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Course of Action 35mm short

Course of Action is a short 35mm period piece about a WWII Destroyer Captain who risked his crew, ship, and carrer to turn the tides of the war. The crew of the USS Devexus is sent out to intercept a German U-Boat who carries a vital encyption system that had to be aquired in order to turn the war in favor of the Aliies. The Captain and crew sustain extreme casulaties as their sub huinting destroyer rams the prized U-Boat. The Captain then faces a court-martial because of his conduct, loss of lives, and loosing his ship.

Discussing a dolly shot with the Camera Crew

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Course of Action was shot in 8 days in Orlando, Florida. I used The Panavision Panaflex Gold and Primo lenses. The court martial scenes were shot at the Orlando Historic Museum in downtown. There were a lot of concerns with power shooting there. The museum was going to be open besides the floor we were shooting on. There were limited options to safely rig 5-wire throughout the building to the third floor to power our instruments. I chose to shoot on Kodak Vision 800T and correct at the lens.

The Vision 800T allowed us to only need a few 1200 par's, a daylight frsenel, and a daylight bonzi; even using an 85 filter. I wanted to shoot these scenes at a 4/5.6. I felt that would still bring out the great detail in the courtroom but not overkill our depth of field. I also wanted to take advantage of using a resonable zoom, which we did, and those tend to bottom out at a 4. The courtroom acts as a "now" time in the script flashing back to the ship and back again to the courtroom. I was lucky in that respect. I used the sun's natural advance on shoot days to illustrate a suttle passsing of time. The really great thing about the courtroom was all the exsisting lighting fixtures. They were all just for show with 12 watt bulbs- so we had a motivated source to work off of besides just the sunlight.They were the perfect praticals for the situation.