From "How Who Are You?" Winner Bob Mitsch –
I hope all the San Jose Dr. Who fans have enjoyed the start of the "How Who Are You?" marathon!
The one thing we've been asked that we didn't have time to cover in the studio was how we made our winning short entry. Well… it all started with one e-mail.
The subject line was "Dr. Who Fan Film Competition" and it simply contained a link to this blog discussing the rules for the "How Who Are You?" Competition. It was forwarded to me by my friend who cosplays the Third Doctor in our group and wishes to remain anonymous. I shall refer to him appropriately as John Smith.
He knew what with all the Who costumes and props I've assembled and my desire to eventually make a fan film, that this would be right up my alley. I told John I'd think about it. It was the day after Christmas and I was in a post-holiday meal coma, so fan films were not foremost on my mind.
Fast forward 7 weeks later with the Gallifrey One convention in Los Angeles approaching quickly. My friends were lined up to play all 10 incarnations of the Doctor for a skit in the Masquerade, which you can still watch here:
as well as a photoshoot we'd planned for that Saturday.
It occurred to me to use this opportunity to shoot a fan film entry for KTEH while we were at it.
So I took inspiration from Tony Lee's rather fabulous comic book mini series Doctor Who: The Forgotten and decided to focus the short on the Doctor himself through-the-years using our costumes/props as a linking motif.
The original plan was to shoot it on green screen but this presented too many headaches in post production especially with all the curly hair wigs! So instead, I called in a favor from a friend I work with, who sampled Peter Davison's TARDIS set walls from a 1984 photo still. He recreated the roundels and column in Adobe Illustrator and printed out 4 Roundel Sheets and 1 column sheet on 8 ft by 3 ft poster stock. We had our backdrop!
We were also lucky enough to be granted the use of a convention room — dubbed the
"Cosplay Hall" for Gallifrey One cosplayers to use to set up — as both our photo studio and our
video studio. So we shot both simultaneously with many Doctors floating back and forth between our backdrops which were only about 10 feet apart. I shot the video footage, while Scott (our 1st Doctor) and his wife shot the stills. Both us were handing off camera duties when we were needed as Doctors in the other's sessions.
I had hoped to include an appropriate companion per Doctor for each sequence but had to drop this plan mainly due to lack of time (we only had about a 3 hour window to shoot everything in), but also we didn't have a companion on-hand for the 1st or 8th Doctor! (Incidentally, you can see highlight from our photo stills session here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/scottsebring/. All pictures by Scott and Vickie Sebring. There's a nifty photoshop of all ten of us from this session here by Kevin Coppa, our 10th Doctor.)
Because I couldn't find my tripod that weekend we were forced to shoot handheld, using a nearby chair to steady the shots as best we could. Being handheld though meant I could do some nice push ins and pull outs for some of the transitions (see the Tenth-First or Seventh to Eighth Doctor handoffs in the video so it had it's advantages.
We got everything done that day except for the three opening shots with Kevin (Our Tenth Doctor) and the TARDIS prop in the lounge. We picked that up the following afternoon and were interrupted breifly by none other than Colin Baker! He'd stopped by on request of the owner to sign the interior of the box. We were happy to let him! You can see the aftermath of that here:
here:
The video was nearly complete failing one last pick up shot which was the close up of the 8th Doctor's hand sliding down the 9th Doctor's jacket. When we shot this at Gallifrey, I goofed on my continuity and had my friend use his right hand when in the master shot he'd used his left. So a week after Gallifrey, I had "John" hold up one of the sections of paper in my front door patio (which simulated the lighting we had best) and our 8th Doctor (now out of costume but off camera) re-do the motion but with the correct hand.
I cut the video together in a week or so. I first cut our 'finished' version which runs about 3:18. Then I began the process of shaving it down and getting it down to the final 2:00 minute competition length as well as adding sound effects for the TARDIS, and Sonic Screwdrivers. Although I temp tracked the video with the Orbital version of the Dr. Who theme, for entry I had to adhere to the rules of the contest on copyright, so I began searching for public domain music to score it with. No
luck!
Finally Scott, who has a musical background, graciously stepped in and provided an original score in the vein of Dr. Who for not one but *both* lengths. I was very pleased since he knocked it out of the park. Scott is also responsible for some clean up work on the video and the end logo/graphic
design. (Saying his help was invaluable is an understatement.)
Then came entering the video by the March deadline, the inevitable waiting and of course the excitement of seeing the other entries posted as well…
I'll pick up on this process in my next post.
In the meantime, let me mention two things about the Sonic Screwdriver that was edited out for time on tonight's segment:
First, The Pertwee/Baker prop was originally used in Gerry Anderson's Thunderbirds movie for one of the close up shots. It doesn't have the emitter head but it's hard to miss:
The BBC acquired the Century 21 prophouse and just reused the prop for Jon Pertwee. Second, before it was modified for use in the Thunderbirds movie, that same prop was believed to be a 1960's Activator tool use by Chiropractors in England. So it's likely the
Doctor did in fact use a real Doctor's tool! Imagine that.
That's all for now. Keep watching Dr. Who on KTEH because we have some neat props we'll be featuring on air! I'll be back to post next week with part 2 of our journey through the "KTEH How Who Are You?" Contest.
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