On the exchange between Valentin and Jezebel, following the protest attack and Dariya’s death
The Valentin/Jezebel scene we recently came out of was not the first meeting of these two characters, as eagle-eyed readers know, but it is their first significant exchange even though it arrives so near the end of the serial. We always knew this scene was coming, but its tone changed significantly as we discovered more and more about the two.
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On the full day warehouse shoot between the Claire, Edge, and the Trio, plus a holiday gift
With the holiday breaks there will be no new pages on Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve, but here’s a special gift instead. In preparation for the publishing of our next book, Night Zero: Volume Three, I’ve been re-reading and proofing some of our vignettes and taking advantage of the comic reading apps on the iPad to do so. For anybody out there who uses a comic reader (on whatever platform), here’s a collection of some of our vignettes in CBZ format. And please let us know, is this something you’d be interested in more of?
The warehouse scene which just concluded last week was another of our all day affairs, taking the approach of knocking out a huge chunk of comic with a single marathon shoot. This meant we’d need a full crew on set, starting with Eli on camera and Jana on makeup/costumes. Eric returned to do his lighting magic, this time accompanied by long-time Night Zero fan/contributor Justin, who took up the ropes learning grip work. Eli was assisted by Kai on the camera side of things, and Phoebe coordinated the show as Assistant Director with Mike supporting her. The full call was eight cast members, just shy of the Dariya’s Death shoot but still much larger than our average shoot.
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On location for shooting the Death of Dariya sequences
For the day of the Dariya shoot we had a 9:00am crew call: in addition to Eli on camera and myself as director, Eric was back to his lighting magic, supported by Jason and Justin; our post-production gal Jen had her first day on-set as a production assistant; Phoebe was assistant director as usual; Jana was costume and makeup supervisor but (due to her on-camera obligations) the makeup application itself was handled by Sara with the help of James. The bulk of the morning was spent hanging lights and redecorating the conference room to be a makeshift emergency room, while the cast entered at staggered times to meet their respective costume and makeup needs.
From a post-production standpoint, large-scale shoots like the Death of Dariya are more challenging to structure. The typical post-production workflow (handled in Adobe Bridge) separates the thousands of photos in our catalog by shoot date, for easy-to-find sorting chronologically. The downside is encountered when we do large, all day shoots, because shooting 20+ pages in a single day and trying to sort through 200 photos for the right 4-5 on each page is a tiresome process. Instead, for substantive shoots like this I break the scene down into smaller sequences, based on character entrances/exits and changes in action. In this way, a large segment like the Death of Dariya becomes the equivalent of six smaller shoots, each one spanning 2-4 pages and containing 20-30 photos.
On the pre-production, location scouting, and new photography techniques in the “Death of Dariya” sequences
The shoot of Dariya’s death brings together some of our earliest cast members from the Night Zero project, while incorporating all the advances we’ve made over the last three years of production. Yevgeniy, Nadia, and Dariya date back to our first office shoot at the end of episode one in June of 2008—before dedicated costume design, before multi-point lighting, before shot cards and camera-optimized shoot schedules. That all three of these cast members have stuck around so long is something for which I am incredibly grateful; that in such time our production quality has grown exponentially is something of which I am incredibly proud.
Pre-production for the shoot was in some ways simple and in some ways challenging. For the simple side, we already had the full cast and costumes from previous episodes, so the only challenge was scheduling everybody at the same time. When dealing with some pretty prolific theater and film actors, that’s hardly an easy task, and must be done many months in advance. The downside to scheduling like this, though, is that once the cast is locked down for a date, whatever location we want to shoot at has to be available as well; if not, we are faced with having to either scout and secure a new location, or try and reschedule the entire cast and crew.
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On the day of shooting the “Devon” vignette bar sequences
The primary shoot location for the Devon vignette was the small bar in Seattle’s Market Theater, home of the improv troupe Unexpected Productions (source of many great Night Zero cast members). Despite producing a full range of shows each week, in addition to classes and rehearsals, the team at UP was happily willing to let us take over their bar for a full Sunday shoot, which is where our story begins.
Crew call for the day was the usual 9:00am, and the production team consisted of myself as director, Eli on photography, Phoebe as assistant director, Kai as 2nd AD and assistant camera, Jana on makeup and costumes, and Eric in charge of lights with Jason as best boy. As always, the first step of the day was to review the space and start shifting it to our liking: moving and removing chairs and tables, rearranging the bottles and accessories on the bar, adjusting or removing posters and other decor. A separate space away from the bar was set up for makeup, and another to stage the various lighting gear that may be needed throughout the day.
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On piecing together the zombie fight for the “Devon” vignette
This second act of the “Devon” vignette, wherein our hero dost make most violent an altercation with a member of the infected team, was produced in the “quick and dirty” style of a Night Zero production, with a skeleton crew and a short day to produce a short segment. The quality and length of the finished product speaks volumes to how far Night Zero has come since its early days, when it would have taken a full day’s work and thrice the crew to produce something of still lesser quality. Here are a few disconnected thoughts on the piece: Read the rest of this entry »
