As part of our continuation to feature different popular entries from Canon & Vincent Laforet’s “Story Beyond the Still” we’re featuring one of the most popular films on Vimeo from the contest, “Key Moves” produced by William Roland, Micah Baird and team with included production write-up.

The Reverie Website

Here is their write-up:
KEY MOVES is one of the first projects that Micah Baird and I have produced together. From concept to completion it took us about two weeks and would not have been possible if not for a series of completely unrelated and fortunate events. We’re living proof that sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good.

First and foremost I knew I didn’t want to solve the mystery of what was in the box. I love the ride of a good mystery and I wanted to create the greatest chance to expand on that theme. Originally the film was called “One Thousand Keys” because the idea of a thousand keys exploding across the floor seemed like a great way to open up the idea of a thousand more boxes and a thousand more mysteries. Choosing to tell the story out of sequence also added a sense of confusion and unease for the viewer.

Micah and I love action, we knew from the beginning we wanted to keep things moving. We were lucky to be able to work with actors April Hutchings and David Lavera because they were game for anything. I’m sure we could have extended the chase and fight scenes up much longer, making them more engaging for the viewer, if we only had more time. Additionally we used car mounts, underwater shots, stedicam, handheld to keep the energy up throughout the film.

For the most part it was just Micah and I shooting this film. Over the course of 4 days we shot 5 locations in 2 cities. Not a lot of time so we didn’t have much in the way of lighting and rigging. Instead we chose locations that would give us light to work with and that were visually interesting. We did use 2 small batterie operated LED lights for the changing location in the chase scene. The desert location was such a blessing. We had to shoot around a storm but it gave us this great ominous feeling that wouldn’t be there if we had blue skies.

Post was a bit tricky as we had to work through the “Cannon H.264 compression isn’t any good for Final Cut Pro” problem. After we converted everything from H.264 to Apple ProRes through MPEG Stremclip everything worked fine (get it here for free http://www.squared5.com/.) Color for the fight scene was a bit tricky too because the final shot was actually photographed on a different day and time. The entire sequence leading up to that shot plays throughout the film and was originally shot cool. After reviewing our footage we felt the final shot looked more interesting so essentially we tweaked the entire movie to match that shot. We also added a noise reduction filter for the night shots. Originally I was skeptical of using a filter that says it will reduce noise because in my experience it will do so by ruining your image. I’m happy to report that this was not the case and I’m very pleased with how the night footage turned out (http://www.neatvideo.com/.)

Here are some behind the scenes stories from our film.

Moments of Greatness

Micah’s first Steadicam shot – Steadicam, separating the men from the boys since 1976. This was Micah’s first Steadicam shot: moving at sprint speed riding a skateboard downhill at night, camera facing behind him, being chased by April, and me saying from behind the monitor “that’s good but can you go a little faster?”

April Hutchings fighting David Lavera – David may be one of the fastest people I’ve ever seen. On top of that he will just climb up a wall like Spiderman in the middle of a conversation without warning. Clearly he is phenomenally athletic, he is also a trained stuntman who knows how to movie fight. April on the other hand is a lovely young actress with kickboxing experience from the gym. Not only did she go for it in rehearsal and the scene but she took some solid shots along the way. Not the least of which is when David jumps nearly 4 feet in the air and kicks April in the back and out of frame. Multiple times April was launched, ending up face down in the sand. When asked if she was alright she just smiled and said “This is nothing, I grew up with brothers. Let’s go again.”

Charlie Purviance’s final closeup – We shot the end fight, trunk shot and reactions at the end of the day in about 20 minutes. Charlie’s CU was the last thing to get but the sun had set. We gotta have that shot. Micah runs to the truck, slips on the prime 35mm f1.2, sets it wide open, punches up ISO 3200, and shoots 2 takes before it’s completely dark. That is one of my favorite shots in the film.

Things that slowed us down

Location scouting – The desert scene was originally set in snowy mountains. Seeing that neither Micah or I live in the mountains or the desert we had multiple days of location scouting to find the right place. After a day in the snow and a day in the desert we still had not found the right location for our final scene. As we drove back from the desert I was trying to rewrite the film when Micah randomly points out the window and says “Why don’t we just shoot there?” Pulling off the freeway and almost immediately onto a gravel road we found exactly what we wanted… a hidden access road surrounded on all sides by sand and desert, totally by accident and chance.

Wondering drunks – The chase was shot in and around Venice Beach back alleys. Shooting around the nightlife there can be tough. In order to keep the background clear while David was jumping the car I shared my monitor with several of the “locals” who were gathering to see the show. Much better to keep them behind the camera instead of stumbling into the shot slack-jawed and mouths agape.

Opening scene – Originally there was a scene at the beginning of the film where an Unknown Man was sitting in a private library viewing the photo from the end of The Cabbie. He then crosses the room to a bookshelf where he pulls out a photo album that is full of photos of similar boxes. Thumbing through he finds an open page and places the photo into the album. I thought it would be nice to show the boxes to help tie in the keys at the end as well as open a new level of charter who might be behind the mystery. We spent more time trying to find the right props, the right location, and the right actor for that scene than any of the others. I never got any of those problems solved and was forced to write the voice over at the beginning of the film to help launch things. As it turned out I would have had to cut the scene out of the film entirely for time.

There were many more highs and lows but what’s most important is we all feel we made a good film and had a lot of fun in the process.

Thanks to Canon, Vimeo, and Vincent Laforet. Their contest helped bring our team together.

William Roland
Director, Key Moves

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