#HobbitChallenge Beginnings

This past weekend, a few friends and I got together to film a video. What kind of video? A very nerdy video. A video entry for the #HobbitChallenge!!! :D

In case you didn't know, The Hobbit is hosting a contest where the contestants have to film a recreation of one of three scenes: "Good Morning," from An Unexpected Journey, "Hide and Seek with Smaug" from The Desolation of Smaug, or "I Am Not Alone" from The Battle of the Five Armies.

About two weeks ago, when the scenes to choose from were released, Karis (who I've mentioned several times before on here, and who blogs over at The Horse Nextdoor) and I decided we should attempt the "Good Morning" scene, between Gandalf and Bilbo. We knew it would be so much fun, no matter how it turned out or how well we did in the competition.

And so we began the preproduction process for our little video. :D

First was brainstorming, along with casting. This part was easy -- Karis is short, so she gets to play Bilbo. I'm tall, so I'm Gandalf. End of story. ;)

With this in mind, we decided to really play up the "feminine" flip on the characters. For instance, Bilbo sips tea instead of smoking a pipe, and Gandalf doesn't have a beard and wears a skirt. Oh wait -- he already does that... "No! It's a tunic!" ;D

The brainstorming continued for our set location, props, film angles, etc., and we began putting together our costumes. No, neither of us made any part of the costumes (except some alterations I made to Gandalf's hat) since we had a deadline to meet (February 1st), but the costumes still turned out much better than I was expecting them too, which I was so happy about... considering costumes are one of my favorite things about movie making. :D

Next began the actual production, which took place on a cloudy Sunday after church. Karis and I recruited our friends Amber and Emily to be our "film crew," and so we all congregated at Karis' house for a 2 hour shoot. Before we could do any filming, however, Emily and I combined our efforts to curl Karis' very straight hair, set up our location for the scene, and prepped the cameras.

Which was actually rather amusing -- we had four cameras during the shoot. We used mine for filming, Amber's for production stills, Karis' DSLR for character shots and her little point-and-shoot for a behind-the-scenes vlog. (We didn't use the DSLR for the cinematography because it didn't have as good video settings as mine.) This multiple-camera setup was great, and totally made us feel all professional. Like, literally, the whole production of our video has been exactly like professional movie making -- just without moolah involved and on a super small scale. ;)

So, the shoot went quite well, and took about two or three hours. It was seriously cold, and windy, but thankfully the rain held off until we had wrapped, and then it started pouring (which was totally a God thing). Poor Karis was getting hypothermia, though, since she was wearing hobbit clothes fit for a warm, spring day. (I lucked out with all my costume layers!) Just goes to show how dedicated we were. Hah!

As for the scene itself... we got alot of great footage. We also got alot of not-so-great footage, like when Gandalf forgot what kind of morning it was, or when Karis' ponies came over to crash our party. (We're going to have a very long blooper reel.)

I hope you're getting the impression of how much fun we had with making this thing. ;)

Anyway, after filming, our little movie crew went through all the footage and pictures, which was just great. Lots of hilarity and some surprisingly good footage as well.

Now it is Wednesday, and we're in the final stages of postproduction as Karis edits the 2 minute clip. It'll be up on Youtube by tomorrow, and once it's there I'll be posting the link on my Facebook and Twitter pages. (Yes, those are both fairly new developments, and I hope you'll go and like/follow me! I love talking and interacting with you guys, and FB and twitter make that a bit easier. :))

Buuuut... in the meantime, enjoy this little "behind the scenes commentary" from Karis and I. :D

P.S. I promised you guys some more pictures from my battle Tauriel photo shoot, aaaand they *are* coming!! I've just got so many things I want to blog about, and no time. Hopefully within the week there will be a post featuring them -- it's in my drafts folder currently, just waiting for edited pictures. ;)