DVX100a Shoots National Winning Short

[janusz]

I shot this film for the National Film Board of Canada's Make Shorts, Not War contest, in December 2005.

The film won the first place/people's choice award and I (the director/producer) was then sent to Newfoundland, France and Belgium to shoot a documentary on the 90th Anniversary of the Battle of the Somme and Beaumont Hamel.

Here is the link to the contest version of my short film:

http://www.nfb.ca/faitesdescourtspaslaguerre/?lg=en

It is only 7 minutes long, called 'The Road of the World'. The director's cut is 11:26mins.

We shot on the 100a, 24p, in 3 days. Please check it out, but try to mind the site's compression. It's not the greatest compression, but it's better than youtube.

Thanks guys.

 

[Kino Eye]

Congrats...very nice short

 

[MikeZas]

Good short, especially the cinematography, you pulled a lot out of the DVX. It'd be wonderful if you could post a higher res version, or at least a few stills.

 

[Lawsuit_Boy]

That was a terrific short. Cinematography was wonderful. Great story too.

 

[deckardScott1980]

Great short! Did you shoot without any lenses or filters? What did program did you edit with? What was the final budget? Finally how did you acheive the final look? It looks great. Great story. Acting was good too. Well done!

 

[janusz]

Thanks

Thanks

thanx for those of you who watched it and/or responded. your feedback is appreciated.

i dont have a full res file posted anywhere, sorry. i'll see what i can about stills, but i am new at this posting in forums thing. i'll try, but the still will most likely be behind the scenes.

we shot with no filters or any lens adapter kit, it was all stock shooting. however, we did use the in-camera color temp in the scene file to warm it up. everything else was done in post.

firstly, everyything INT was shot at night (except one shot, shooting towards the open door when they say goodbye). for all INT scenes, i dropped the color sat. down to 70% in FCP. everything EXT was de-satched down to 50%, and added some contrasted. for the battle scene, i also crushed the blacks, desatched the highlights and then tinted with a touch of deep green, and dark khaki. initially i used GFilm's Basic Bleach Bypass, but the plugin somehow revealed the .psd layers which i used to create the muzzle flashes and machine gun tracers. so i just imitated the look with FCP's effects/filters.

sorry, but we shot in dec '05, so i can't recall the scene file.

thanks again to y'all who watched/commented. much appreciated.

 

[janusz]

...

...

sorry about the typoes, super tired and stressed... damn industry. haha

 

[Northainan]

Nice. Who recorded the sound? What mic did you use? The sound design was nice.

 

[janusz]

audio

audio

the audio was recorded witha shot gun mic, boom pole style, with a mixer on location.

it was mixed in protools and most of the gun shot sounds were actully created by me. i would combine three - five diff. sounds to create the feel/quality that i wanted the rifles to have. all in all, i think i created 6 - 8 diff. gun shot sounds.

we also did some foley work, wearing he uniforms for sound scaping in post, and of course, some extra breathing, coughing adr style. adr was actually only for "real dialogue" used once, for the line "it'd be no other way".

thanks

 

[LuckyProducer]

Wow man! That shoot out looks so real! What did you use for the big grenade hits....with the dirt flying up in the air. Please let me know. Please explain how you shot that entire shoot out scene. How many cameras? Any lighting? What kind of guns? Sound...the whole gist. I am really interested on how you pulled it off.

 

[PaPa]

any behind the scene grabs or anything of that sort?

type of shotgun mic yes, but what type? Sound was fantastic.

Lighting was also brilliant, please share the equipment used

Generators? Details details, its your duty to inform us!

 

[janusz]

equip... and such.

equip... and such.

we didnt spark anything for the day battle scene. we just used bounces and relectors, and stopped up or down on the iris to keep it consistent. the majority of the combat sequence was shot at 1/120th shutter, with a few key moments bumped even higher to 1/250th. I spent aabout a week visualizing, blocking and storyboarding the seq. then i handed it all over to my DP and he loved it. we shot it exactly the way i saw (except we had to cut out a rack focus, but no big deal).

none of the soldier you see firing rifles were actually firing at all, not blanks or anything, we couldn't afford it. so they faked the recoil of the rilfe and we did all the audio/visual efx in post (in FCP and pro tools). the mic we used i think was a seinheisser (or however that is spelt), my audio guys just gave me a receipt, i trust him, so i didn't check for anything besides the amount, sorry guys. but we just boomed with one, no lavs or anything.

during the night ext in the trenches, we had two 1Ks up (via a 45oow genny), and some china balls for mini explosions and fire in thr trenches. in the last shot of the night seq - before cross fading to the mom and boy praying - the back corner behind the two main characters was actually lit by a real fire. one 1k was 1/2 ctb'ed for moon, and the other was full cto'ed and sparked sporadically for the big explosions. that trench was real too, dug out for us, with tree trunks and stuff laid all over the place. it was 60ft long, 6 - 7ft deep, and 5ft wide. the art guys did an amazing job. (the owner of the property - a good family friend - dug the trench for us with his komatsu, which we also used for a 20ft crane/jib shot, in the dir's cut).

we had a pretty small light package actually: 1 x 2K soft box, 1 x 4ft 4bk kino (daylight bulbs only), 2 x old quartz 1Ks, 4 x Arri 1Ks, 6 or 8 x 500w lowell pros, and 2 x 250w lowell pros.

we also had a magiqcam steadicam cam we didn't use, and an 8 foot DV jib, that we tried but didn't like.

i hope i answered everything, but if not, fire away and i'll respond.

ps, i'll see what i can do about those pix.

 

[janusz]

oops sorry

oops sorry

we had one cam the whole time. and B and C were options for a while, but didn't go through.

the rifles were all real, ca. WWI and everything. all 100% accurate. however, a Canadian story, I couldn't find anyross rifles, which were the rifle cdn's used earlier in WWI, so I had to replace it with something that looked similar from the same era. so in flew the US P1917, which looks the same (sameish) but shorter. we had two P17's ( and I actually broke the bolt handle off on one of them showing teh cast how to use it, oops. the gunsmith at the armoury said he has neverseen such a thing in 20years. I have no idea how i did it). we had 3 or 4 mausers, (german rifles) and about 8 enfield's, the british army's rifle that the cdn's eventually switched too. the british and cdn's used it in WWII as well.

the mortar hits were done using air compressors. we had a 180psi air cannon and some high powered compressor (via the genny again) and pumped the air cannon to 120psi. loaded it's snoot ( a funnel) with vermiculite, moss, a touch of snow and styrafoam) and rehearsed for timing, without blowing the cannon. once that 360 degree shot was perfectly blocked and ready we rolled the camera and fired the air cannon at the right time. it sprayed 12 ft in the air from ground (if you watch again, the explosion happen from the bottom of the trench, so really it was 12ft up plus the 5 - 7 ft below the ground the cannon was)

in the other explosion shot, we hid the compressor behind no man's land debris, and behind a rock dirty in the FG of the frame.

 

[janusz]

oops, sorry again...

oops, sorry again...

those four arri 1ks, were actually redheads, sorry.

 

[Arrow]

Your work is great.

I appreciate good work, and it shows the time and effort you put into it.

Also congrats on winning first place/people's choice award.

 

[PaPa]

wondering what u did for the generator and sound issues?

 

[LuckyProducer]

Wow! Awesome idea!

I have a question though. What do you do carrying guns around and not get caught by the police? did you know the risk of gettin gin trouble and just went shooting, or did you buy licenses and permits and such. Also, for the explosions, you can't get in trouble for that. I was setting off several chlorine bombs and I got in trouble by the cops. What would I do?

 

[janusz]

Pics

Pics

First set of BTS shots.

 

[janusz]

Pics

Pics

Second set of BTS Pics.

 

[janusz]

Pics

Pics

Third set of BTS Pics.