Short film - Headshot

Bezakor said:
Question: What would be the advantages of using 2.35 aspect ratio? or was it simply for aeshetics? it can be very awkward when on a 4x3 Tv....
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The target was definitely not the 4x3 TV but ideally a real cinema screen. I know many people like cinemascope movies to be reframed (pan&scan) on 4x3 screens but I don't.
Plus, less and less TVs are sold in 4x3 and move toward 16x9.

This short was one of the 5 finalists at the Alice Film Festival in San Francisco, at the Bimbo's and it looked pretty good on a cinema screen.

Spielberg prefers shooting 1.85. One can argue this is always the right choice but that's his. In the end, most people in the audience don't remember the framing but remember the story.
Ask people around you who saw "Out Of Africa" from Sidney Pollack how it was framed. Many will answer "widescreen" when it was actually shot 4x3, a personal choice made at a time he was pissed at Pan&Scan when films get butchered when transfered to video.
2.35 has been used in all kinds of films, westerns, sci-fi, drama, ... and even in comedies shot indoor, where body language takes the lead on facial expression and shots need to be framed wider. Wedding Crashers is an example even if there are some very nice outdoor landscape shots that take full advantage of the 2.35

We could have framed it 16x9 but, having a bigger project in mind, I wanted to take a shot a 2.35, experiment and learn how to work with this aspect ratio which is to me the format I prefer in movies, and the one I expect to see when I watch a film on a big screen. I feel like the human eye is made to see things in that format.
 
vicnewton said:
what type of lighting did you use.
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Hi vicnewton, I missed that one ...
We used ARRI lights, a Softbank D4 Tungsten Light Kit
The DP worked alone on the lighting and spent quite some time adjusting it according the look we agreed on.
The set up was basically a two light setup. In close ups, the key light was a 650 Watts in a soft box, the back light was a 150 Watts fresnel.
Another 150 Watt was also used, creating a very narrow beam, like a spot, using the barn doors to intensify the light reflection in the eyes.
Smaller cheap lights were also used to light objects in the background when needed.

vicnewton said:
And what did you edit this short on?
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Edited, color corrected and sound mix done in Premiere Pro
Music in GarageBand on a Mac
 
trovan - Thanks! I find lighting the hardest part of the process. The director wanted a specific look and provided screenshots from a few films as examples. Getting the lighting correct for the actors was the top priority. Once that was set I focused on the background. The set was a closed interior so there weren't problems with changing light conditions. The surfaces were mostly plywood and therefore had a muted brown cast. The most interesting feature was the furnace and ducts. I worked with the lights to create shadows and depth. I also grabbed a few old metal ducts and used them as props in the background. Again, to add feature and depth to the flat walls.

Sprack - Ha! Yes, that's one of my favorite lines.

harry.mchugh - Lots of us in the Bay Area. Spot DVXs in the city all the time.
 
Just saw this. It was really well done. Some great acting too. Overall a nice piece of work. Could easily see it as one scene in a much bigger picture.

pk
 
VizPictures said:
That's a very personal choice. There are always so many ways that different people would chose to shoot a film, each one being unique and interesting.
I don't know if "better" if the right term actually. To be more accurate, you'd have prefered a different artistic choice, but that's not the one we wanted to make.
The point was certainly not to show off a camera or adapter. I did not even mention the adapter in the title of this post by the way.
The point was to tell a simple story, have fun, and hopefully entertain a few and ideally make them smile or laugh which seems to work.
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Well said.... Good point.
 
Hi all,

I'm reviving this old thread just to say that Headshot was selected at the Hollywood DV Festival in March.
It will be shown at the Fairfax Cinema Theater in Hollywood, California on March 26th 2007.

That's great news :) , just wanted to share the info.
 
lol, loved it man,
made me laugh, and scared, at the same time

thats a great thing ot make osmeone feel! Great stuff!
 
I love that 2.35 ratio. You can do a lot with composition in that ratio.How did you come up with the crop size 720 x 306? I have Premiere 1.5, which has a crop filter where you can drag&drop it on your clip and you can make your adjustments at the top and bottom. But I can't find where it give me size dimensions after I made my crop.
 
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2:35 is probably the ratio I gravitate towards the most. What's the deal w/the "didn't need an adapter" comment? It's not like a bothersome prop or song you dropped in for the hell of it. I shoot as much as I'm able to with my adapter. Anywho, mazel tov.
 
Northainan said:
I love that 2.35 ratio. You can do a lot with composition in that ratio.How did you come up with the crop size 720 x 306? I have Premiere 1.5, which has a crop filter where you can drag&drop it on your clip and you can make your adjustments at the top and bottom. But I can't find where it give me size dimensions after I made my crop.
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Use the crop or clip effect depending on if wanna keep the horizontal lines or not. Using the clip effect in Premiere, clip 21 on top and 21 on the bottom.
I used the clip effect that left me with a 4/3 aspect ratio, letterboxed in 2.35
I could then use that file to generate a DVD or to put it back to tape.
To generate the file that I posted online I used Discreet Cleaner. I fed it with the letterboxed 4/3 video file. In this case I cropped the black horizontal lines.
I suppose you can do the same directly from Premiere, but maybe not export to the Flash flv format, that I don't know.

The nice thing about clipping in post is that you can adjust the vertical framing of each individual shot in case it was not perfectly framed during the shoot.
We tried to frame it as close as possible to 2.35, using a piece of rubber band on the monitor.

Headshot%20Production%20Second%20Day%20002.jpg


But sometimes in post it was nice to be able to pan vertically very precisely. For instance to track the eratic movement of the actor who was doing the agent and who almost left the frame a few times. The DP did a very good job at tracking that guy, specially pulling the focus in real time, but a few times, Pow Al was just too fast.
 
VizPictures said:
Use the crop or clip effect depending on if wanna keep the horizontal lines or not. Using the clip effect in Premiere, clip 21 on top and 21 on the bottom.
I used the clip effect that left me with a 4/3 aspect ratio, letterboxed in 2.35
I could then use that file to generate a DVD or to put it back to tape.
To generate the file that I posted online I used Discreet Cleaner. I fed it with the letterboxed 4/3 video file. In this case I cropped the black horizontal lines.
I suppose you can do the same directly from Premiere, but maybe not export to the Flash flv format, that I don't know.

The nice thing about clipping in post is that you can adjust the vertical framing of each individual shot in case it was not perfectly framed during the shoot.
We tried to frame it as close as possible to 2.35, using a piece of rubber band on the monitor.

Headshot%20Production%20Second%20Day%20002.jpg


But sometimes in post it was nice to be able to pan vertically very precisely. For instance to track the eratic movement of the actor who was doing the agent and who almost left the frame a few times. The DP did a very good job at tracking that guy, specially pulling the focus in real time, but a few times, Pow Al was just too fast.
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Thanx Viz
 
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