"Catching The Fever" feature film stills

troypod, if you can enlightene me how after paying the crew, actors, for some of locations, gear rental and trucks the producer still could squize $4000 for over 20 day rental of the adapter and the lenses i would really appreciate it.
 
60 grand! What couldn't you do with that kind of money!

No worries Patrick, I feel your budgeting pain.

Movies are labor intensive and labor (even cheap labor) can COST!

-- Dean
 
Well, you look like a handsome fellow, you could make that much selling your body...
;)
Nice stills. Looks like you guys had a blast.
 
It does look good. It looks like a lot of effort went into your setups. How long was the shoot? Can you describe your exterior night setups a little? (lights used, how powered)

Do you own the HVX? You can get the M2 or Brevis (and other) adapters for 1k and use cheap primes.

Nice work - looking forward to seeing the trailer.
 
Our workhorses for all outside shots were 3x 1.2 HMIs. They had magnetic balasts so we had to use crystal-sync genny (ours was only 5000w) but we got another regular 4000w genny and powered the 3rd HMI (with eletronic balast). Of cours as always the problem was placing the gennies far away so it didn't interfere with sound. Usually relatively harsh backlight and softer fill (often bounced off of bounceboard). Sometimes i would just place full grid in front of the light (it eats up a lot but produces really soft light).

For the interiors usually small kinos and fresnel units to either backlight or create "window lights".
 
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20 days seems pretty tight... I'm sure with a M2 you'd be spending way too much time lighting... Good work mate.
 
Looks like fun. Cute girls, I heard you have rating system. Not very PC-DP. :kiss:

Do electronic ballast HMI's need crystal synched genies?

The stills don't look like they are in the right aspect ratio. Am I wrong?

For $60k you could shoot 16mm but the crew wouldn't get paid. :dankk2:
 
Yeah we were tight on time. Somehow bad scheduling forced us to sometimes shoot about 10 pages a day (only on a few occasions though) -- nothing to brag about. On "well scheduled" days we were still banging out 5-6 pages.

Electronic balasts are fine with regular genny but magnetic ones definately need crystal sync.

Crew not getting paid was not an option. I was bringing my people to the project so i knew it's going to be great fun plus those peps do know what they are doing, are fast and reliable and also get my "drift" ("if something can be griped with gaffer tape do it") still those are people working in the biz so they had to be paid (even though modestly). Making movies is total fun but it's also a business transaction. When their is monetary exchange ultimately you end up with better product and your crew is so much more dedicated to the project.
 
My immediate reaction is that it's way overlit, especially in regards to non-practical, un-motivated sources. There are some great shots, but they're definatley the ones that are motivated.

Frames 1 and 5 most clearly illustrate the problem for me - flat, un-motivated key lighting. The lack of motivation wouldn't be a problem if they weren't so broadly lit, because there's a certain suspension of disbelief in such lighting when there's a proper contrast ratio in the face and on the body. When it's lit to nearly 1:1, it doesn't look real, because that's not usually what 'real' lights throw. There's some nice back-lighting being used, but I feel that it's almost wasted with such intense key lighting in use.

I really liked the shots where the lighting was much more naturalistic and more clearly motivated (for the most part). Shots 3 and 4 are absolutley beautiful! Even though we don't see the light in shot 3, it looks properly motivated because of how the light falls on her, leaving her partially in shadow. I'm guessing you just lit this scene with the practicals - and the quality difference shows.

Compare shot 3 to shot 5. I think that best shows the comparison between the two methods I'm talking about. What's the motivation for the light in shot 5? It looks like a 1/4 blue gelled 2K through a scrim - NOT moonlight, or a streetlight or a decklight. From the framing, it looks like the house should've been the motivation for the light, maybe with a tiny bit of fill from the other side.

The blue gelled lights in the kitchen are odd, considering that we see the microwave throwing yellow/amber light... why'd you decide to do this? In the shot with the two women, this is especially distracting, because the difference in color in the frame draws the eye away from the subjects. Why not just leave that space dark?

The last 5 or so shots look really, really good. I'm guessing that the last few are mostly natural, augmented by HMI's?

Thanks for posting the stills though - I hope I didn't come across too harshly!
 
I kind of agree with walken0709 about the lighting but its hard to tell if its appropriate lighting for the scene since we can't see it in action. When you look at all the shots in a row like you have set them up though, it looks like its been lit basically the same mood all the way through. I think a little CC in post to bring in more contrast on some shots may be needed to give a sense of changing moods or feelings. I did like the use of color in the living room scenes. The blues and pinks. At least I think its a pink light, could just be painted pink but it plays off the blue nicely to give it a pastel look but I wish the rest of the scene was lit the same or at least art directed to match. The black couch and black statue is killing it for me. The third and forth shot look very nice, I like the warm feeling it has and it looks like it would match to what they would be talking about. As far as the 35mm thing, you can always roto in some blur on the closeups.
 
walken0709, you will have more fun on the set if you don't worry that much. It's similar with gaffers talking about lack of lighting continuity. It's a movie! Noone will now. In frame 1 the lighting IS motivated it's an exact reproduction of available light at the location. Check out this pics of a PA taken as reference:
http://catchingthefever.com/por_car.jpg
-- if not for the fact that i didn't bother setting up another HMI on the left the lighting scheme is the same. Also it seems you are misinterpreting meaning of "flat" -- with that amount of backlight defining their faces you can't possibly create image that is "flat" (unlike the pic of the fat girl that was shot flat on purpose to make it more pathetic)

My personal complain (to myself!) is that i lit it a bit too much like a drama -- i should have used more fill.
 
Patryk_Rebisz said:
walken0709, you will have more fun on the set if you don't worry that much. It's similar with gaffers talking about lack of lighting continuity. It's a movie! Noone will now.
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I'll have more fun on a set if I don't worry that much about lighting? You've got to be kidding - that's possibly the worst filmmaking advice that I've ever heard.

If you'd said, 'well, it was a 20 day shoot, and we were pressed for time on some shots...', or something to that effect, I'd have more sympathy for the cheap look of the film - but to outright say that you were more interested in having fun than taking your time to get it right? No one will know?

I can't believe I'm reading this. When someone is putting up money, regardless if it's $60K or $60M, they deserve more than 'don't worry so much on set'. Yeah, that attitude will take you all the way to the top.

Well, I'm sorry that I actually took the time to critique your shots and ask questions about your methods when you were clearly just hoping for empty praise.
 
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