We locked our cast a week or two ago, but we’d like to take this opportunity to officially announce them to our readers!

Jake White – “Tyl”

 Caleb Courtney – “Eli”

 Sky King – “Lex”

 Aaron  Kuban – “Adrian”

 Spenser P. – “Kit”

 Tyler Thomas – “Hal”

Stay tuned for an update as we move into production mode!

Hi guys. Ben here. Quite a lot’s happened since our last post and things are really getting into gear with “Sol.” Casting is almost complete – we have 5 of our 6 principal roles locked. Our equipment is about all lined up and next week we’re going to start interviewing to fill out our crew positions. It’s great to hear from so many energetic and (very) qualified craftspeople from this area and it’s been a pleasure to meet so many filmmakers from here (and from all around) that want to help bring “Sol” to life. But more on that later. Today’s post is all about creating the sets for the film…

One of the great things about making a sci-fi is that you can come up with some really interesting set pieces and find cool ways to make something that no one has seen before. A lot of the story involves young adults being lost on a desolate planet so there aren’t too many sets to build (nature has given us some great ones) but the ones we have built have been exciting to watch come together. Our first set is The Slip Gate – a framework housing a doorway that allows instantaneous travel:

Should be pretty crazy.

It’s being built in Asheville by the Production Designer and two local artists that have come on-board as well. They’re a wonderful group to work with so it’s really productive every time we get to sit down and toss around different design ideas and discuss how to bring all the sets and props to life. We’ve got a really tight schedule with all of these so putting them all together has been a huge exercise in working as fast as possible while still trying to design something that’s new and interesting.

The Slip Gate is made with a combination of steel plating for the structure and supports, and thick copper tubing that’s going to house the portal in the film. It’s been really important to me that everything in the film looks real so almost all of our props and sets are being made with materials that would be used with something industrial like this. It can make things pretty difficult to work with at times (and heavy) but the look has been really paying off with our camera tests.

All the props and sets in the film are also supposed to look quite worn and weathered – they’ve been on the planet for a very long time – so we’ve been experimenting with ways to make something new look old and distressed. One great method we’ve come across is mixing types of paint. We’ve done several different coats on all the materials and, when mixing gloss, semi-gloss, and matte, the end result is a look of lots of wear and tear. Once we’re out on location with the set we’ll also take the blow torch to its surface to add some really great burn lines that simply just make this thing look like it was dragged through hell.

Our second principal set piece is a crashed spaceship that we’ve been building for the last few weeks. We’ve got about another week left for construction but it’s coming along well. We wanted something really sturdy to function as the ship’s foundation so we decided to clean out the frame of a fiberglass boat and build from there.

Finding the right boat took a bit of work. I wanted something pretty large because this set is supposed to dwarf all the characters. After an extensive search around the area we ended up finding a 16′ Fiberglass V hull boat on Craigslist. We really wanted a boat with a V-shaped hull because it looks much more graceful and helps break up the “boat shape” in the foundation. So after spending an afternoon driving out to TN and lugging this thing back up the mountain we got to work stripping it down and building our set on top of it…

We wanted to give the ship a pretty interesting look so we’ve started adding all sorts of materials on to its surface. Jinx and Bob, our two lead set builders in Asheville, have come up with pretty cool ways to bring this to life. It’s definitely picked up some size over the course of construction too:

More to come! Four weeks until production…

BC

Hi guys. Ben here. So before we dive into the happenings with “Sol” I thought now would be a good opportunity to fill everyone in on the project background so we’re all on the same page. “Sol” is a film we’ve been working on for right about eight months now. I’ve had the story in my head for about a year and a half but finally got everything to a point where I thought it was ready to start writing the script around February of ‘09.

The premise of the film is a futuristic science fiction about a group of young adults that find themselves marooned on a hostile alien planet with no means of rescue. The title “Sol” is based on the Latin word “sun.” This term is often used for specifying Earth’s particular parent star, and the same holds true for its usage in the film. Even though the characters find themselves on a far-away planet the story still greatly revolves around the particular star that is Earth’s distant sun.

So I started the script back in February, locked myself in a room, and had a first draft finished in about a month. The script was a bit long and still needed some work so it wasn’t really until May that I thought I had a version that was ready to roll. Of course there were lots of other projects going on to the side but it was always being worked on in some form or another. To give a more concise example – when I started writing, the view from my window was this:

and when I finished writing this was my new view:

It’s been a pretty strange experience because we’ve actually been hiring a crew, scouting locations, and having sets built before the script was even finished. I’d never really recommend doing this (it can be quite stressful and confusing at times) but it worked out well for us because I knew there were certain elements that wouldn’t change so we simply started with those. We’re also working on a pretty tight schedule so I thought it was important to get the ball rolling as quick as possible. So far so good…

While finishing up the script I spent the earlier summer season driving all over the coast of NC to find the best location to match the script. The story takes places on a desert island, which is pretty easy to find when most of the OBX are tiny dots of sand, but finding one that suited the story and was logistically feasible was a bit more complicated. The cast and crew are going to number around twenty so managing a production that would have to shuttle that many people to an island at least twice a day would be tricky. Especially when none of them have roads, electricity or any infrastructure. We searched all over the coast trying to find the specific kind of terrain the film needs (additionally I think I’ve combed every inch of US coastline on Google Earth) and we’ve finally set a location. It’s fairly far up the coast, actually right by the area where the Wright brothers flew the first aircraft.

The later summer months have been divided into a fast-paced marathon of casting, shot designing, building sets, hiring a crew, managing financing, finding costumes, arranging VFX, settling logistics like booking beach houses for a month for everyone, building props, story-boarding, ironing out our post work flow, and camera tests (all at pretty much the same time.) Definitely one of the more unique summers I’ve ever had. As this is the Pre-Production section of the blog, all of these elements are going to be topics of discussion for the coming posts leading up to principal photography.

Anyway I hope this clarifies the situation for everyone and makes sense of future updates. Less than two months until production…

BC

Hi guys. This is Ben Carland, the director of “Sol,” and I wanted to welcome everyone to our new Development Blog. Now that the wheels are really picking up speed (we’re two months away from production) we figured this would be a great way to keep people updated and in the loop as things come together. The Development Team and I have been working on this film since January so hopefully this will give a nice little chronicle of how “Sol” has grown from a few pages of writing in my notebook into a full length feature film.

What to expect…

Over the course of “Sol” we’re going to divide this blog up into three sections: Pre-Pro, Production, and Post. The Pre-Production Section will cover everything that we’re working on as we prepare for principal photography. This will include excerpts from camera tests, set building, VFX trials, casting updates, etc. We’ll also include updates from various members of the Development Team to discuss the different aspects that they’re working on.

The Production Section of this blog will contain posts and information from when we’re out on location filming. Cast and crew members will be invited to post on an almost daily basis (as our schedule permits) about anything ranging from what we filmed that day, different elements of the production that are most interesting to them, or posting photos and videos about what’s going on.

Finally, the Post Production Section will include all sorts of updates pertaining to the completion of the film (editing, VFX, sound effects, scoring, etc.) and what we’re working on after we’ve finished shooting it. We’ll feature entries from members of the Post Team on “Sol” and include excerpts from the finished film as it comes together. In addition to samples from VFX Artists and Sound Designers, we’ll post plenty of updates from our Composer as he works to bring the soundtrack of “Sol” to life. This will be an especially exciting section of the blog for me because we have a lot of interesting and dynamic ideas planned for creating the score.

In addition to all of our production updates we’d love to open a section that’s exclusively dedicated to Q & A. Any types of questions are welcome and we think this would be a great way to bring more people into the filmmaking process. There is no set schedule or criteria for submitting questions or how we’ll be answering them. Feel free to send any questions to questions@obsidiancollective.com at any time. We’ll post the question and answer whenever we think we’ve found a submission that’s fun or interesting to discuss.

I think there are a lot of interesting aspects to the production of “Sol” and to the way that we’re bringing it to life that can be a lot of fun to discuss.  The film is a science fiction so there’s tons of room for imagination when using that genre, we’re making the film using a lot of the newest and most interesting technologies available, and the production is entirely local to NC so this is a great opportunity to take part in something that’s exclusively a home-town effort. This is a fairly small size production so the story of bringing “Sol” to life is going to be much more personal and first-hand than a lot of the larger films out there. Seeing a smaller film like this take shape should also be a great look at “getting a lot out of a little” and realizing what independent productions can pull off with a little ingenuity.

The production of “Sol” is just small enough to be possible at an independent level but large enough to be interesting, exciting, and filled with challenges. We hope you’ll follow with us for what is sure to be a very unique and memorable ride…

BC