Stairway to Heaven
– 2005
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William Porterhouse is dead and
headed towards the express elevator to hell... until he escapes into a
stairwell to find his wife. But death is never so simple. Trapped on the
stairs and pursued by a sage bum, William confronts his own misspent
life. What he learns could change his... death.
visit the official
press site
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genre:
length:
format:
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fantasy
25 minutes
Mini-DV widescreen
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notes: |
This is the first
project Michael has produced, written and directed in eight years. It started as a muse about a Noirish private
dick. Fifteen drafts and a page-one rewrite resulted in a
completely different story about a man's personal redemption.
These work-in-progress frames are from the camera masters with
some stand-in compositing and color correction.
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cine: |
This
project was shot at 30p since, other than festivals, it's most likely destination is online portals, DVD
magazines, and broadcast shorts programs.
Michael was
very careful to choose locations that leant themselves to beautiful
lighting, requiring very little additional instruments for the 640ASA XL-2.
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vfx: |
Some finished scenes will
include digital back lot and character doubles. The top-most frame
and the car interior scene, for instance, still show white backdrops
that will be used to pull luminance keys behind the foreground talent
and set. Other key scenes have the dead William
(Jonathan Boatwright) observing his living incarnation. Michael chose
specific moments when both the living and dead Williams would be in a
shot at the same time. For these shots, the camera was locked down
and the scene twice.
See some VFX examples
here.
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tools: |
camera – Canon XL-2
lighting:
Mole Baby's, Tweenies
Lowel Pro-lights,
3-watt LED flashlight editing:
Sony Vegas 5.0 |
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visit the official
press site
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cast
crew
read the
shooting script (pdf)
read the shooting script (htm)
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