Presence Films

03/20/2024

Don’t Ask was a fun and rewarding project to work on. We are so grateful to all the people who made this award possible.

Big shout out to Cary T***n, Rupert Wild, and our cast and crew! Check out our Instagram post for profile info.

Thank you to Oregon Short Film Festival for the recognition and forum to share Don't Ask with our local community!

03/17/2024

This is it!

The Oregon Short Film Festival is today March 17th!

Clinton Theater opens the doors at 2pm PST. Don't Ask is showing after 5:30

Come join us for the premier screening of Don’t Ask. Also support other filmmakers and creators in our local PDX market.

When you see us, come say Hi!

** Check out the interview with Cary and Rupert on how they met and how Don’t Ask came to be.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90pGP-aFM3g

02/28/2024

As we draw closer to the Oregon Short Film Festival on March 17th, our excitement grows!

Film festivals, like this one, will provide an opportunity to showcase Don’t Ask to a wider audience. This festival averages 300 viewers!

We also look forward to networking with other industry professionals about the PDX Scene and upcoming projects.

02/02/2024

Behind the Scenes on set with director, actor and director of photography. Setting up lighting, camera and getting in some performance rehearsal.

Collaboration is a key to success.

02/01/2024

As part of getting ready for the Oregon Short Film Festival in March, a project is encouraged to have a trailer to build anticipation!

Check out our YouTube channel to see the fresh off the press trailer for Don’t Ask.

Tell your friends and subscribe!

01/19/2024

We are delighted to announce that out of over 500 submissions, Don’t Ask is selected as an Award Finalist as part of the Oregon Short Film Festival Oregon Short Film Festival on March 17 in Portland.

Join us at the Clinton Street Theater!

Festival and ticket info available at https://shorturl.at/nMUY3

12/23/2023

My tools, the Canon C300 ii with matte box, focus puller, Atomos Sh**un monitor/recorder and a 35mm Zeiss super-speed cinema prime lens mounted up.

This is a lot of kit for a tripod head to properly handle and balance. This Cartoni Focus 12 fluid head was pushed to its maximum limits with this much weight on it. A sometimes overlooked consideration is to have a tripod that can accommodate the rig you’ve built out. Fluid heads have their weight ratings, I learned the hard way that maximum capacity is just that, and not an ideal zone for capacity. The reverse is true with a light camera build on a high capacity fluid head.

-Rupert Wild, Director of Photography

12/20/2023

Audio is such an important part of filmmaking and the final experience for the viewer.

With a directional mic mounted on a hand grip, or as seen here on a fishing pole (boom pole) we eliminate the need to put a lavalier mic on every player. It’s essential, however, to capture room tone to help with consistency in post-production.

-Rupert Wild, Director of Photography

12/16/2023

For this production, when we broke the script down into Scenes and Shots, we had a storyboard artist get our ideas down visually so that we had a clear road map to begin from in setting up and capturing our coverage. �

This wide ending shot helped bring everyone back together for the pay-off.

-Rupert Wild, Director of Photography

12/13/2023

For this medium-shot of Lisa entering the house we were able to play with camera angle ideas and the use of the limited space we had at the location to cheat this entrance of our final player.

Just the hand reaching back in the drawing helps indicate that our player is coming through the door behind them.

-Rupert Wild, Director of Photography

12/09/2023

Pre-visualizing this 2-shot of our “parents” gave us some ideas to plan for the rack-focus desired for the dialogue in this scene.

These drawings can be as crude, or as elaborate as you like. You can see the addition of the tighter frame in the drawing to indicate tightening up the shot from the original space around the players in the drawing. These kinds of choices are a lot easier to make and discuss with pencil and paper ahead of filming. On set, these don’t need to be inflexible. They are just a well thought out starting point for camera and player blocking.

-Rupert Wild, Director of Photography

12/06/2023

Please come join us this Wednesday for the world premiere screening of “Don’t Ask”

McMenamins St. Johns Theater & Pub

11/29/2023

For this medium over the shoulder shot we were able to get a sense of how to best build our shotlist so we knew when to strike the china hutch from behind our players, creating room to move lights and camera over to that limited location space for our reverse shots and close-ups.

This also helped for moving and setting up furniture on the production days as we knew where we wanted things to at least start out.

-Rupert Wild, Director of Photography

11/17/2023

Pre-visualizing this Medium-Wide shot helped us to determine set dressing, lighting and lens choice for our coverage of Harve in the kitchen and the other players reactions.

This was the one shot I was the most concerned about and ended up having to use a 15mm prime lens because of the limited space. A short focal length tends to expand space and does have a slight warping effect on straight lines.

-Rupert Wild, Director of Photography

11/15/2023

An often overlooked, but incredibly helpful communication and planning tool is the Storyboard.

Any drawing that conveys what the actor is doing, location information and camera perspective is a helpful way to collaborate on how the final film will flow. Early in the pre-production process this can be a very effective way of adding and removing shots to your project.

This Establishing Wide Shot - captured Full Coverage of the script that would be cut back to in the edit and helps establish where all our players are in relationship to each other.

-Rupert Wild, Director of Photography

11/09/2023

“In a world…” where you need an inanimate device to come alive, you need a voiceover actor.

Voiceover techniques can be applied in many ways. Be it narration, dubbing, or characterization; there can be added depth of story and immersion of the audience when used.

“Don’t Ask” leveraged the power of voiceover to bring out the personality of a digital assistant. This invisible seventh character in the sketch, keeps our troop on their toes.

10/28/2023

There is a well known quote by French filmmaker Robert Bresson which goes “...film is born three times. First in the writing of the script, once again in the shooting, and finally in the editing.”

Over a few long editing sessions, full of discussion and sanity checks, Cary and Rupert locked in the final cut of “Don’t Ask”.

Collaboration and fun with the process are key to working as a filmmaking team.

10/04/2023

A lot of what we create we borrow from things we enjoy.

The Shatner lighting makes me laugh every time I see it used, and I had the pleasure of learning the technique on set from the Cinematographer I studied under years ago.

For this scene I wanted a way to up the funny for this exposition shot from our character ’Scott’

Using two solid flags to create a slit you then stage a powerful light source back away from the opening and raise and lower the light until you have the lighting, and importantly the shadow, you are looking for.

-Rupert Wild, Director of Photography

09/19/2023

What did they say? DON'T ASK!

Filmed on location in Portland OR

09/19/2023

What's all this then? DON'T ASK!

Filmed in Summer 2023

09/19/2023