Last week I traveled back to Savannah with my friend Zach to help out a few of my SCAD friends on a film project. The project was called Crowning Achievements with H.J. Wellington Astor. It was a short film that would parody literary classic readings with an eccentric, sheltered billionaire reading from bizarre, poorly written novels. It is structured to act as the first in a series of videos. This particular episode focuses on the pre-teen "classic" The Goats by Brock Cole.
Zach and I met with Adam Tuckey, Justin Andrews and Katy Lowe for lunch on Monday and then went straight to Adam's to build our set. We worked on the mise-en-scene of the frame for a few hours, took a break for dinner and then began filming into the night.
The shoot was stress free and, although we hit some obstacles, we worked off of each other to come up with some pretty creative solutions. It was a very satisfying experience to go through, especially after some of the more stressful shoots that happened during the first quarter.
Our crew positions were not set in stone and we all took turns in doing various things. But if I had to nail down positions for this post, I'd say that I was camera operator, Justin was director / 1st AD, Zach was 1st AC, Katy was 2nd AC / 2nd AD, Adam was the actor / director of photography and Jane Mansel came in to record sound.
We worked hard on filling the frame with books, plants, china and other things to sell Adam's house as H.J. Wellington Astor's mansion. It's all in the frame of the film but the details are hard to see. I took pictures of the set for reference for future episodes if we decide to do them. You can see all the stuff that made up the background of the film below.
Me and Zach took a lot behind the scenes pictures while we were setting up and while we were filming. You can see them below.
Zach and Katy making cue cards for Adam. They became vital.
The camera rig we used for the slider that Adam and Justin built. 
My ghetto lighting kit.
Testing our first lighting set up. The back light proved too bright.
Ended up adding some shots so we added a pentagram to the slate to mark this. This shot was "1 B Prince of Darkness Cuatro."
Adam edited all the footage together and put the video up today. I really like the way it turned out. It's very retro, quirky and feels like something that would come on Adult Swim or the BBC. I feel like it is a good template for future episodes where I feel things can get a lot more on the insane side.
Thanks to Adam, Justin, Katy, Jane and Zach for their hard work on this. It was a fun project.
Watch Crowning Achievements with H.J. Wellington Astor Episode 001: The Goats below.
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