Face of Justice - A Western

fixitinpost

fixitinpost

Well-known member
FOJ_Poster2.jpg

(temp poster)


"Sheriff Matt Gleason must protect his town from an old foe, who is bent on revenge."

"Face of Justice" is a ten minute short film that we have been working on for over four months now. Spent almost four months in pre-production, and shot two weeks ago. This is my senior project at the Art Institute of Portland. I'd been wanting to do a Western for a long time, and figured this was my chance to do it. Called in a bunch of favors, got a good producer on board, and went from there. The set is owned by a guy I know. I knew the wardrobe and weapons guys, so they gave us a huge discount. Definitely couldn't have done this project without their help and support. The same goes for everyone who was/is involved with this project in any way.

A huge thanks also to everyone on the boards here. Both those who were on crew, and those who gave me very helpful feedback on early drafts of the script. You guys rock.

We shot for three days in NE Portland. We had a lot to shoot, so we ended up pulling 13 hour days (Friday - Sunday). Friday and Saturday were insane, but Sunday was a rather laid back, which was nice.

Now we enter post... I'll be updating the thread as we make progress.

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More BTS pics here: http://www.etchantdigital.com/FOJ/gallery

We had a great cast and crew. Everyone did a fantastic job.
 
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Here are some images straight out of the camera (HVX with M2). Cropped to scope.

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Night interiors. 2.5k HMI PAR blasting through the window for moonlight. 3 china balls (not sure of wattage) and practical oil lamps illuminated the rest.

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This one was shot on an overcast Satuday morning. We were able to use the 2.5k to give the illusion of hard light outside. 2 small Kino's provided fill.
 
Crew:

Written by: Jerry Turner (fixitinpost) and Kyle Glenn
Additional Writers: Kisa Jones, Eli Shell

Producer: Walker Williamson
Director: Jerry Turner
1st AD: Kyle Glenn
DP: Patrick La Valley (PDX_DVX)
Script Supervisor: Kisa Jones

Production Designer: Amber Overstreet
Hair/Makeup and Makeup FX: Amber Overstreet
Wardrobe: Tom Mannen
Gun Wranglers: Tom Mannen, Roger Sweissburger
1st AC: Eli Shell
2nd AC: Evin Carr (ecarr)
Production Sound Recordist: Jedediah Burger
Gaffer: Kale Heiley
Grips: Thomas Soderberg, Erin Marrs, Jason Windsor
Craft Services: Hollie and Bob Wykes
Production Assistants: Morgan, The two other guys...
Horse Wrangler: Diane Overstreet

All picture post: Jerry Turner
Composer: Herman Witkam
Sound Designer: Anthony Gainer
Credits song: Tommy Overstreet


Cast:

Matt Gleason: Jim Craig
Swanson: Tracy Conklin
Henry Ramsey: Nathan Carlson

Gang Member 1: Jeremiah Benjamin
Gang Member 2: Bob Wykes
Gang Member 3: David Kyle
Gang Member 4: Bill Grigsby

Dead girl: Serenity Turner
Mrs. Jones: Ariel Overstreet
Mr. Jones: Thomas Soderberg
Child: Alex Wicks

Barkeep: Tommy Overstreet

Townspeople:
Walker Williamson
Eli Shell
Roger Sweissburger
Tom Mannen
 
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I like the M2 grabs. Shooting a western sure does have its challenges. Look forward to some info on this. Particularly some footage when you get to it.

Jason
 
Cool stuff, Jerry. Is that your HVX or the schools? Some of the grabs look GREAT, while a couple (i.e. the CU of the cards) still looks soft. It's something Ryan and I noticed with our Heinz Commercials we just shot ... no matter what we did, it still didn't feel quite as crisp as we felt it could have ... though some of yours do look really sharp (mostly the ones where you had really good/strong light).

Thanks for posting this stuff, and really looking forward to the finished result! How long do you think you'll be in post before it's final?
 
I don't want to put this to bluntly, it's not really a big deal, but I feel like that temp poster is probably doing a huge disservice to your movie.

I might be alone here, I don't know, but the problem seems to be the contradiction between the title of the picture "Face of Justice" and the face looking back at us in the poster. The guy really looks to me like a milquetoast albino doing his best to impersonate one of Walker Texas Ranger's steely glares. Compare him with Gary Cooper even, himself a bit of a stiff, and the results aren't flattering.

It's hard to tell if this evaluation is or isn't valid from your other pictures

I know a poster doesn't mean much but it is the first impression.
 

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Kind of have to agree with the above, though I never gave it any thought until now. Another cool shot (if you have one), may be instead to have the same title, and with face HIDDEN behind the brim of the hat, as the person is looking down. Then we don't know what the face of justice looks like until we watch the film ... making us want to see more because of the mystery, and the ominous, unknown feel of it.

Also, just checked out your BTS shots ... AWESOME stuff. Your craft service table complete with RV, HUGE tent/cover, etc. just screams high budget. Can't wait to see it all.
 
Norm Sanders said:
Cool stuff, Jerry. Is that your HVX or the schools? Some of the grabs look GREAT, while a couple (i.e. the CU of the cards) still looks soft. It's something Ryan and I noticed with our Heinz Commercials we just shot ... no matter what we did, it still didn't feel quite as crisp as we felt it could have ... though some of yours do look really sharp (mostly the ones where you had really good/strong light).

Thanks for posting this stuff, and really looking forward to the finished result! How long do you think you'll be in post before it's final?
Click to expand...

That's actually Ryan's HVX. I noticed the sharpness thing as well. Capturing an image from the ground glass in the M2 is never ideal for maximum sharpness. Some of the images definitely came out better than others. I'm not sure if that could be helped a little by trying to get the lens to focus more sharply on the gg (adjusting the distance between the two). Might be worth trying. On the images that look sharper, I'm not sure if they're actually sharper, or if the increased contrast is creating the illusion of sharpness. I know for sure that the saloon and night stuff will be softer, though. We were at an f/1.4 on the 50mm and 85mm lenses, and wide open on the HVX. This definitely makes the image softer. For the stuff where we had enough light, we tried to keep the HVX around a 4.0-4.8, where it seemed to be sharpest to us (from extensive testing before hand). I've also been playing around with some sharpening stuff, and have been able to help the image out a little bit.


We're looking to finish post about half way through October. The premiere isn't until the middle of December (Hollywood Theater), though, so we have more time if we need it.


Messenger: Definitely agree with you about the poster. It was mostly just a test to see how the logo looked on an image. It will be replaced with a much more appropriate image later. Right now I'm bouncing around between several ideas, including Norm's.

Norm: Glad you enjoyed the BTS pics. The huge pavilion was already there, but everything else we brought in. It definitely turned out to be a huge production. So big that the head haunchos at school didn't think we could pull it off. ;) Despite that, however, our budget was limited to my cash on hand. Through production, I think we spent around $1,500 (haven't tallied things up yet).
 
It is fun to see this project come together. You've put a lot of work into it, and I know you'll impress everyone at AI. Keep it up. :)
 
Yep, REALLY impressive stuff! Good thing you're matting this for cinescope, as it'll help get rid of the rods coming in the bottom of the frame in that last shot. :grin: Also, will you be zooming in some to get rid of the black that's coming into the right side of the frame there in that last shot?
 
Glad you guys like the footage! I'm not sure if I'll be zooming in to get rid of the filter frame, or if I'll do some paint and roto... Either way, I'll get rid of it some how. That snuck into a couple other shots as well, unfortunately.

Yeah, it's definitely a good thing I'm letterboxing... I'd hate to have to paint those rods out. :D The 24mm lens was just a bit too wide for the super long rods. ;)
 
Hey fixit! Thanks for sharing stills, info, and early footage of your project. Looks like a big deal!

Your night exteriors look the best of all the shots. Which is quite impressive, I might add. They feel like night, look like night, and are exposed very well.

One of the shots that threw me for a loop would be the very first shot. It's very ambitious and cool, at the same time it's kinda hard to see what's going on. You've organized all of these actors, costumes, etc and then there's not a lot of light and things are blurry. I know that the choice to use the adapter on this shot was a choice, and no choices are wrong. I'd personally like to ask why you chose the adapter and opening the iris all the way instead of naked HVX for what looks like a very well blocked shot?

I think you've run down what you did for the night exteriors, any other tips or tricks you'd like to share about getting great exposure? Did you use the adapter on those as well?
 
I dunno if it was the compression, but alot of shots looked a tad blur, and overall it wasn't very sharp...the rails made me laugh though..heh
 
The rails (and the black) were entirely my fault. I did a test with the letterboxing/pan and scan, and it works well to get rid of the rails- the black is another story. woops.

As for the softness, the stuff looks pretty sharp to me, and we did a lot of focus checking. Naturally the adapter adds some softness, especially on the night scenes where we were shooting wide open.

One of my greatest frustrations while using the redrock was the fact that we didn't have a way to flip the image so that I could operate without an external monitor. If we had been able to do that, we would have been able to use our monitor out to put it out to a 24'' dell, and I think more things would have been caught, but as it stood, I had to monitor via a standard-def 7'' varizoom. And even that went down a couple of times, forcing me to operate with the on-board flipped around all crazy....Not trying to shed the blame by any means, it's definitely my fault.
 
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Kholi said:
Hey fixit! Thanks for sharing stills, info, and early footage of your project. Looks like a big deal!

Your night exteriors look the best of all the shots. Which is quite impressive, I might add. They feel like night, look like night, and are exposed very well.

One of the shots that threw me for a loop would be the very first shot. It's very ambitious and cool, at the same time it's kinda hard to see what's going on. You've organized all of these actors, costumes, etc and then there's not a lot of light and things are blurry. I know that the choice to use the adapter on this shot was a choice, and no choices are wrong. I'd personally like to ask why you chose the adapter and opening the iris all the way instead of naked HVX for what looks like a very well blocked shot?

I think you've run down what you did for the night exteriors, any other tips or tricks you'd like to share about getting great exposure? Did you use the adapter on those as well?
Click to expand...

I'm glad you like the night stuff (ext). We did a lot of testing before hand to make sure it would work. And that's really the trick to it. We spent several hours testing different gags that we wanted to do on set, weeks in advance in case we need to make any last minute changes. We shot all of our night exteriors with the adapter, and were wide open for most of it. That night is still a blur, but if I remember correctly, we were very excited when we actually managed to get down to a 2.8 on one shot.

As for using the adapter all the time (especially for the night interior), there are several practical reasons for it. First off, the M2 has a unique style of grain that it adds to the image. There's also the diffusion to consider. That was something that I really didn't want to mess with simulating in post. That was our biggest reason, in addition to maintaining consistency with DOF at all focal lengths. Unfortunately, the web compression doesn't do that shot justice. While the middle part of it (going over the first table) is soft, the rest of the shot is as razor sharp as you can get with the M2. The web version was made from a poor quality SD downres, and that shot really suffers for it (the process for mastering for the web with the final short will be a lot different). I definitely agree with you that the shot is a bit dark. I've been doing a little testing with colour correction, and I can actually brighten things up quite a bit without enhancing the noise too badly.

Patrick letting that stuff slip in isn't entirely your fault. I was watching the monitor as well on those shots, and didn't notice it at the time. As far as the rails go, Ryan pointed out to me that we had a shorter set available on set... why none of us remembered this, I don't know. :nads: Live and learn, I guess. ;)

The monitor situation was definitely less than ideal. It's beyond me why the HVX can't output through component and composite simultaneously. I'm sure there's some technical explanation for it, but it sure is frustrating.
 
IN that case, maybe it's what Malcom said and the compression is adding the blur/smear/softness to the image. When you upload another let us know! I'll look out for a higher resolution image.

Again, good job!
 
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