"Down the Road" Production Blog: Preparing a News Scene

I must confess, I'm not entirely done with filming. There's a few odds and ends still left that I've been setting aside since they don't involve the main actors (and hence can be filmed whenever). But after continually going back and forth between editing, visual effects, and filming the occasional insert shot, it's been a little hard to keep track of it all. So, for the time being I've set aside post-production until I'm truly done with filming. And I gotta say, it feels really nice to be back in production, standing and moving, getting outside, working with something physical rather than just a computer.

There's still about 3-4 full side scenes left to film. And one of those… a news report.

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This is the main thing I needed up until recently for the scene: a mic flag, you know… one of those little boxes with the channel's logo on it.

I was able to get it pretty cheap: approx. $10. And that would otherwise be uneventful news… if not for the fact that I foolishly decided to CUSTOM BUILD one out of a tissue box BEFORE realizing I could just buy one! Argh!

So, without further ado, I bring you my crazy process of building one on my own...

As I mentioned earlier, I began with a tissue box, cutting it into corners so I could shrink it to the right size I wanted.

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Here's a size comparison. Ah, the power of "Tissue Box Shrinkage"!

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After taping it together at the right size, I began cutting appropriately sized holes for the mic I was going to use. Then, I wrapped it in a single sheet of paper to smooth out the edges.