"UN2814" - Sony A1p/Letus35A short film

[jenningsp]

"UN2814" - Sony A1p/Letus35A

this is a 9min short film by Anthony Koreny. i was the DOP

we shot on the sony A1p PAL HDV camera in the pseudo 25p mode with the Letus35A adapter (now discontinued)

we used an assortment of nikon primes.. 28mm f/2.8, 35mm f/2.5, 50mm f/1.8 and a 135mm f/2.8.

we shot everything at f/2.8 in a studio. for close ups we had to adjust the flange distance on the letus as the minimum focus on my 50mm lens is 0.6m.

for lighting we had three red heads to back light the plastic. a soft box for the key light in the room and a kino for close ups.

this version is a preliminary cut. the only version i have... since this version Anthony has cleaned up a few of the scenes, done a new and improved colour grade and conformed everything for a 2.39 aspect ratio.

it's a pretty sound intensive movie, so turn your speakers up :D

EDIT- you can catch some HD stills two post down!!!!!!!:D:D

links -

youtube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3QiNpSncLE

slightly better quality than youtube - http://www.megaupload.com/?d=X0WL902I

[jenningsp]

i just watched the movie files.... the compression doesn't do it justice at all :(
i'll post some HD stills later

[jenningsp]

http://www.dvxuser6.com/uploaded/19156/1200611595.jpg

http://www.dvxuser6.com/uploaded/19156/1200611736.jpg

http://www.dvxuser6.com/uploaded/19156/1200611774.jpg

http://www.dvxuser6.com/uploaded/19156/1200611814.jpg

[jenningsp]

http://www.dvxuser6.com/uploaded/19156/1200611866.jpg

http://www.dvxuser6.com/uploaded/19156/1200611909.jpg

http://www.dvxuser6.com/uploaded/19156/1200611951.jpg

http://www.dvxuser6.com/uploaded/19156/1200612009.jpg

[jenningsp]

67 views later................

any comments?

[Charles Lowthian]

i'll only give a photography opinion, cos that's what i do :)

i liked the handheld. did you shoulder mount or wrist hold?

haven't used that model letus before, so couldn't identify if vignetting was during, or post with all the 'shutter' strobing.

my own opinion would be to darken the blacks and add a green/yellow colour shift (eg: saw III 'surgery' room) to give it a less natural balance.

the youtube version seemed a lot smoother than that higher quality link...were frames dropped?

would like to see the graded and a higher res version.

melbourne user too :thumbsup:

[jenningsp]

thanks for the comments :D

most of the handheld was done by pushing the LARGE camera battery into that little pit right between your shoulder and your pectoral mussel.. not my arm pit :D but there's this kinda comfortable position to hold the camera.... so i guess it's kind a half way between shoulder mounting and handheld.

the vignetting was mostly due to the way we did the lighting. but that adapter does vignette quite a bit. it's one of the reasons i'm upgrading to the SGpro soon :D
the other reason is it's got really poor edge to edge sharpness... you can see in most of the wide shots (that 80% of the movie because we used the 35mm lens the most) there is a "cone of focus", where everything except the center of the image is out of focus... you see it in the still of the wide shot of the blond guy standing in the plastic hallway.. his pants are in focus but his face and feet aren't. i can't wait to get the SGpro.

the stutter in the non-youtube file is because my cumputer screwed up the encode.... the youtube version was encoded by my friend, so it doesn't stutter as much but it's still a bad encode... the HD version doesn't stutter at all

the new colour grade is a lot more monochrome, with a slight blue tint. it looks very "sterile" :D i'll see what i can do about getting a HD version of that uploaded. it might take a while though.

YAY for Melbourne!!!! where abouts are you? what do you do?

i'm a film student at Footscray.