Post by Punjab2000 on Jul 15, 2005 23:09:01 GMT
On the screen, American Made appears to have happened in real time and to have been a relatively straightforward task to undertake. However, the production was a very challenging one, spanning six days of filming and significant travel.
Once the location was found on Clay Mine Road in North Edwards, CA in the Mojave Desert, extremely detailed planning was necessary to ensure a smooth production.
The desert, more than one hundred miles from Los Angeles, a limited budget - everything was ripe for a disaster to bring the production to a screeching halt. No such disaster happened, due to the meticulous planning by producer Marcus Cano. A small army of production staff prepared for what was a challenging shoot logistically.
Cano organized a small fleet of vehicles, both for the production and to be featured as picture vehicles. He even volunteered his own vehicle as the hero car. Needless to say, it was in need of a serious car wash once production ended.
Cinematographer Matthew R. Blute worked with Raju in tremendous detail to maximize the fleeting sunlight hours to film in January's short winter days.
Since the entire script is essentially one long scene, the trick was to make everything look like it happened on the same afternoon for the Singh family. Blute and Raju carefully mapped out their shots with diagrams, models, and storyboards. However, the single most important pre-visualization technique used by Raju and Blute was with a video camera.
They convinced Cano and other friends and family members to perform the entire script, on location in North Edwards a month before production, while Blute filmed it. The two edited the scenes together and had a "rough draft," so to speak, of the final film. It enabled Raju to better communicate with Blute and for both to see potential problems and come up with new or better ideas for the final production.
The production team planned to avoid having re-shoots for the film, so as to prevent having to return to the desert and pick up anything in the end. To ensure that, editor Scott Rosenblatt was present on set with an Avid editing system on a laptop. He cut together the images off the wiretap from the camera, making sure that the edits matched and that the scenes were flowing together. Everything worked - American Made did not have to return to the Mojave Desert for pickups.
Official web site : www.AmericanMadeTheMovie.com
and also www.dwf-film.com/