RIDE ALONG - a film by hybridtheory and xpac84

[Ben Sliker]

http://www.dvxuser6.com/uploaded/5649/1165087612.jpg

RIDE ALONG - A Clean Slate Production

Coming Soon to DVXUSER Dramafest.

Directed by Ben Sliker
1st AD/Grip - Brad Mate
Composer - Justin R. Durban - "Edgen"
Orginal Story Concept - Jennifer "Ma" Sliker

Eric Mitchell - Dan Black


Production Updates -
12/03/06 - Currently finalizing script, filling a few casting gaps. Contemplating shooting straight dvx or upgrading 35mm adapter and more primes.

12/06/06 - Received new adapter parts for B&H today. It cleans up the picture enough to convince me to go all 35mm adapter this time around. Starting storyboarding.

[Ben Sliker]

Here are some location pics. There is a police station in a strip mall near my townhome, and the cool thing about it is that there is always like 20 cop cars parked out in the parking lot, I plan on pulling right up next to them and shooting. That's basically what i did to get these pics.

http://www.dvxuser6.com/uploaded/5649/1166479016.jpg
http://www.dvxuser6.com/uploaded/5649/1166479000.jpg
http://www.dvxuser6.com/uploaded/5649/1166478985.jpg
http://www.dvxuser6.com/uploaded/5649/1166478959.jpg

[Ben Sliker]

reserved for pics

[Brandon Rice]

Dude, love the poster!

[Cryogenic Filmworks]

As Brandon says. Nice poster.

[Ben Sliker]

thanks guys, new sig banner to go with it. yay.

[griffin]

Poster looks great.

[Geoff_R]

Wow, thats the best poster I've seen for this fest yet! Awesome job. I think you're title and poster do a great job of defining your story and stimulating curiosity. I'm really anxious to see how this one turns out.

[Lake Films]

Great poster is right. Question, obviously that is a real crime/accident scene, but was the character there or 'added' in after the fact? Not photoshop savy, lol.

[Ben Sliker]

There's a great website Jack Daniel Stanley showed me last fest.

istockphoto.com

The photo is stock, which I know takes some of the mystery out of it, but I did do a lot of color correction, and then of course some paint brushes, and titling.

But thanks for the comments guys. I officially ordered the parts to upgrade my 35mm adapter, so I'll be shooting the whole thing with the adpater this time around. As opposed to "dead inside" which was half straight DVX/half 35mm. I suggest no one do this as it is murder to try to make them look the same in post.

[Edgen]

very slick poster! I'm diggin' it so far man :) Good luck with the shoot.

/j

[Ben Sliker]

Thanks Edgen.

Announcement: Edgen has once again decided to compose for us! Welcome to the team!

[Edgen]

aye, Glad to be aboard cap'an

Anxious to get started!

/j

[Ben Sliker]

sweet, my new 35mm adapter parts are coming today, once i have it put together, i'll put a old/new comparison together for you guys.

[Charli]

Nice poster.

[jeremytuttle]

sweet, my new 35mm adapter parts are coming today, once i have it put together, i'll put a old/new comparison together for you guys.

That would be cool to see. I also like the poster, good luck with the project.

[Ben Sliker]

First, thanks everyone for the comments on the poster!

I promise that I will get a video comparison up soon, but for right now you'll have to settle for some stills, but i think they might be better for explaining things anyway. If you can stretch your browser so that the images are 2 on top of 2, that's the easiest way to see the difference.

First, here's what I did on the suggestions of DVXuser twocik23. He originally built the adapter for me to which i upgraded.

My adapter is a static one, and was built in this order originally:
nikon f1.8 50mm lens - nikon f mount - 55mm spacer ring w/ground glass mounted inside - +10 asian macro - +10 asian macro - 55mm - 72mm step up - DVX

http://www.dvxuser6.com/uploaded/5649/1165711805.jpg

Here's the new setup:
nikon f1.8 50mm lens - nikon f mount - 55mm spacer ring w/ground glass mounted inside - hoya 55mm +10 close up - 55-58 adapter ring - century optics 58mm +7 achromatic diopter - 58-72 step up ring - DVX

http://www.dvxuser6.com/uploaded/5649/1165711826.jpg

And here is the difference. These are unaltered images from the DVX (well, flipped rightside up) subject 1 - girlfriend was approx 3-4 feet from the camera, subject 2 - paddle on wall was approximately 10 feet from the camera, lighting source was a single 200 watt "hair" light right in her face, iris stepped down in DVX.
http://www.dvxuser6.com/uploaded/5649/1165709714.jpghttp://www.dvxuser6.com/uploaded/5649/1165709748.jpg
http://www.dvxuser6.com/uploaded/5649/1165709769.jpghttp://www.dvxuser6.com/uploaded/5649/1165709789.jpg

I'll spare you the search on B&H and tell you that those new parts with shipping cost about $330 USD. Some might look at those images and tell me i'm crazy but i think there's a ton to be excited about. Here's what it fixed.

Focus: This one should be fairly apparent from the images but I think the most stunning example is in the paddle on the wall in the 2nd and 4th shots. The old adapter also tended to have a "sweet" spot (evidenced by the flag in the 4th shot) and unless things were in that zone, they were blurry. I also have shots for the new adapter where the CD spindle (lower right corner) is also in sharp focus.

Chromatic abberation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromatic_Abberation In lamens terms, this is where all of your light waves don't focus at the same distance, and it ends up looking out of focus as well. In the old adapter this contributes to the blurriness as well.

Color saturation: I was surprised to see this, as the new adapter stays truer to the colors than the old one, which seemed to flatten out the images, the new adpater has better saturation and color depth.

Smearing: This had to do with the asian macros being a cheap piece of glass. In other shots, when a person would reach the corners of the lens, their head would warp or smear towards the corner, which looked just awful. Because they are cheap, the asian macros are untested as to the power of the lens, so they could be a +10, or a little more or less. The ones that I had happened to not be exactly +10 so they warped the image. the hoya +10 and CO achromatic diopter +7 are more expensive, thus more accurate to their power.

Well, that's about all I have to say about that. The moral of the story is: DON'T BUY CHEAP PARTS, there are a few things you can get away with in the video world, but optics tends not to be one you can skimp out on.

[Brandon Rice]

Thanks for the write up on your new setup man! It's looking great!

[Ted Arabian]

OMG! I LOVE THAT POSTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now to finish reading your thread!

-Ted

[Ted Arabian]

hybridtheory, nice bit of info on the adapter. And I like your results from you efforts.

Twocik23 is pretty cool from the exchanges that I've had with him. Good luck with this man! Excited to see it.

AND I LOVE THAT POSTER!!!!!!!!!

-Ted

[ZFarms Productions]

hey i can't wait to see the film. good luck with it!

[Ben Sliker]

TED! love to see you here man, you bring good energy. thanks for the praise.

I'm telling you ravinesedge, it's bad luck to switch avatars, I WANT MORE GRIM REAPER.

[ZFarms Productions]

TED! love to see you here man, you bring good energy. thanks for the praise.

I'm telling you ravinesedge, it's bad luck to switch avatars, I WANT MORE GRIM REAPER.

i ran out of Reaper ones LOL... i'll see what i can dig up

[Ted Arabian]

TED! love to see you here man, you bring good energy. thanks for the praise.

HA HA, Man, My pleasure!

That poster is so awesome. What, how did you come up with that? Seriously... I'd love to hear what the creative process was for your poster. It is spectacular!

-Ted

[Ben Sliker]

Here ya go Ted -

it's less creative than you think.

The background image i bought for 1 dollar off of istockphoto.com, brought it in to photoshop, and increased the saturation and contrast to make it look like it is now.

The red, white and blue accents on the top are brushes that I downloaded for photoshop, a set called "grunge corners".

The text on the bottom is called "movie poster" and I found it on 1001freefonts.com.

The title "ride along" is a font called "invisible killer" i believe, and was also found on 1001freefonts.com. Be wary of that site, cause you will spend and hour looking at fonts and not even know it. To get the "mirror" or "looking glass" effect on the text, I simply used photoshop's "free transform" tool and pulled the top straight down past the bottom, so it was reversed the way it is now. After that, i applied a gradient to it so that it looks like it disappears.

So there are all my big photoshop secrets.

[Noel Evans]

Poster is great. Excellent colours. Good luck!

[jeremytuttle]

Thanks for the info on the 35mm adapter. Your new one produces some great images.

[snodart]

Yep, the poster rocks. Great title... I can only imagine where this will go. Can't wait to see it.

[Ben Sliker]

new location photos in the second post.

[Norm Sanders]

Ben, just saw your banner when you posted in my thread & thought I'd check this out. LOVE the poster, and the title grabs me because I've been on dozens of ridealongs ... though I've also been referred to as the ridealong curse, because it's always been slow as snot when I'm along for the ride ... ZERO action, lol. Just my luck.

Anyway, looking forward to your film!

[Ben Sliker]

wow, dozens? we could use you as a reference for ridealongs. lol. Any particular reason for all of them or do you just like to feel like your "on the beat"?

[Norm Sanders]

My best friend of 8 years or so was an officer, as well as #2 entry man on the metro SWAT, etc. So it was just a fun opportunity to hang out, try & find bad guys, etc. I was also on the hiring list for a few years, testing & placing quite high ... then when the rubber met the road, I decided that being a police officer really wasn't my dream, and I'd prefer to just play one sometime on screen instead. :) So I pulled myself out of the hiring process several years back.

[Kyle Stebbins]

love the picture in the poster... dont really like the font for the title, but, eh... looking forward to this! don't get in trouble with those cops... we had some problems with ours!!
-kyle