new filmmakers Asylum Artists production: MEET YOUR MAKER by Don Dixon, Chris Reesor, Scott McIntyre and Shereen Mroueh

Chris Reesor:“Meet Your Maker” really evolved organically. Originally, Joe had approached us just to shoot the featured musicians (Don Rooke/Kevin Breit) in a small studio performance setting. As we started talking to Joe, it became very apparent that there was a story to tell. At this time Joe was just starting a guitar build, which seemed like a very natural starting point for our film. The building of the guitar and it’s related components would be the thread that travelled through the piece. As we headed into production, we were also made aware of some of Joe’s peers and fellow builders. They would serve quite nicely as the supporting cast in the film. And we made our way though production, we could see that each component was nicely complimenting the others.

Chris Reesor:All of us here at the studio are inspired by real, honest stories. To be able to look through the window into the life of another person and really get a sense of who they are as a human being. That’s what inspires us. We’re influenced and inspired by all those independent filmmakers putting out a story. Fortunately now, those stories are more readily available because of the internet.

Chris Reesor: Learning by doing has been our most successful approach so far. Every member of our team has some educational background, but having the ability to think on one’s feet and capture moments as they happen can’t be taught.

Scott McIntyre: I’m a graduate of the Media Arts program @ Sheridan College in Oakville, after graduating I was nominated for a Canadian Society of Cinematographers award for my work on a short film during school, and began working in the commercial advertising world.

Scott McIntyre: It was around this time, we picked up a Canon 5d MKII @ the Asylum studio and began shooting a large portion of our work on HD-SLR. For the Meet Your Maker project, we relied heavily on really strong cinematic composition, as we were trying to avoid movement because of the rolling shutter affect associated with the 5d. We used Nikon prime lenses to shoot the project and adapted that to the Canon 5d with a Novoflex Nikon-Canon mount.

Our lens set included, 24mm,35mm,50mm, 85mm, and 105macro . Most of the shots were naturally lit with ambient light, except the shots of Joe on his couch which had a window light for key, and a Kino Diva with Daylight bulbs balancing the falloff.

For the performance shoot we used 4 Canon 5d’s with mixed focal lengths, and lit the scene with Tungsten Fresnel lighting, and a Kino Diva kit. The diva’s were 75% Tungsten, and a 25% Daylight. This created some nice blue specular highlights on the guitars, and created a contrast in color within the scene, that tries to direct your eye towards the players.

Chris Reesor: All post production video was done in FCP and all audio work was done In Protools.

Scott McIntyre: The project was coloured with Apple Color, and I tried to get as natural a feel to the footage as I could through digital color. By using masks, and HSL Color selection to make certain part of the images pop, I found we could really control what part of the frame the user was focused on, without realizing that there was several layers of masking, and colors corrects on top of an image.