Test footage: The Basement

[PoEun1]

Forget this one. I'm having some trouble loading the video here.

[Valdimer]

Ok, here we go. I got it figured out this time. ;)



Now, keep in mind, this is our first real test with this camera, and we've only got one, so we had to go back and reshoot each shot.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GPTFPuqU68


Check it out, and give us some feedback!

[Jack Daniel Stanley]

looks pretty good
I liked the floating documentary style camera, especiall from the perspective at the end of gthe gurney.

Your image is a little low contrast, however, meaning the blacks aren't very rich.

Also, crushing the blacks some will make the image seem sharper and the environment feel darker without actually making it in darker.

So try getting a little more light into the camera and crushing the blacks. You can also bring things WAY down in post without adding noise (you can't make them brighter without introducing a little noise or a lot beyond a point). So when you bring things down in post, the blacks won't get blacker beyond a point just more things will become black as the shadows get crushed. But if you shoot with more light then the brightest part of th image remains the iceberg tip that you can still see properly exposed or darkened as the rest of the image "melts" into the crushed blacks.

Take a look at "SHED" on my website in my signature (hello Basement meet the Shed).

I got a good gore / film look buy pumping light into the camera, shooting with the master pedestal way down, lots of in camera saturation and then using a bleach bypass filter in post.

Not that your fillm has to look like my film, just want to show you the far end of the contrast spectrum and you can take it or leave it.

Last thing .. to sell the ear bit. I would use multiple shots there to sell that more. Have him go in like you do in that medium close shot, but rathe than have him dip out of frame cut to an extreem closeup of him sawing on the ear (don't have to see actual cutting, just a sawing motion with new ooze spilling around the knife) and then put the cut off part in the actors and cut to him finishing sawing and removing that part in a wide shot a little further back than the medium (so we can't see that the real is in tact so easily) or cut back to the medium if there's enough goo on the real ear, or cut back to the medium and follow his hand away from the real ear as he brings the piece away so the real ear is no longer in the shot.

- Jack

Pretty creepy stuf

[Lake Films]

Jack....Loved "Shed", great job with no dialogue, I love it. I'm working on getting something like that going. Scene files, care to share? What did you use for CC, magic bullet or Graeme?

[Jack Daniel Stanley]

I think that one was all graeme Nattress , that was before Magic Bullet 2.0 as the old MB ran booty on Mac.

here are the settings
SETTINGS
LENS = Anamorphic Adapter.

DETAIL LEVEL -5
V DETAIL LEVEL -2
DETAIL CORING +3
CHROMA LEVEL +5
CHROMA PHASE 0
COLOR TEMP 0
MASTER PED -12
A. IRIS LEVEL -4
GAMMA CINE-LIKE V
MATRIX ENRICHED
SKIN TONE DTL ON
V DETAIL FREQ THIN
Progressive 24p ADVANCEDthat was my first short really
after a few more I would now put the chroma phase at +2 as I did on Odd Squad because this cools of the DV red shift which is aggrevated by the cranked chroma -- some of our red blood really bled ... pixelwise I mean.

Then like I said, in post I basically used nattresses bleach bypass. You can pull down the blacks, crank the hilights, and desaturate all right there.

May have used the proc amp to really crush the blacks in those shots where he's just floating in black ... not sure though ...

ok this is incentive for me to put my BTS online, since Jarred is no longer selling the Zombie Fest DVD's ... encoding web versions now ... will be up later tonight and you can see how we did the makeup and lit it.

[Lake Films]

Thanks. Cool, look forward to it!

[PoEun1]

Thanks for the advice! I will look into the suggestions you mentioned. This was our very first attempt at using the camera. Hopefully we will get better :)

[marlenedegrood]

Haven't watched Shed in a while.....I forgot how great it is. Jack......you are the master! Thanks for sharing more info with us.

[bherr]

I don't know what you're using for blood, but the stains on the killer's arms aren't convincing...blood doesn't stain skin. If it's dried blood, then it's dark maroon, almost brown-black. If that's a tattoo on his arm, then ignore this.

[Jack Daniel Stanley]

Haven't watched Shed in a while.....I forgot how great it is. Jack......you are the master! Thanks for sharing more info with us.
thanks :)

I didn't mean to threadjack ...
just saw some bloody dudes in a "Basement" and the image was a little lo contrast ... so thought I might have some pointers on high contrast and blood as per "Shed".

speaking of the blood that was just mentioned ... and since we may all die before my BTS encodes for the web (its saying 20 hours left -- why is compressor running so slow?!) ... but speaking of the blood, which is talked about on the BTS, I recommend 3 types for best economy, and effectiveness.

A liter size jar of stage blood is like $30 - $50 dollars.
So ... what we had was
1 small bottle of coagulated stage blood
1 small bottle of regular stage blood
and
8 bottles of Hershey's Strawberry syrup
and
4 or 5 Bottles of Chocolate syrup

its so much cheaper and you can mix the red to brown ratio under the shooting lights on camera (older blood = browner, and of course the new shouldn't be too red)

We had 24 bottles of syrup (or however many it took to fill a 5 gallon drum) to make pooling blood when the blue mutant is shot iin ODD SQuad and it all cost about $12 dollars. Would have been over 1 hundred $ with stage blood.