Feature Footage

[Staley]

Here is some footage from a feature we shot in August. This reflects some of my personal favorite material from our 18 day shoot. I was the DP and my business partner Danielle Jacobs was the Producer, enabling us to achieve a pretty high production value on a fairly modest budget with most days having several company moves.

We only had our HPX for 2 days before we started the picture. The moth at the front is something I captured on our one prep day. And the first poker shot is the first shot we did in the movie.

We have been nothing but happy with the HPX and it gets a lot of use. And we do rent it to insured productions in the Los Angeles area.

Check it out…



http://www.presentdaypictures.com/cr

Cheers,
Ben

[EditingFX]

wow. so many nice shots. great moves, racks, lighting (or lack of)
. i hope to do half as well on our feature starting this month.

[Zak Forsman]

hey it's Brea!! did you like working with her?

http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/8358/picture1tr4.jpg

[Staley]

She was great! With her hair and everything it was hard to keep the camera off of her in all the multi person scenes. She's very... for lack of a better word, "interesting", And I mean that in the very best way. She was a lot of fun to work with!

[hunter richards]

nice footage, what is the movie about? The name "Corspe Run" throws me off, any ways it looks good.

[Brad Neal]

Really nice! What lens did you use?

[Staley]

I sortof dubbed the movie a more passive, "Fight Club". It's about a bunch of young people addicted to video games, its also a love story, and it also takes a hard look a our society and what we dub, "the norm". It's not a standard, cookie cutter movie and doesn’t fit an easy description.

We used the Fuji 17x lens. It’s what the budget allowed so I approached it with the zen attitude of turning your weaknesses into creative opportunities. All in all I am pretty happy with the results. I think the pictures we made with our budgetary limitations are pretty impressive, although I’m not sure I’d dive in and do it again with such abandon. It was a VERY ambitious movie to shoot based on the script, our schedule and our budget.

I’m happy to answer any more specific questions.

[Ed Waters]

Wow , I assumed when watching it had to be a hi end hi def lens, VERY nice.

Did you shoot this 1080P ?

P2?

Post manipulation?

Thanks,

Ed

[smelni]

Its a common misconception that the Fuji lens doesnt appear to be a high end lens. The CAC correction is very good and makes the lens look great - the biggest drawback to the lens is the breathing - but other than that its great

[walnutcrunch]

What I find interesting, that I've been trying to figure out myself, is the orange glow around the vertical edge of the moth's body in the opening shot. Is that the CAC in effect? Should that really be a purple fringe? Is it corrected to a less noticeable colour.

I find when I put our Canon 2x into very CA prone situations I can see that exact same outline. You never notice it in movement, and it only really can be seen staring at 100% pause on a monitor with a blown out background and sharp lines, and most noticeably 2x extender. Anyone else notice this?

Was that shot taken using the fujinon 2x.

Don't get me wrong, I think CAC works wonders, just curious about that effect though.

[alexdias]

Great material Ben.
I believe this is statement to the possibilities of this camera/lens.
Very impressing.

Cheers,
Alex.

[Staley]

To answer the questions above

We had a huge amount of slow mo shots so we decided to just shoot in 720. I haven’t done the color correction yet. The movie is still being edited. Oh and… “Corpse Run” is a term from the game “Everquest, which I’ve never played, so it was new to me too.

The moth was shot with the doubler down and no CAC, this explains the color around the edges (which I happen to like). And yes, I think the Fuji IS a great lens if you discount the breathing, which all ENG lenses do. We just took that into account and the director and I planned the shots in ways we could compensate.

Thanks for all the questions and feedback everyone!

[Noel Evans]

Staley, some awesome shots in there.

Totally agree with you on the fuji lense, but IMO it shoots way above the price tag. Setting your shots in a particular way and distance from the camera can help a great deal with the breathing. And using the macro for focus elliminates it altogether if your subject is within range. Though not repeatable, using the focus in red on a Panasonic monitor can get you on target without too much hassle.

I noticed you were a bit blown out on a couple of shots, for example under the bridge shot and the dancing in front of the cars; and please take this sincerely as thats the way I am asking; was this by choice?

And although I liked your light set up in the opening round table shots, with the dark background, I felt it was a bit videoish in look and was wondering if you recall your cam settings on those shots?

Some really great stuff in there. Thanks for letting us see it.

[Jason Ramsey]

Hey, if you don't mind my asking what your settings were and the final MB size of your flash output there...

It played almost entirely glitch free for me on my crappy 1024/kbps w/ greater than 999ms ping satellite internet. And, I thought the compression quality was great.

Thanks,
Jason

[Staley]

NCJE – The shots around the table were the first scene we shot in the movie. I honestly can’t recall my settings although my AC surely has them in her palm device as she kept exhausting records of everything. That was a tough one, right off the bat. A six page (if memory serves) dialogue scene with 7 actors and we only had about 3 hours in the schedule to cover it. We made one lighting setup and went for it. I actually really like the look of this scene myself.

As for the “dancing”, yes, I wanted the light to blow WAY out. It doesn’t look like anything else in the movie. The harsh contrast was intentional. This look was a creative choice, dictated by budget and time constraints. Lots of action to shoot with over a dozen people at night and with very little time to work with. I am someone who hates 90% of all night scenes I see. They almost never look real to me, they look like someone hung a light behind some trees and called it good. Having said that, I don’t know if this scene looks real, but it IS cool. At least to me.

Under the bridge we had no power, we had a monitor from the film commission watching us and there was all kinds of rules because it was under a freeway. The sun was low and it was pretty dark down there, we bounced in some sunlight with a shiny board and made it work. So yes, the outside is pretty blown out but if you see the scene and understand how it fits in the movie, it’s a big turning point. I really like this look as well.

My approach is always to have something hot in the scene if I can. I tend to like a more raw (for lack of a better word) looking image and the director really wanted that kind of “rough around the edges” look for this movie. Thanks for the comments!

RAMSEY – I think I sent this through at 800mbs. I barely compressed it. The file is around 36megs I think. I just wanted it to look really great, but now I’ve been keeping a real close eye on the bandwidth. We’ll see how long it lasts… If you want exact specifics I can send them later. I try and not compress anything very much. I’d rather it look good than be super fast. I think crappy compression has a strange subliminal effect on people’s judgment of your work… heh heh

[John C Lyons]

very nice work guys. i have no idea how you managed to show so much footage and i really have no idea what the movie's about. you didnt spoil anything, that in of itself is a feat! thanks for sharing...