My introduction to Brendan Boyd film-making.
I met Brendan last winter on a Tito Guillen short called “The Woman Upstairs” where he was both acting and doing blood effects. I knew he made movies but, sadly I hadn’t really checked out any of them (I will now of course!), I’ve been out of the indie film circle for a while. I was causally invited to come on set this last weekend and I neglected to even ask what the movie was about. I was simply interested in the idea of mixing with more film nerds, see what people are doing, and so on. I showed up about 15 minutes late as I do for pretty much everything I attend and I wasn’t quite sure if I had the right address. I arrived at what looked to be a 70 year old house with a couch on the porch and no visible street number. For some reason I didn’t bother with ringing a doorbell or even knocking, I just walked in… something was up me that day, and I was more out-of-it than usual. Upon my first few steps, I see a huge mess of old puppets and costumes, and could hear familiar film type racket coming from one of the rooms. I should be in the right place. I quickly bumped into some actors and introduced myself so they wouldn’t think I’m just some random creep who wandered in from the street… I just made myself a little less random. I was pointed toward the proper doorway, I slid it open and walked right into a scene which can be awkward… especially so, if when you do, the scene is of a friend of yours, naked, miming masturbation in a chair in front of you. At that point it didn’t take too long to get up to speed, and start snapping out shots whenever it seemed appropriate to do so (well to be honest, I was far too uncomfortable for the first hour or so, it was a new element for me). Ok, at this rate I’ll never finish this post. It wasn’t a porno. It was awesome. Yes, I’m still absorbing it. Yes, I wish I had more photos, (for some reason I only had a 1GB card with me) Enjoy.
The secret is out, I use photoshop
I was sorting through some old work last night and came across this image. I was doing still photography for an independent film here in Edmonton and Tito Guillen (Director) wanted to use this shot as the poster. Unfortunately this was just one of those shots that didn’t work out, basically it’s terribly out of focus and our actor is yawning in the shot. There was also a lot of negative space on the left side which bugged me so I decided I was going to work on it a little before I gave it away. Here’s what I came up with. Be sure to click the thumbnails to see the full before and after images.
haha, I should mention that 98% of what I usually do in photoshop is color modification and shading. I never transform any of my portraits like I did this one. This was just one of those instances where I had to salvage a shot I would normally have deleted. In this case as I was editing a story and a characters appearance, not solely a person in a portrait where I wouldn’t ethically be able to modify this way.
J
