4 Hours Left...for the Campaign Fundraiser!

Exciting news! We're 70% funded with just 4 hours left in the campaign. Thank you to everyone for your support!

This has been an amazing experience and I appreciate knowing I have such wonderful folks behind me. Keep an eye out for updates on the campaign rollout after the fundraiser ends today here at: INDIEGOGO.COM/WRHAP

Color Correction Results for 35mm PSA

Here are the results from our color correction session with the wonderful Damian at CO3:

I really appreciated the time, effort and patience they put into our little PSA. It was my first color correction session at a post-production company, let alone one as big a deal as Company 3, but they made me feel comfortable and very welcome as I proceeded to use up nearly each and every minute allotted for our two hour session. See how it compares to our initial vision in the last post.

Thanks Damian!

LESS THAN 5 DAYS LEFT in our fundraiser, don't miss your chance to back a great cause: INDIEGOGO.COM/WRHAP

Color Correction Tests in Photoshop

To prepare for our color correction session for the PSA last week, our DP, Sandra, did the following color correction tests in Photoshop to screenshots from our footage. See how she added some contrast to let the whites go white and blacks go black and saturated the image so the reds stand out, but not so much that the skin tones get too red. She also brightened the overall picture to add a bit of punch to the scene:

She wasn't in town for the color correction session and I was a little nervous going on my own. It was my first time color correcting and my first time at a post-production house and I wanted to get it right. She prepped me with the following common sense tips on what to watch out for:

1) Be sure that everything matches from shot to shot
2) Check that all the actors skin tones look normal
3) Keep the whites white and the reds red
4) Be consistent with the lighting
5) And finally -- Don't worry about trying to talk to them in their terms, just tell them what you want in your own words and they should be able to figure it out from there.

Worked like a charm. Thanks Sandra!

Support the campaign at: INDIEGOGO.COM/WRHAP 
Only 8 days left!!!

How to Get Your PSA on the Air!

If you work in social marketing or health outreach, you probably know how challenging it is to get a public service announcement (PSA) on the air. The very nature of a PSA is that you don't pay for advertising time on television or radio, because as a public service - it's free. Unfortunately this has often relegated many PSAs to the nether regions of late night or early morning between the hours of 1 to 5AM, when most of our target audience is asleep.

To make sure our PSA gets aired during prime viewing hours during important HIV testing awareness days we are pulling all the stops to grab station managers' attention and to track the number of times each PSA is aired. We're raising funds and support via Indiegogo.com at: INDIEGOGO.COM/WRHAP

We're just $755 and 12 days away from reaching our goal, please help us make a difference in our community by supporting our fundraiser :)

Check out our instagram pics from our expanded online presence at tumbler and instagram !!!

Why is the room so light?

An award-winning post production house has generously offered to fit our spot in for color correction. While we wait to hear back on possible days and times, I've been going through the lighting references I collected during pre-production. We shared a lot of options with our DP, Sandra Valde, but what they all had in common was a flood of light. The goal was to create an ethereal feel to the environment. (I almost used "surreal" but that word is used so much...)

We wanted viewers to know that, while the characters are at a house party, it's not supposed to be realistic. The set design is highly stylized. The sofa and pillows tell us it's a living room, but it doesn't look like anyone's living room that we know. In order to suspend viewers' disbelief, we used an exaggerated amount of light so they know that the world is not real, so they know that it is a representation of real life.

This way audiences will hopefully not take the game and the card reveal at the end literally, but instead will recognize it as a visual metaphor. The game, the card and the blindfolds are all symbols. The game represents sexual encounters that we may have throughout our life. The card represents our health status. If we're wearing a blindfold by not getting tested, how can we know what we're passing around?

Can you tell which reference inspired our look?

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The sound of "Sharing"

We were initially considering something dark and edgy. The term, "dubstep," was tossed around. We wanted something that would appeal to our target age group: 18 to 35 year olds

Our editor (John Carey) introduced us to composer Keith Kenniff's catalog and selected "Rituals" as our temp music. Temp music is a film term for the temporary soundtrack used during the edit until licensed music becomes available. "Rituals" is a playful indie pop track and the polar opposite from what we initially had in mind. We fell in love with it!

HIV/AIDS is a serious condition, but we are attempting to distance the diagnosis from the stigma. We want women to be happy and in control of their reproductive health, not distrustful or in fear, so we thought the playfulness of "Rituals" would be the perfect juxtaposition to lift the somber tone that our PSA might otherwise have.

We finally decided to make it official and contacted composer Keith Kenniff for permission to license his song! And he said, "Yes." We couldn't be happier with our music selection for the PSA!

Support the campaign at: INDIEGOGO.COM/WRHAP

Things change...Being Flexible with Your Vision

Some of you may have noticed that several things from the production still are different than in the original inspiration boards. For one thing, everyone in the cast is wearing black instead of white. Secondly, the blindfolds are white in the final production instead of black. This color switch isn't a mistake. In the time between development, when an idea is first shaped, and final production...things can change.

It was all very well thought out (See Friday's post). So what happened? Why switch the wardrobe to black and the blindfold to white. It was a lighting issue. Even though 35mm film is more sensitive than video, an all white set design with actors dressed all in white would be too much. The scene would look, "blown out," which is a film term for when an image appears overexposed to light, and therefore hard to see.

We didn't want to blind viewers, so we switched the colors. We were still able to keep the red + white + black color scheme, though, which still helps the PSA stand out.

Support the campaign at: INDIEGOGO.COM/WRHAP