Red
Canary gets the Call
In July of 2005 Red Canary Productions was
asked to produce a short documentary on just what life was really
like at Kraftwerk Design. The documentary was then to be shown at
Kraftwerk's annual open house, and later to be used as part of their
promotional package sent to potential clients.
Click
here to watch the movie
Developing
Characters and a Story
"We knew we wanted a character driven
story, not just a bunch one-liners or shots of people trying to
be funny." To make that idea happen Red Canary facilitated
a brainstorming session with everyone at Kraftwerk, where the no
poopoo rule was put into effect and ideas flowed like honey.
"From my initial meeting with Thomas, I knew there were certain
things about the people that I wanted to key in on, for example,
Brian really loves fruits and vegetables, Heather makes really bad
coffee, and Quincy is a pop culture junkie. So during our brainstorming
sessions I asked a bunch of loaded questions to try and draw out
each person's personality. I was looking for things to exaggerate
on - to build characters."
A full day of production
The shoot started at 7:30am with shots of
Quincy driving into the studio on his scooter. "We wanted
to introduce the characters in a way that was real, but also
a bit funny." Then
we just kept on shooting until about 5:30pm. We were all pretty
pooped.
Discussing the Lunch Wheel Shot
Putting
it together in Post
We started post production with over fours
hours of raw video, a rough script, and a six pack of vanilla
coke.
"The post production work flow was great. I was back at the
The
Nest editing and scoring the sound track, while the designers
at Kraftwerk were working on the design elements of the piece like
the titles and end credits. We would use Kraftwerk's FTP server
as a place to exchange files. So I would finish up a rough cut of
the foosball sequence, drop it on their server, and start working
on another part of the project. As soon as the file had finished
transferring, I'd shoot them over an email to let them know. They
could then sit back and watch it and send over some more feedback.
Johnny assisting as Boom Operator.
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The
guts, the glory, the foose.
The
Fooseball Sequence
These guys are nuts about foosball. I've
never seen more passion, and enthusiasm for the game. I think
the movie gives a pretty accurate portrayal.
Creating a Soundtrack
We knew we wanted an original soundtrack
from the beginning. Something that would enhance the time lapse
sequences, but also not be to distracting for the rest of the
movie. We turned to Apples Sound Track Pro and it went excellent.
"We
were able to just bring in the current sequence right into Soundtrack
and just score the music right to the different beats of each
scene. Pretty sweet!"
Story boards
Even though the film was a documentary,
it was actually sort of a drama based on real life. Todd sketched
out pages of story
board frames in his moleskine
journal a couple nights before the shoot.
Tools Used In Production
Canon XL-1
Bogen Tripod
Sennhiser ME-66 Boom Mic
Apple's Final Cut Pro HD
Apple's
DVD Studio Pro 3
Adobe After Effects 6.5
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Illustrator
Apple's
SoundTrack Pro
Lowel & Briteck Lights
Apple G5
Apple 20" Cinema Display
Volkswagen Vanagon "Production Mobile"
Designer
Interviews
Are the interviews real?
The interviews were based on answers to
a bunch of questions that I asked the group during a brain storming
session. There
response in the movie were all based off of exaggerations from
real stuff. We all had a little fun with it.
Thomas,
Todd, and Brian discussing Cinéma
Vérité.
Find
out more information about Kraftwerk Design by visiting: kraftwerkdesign.com
Time
lapses
Right away I knew I wanted to do some time
lapses for this project. A few months earlier I had been experimenting
with some time lapse stuff while I road my bicycle downtown. Everyone
loved it.
So the question with this projects was how do we show an 8 hour
day in 6 minutes? The time lapse was the natural way to show
the ins and outs of the studio, without boring the audience.
Click
here to watch the movie
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