The House of Dead - Full Movie Shot on HD-100

adamr316

adamr316

Well-known member
Hey guys,

I was the director of photography for the short film "The House of Dead". It was shot entirely on the HD100. This is my first foray into short filmmaking...I'm mostly a video/interview/documentary-type guy...but I took a shot at it.

The only budget we had was for food and tapes. It was my and the director/writer's senior project for college. The audience at the college's "senior film/video show" loved it...so I hope you all do too.

Unfortunately since Final Cut Pro does not support JVC HD 24p, we had to edit it in standard definition...but I can tell you it looked gorgeous on a Sony HDTV...too bad we couldn't have final output in that format...but at least we shot it HD for future-proofing.

Anyway, for people on slower connections, here's the trailer: http://rarshow.com/hodtrailer.wmv

For those of you on broadband connections (and those on slower modems who liked the trailer): The full movie - http://rarshow.com/houseofdead.wmv

PLEASE DO NOT REPOST THIS LINK ANYWHERE ELSE!

I appreciate all feedback and will answer any questions you have. I am aware of one scene being too dark for computer playback (it looks fine on TV/projected).
 
looks great - good job...

can u elaborate on the editing workflow? How did u edit in SD and output HD?
 
I thought it was very good also...I also would like to hear about your workflow as I am an owner of the HD100.
 
Hi Adam,

I already watched it and it's a good work (and very good looking!!). Here are some cuestions:

What micro did you use?
What kind of lights?
What about the settings on camera?
Any filtter?
Too much work in post (color correction, etc....)?


I don't wanna impose on you. Answer what you want, jejejejejejje

;)

Keep that way!!!
 
I'm sorry I didn't get back here sooner to answer your questions. I have been real busy lately finishing up a feature documentary...unfortunately not shot on the HD100 ;-P

redindian, I did not edit in SD and output HD. I shot HD to futureproof the movie.

My workflow:

I recorded to tape in HDV720/24p and used the JVC HDV BR-HD50U deck to downconvert via the S-video jack. That was connected to another JVC deck and fed into firewire to Final Cut Pro 5.0 . When post-production was finished, we output to DVD and windows AVI (so I could drop it into Windows Media Encoder at home).

I was quite disappointed that we couldn't capture HD with Final Cut. Because we share computers at my college, we couldn't get the FCP plug-in to allow us to edit (too much hard drive space would be used + low budget.) But we're happy the way the footage looks in HD...but knowing it could look better stinks.


Ivan:

Our only microphone was the Sennheiser ME66. None of our sound had to be ADRed.

For the computer scene I blue gelled (CTB) two ARRI 650 lights and color corrected the footage later for a darker blue. Ideally we'd have a better gel selection but...that stuff is expensive.

For the outdoor night scenes, a smith-victor 800w broad light was used, gelled blue. No color correction was used in those scenes. For the lumberjack scene, a dimmed 650w ARRI was used for the keylight and the smith victor 800w was used for a backlight.

The bedroom scenes were lit with the ARRIs on either side of the bed, aimed at the ceiling and spilling a little onto the bed.

I did not use any lights for any other scene. We were blessed with a well-lit house and I still am amazed at how good the movie looks without using any.

I tested the camera a lot before shooting the film and decided on Tim Dashwood's DVX100A Match for CINELIKE_V for all color scenes. The black and white flashback scenes were set to Tim Dashwood's Film Noir settings. I kept my detail setting at -6.

Settings can be found here: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=62835


Post-production took about 45 hours, including gathering stuff for the DVD release (bloopers, deleted scenes, etc.) There wasn't much color correction to do. Some people have said the movie looks too red, but it was intentionally done that way. We shot using the 5600K setting for all indoor scenes.
 
Adam, excelent photography and great camera angles! Here's what I did and didn't like:

The Good:

Photography and overall lighting- with such limited lighting ressources, the picture looked great and professional.

Audio- Good score, with the use of a classic "resident Evil" song. Works well on your "House of the Dead" :) (I know the song is "Requiem" :) )

Good dialogue audio- very well recorded. Sounded professional.

Twist- While this type of twist is being used in almost every major Hollywood movie, it still works. (Old lady 0ne). The last one doesn't, tough.

The Bad- Inconsistent story. It felt like you had to rush your effort due to time constraint. Your main character just "flips"too early. He just goes to the house one day, and gets "crazy" almost immediately after seeing the "get out"message (and the opened drawers). He looks like a tough guy. I believe you needed some more background story and build up before "breaking" the character.

Acting- The lady was okayish, if a little over the top with the eyes. The main actor was not good. He just couldn't deliver the change of the character- from confident writter to terrified haunted. The other characters where just very secondary, so weren't that influential.

Final wist- yes, the Phsichiatrist one. It's just too much, and has an unwanted comical feel. Was the man just too bored with the story? :)

Anyway, solid effort, and very well executed. Just don't let time constraints limit your story. Or, if there's really that barrier, try to trow away unnecessary shots to the plot (garden day shot, or too much driving in the woods) and develop the important ones.

You got the cinematography touch... Now just fine tune the screenwritting skills and hire better actors, and you're all set for a bright future in filmmaking!
 
Was this shot in Maryland?

Was this shot in Maryland?

Good job. Was this shot in Maryland? If so, where?
Thanks,
Seamus+
 
SPZ said:
Adam, excelent photography and great camera angles! Here's what I did and didn't like:

The Good:

Photography and overall lighting- with such limited lighting ressources, the picture looked great and professional.

Audio- Good score, with the use of a classic "resident Evil" song. Works well on your "House of the Dead" :) (I know the song is "Requiem" :) )

Good dialogue audio- very well recorded. Sounded professional.

Twist- While this type of twist is being used in almost every major Hollywood movie, it still works. (Old lady 0ne). The last one doesn't, tough.

The Bad- Inconsistent story. It felt like you had to rush your effort due to time constraint. Your main character just "flips"too early. He just goes to the house one day, and gets "crazy" almost immediately after seeing the "get out"message (and the opened drawers). He looks like a tough guy. I believe you needed some more background story and build up before "breaking" the character.

Acting- The lady was okayish, if a little over the top with the eyes. The main actor was not good. He just couldn't deliver the change of the character- from confident writter to terrified haunted. The other characters where just very secondary, so weren't that influential.

Final wist- yes, the Phsichiatrist one. It's just too much, and has an unwanted comical feel. Was the man just too bored with the story? :)

Anyway, solid effort, and very well executed. Just don't let time constraints limit your story. Or, if there's really that barrier, try to trow away unnecessary shots to the plot (garden day shot, or too much driving in the woods) and develop the important ones.

You got the cinematography touch... Now just fine tune the screenwritting skills and hire better actors, and you're all set for a bright future in filmmaking!
Click to expand...



Thanks so much for your comments. Yes, we had about 2 months to complete the movie (2 weekends to shoot, night only and 1 month to edit). So time constraints were definitely an issue...as was budget. We also had to keep the movie under 15 minutes...so I definitely agree with you on the script needing more character buildup/background.

For my first foray into "filmmaking", I was proud of it. I will definitely try to improve a lot if I do it again. For now though, it's back to documentary-making.


To answer Seamus, yes it was shot in Maryland...how'd you guess? It was shot around the Hunt Valley/Timonium area.
 
Watched the trailer... the lighting looked real flat, and the image looked pretty videoy... did you shoot 24p?
 
Brandon Rice said:
Watched the trailer... the lighting looked real flat, and the image looked pretty videoy... did you shoot 24p?
Click to expand...
In the first post they state that it was shot in SD, so yes it would look like regular DV (because it is). As for lighting, you are right, it is very flat.
 
stephenlnoe said:
In the first post they state that it was shot in SD, so yes it would look like regular DV (because it is). As for lighting, you are right, it is very flat.
Click to expand...

Regular DV can look like film.... I've seen a lot that's looked filmic and good quality before... :Drogar-BigGrin(DBG)
 
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