Canon Live Learning Tour: Seattle

Well, here it is; the latest episode of our ongoing police-procedural mini-drama from the Canon Live Learning Tour. At my urging, the attendees once again chose to tease Canon's incredibly good-natured and helpful Chuck Westfall as we developed our concept for "CLL Seattle: Video Victims Unit"...

As always, we arrived at our workshop location clueless as to the scene opportunities it might offer.

After our morning's introductory technical session, I led the team through my approach to location scouting.  In the process, we discovered several interesting opportunities beyond the basic white cyclorama we almost always encounter. While surveying the venue, we first discovered a window-lit office space with commercial-style desks for six office workers and, nearby, a conference room with a large and dramatic conference table. 

We did a bit of free-associative brain-storming as we walked and decided to abandon the opulent conference room and decided to use the bull-pen area as our police detective's HQ.  The flashy looking conference room would have been a perfect location to arrest some murderous Wall Street weasel and we briefly considered such a scene. After a bit of fingernail chewing, though, we decided we didn't have the time for that particular story arc and continued our informal location tour.

Moving on, we quickly discovered a gritty-looking furnace room that would have been a great crime scene location; just the spot to discover a pathetic shoe accidently left behind when a villain was disposing of a victim's grisly corpse. Creepy!  With this idea tucked away for consideration, we briefly considered a long back-lit hallway before happily stumbling upon an abandoned audio recording studio. This space featured a nice dark room with a large double-pane window that looked directly into an adjacent sound-proof recording booth.  Blood-red curtains added an ominous quality to the natural daylight from street level windows.

Perfect! This room offered us a chance to construct that classic scene wherein the hesitant witness surveys a line-up of the usual suspects through a one-way glass. A bit of back-lighting would be required and I had some nice little LCD units that would do quite nicely, thankyouverymuch...

Now that we had an "anchor scene" we could free-associate and improvise the rest. Our two professional actors hopped on their roles as Detective and Street Cop while our attendees and Canon peeps pitched in as character actors.  Dialogue was created on a scene-by-scene basis...

You know, I'm always tickled pink by the way our amateur talent chose to "bring it" with their fresh and intuitive performances.  Our Witness was particularly focused and the Usual Suspects were, well, totally suspect in every way...

Although the finished piece is brief, our first-time filmmakers did a fine job, I think.  We shot six different locations - both interior and exterior - in a mere three hours. Concept development, filmmaking and acting is a tall order and everyone rose to the occasion with enthusiasm.

While we messed about, experimenting with different camera support systems, audio approaches, and lighting challenges, a crew of three videographers was busily shooting us.  Yep, there were HDSLR cameras and filmmakers everywhere!  I understand that Canon will be posting a "making of" video from this day on the Canon Digital Learning Center in the near future. Stay tuned!

Thanks again to Canon, and particularly the beleaguered Chuck Westfall, for their unflagging support of our efforts to share the pure, unadulterated fun of HD filmmaking.  Who knows? Maybe one of our talented attendees will be inspired to take this craft to another level. I, for one, wouldn't be surprised...

- Bruce