We are pleased to bring you finalist entry “Another Key Tomorrow” by Austrian born Mike Kobal now living in NYC. Mike is a professional photographer turned filmmaker, exploiting the new HDSLR technology and inspiring others along the way. Mike was so kind to share with us his behind the scenes production write-up.

Mike Kobal Website

Here is the production write-up:

My name is Mike Kobal and I am excited to share my behind the scene story here on digitalcinemafoundry. Thank you for having me on your site!I am a regular visitor of Vincent Laforet’s blog and was aware of Canon’s Beyond the Still* *contest from the very beginning. Due to my busy work schedule at that time I did not think I would be able to participate in Chapter 3, but a* *week before the deadline my schedule lightened up.

I* *had two ideas*. *One was very linear, staying with and continuing the story based on the two previous episodes. * *The other was just staying within the contest rules and having fun. I started scribbling down notes which eventually led* *to a loose script. It became clear I would not continue the story and just fool around, making it suspenseful and playful, maybe even comical.

I started calling friends, models and actors to see who would be interested and available. I made sure to contact* *Wilder Lee, a musician who I had met a couple weeks before while he was playing in the subway*. *Fortunately,* *he agreed to be part of it.

For the subway scenes, everyone was supposed to meet at my place in the East Village on Saturday morning at 10 am. It was raining like hell and there was a coastal flood watch in effect. Everyone was late, and my assistant decided to drive home to Pennsylvania, because I possibly could not be serious about shooting in this weather. Jemy and Lenka (actors) called before driving to the city in the hopes that shooting would be canceled. I assured them we would not shoot outside, only in the subway. (If you know me, you don’t believe that.)

Wilder showed up with his girlfriend and no drums, thinking this was just a meeting to sign the release and we would shoot another day. Hmmmm. What to do. We had no time to go back to Brooklyn to get the instruments and decided to use a plastic garbage container instead. But what could we use as drum sticks? Wilder’s gf had the idea to use spoons. This is when I got the idea to use the spoons as mysterious and symbolic objects.

I had to reduce my gear since I did not have an assistant and only grabbed two lenses, camera body, external mic, a small tripod w fluid head and the shoulder mount. 2.5 hours of shooting in the subway, and we were done. Great timing to shoot on a very rainy Saturday morning, because there were definitely fewer people in the subway. In the evening it was still raining, and Thomas Gibbons came by and we shot the panning shot – window/outside/inside view.

I scripted drawings for every scene we needed to shoot at Lucy’s bar (I would post them, but unfortunately they stayed in my pants pocket and I washed them). We headed over on Tuesday, about 2 hours before the bar officially opened, and shot it in two and a half hours using only two small led lights, one reflector and available light. It was pretty easy to get all my gear there since it is only a couple blocks from where I live. I had every scene scripted and did not need to change anything.

The following day I asked my Russian friend and mountain bike buddy to do the opening scene. I also had to return to the subway one more time to shoot the girl with the key in the elevator. Finished.

Editing was straight forward, FCP, a bit of contrast enhancement, since I flattened all camera settings (5D2) and put it together in two days. I was very fortunate to get great music from my friend Dikayl Rimmasch and Constantin Phillippou, who wrote a big part of it, in one hour!

I had a blast shooting this little short. I learned a lot and am aware that it is far from perfect, just in case you where wondering :O) Lots of room for improvement in my future productions. Big thanks to Vincent Laforet for initiating this incredible contest, Canon, and of course Blake Whitman (aka Mista Vimeo) and all Vimeo members for their support and feedback!

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