I am going for a look for “The Adventures of Paul and Marian” that doesn’t shy away from the fact that we’re shooting in a studio. I want the movie to hearken back to technicolor and older Hollywood movies, artifice and all. As I wrote quite some time ago, we decided to shoot in front of rear projection in order to achieve this look. Rather than shoot in front of a green screen and add the background images later, we would project them live and get everything on camera.
However, the logistical challenges of doing this on a limited budget with limited time are immense, and we have decided to return to using green screen for this movie. The advantages to this are that we can move much faster while we shoot, we have a lot more flexibility in post, and I will be able to spend more time on set working closely with the actors rather than worrying about technical issues with the rear projection image. The performances are what’s going to sell this movie in any case, so I have to be able to focus on them. The amazing thing about digital editing and green screen is that there’s so much you can do to the image in post, so we’ll have a huge amount of options in shaping the look of the movie afterwards.
This will mean a much longer and more expensive post production, which I’m not exactly happy about, but it’s the best choice for making this movie as interesting and good as it needs to be.
Tags: green screen, hard decisions directors have to make, rear projection
