BEHIND THE SCENES
Sometimes the making of a film can be just as interesting as the film itself.
This is the evolving story of how Fallen Star was filmed. Here you will see a behind the scenes look at the film process and the visual effects production. This film is unique for Parish Productions as it marks our first time using a virtual production setup. This is a brief overview however. A more in depth look at each process, especially the Virtual Production side, will be coming in our blog posts if you want to dive in deeper into the process. Otherwise, enjoy this journey through the process of filmmaking!
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Once the script is written, the most important part is finding the cast and crew. They are who will bring your story to life. So much hinges on them. While a lot of people think that acting is an easy job, it's actually very demanding both physically and emotionally. Thankfully on this project, we had a team up to the challenge from day one! The team consisted of returning Parish Productions members, as well as new faces from the University of Toronto, marking the return for Director Kyle Parish, who attended the university.​
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Once the cast is set, it's time to start practicing. For Fallen Star, filming was scheduled to begin in early May of 2024, so the cast and crew started rehearsals in December. As the cast was spread out across Ontario, the bulk of practice was done virtually, with cast members working in groups together at their respective locations ​
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Of course one of the toughest aspects of a film like this isn't just the emotional acting but the intense fight scenes. This requires careful practice and preparation to make sure no one gets hurt. The lightsaber blades are hard and could definitely hurt someone if not careful. And it goes without saying that messing up a punch or kick will also hurt. So for this, the cast were given outlines of their moves and stunt sabers to practice with on their own time. Training began slowly in January, ramping up to multiple days a week by March. Each fight was practiced again and again, starting very slow and speeding up by the time filming began.
But what would a film be without amazing costumes to help transport our actors to a galaxy far far away? Pretty ridiculous that's what it would be. Concept art for the looks and feel of the characters came early. Unlike previous projects, we cast away the traditional Star Wars looks and went more medieval. This fit the feel of the story as more of a legend style tale. Something you might hear being passed down from generation to generation.
Finally there's makeup! This film would require extensive makeup work from designing wounds, cuts and bruises, to face art. These elements help add another layer to a character. Thankfully for us, our award winning makeup artist, Domonique Landry, was up to the challenge, designing the look for The Son, as well as all the fine details needed during the fights. Everything from a stomach wound, terrible gashes, to hair styles, and small face markings, these details can't be overlooked. These film by far had the most extensive makeup of any project to date
Bringing this film to life was going to be a monumental technical challenge on so many levels. Early on it was decided that the only way to tell this story correctly was to do the locations virtually. To do it practically just wasn't an option. With that in mind, a virtual production studio was built consisting of changeable overhead lights, lots of green screens, HTC Vive trackers and sensors, all feeding information back into a computer running Unreal Engine, where all our sets had been designed. A feed was also run back a monitor on our camera rig so the cinematographer could see their moves in real time in the virtual world. This was an complex setup for shooting but beyond a few small glitches here and there was the tracking, everything went smoothly. You can learn more about this process in our virtual production section
Filming began on schedule on May 3rd, 2024. For the first time ever, weather wasn't an issue as all the filming took place inside. It was however a slower filming process then on previous projects. A great deal of time had to go into setting up each shot in the virtual world to match our physical world. But this process got a lot faster as the days went by.
The cast and crew had blended well into a family group. Set was an extremely entertaining place to be with jokes always going on behind the camera. But everyone would return to character just in time for action to be called. This fun filled environment made shooting days seem to fly by.
The long hours of practice made the scenes go smoothly. With our team behind the camera and in front of the computer working in sync with each other. There was a constant flow of food to set, and we just kept going and going.
Each day flowed smoothly into the next. While the cast relaxed after shooting, massive amounts of footage was being compiled behind the scenes. Sometimes that process would run late into the night, with touch ups for the next days scenes being done in Unreal Engine as well.
Organization was super key. Not only are you keeping track of good takes on the primary camera, but also matching those takes up with the correct take in the virtual camera. The exact matchups are critical when putting everything together in post production. That's what makes this process so different from your standard green screen filming. Here the camera can move in 360 degree space with our actors and that virtual environment has to match that exactly, including focus adjustments.
It requires a huge amount of collaboration between the director, cinematographer and virtual production operator to pull everything off correctly. We would break regularly to discuss setting up a shot, where it was situated and even the physics of what's happening in the shot. Is the wind blowing? Ok we need fans on the actors. Lots of work and planning.
But even with these new challenges, the cast and crew rose to the occasion. The performances did not suffer and everyone kept that energy, even when doing a 15hr long shoot! To the directors amazement, nothing would stop this crew or their passion for this project!
Fight scenes have always been the most challenging part of any production, but this time that wasn't the case. The cast was determined to have polished fights. We actually got takes of nearly 3 minute segments all at once without a mix up or need to cut. It was incredible and a true credit to everyone's hard work. With a more complex filming process, not having to worry as much about the fight scenes made such a difference.
One of the other unique elements to the fight scenes this time was the addition of lighting the blades up. Since the saber effect is always done in post, the concept of needing to turn the stunt blades lights on was never a thing. But these fights involved a lot of tight closeups and emotional shots. So we turned the blades on to get a nice color reflection on the actors faces. The results were definitely worth it, though sometimes the blades wouldn't cooperate and would turn off mid sequence.
Before we knew it we were down to the last day of filming! While the filming schedule was setup that not everyone would be needed on set each day and so people could leave after they were done filming, no one left. Everyone stayed from day one til the day after filming wrapped. While something like that might not seem like a big deal, the support every cast member was putting into making this film was incredible. It just kept reaffirming the belief that we were doing something special.
We were doing something special with a very special group of people. Over the years of Parish Productions Films, we have had many different casts and crews. Each one has been unique in it's own way. But the feeling from long time crew members was that this crew had a different feel and vibe. It was an energy, a heart and passion that's hard to put into words. What it really did was bring to life an incredible project. A project that was a huge experiment to begin with. None of us had experience doing Virtual Production. Could we actually make this work? The answer was a resounding yes! But it wouldn't have been without this crew putting in the work and trusting in the vision. This team was asked to work on set without seeing exactly what the environment would look like. They had to trust that the choices being made would turn out correct in the end. They made that commitment without a second thought. We came together in a way that was beyond expectations. It was probably the most moving experience I've ever had on a film project. While my last project came with great success, it also came with a ton of stress, enough so that I begin to question if it would be the last project for a long time. But I wasn't allowed to step away. I was willed into Fallen Star by our amazing lead, Abby Wolfe, and to then have this crew rally around this project so strongly, they gave me the energy and the dream of filmmaking back. The love from this crew and for each other is the greatest gift of all. As the film moved into post production and beyond, it's the love and support from everyone that continues to make Fallen Star a film for the records! We can't wait for you to see it!
