now this is my dream today. I have also created something new to go along with that “I would really like to make a living doing independent films…with a cast and crew like Chutes & Ladders every time I made one!”
Leo G. Herra as Alejandro
Chutes & Ladders has changed my life, not just my acting life, but my actual whole entire life. I was very excited when I got cast in the project because before that I had bombed my last two auditions and I had felt pretty bummed about that. When I found out about this I couldn’t have been more ecstatic, I was jumping for joy at just landing the role. I didn’t know what the project had in store for me but I always had a thing for sci fi and I believed Miguel knew what he was doing. He sent out all the information for the table read and Chutes & Ladders was well on it’s way to becoming a huge step in my acting career.
I was a bit nervous about my performance the first day I got on set because it would be the first time I acted in some ones project other than my own. I also had no idea how Miguel ran a set or how professional it was going to be. Once Miguel got everyone into place for the first shot I knew that I had nothing to worry about. As the weekends went on and the project hit more snags, the cast and crew started to feel more like family to me. This was my first set so I had nothing to compare it to but what was going on with this project felt right. I was never more certain that I wanted to do this for a living then when I was on the set of Chutes & Ladders. I felt comfortable and very relaxed knowing that if Miguel saw something he didn’t like about my performance or felt it could be better he would let me know. I also was thankful for my fellow actors on set who brought out fantastic performances and each and everyone had done something that let me grow as an actor. I truly was humbled by the experience of acting in Chutes & Ladders. I loved every second of filming and I hope at some point in the near future (No pun intended) I will be back on set with that same cast and crew having the most fun you can have filming a microbudget sci fi web series, which I can tell you from experience is a whole lot of fun!
Production lasted 11 days spread over three months. We originally planned for nine days, but two things happened. One, it was ridiculous to think we could shoot the entire series in nine days. I don’t know what I was thinking. The 11 episodes came in at about 58 pages across multiple locations. I also hadn’t accounted for the “everything that can go wrong, will” factor of production. Scheduling lesson learned.
As it stands, we’re fortunate to have managed all 11 episodes in the 11 days. With exception of day one, we moved fast and always finished on schedule. We had a lot of outdoor shots in public locations so often times we moved fast by default. We weren’t able to set up any lights and couldn’t afford to get many takes before drawing attention to ourselves.
Spreading a shoot out over two months is difficult. We planned the first two weekends consecutively, but the remaining six days were mostly squeezed in when everyone’s schedules worked together. There were a few times where circumstances beyond our control caused us to lose an actor just days before shooting, having to scramble and reschedule what scenes we were shooting on any given weekend. It was also tough on our actors and continuity. We had to give a few haircuts and adjustments on the morning of some shoots. If nothing else, scheduling our next project will be a breeze after all the juggling we did for this one.
We made a few inevitable mistakes on day one. We chose to do one of the most difficult scenes first, one to get it out of the way, and two, because our first weekend was the only one where we had all of the actors available. As stated in my previous post, we lacked any kind of manpower when we needed it most on that day. Despite being only halfway through the scene, we wrapped early because it was either stop then or go three hours over on day one. I knew we could make up for it over the next two days. I like the idea of knocking out the tough scene early, but next time we’ll be more prepared to do so.
It wasn’t all stress and mistakes though. Having a small set makes it a fun environment. Everyone got to know each other and everything was very relaxed. The crew had great chemistry and everything ran smoothly. So long as I had my shot list ready to go for each day (and for the most part I did), there was little downtime. When we were “on set” rather than at the beach or park, we were able to really take our time and get some great footage.
When you’re on a microbudget project, the people are all you’ve got. Everyone there to help you is there for the love of making film and the learning experience. It’s important to remember that and really appreciate the great things done by our cast and crew. Datta, Violet, and I really wanted our set to be a fun and enjoyable one. Hopefully we achieved that.
Violet did a lot of everything on the production. From handling production design to hair, makeup & wardrobe, she was always finding creative ways to add value within our limited resources. Here, she talks about one particularly challenging scene with Agnes. These are excerpts from Violet’s blog, University of You.
by Violeta Reina
For this scene in Chutes & Ladders, the hair was kept pretty simple, a thin braid that started on one side and wrapped around to the other. I’m lucky to have a friend (Ella Maria) who is an amazing Hair Dresser that I can call up before a shoot and make sure I am fully prepared.
Violet applying bruises and cuts
Cuts and bruises have always been one of my favorite things. I am pretty clumsy myself, so I generally have plenty of real life samples to base my work on. I watched some tutorials a few days before this particular shoot, but I didn’t really find anything that was different from what I was already doing. I also searched for images I liked of fake bruises. If you can stomach it, I recommend searching for images of real ones too.
I used Ben Nye’s Cuts and Bruise Wheel, layering on the blue and red tones with a nylon stippling sponge. Layering the two helps create the uneven purple tone found in real bruises, pale in some areas and almost green in others. I went back in with a little extra red to create fresh scratches and a little yellow in the center to make it look a bit swollen. I used a basic translucent powder to set it, also from Ben Nye. Brushes won’t work here, bruises call for velour powder puffs so you can really press it into the skin. A little stage blood and in our case, a little bit of dirt and ashes, and you are ready to go.
Kick Ass Agnes
The costume was a lot of fun to work on too. The vest started as an ugly puffy vest with fur trim on the hood (Think JLo circa P. Diddy). I promptly removed the trim and sewed the hood back together. I also wanted to add a little edge but had to find a way to do it cheaply. Taking a bit of inspiration from Project Runway a few seasons ago, I purchased the longest black zipper I could find, and broke it apart. 2 dollars well spent to add a metal trim up the front of the vest.
My favorite part however was the belt. I cleared out the rack of belts at the local thrift store. Four black belts, some with broken parts, were fasted together into this giant mega belt. To save time, I ditched the task of sewing through leather, and went straight for my card hole puncher. I snuck into my husbands desk and stole a few of the little brass fasteners used for scripts. Turns out, they are great for fastening pretty much anything. I was pretty pleased with the overall look of the final product. I think she is ready to kick some ass, don’t you?
I’m that guy that many actors would consider a dumbass.
It was late 2009 and I went through a round of auditions for an upcoming television series for a primetime slot in India. When the executives called me and told me one of the three principal roles was mine, I was ecstatic. Really, orgasmic.
It took one meeting with the producers to find out that there was really no story line and it took three minutes of watching Indian television to realize that if that was my break – well, then it wasn’t really a break.
Now conventional wisdom – or even plain common sense – would suggest that if you get a role (especially for a green lit TV show for a top network), you take it. You don’t ask questions. You just take it.
I didn’t.
2010 was occupied with building a film production company and a literary management company in India (check it out and tell all your ‘dot not feather’ brown peeps about it – www.tulseapictures.com).
It was going well and continues to but I was missing what I said I would always do – act. And as the great actor, Naseerudin Shah, of India said in a GQ interview that I read (which is perhaps what inspired me to turn down the TV gig), “I don’t care if I have a big role or a small role – I just want to be a part of a good story.”
Yep, it was time to shut up and act. Thank you, Mr Duran.
So we began to shoot Chutes and Ladders.
It was fun and exhausting. It could have just been fun (and not as exhausting) but (like everybody else in the project) I had to juggle the acting with the day job. On one occasion, I remember flying back to LA at the crack of dawn after a late night flight cancellation and scrambling to our shoot location.
But, it was WAY more fun than exhausting. Getting to be directed by Miguel (we hadn’t worked together on something in nearly ten years), getting to work with the talented Leo, Agnes, Norma, and Luca was awesome.
The mysterious man from the future
And equally exciting was getting to know Vikram. Vikram the man from 2086. He’s mysterious, dresses thrifty but well, carries a burden that time travel cannot remove, and a dilemma that will ultimately test his strength of character (stay tuned for season 5 on that last bit….mwahahaha).
But really, how do you come to terms with lost love? Dealing with people you care about today when you know their demise is inevitable? Understanding that without that delicate balance of good and evil the world just wouldn’t be recognizable to the man without a chute or a ladder?
I took a week off from my day job to get things going with the web series. The plan was to use most of the week for prep and then start shooting at the end of the week – Friday, Saturday, and Sunday would be our first three days. I thought that would be plenty of time, but it took every spare second to make sure we were ready by Friday morning.
The toughest decision we had with our limited budget was what crew we were going to have. Since my focus hadn’t been on production the last year or two, there weren’t many crew friends I had kept in touch with enough to ask for volunteer work. We also wanted to avoid too big a crew. We were working with clamp lights in one location with a handful of actors. We had a situation where we were fortunate to not need a lot of people to get by. So there had to be some cuts.
We would get to know this room well.
We had a sound guy , Victor David, who will also be creating our score, we had a friend, Andrew, who was on break between reality shows who would be our sole gaffer/grip, we had Violet, our makeup/hair/wardrobe/production design/production manager, Datta, who was a Producer, but also acting, Ritchie, who was our family PA, and I would was DP’ing as well as directing. From there, we made the decision to hire a Script Supervisor rather than a First AD. We could only afford one. Since there wasn’t much crew and I had already done the scheduling, we thought it made more sense to go with the Script Supervisor. I’m editing the thing too, and with everything else going on, we needed good continuity and good notes. We really needed that organization in the madness.
In hindsight, next time we will bite the bullet and hire a few more people. There were times we really missed having an AD. The first day (which I’ll cover in more detail next post), we simply did not have enough people. Datta had to hold a blanket up outside a window on a day he was filming. Producer or not, it’s never good to have to ask an actor to do that kind of work. For the next shooting days, we added a couple more people, but what really made a difference is that our little crew that could really got the hang of working together. By day 3 we were fast and efficient. But it took finding that right mix of talented people to pull that off.
Back to prep. Those days leading up to filming were filled with small errands that added up thanks to LA traffic. Driving out to meet up with potential crew, then driving to the read through, and then back ate up a ton of time. Having a checklist to get through all the tiny things was priceless. Without that list, so many things would have been overlooked. Next time, the one thing I will have for sure is a Production Manager and help for those prep days, so that I’m not making a shot list between runs to Home Depot and putting together the craft services table.
Casting in Los Angeles instead of Phoenix opened up a whole world of options. As I mentioned before, we needed a specific look for the four roles we were casting – i.e. they were a Latino family. Not only did they have to look like a husband, wife, brother, and sister, they also had to be (or look like) a certain ethnicity. That made it tough. In Phoenix, we would’ve had to settle based on the responses we received. In Los Angeles, we had options.
Family Photo at the read-through
It’s so hard to find that impossible combination – someone who has the right look and delivers a good performance. Sometimes there’s an actor who is amazing, but might not have the right look to fit with the rest of the cast. Or, an actor who looks exactly as I imagined when writing, but might have an accent that’s too strong or not be just the right fit. By the time we started holding auditions in LA, we were in a bit of a time crunch before we started shooting. We weren’t going to settle, but it meant the possibly of auditioning right up until the first day of production. Fortunately, that didn’t happen. We were so lucky in being able to find amazing actors for the roles with plenty of time to spare.
When I’m writing a script, I have a vision of the movie in my head. I imagine a certain look for a role, and that was made easier in this case because we had two roles cast as I was writing, Vikram’s and Olivia’s. Unfortunately one of those people didn’t commit and we had to recast that role. It made casting for Olivia even tougher because I wrote the part with nuances of a certain person in mind, so the first thing I had to do was let that go and make sure I imagined those auditioning as Olivia, not as the original actress.
It’s interesting and terrifying to see words I’ve written performed live for the first time. There were two really cool things that happened. First, I saw a part come to life exactly as I had imagined it while writing. It was a relief to see a scene work when the lines were delivered. Second, I saw lines interpreted in a completely different way than I had imagined…and I kind of liked it. I love seeing how one line can be read so many different ways.
The other thing I learned is that what you see in person can be completely different than what you see on video. I went home after the auditions with certain perpections about each performance and I was blown away by how different some of them looked when I watched them on TV, for better and worse. In one case in particular, we were very torn between two excellent choices and eventually it came down to not just the audition, but also their reel and available content online.
The table read was the icing on the cake. We felt really good about our cast and once we were all in a room together, reading through the entire series, it finally felt like, “yeah, we can do this.” Now all we had to do was make sure everything else was set to go for the first day of production.
Production lasted 11 days spread over three months. We originally planned for nine days, but two things happened. One, it was ridiculous to think we could shoot the entire series in nine days. I don’t know what I was thinking. The 11 episodes came in at about 58 pages across multiple locations. I also hadn’t accounted for the “everything that can go wrong, will” factor of production. Scheduling lesson learned.
