Art History movie and beautiful cinematography...

[pn.md]

Jarred, I just found the Art History site. Yes, I know I'm way behind. I didn't realize that you were involved in it.
I'm sure this has been discussed already but... :)

http://www.stealart.com/trailer/trailer1_700k.mov

My question is, how is that your picture looks so film like and appears like it could have been made by a major studio?
I saw another film shot with DVX and it had nowhere the same look.

Both productions utilized our beloved DVX100.
Is it the acting, props, lighting? I noticed *you guys had all this amazing mounting equipment for the DVX.

Did you guys use some special filters or lenses to get the film look? What filter did you guys use in the basketball scene? It has the yellow sepia glow. Did you use the Panasonic anamorphic lens? ::)

[pn.md]

Jarred, I read somewhere else that you said the yellow tone was used to prevent piracy or something like that? Well you got me ::)

Wow, I think the yellow orange tint gives the picture a feel very much like Bruckheimer/Simpson productions. Very slick and modern. Which is beautiful, IMO. If it was not intended they should consider keeping it. I would like to see the trailer without it 8)

[jumar]

Holy wierd.

I just watched that trailer and in the scene in the metal shop I was thinking, "Wow, that looks a lot like something I shot in the summer". Then I read the cast bios. Then I watched it again.

I shot a short in the summer on the DVX100 that took place entirely in a metal shop. The kicker is that it was with the same actor that's in that shot (Hayden). Isn't that bizarre?!

[Zoomforce]

Art history was quite the collaboration of some major talent. Todd Williams DP'd, Nick Bicanic was the director and the cast was exceptional.

We took the DVX to the max.. we wrapped the camera with about $100,000 worth of cine equipment and shot everything with filters. We had the full light truck and a crew of 50 to bring it all together.


The yellow wasn't for copy protection, don't know where that rumor started but it was inspired by bad boys. *


We always had between 3-6 pieces of glass infront of the lens, most people just color in post but Todd wanted to do it in camera and thank god it worked. We have gotten pretty good response so far, I was in LA at DVexpo and Adam Wilt projected the trailer and I fielded some questions about it and *pretty much everyone couldn't believe it came from this camera.

[Drew599]

I know someone has already asked this but when will the DVD for Art History be out. Plus how long is it. As I understand its something that was done to try and get funding for a feature.

[David Jimerson]

I saw one of the dolly rigs in Videomaker magazine -- I was impressed. Glad to see that the finished product is pretty cool.

A $7,000 budget, eh? Is that US or CDN? 8) Either way, Kevin Smith, eat your heart out . . .

[kyle_doris]

damn, 7k budget. yikes... that's smaller then my budget, hehe. kudos.

[Zoomforce]

yeah US$.. totally unrealistic though. It was produced by a production company that called in alot of favours. It was more a concept production that companies really wanted to support. Equipment trucks, Every piece of Camera Equipment you could want, full crew, Catering the whole nine yards.

[nickybee]

jarred's right - it's an unrealistic figure - though within the grasp of people with some connections to explore.

basically the $7k USD roughly breaks down like this 30% locations, 30% food, 30% camera/grip/lighting gear...
(obviously we're getting people for free and not paying close to book rates on gear - but then most indie productions don't pay book rates anyway) - thing is even if you had all this gear for free there's no guarantee you could replicate the shots...

the kicker is that we had a skilled dp (Todd) a DVX100 expert (Jarred) and an experienced crew so as far as the look was concerned sometimes that makes all the difference.

For example - the basketball scene is all natural light - not a single light source was used - a lot of people don't believe that...

Locations wouldn't have been so much if the metal shop hadn't totally screwed us over - you can read more about that on the website if you like.

I've seen test blowups to 35mm that hold up very well - but you'll be able to judge for yourself very soon - the final cut has been complete for almost a month but we just have to redo the titles (make them TV safe) and add the commentaries and behind the scenes...
you'll have it before Valentine's day.

nick

[Zoomforce]

you forgot to give yourself directing credit.. and it was Nick that came up with the revolutionary 2 camera "shotgun" rig that they showed in Videomaker magazine.

[nickybee]

it's called modesty.
notice I also called you a DVX expert when in fact you're a hopeless loser who spends loads of time milling aluminum sheets...ha ha

nick

[J.R. Hudson]

Modesty? What's that?

So anyway, the other day I had some chick checking me out...

[kyle_doris]

is it okay to crit the trailer here? i'm not sure if that's welcomed. :-/ but i do have some questions about something in the trailer i noticed that bothered me somewhat.

possibly this is something best to mention one on one, because i'd like some insight into the specifics of it. i understand if it's not cool. either way, let me know.

peace.

-kd

[J.R. Hudson]

Feel free to say whatever you want in here, just don't criticize the trailer. :D

Of course, Kyle. That's what the forum is for.

[kyle_doris]

i have an issue with the 'hollow' sounding audio at parts, especially with the exchange where the women says 'quite the contrary'. i think this might be due to the mixing, because the high bass of the music contrasted with the audio is odd. the sound doesn't have much body, it sounds very handheld/on the run/video work. which seems to be juxtaposed with the very stylized visuals.

[nickybee]

just kidding...of course you are more than welcome to say anything...

to answer your comment - though you may well not consider this much of an answer.

Shooting finished (it was a 4 day shoot) on a particular sunday.) - the wrap party was the following weekend.

The day before the wrap party (having only ever had a quick look at the footage to grab some stills for the website) - I decided that since the editor who was going to be doing the film was busy I would cut together some footage to show people what we had done.

I didn't originally intend for the trailer to stay up as long as it did (we intend to cut a "proper" trailer as it were but never ended up doing it)

Anyway I sat down with Vegas 4 (having never used it before) and took the music track we had rights to for the opening titles and glued together one minute of stuff. (in a couple of hours)

ok fine so I paid some attention to what I was "gluing" etc etc - but the point being sound mixing was the least of my worries at the time - getting something done to show the crew the result of their efforts was

sadly I never went back to fix it - you'll notice for example things like the line that the Alex character speaks "steal it and replaced by an exact replica"...

the word replica is totally gone - it just wasn't there in that take. (the sound post guy dug it out and found it eventually)

so while this is a long winded explanation the fact is that the footage in that trailer (with the exception of the web compression and some simplistic after effects titling) is basically untouched and my sound mixing is limited to cross fades (no EQ of any kind)

so yes - it sounds a bit odd at times...

hope this clears things up

nick

[kyle_doris]

very cool. thanks :)

the reason i ask is, with the project i'm working on right now it is almost entirely dialogue. my background is in visual not audio.

so when i heard that the first thing that came to mind was "if that's how the audio sounds through the XLR inputs of a DVX, i'm really in a bad position." i haven't purchased the DVX-100A yet (actually my crew will have two) so alot of this for me is on other people's word and reviews as such.

through this whole process i have concluded that audio mixing is prolly going to be the hardest part of the whole project, especially since it's SO important. if anyone has some good tips for me that would be great. i don't have a huge budget. *however, my budget is large enough to definately get some very good audio equipment.

thanks for the explaination, now i'm not completely freaking out. hehe. pheew :)

i hope i didn't offend, i just feel i need to ask these questions because it's the only way i'll learn more about specific areas i feel i might not have the most expertise in.

peace.

[nickybee]

of course you didn't offend - that's how I learned a lot of stuff...well that and google.

I imagine it's similar for a lot of other people...

as to the sound - I've been involved with two projects using DVX100 so far - one was a TV mini series (aired on CBC) and we did all sound to DAT (steadicam guy/DP insisted)...the other was Art History - where we did all sound to camera...

basically we had boom mic, lav mic and two radio mics (rarely used) going to the mixer and then to the camera's XLR jacks...

the sound is no different (at least none that anyone has ever pointed out) to the DAT...

so I wouldn't worry about that...as to the onboard mic itself - I have absolutely no idea how good/bad it is

nick

[Taylor Moore]

NickyBee.
What was the CBC TV series...

[nickybee]

it was called "Under the Cover" - It ran on Zed (it was created and written by Dominika Wolski - who you see as Stella in Art History).

zed/cbc has kept quicktimes of them on the website so feel free to see it there (I was the co-producer on that particular series - it was shot on DVX100 in camera letterbox)

http://zed.cbc.ca/go.ZeD?CONTENT_ID=35119&FILTER_KEY=2973&page=conte nt
http://zed.cbc.ca/go.ZeD?CONTENT_ID=35121&FILTER_KEY=2973&page=conte nt
http://zed.cbc.ca/go.ZeD?CONTENT_ID=35122&FILTER_KEY=2973&page=conte nt

here are all three episodes...have fun

nick

[combatJJ]

I just watched all those videos and really liked them. What kind of steadicam did you use for those?

[pn.md]

Jarred or Nickybee,
I really like that Bad Boys inspired yellow filter. ;D
Do you know what brand it was?

[Zoomforce]

it was a tiffen 6x6. I think we used 2 seperate yellows at various points.. and a chocolate too.

[pn.md]

Thanks for the info Jarred. What the heck is chocolate?
Do you think Michael Bay and Bruckheimer create their unique slick picture tone with camera filters or in post production?

You really do have THE definitive DVX100 forum on the web! :D

[nickybee]

this has probably been covered elsewhere in the forums - but the steadicam used was designed for cine cameras (it was a full on steadicam - meaning not some cheapo imitation) - our steadi op (also our dp - Dean Heselden) custom made a case (From two cheese plates and bunch of iron bars) which made the camera much heavier and therefore easier to balance.

he had a wireless video link setup on the rig...I wish I had some pictures of it all - but at the time I had other things on my mind.

nick

[Zoomforce]

chocolate is a color of filter. We may of used a tobacco as well, to be honest its been awhile so I can't remember.