FS7: Teaser for feature fiction/doc I have in development

jasonbrooks

jasonbrooks

New member
Six minute teaser for a feature hybrid doc/fiction I've been developing for the past couple of years. The film will tell the true story of two West African economic migrants on their way towards Europe, and star them as themselves.

The vast majority of the footage in the teaser was shot on our first 'proper' shoot trip to Senegal in January. We had a six-person team plus talent (Dir., DoP, Sound, Producer, AD, Runner). Shot in 4k@23.076 on a pair of Fuji MK cine-zooms. Also used a new PDMovie wireless FF and Atomos Shogun Flame monitor setup for the first time to good effect.

The teaser is skewed towards the pre-title sequence showing the main character's childhood, as that's most of what we've currently shot (apart from workshops).

Link: https://vimeo.com/255087348
Password: lifeenroute

More info on the film at: http://www.lifeenroutefilm.com

Any and all comments welcome.

:)

jason
 
Love the handheld style you've opted for here Jason. Really suits the subject. Good luck with the project.
 
Really nice stuff Jason. And I'll double down on what Liam said - excellent use of handheld. Not using it for everything, just for shots that need the energy. It's so much more effective for that selectiveness.
 
A great project to take on and the trailer sells it. It's a gamble using dramatisations in documentaries but your scenes seemed incredibly authentic and dramatic. The two characters playing themselves seem very comfortable. Paul Greengrass among others has a great history of doing this and/or using non-actors - Bloody Sunday, Captain Phillips, United 93. It's like neo-neo-realism.

Your also pictures look good and pacing at least in the trailer is excellent.

Good luck with getting funding. Netflix obviously have a lot of dough to splash around (their market valuation is an obscene $140 billion) and CEO Hastings says they're committed to spending a big part of it on production - and they're increasingly sensitive to the demands of non-US countries for local product. So you'd think they'd be able to spare you a few coppers.
 
Liam Hall said:
Love the handheld style you've opted for here Jason. Really suits the subject. Good luck with the project.
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Thanks a lot Liam, glad you like the style. It's been a very interesting and challenging learning curve for me to work solely as director and have to communicate with a DoP on this project, but we have very similar visions and he's very receptive to my input, so things have been moving in a positive direction (so far at least)!

Cheers,

jason
 
Grug said:
Really nice stuff Jason. And I'll double down on what Liam said - excellent use of handheld. Not using it for everything, just for shots that need the energy. It's so much more effective for that selectiveness.
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Nice one, thanks for your kind words Grug. I'm hoping to continue developing the synergy between the HH and sticks work, trying to allow the two to weave seamlessly, making it feel like a 'slick' feature, but sprinkled evenly with the grit that conveys it's documentary reality. Onwards and upwards! :)

jason
 
Afterglow said:
A great project to take on and the trailer sells it. It's a gamble using dramatisations in documentaries but your scenes seemed incredibly authentic and dramatic. The two characters playing themselves seem very comfortable. Paul Greengrass among others has a great history of doing this and/or using non-actors - Bloody Sunday, Captain Phillips, United 93. It's like neo-neo-realism.

Your also pictures look good and pacing at least in the trailer is excellent.

Good luck with getting funding. Netflix obviously have a lot of dough to splash around (their market valuation is an obscene $140 billion) and CEO Hastings says they're committed to spending a big part of it on production - and they're increasingly sensitive to the demands of non-US countries for local product. So you'd think they'd be able to spare you a few coppers.
Click to expand...

Thanks Afterglow, it means a lot to read your support, as it's really challenging to 'keep the faith' when you've been developing a project for so long and still haven't found funding. I can't wait to be able to start shooting the real meat of the story, which covers some pretty dramatic ground from Mauritania, through Mali, and up to the mediterranean shore.

At the moment we're focusing on more traditional film funding routes (BFI, doc funds, etc), but it might well be a good idea to start the process of getting in touch with Netflix. Seems to me that they have a number of industry 'gatekeepers' with whom they will discuss projects, so I guess it's time to start contacting them (or people who know them!).

Cheers,

jason
 
Wauw... that's looks really great. Did you just shoot internally in log and just used the Shogun for focus pulling? :eek:
Are the night shots also FS7?
This is come of the nicest looking FS7 footage I've seen in a long time. Also didn't feel docu at all to me, and I mean that in a good way.
 
legrevedotcom said:
Wauw... that's looks really great. Did you just shoot internally in log and just used the Shogun for focus pulling? :eek:
Are the night shots also FS7?
This is come of the nicest looking FS7 footage I've seen in a long time. Also didn't feel docu at all to me, and I mean that in a good way.
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Thanks so very much for your kind words and encouragement. It is indeed internal Cine-EI Slog3 footage shot in XACV-I at 4k @23.976p and downscaled to 1080. Night shots are the same, from memory almost all shots were over-exposed by around a stop (maybe even two for the night shots). All graded in DVR.

Cheers,

jason
 
Looks great, Jason...I left you a comment on Vimeo too.

In DaVinci Resolve, did you use a LUT or just tune your own image? Looks nice and organic.

Good luck with this project. I'm an FS5 shooter, and it's nice to see some good Sony work, since all the "cool kids" are shooting RED, BMD, etc.
 
David_Manning said:
In DaVinci Resolve, did you use a LUT or just tune your own image? Looks nice and organic. Good luck with this project. I'm an FS5 shooter, and it's nice to see some good Sony work, since all the "cool kids" are shooting RED, BMD, etc.
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Thanks David - really glad you liked it! In the grade I got a basic look using a set of exposure-compensating LUTs that I created from the widely available LC709A (Low-con 'Alexa' look) LUT using Ben Turley's great "LUTcalc" software (well documented by it's creator @cameramanben on this forum). I then tweaked curves and saturation to taste for each shot/sequence, also desaturating some colours selectively using "Hue vs. Sat" curves in DVR. Overall though, the shifts were mainly to keep the darker skintones looking nice, realistic and readable in strong daylight conditions.

Cheers,

jason
 
Truly impressive work that had me wanting more.

I am pleasantly surprised by what the DP was able to do in low-light with lenses no faster than f/2.8 and being locked into 2000ISO. The candle-lit scenes in particular. I would have thought those scenes would require a fast prime. To what extent were those scenes lit "naturally", with only candle-light and existing practicals? Do you recall if the DP supplemented with any video-production lighting of his own? Whatever the case, the scene looks "un-lit" and natural. Which is the beauty of it and what makes it impressive.
 
JPNola said:
Truly impressive work that had me wanting more. I am pleasantly surprised by what the DP was able to do in low-light with lenses no faster than f/2.8 and being locked into 2000ISO. The candle-lit scenes in particular. I would have thought those scenes would require a fast prime. To what extent were those scenes lit "naturally", with only candle-light and existing practicals? Do you recall if the DP supplemented with any video-production lighting of his own? Whatever the case, the scene looks "un-lit" and natural. Which is the beauty of it and what makes it impressive.
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Hey JP, Thanks for your kind comment, I hope other people (i.e. funders!) want to see more as well! I'm pretty pleased with the night-time ritual setup too. We worked like absolute crazy to light as many candles as possible and stick them onto walls around where our talent is kneeling. There is next-to-none artificial lighting (an existing bare 60w lightbulb about 10ft from the scene for the merest hint of fill). The scene is shot in the main character's real back yard with his mum, where the same ritual actually happened 4 years ago.

This is pretty much in line with the methodology we plan to continue throughout the rest of shooting, to work with environments as we find them as much as possible, with the aim of making the whole thing feel like it could be a really nicely shot doc. Given that the story is true, it seems like the best method to pursue!

Here's a shot of the scene from behind the camera to give a sense of how many candles there were (though it varied as they kept blowing out and falling to the ground when too much wax melted!) ;-)

IMG_2111 (1).jpg

Cheers,

jason
 
goodgoings said:
Beautiful images. I'm curious about how you handled sound for this shoot. Did you have lavs and a boom?
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Yep, you've got it. I'm fortunate to have a really talented (and well kitted) sound recordist and mixer as a good mate who forms an extremely valuable component of our crew. He was recording with lavs on talent, as well as a special boom setup called an "M-S", which is basically a directional shotgun complemented with a cardioid pattern getting the 'missing' stereo image from the sides. It can then be de-matrixed and mixed up something lovely. He also handled the sound design/mix on this trailer, incorporating plenty of other atmos from the trip and even some foley I believe. The vocal audio for the ritual for example was recorded twice, once observationally (all mixed/overlapping with the other sounds), and then once 'clean' afterwards with just the mother in a (near) silent room.

I'm so luck to have had him along on the trip! He's at: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm5906163/

Thanks for the kind words,

jason
 
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