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Who Can Save Them? (2013)

As far back as I could remember I have always had a fascination with super heroes.  Something about these symbols of modern mythology always brought me to a place of awe and wonder.  Needless to saw when I saw my first super hero movie, I was instantly hooked.  In case you're wondering, Tim Burton's Batman (1989) was the one that started it all.

As I got into filmmaking dreams of directing the next Batman Begins or X-Men started to dance inside my head.  So I began studying the ways of Christopher Nolan, I loved his interpretation of the Batman saga.  Immediately I was drawn to the look and feel of each film.  He brought the characters to life with a balance of being invincible and being human.  I knew if I was to work on a super hero piece I was going to try and bring what he did.  Who knew the opportunity to do so was just around the corner.

A friend from church approached me about helping her film a super hero video.  It was going to be a part of a skit they were doing for a Women's Discipleship.  They wanted to open up with a 3 minute video, then continue live on stage.  Right away I jumped at the chance.  First off it would be fun to do, and second, it would give me a chance to get my feet wet in the super hero genre.

The piece would be called Who Can Save Them?  They chose the actors and premise and I went to work writing a script and preparing the shots.  Seeing how we had a short amount of time to shoot and we couldn't bring a light set on location, I was limited to what I could do, but I made the most of it.  What helped me greatly was a tutorial I had came across recently on shooting in low light situations with a DRSL.  The short was shot on a Canon T3i DSLR.Looking at the footage afterward I was able to see how the tips and tricks I learned about low lighting, really helped to get clearer images than I expected.  

Natural light all day everyday, unless you can bring a spot, that would really help.We had shot the short in a parking garage early in the morning.  For the most part things went well in the 2 hours we had to shoot.  The only thing that slowed down production were sound issues, in the sense we had to wait for cars to leave and people to stop talking so they wouldn't get picked up in the recording.  Especially this one hipster woman who would not stop talking loudly to her friend, but that's another story.

In the end this did give me a small taste in working with the super hero genre.  I will say it inspired me to begin writing a short for a very similar genre, but I'll save that for another blog.

-Manuel Montanez