Close Encounters of the Cab Kind

Description

Close Encounters of the Cab Kind is an anthology series created for Youtube that captures the city of New York through the absurdist lens of a cab driver. Episodes are mostly comedic with a few dramatic episodes. Some stories are inspired by real life accounts while others are satire and social commentary.

Camera

Nikon GH2

Runtime

Between 1:24 - 5:19

Credits

Director: Alex Lee
Writer: Eric Corson
DP: Yuling Chow

Development Diary

Shot on location in Queens, NY with a shoestring budget. One of the first decisions we had to make was whether to shoot on location or in studio with a green screen. In the end I decided the show needed to feel authentic to work, and that a studio look would give it a feeling of being too contrived and not authentically New York. So we went with on location. Ooh boy.

It was a challenge working with a moving vehicle and within the boundaries of the law. Lighting was a real pain in the ass -- principal photography lasted two cloudless sunny ass days that made for extremely troublesome shadows anytime we passed a building and made for extremely blown out windows. We also had to have three people crammed in the trunk as we recorded -- myself, DP, and sound, and we had a streetside base. Getting clean audio also proved to be difficult even though we specifically scouted for locations with the fewest number of potholes and the least amount of ambient traffic noise. We shot all 10 episodes in 2 days for an average of about 11 pages a day. Gruelling, with little margin for course correction or reshoots.

Lessons learned:
Don't overvalue authenticity in the process. While it helped with performance since the actor was actually driving, without the proper resources the pursuit of authenticity can cause more net harm then good. Most of the best shots of the city were MoS or B-roll. We would have been best served doing part of it on location and the rest of the scenes in studio.