"The Lodge" - Horror Feature - HVX + M2

rauschelbach

rauschelbach

Member
Hi guys, we've just finished filming a feature and finally have a proper trailer cut. It was shot on the HVX with the M2 and Zeiss lenses.

www.thelodgemovie.com/trailer

You can visit the official site here(still under construction):
www.thelodgemovie.com

Or read our blog here:
http://brothersshamus.blogspot.com/

Let us know what you think of the trailer, or the movie overall. We're hoping to have final edit at the end of the year and release it early 2007.

Thanks,
John

http://imdb.com/title/tt0475323/
 
WOW, beautiful footage on the trailer. Was it filmed interlaced? looks like some interlacing artifacts are showing up.
 
Kdawg I think that's just the video encode on the WMP.

John the footage looks really nice, very cinematic.
 
I watched the trailer on my TV, i must say, this REALLY looked like it was shot on film! I am not the type of person to say this but this time I was sold. Great production value!
 
Last edited:
I'd say the same. Very cinematic. Nice editing... good build at the end. Not sure of your budget, but it looks expensive and that's the best compliment... What's the plans for the flick and film info?
 
This is weird but i click on the trailer link and nothing happens. Does anyone else have this problem?
 
The link on the official website isn't hooked up yet, we haven't posted it 'officially' because of some music licensing issues. if you go directly to www.thelodgemovie.com/trailer it should load up. The WMP encoding isn't' the greatest, you can try the quicktime version, it might look a little better. We'll have a higher-res version once it's up on the website.

Thanks for the kind words, I'll let you know when we have distribution.
 
The website design is very nice, footage looks very good, but I don't like the editing for the trailer at all nor do I like the graphics( get a graphic designer). The pace doesn't feel right and all the quick transition to black when you hear the heart beat feels a bit like a cheap trick, it doesn't really blend in.
 
everything was great. the only criticism would be
we got "too good of a look" at some of the "scary people"
but overall very good
 
Thanks, Christopher, we had a 14 day shoot. I don't wanna give away the budget, but I will say that it fell under the 'ultra-low budget' guidelines as far as SAG was concerned.
 
John, thank you for the feedback. I asked as I am trying to put together an ultra low budget direct to DVD feature. The usual hurdles... Looking at your IMDB and blog, I gathered you figured out a story with few characters, one main location and probably completed with a short shoot time/limited budget. Thanks for sharing.
 
great looking trailer.. If you dont mind some brain picking..
What was your workflow?
How did your 1st AC pull focus?
What lights did u use mainly?..
How many peeps in your crew (grip/elec/camera/pa's/ad)
Great music, original?
Biggest production problem story?

Great job again!
 
It looks good.

It's possibly a little done to death storyline but...who knows, there's always room for another well told version of the tried and tested genre pics.

How about some tech info? Lighting? Post production? You know, all the stuff that DVX'ers like to read.

Thanks for posting. Pete.
 
The jumping off point was to keep a small cast and one location to keep costs down. That way we could spend our money on the really important things; sound and grip/lighting. Oh, and the food, which actually might have been the most important.

As far as our work flow, we were working off two P2 cards which we had to dump on to a laptop fairly often because we were shooting 1080i. But it wasn't that big of a deal, it felt like we were changing batteries just as often. Our AC pulled focus using a really cheap follow focus. We actually had to have the rental house send us another one halfway through the shoot because it was falling apart. I would definitely try to find a gear driven FF instead of a belt driven one next time. The main lights we used were a 2500 HMI, a couple of 1200s, a few Kino-flow banks, and various other pars and what nots. The HMI's were used for the night exteriors of course, and as moonlight or sun coming through the windows. We were able to take advantage of a lot of the natural light with shiny boards. We had a 3 ton grip package that came in pretty handy. We tried to squeak out enough stuff we could with our limited budget. But it was worth it in the end.

We had a very small crew too. Besides our dp, we had a gaffer, key grip, 2 ac's(one stepped up as a grip when we needed) a couple grips/electric, and a few local grips and pa's also came to help off and on. The people that really saved our butts though were our production designer and art director. These two should not be overlooked when setting up your crew. Just having people there to keep an eye on the hot set, resetting props, or dressing a room at a drop of a hat was invaluable.

But overall, rental is the best way to get your equipment I believe. Of course it's nice to have your own sticks, mics, and whatever for experimenting or doing a small short, but I don't feel you need to do it all yourself. We hired some great people that know their specific craft better than I would ever be able to learn.

We've also hired an editor that will be cutting on Final Cut. We've passed on our 800 gigs of footage to him and will hopefully have picture lock toward the end of the year. After that we'll move on to sound design. We've put off our biggest chunk of the post production money for that specifically. It's probably the most important part in making our little movie into something better. The audience can forgive a soft image if the sound is great, but crappy sound ruins the best image. The music in the trailer isn't original, that's why we haven't posted it officially yet. We want to make sure and tie up any licensing issues before we do.

Oh, and I guess the biggest production problem might have been the M2 to tell you the truth. Setting the flange focus was almost not worth it. If we hadn't already shot a day of footage we might have just dropped it and went straight HVX. We were constantly fighting a soft image. But the problem wasn't just because it as an M2, our dp used the P+S on his next feature and said he had pretty much the same issues. The whole adapter thing seems more like a hand made craft than a finely tuned science still. I'd rent one if you're thinking about going that route, experiment with different models and see if it's really worth it.

Was that a longwinded enough reponse for you? Let me know if you have any more specific questions.
 
Thanks for the info John.

rauschelbach said:
Oh, and I guess the biggest production problem might have been the M2 to tell you the truth. Setting the flange focus was almost not worth it. If we hadn't already shot a day of footage we might have just dropped it and went straight HVX. We were constantly fighting a soft image. But the problem wasn't just because it as an M2, our dp used the P+S on his next feature and said he had pretty much the same issues. The whole adapter thing seems more like a hand made craft than a finely tuned science still. I'd rent one if you're thinking about going that route, experiment with different models and see if it's really worth it.
Click to expand...

But then you wouldn't have the nicely textured images that are in your trailer. I think you made the right/smart decision. As a full time shooter myself, the more footage that I see from the HVX with an adapter, the harder it is for me to find much that I like straight out of the camera. I think for short and long form drama, the combination of HVX + adapter is hard to beat.

What on set monitoring were you using? And lenses?

Pete.
 
Yeah, I don't want to scare anybody away from using an adapter, because in the end, I'm sure it will only be people like us that pick up on a little edge softness. Overall the film ended up looking pretty great.

At first we were using a HD lcd Tv for monitoring. It was ok, we mounted it upside down, and it was nice having a large image, but the lcd tv isn't the greatest representation of what were actually getting. Later we found that the lodge we were staying at actually had a crt HD tv, and hooked that up instead. It looked much better. All we really needed was something to check the framing, we figured out quickly that we could trust our dp on image. And we actually ended up watching a lot off of the on camera lcd, a few people watching the built in one, and a few on the external add on. That P2 system was a life saver.

As for lenses, we used Zeiss Super Speeds, t1.3. Our dp insisted going with these because he knew we were on a tight schedule, and the fact that we could easily switch lenses and not have to worry about changing f-stop would save us money and time in the long run. We were zipping through setups because we could set the lights and not have to worry about changing them much. And the fact that they were 1.3 saved us from using more lights and electricity, which probably saved us money there too.
 
rauschelbach said:
As for lenses, we used Zeiss Super Speeds, t1.3. Our dp insisted going with these because he knew we were on a tight schedule, and the fact that we could easily switch lenses and not have to worry about changing f-stop would save us money and time in the long run. We were zipping through setups because we could set the lights and not have to worry about changing them much. And the fact that they were 1.3 saved us from using more lights and electricity, which probably saved us money there too.
Click to expand...
I think a lot of the soft edge problems that are attributed to these adapters is actually the result of using very small stops on the primes (and the HVX, or whatever camera, focussing on the screen). At T1.3, on anything but maybe the 18mm, the depth of usable hard focus is almost zero inches. On the 85mm, even at F2.8/4 split the focus depth is nothing. That's why we (DOP's) like to pump up the light, we can stop the lens down enough to take the pressure off the focus, particularly if there is going to be any camera movement. But like you said, more lights cost more money, and that seems to be the one constant across all budget ranges, there's never enough cash.

Anyway, great effort and all the best with the post.

Pete.
 
Excellent stuff:thumbup:. I thought the trailer was pretty scary:Drogar-Love(DBG): . Except maybe you should have reduced some of the fast cuts to black. I think you did the right thing going with the M2. You definately wouldn't have got that look straight of the HVX :beer:.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top