"Michael Knows"- HVX workflow perfect for 24-hour festivals!

Noah

Noah

Well-known member
http://edcommunity.apple.com/insomnia_fall07/item.php?itemID=611

Logline
Michael woke up this morning, knowing today would be the last day of his life.

Cast
  • Michael - Robert Olsen
  • Psychiatrist - Rae Wright
  • Girl - Holly Shawhan
  • Radio Man - Greg

Crew
Created By:
  • Dan Berk
  • Chadd Harbold
  • Robert Olsen
  • Bryan Alexander Gaynor
  • Noah Posnick
  • Chris Low

Music By:
Justin R. Durban
Edgen Animations
www.edgen.com​

About The Process
I decided to team up with Last Pictures for the Apple Insomnia film festival. We shot on 2 HVX's with both 16gb and 8gb p2 cards. Editorial done with the Final Cut 2 suite. Special effects applied in After Effects.

We would have never finished this film without P2 cards. We were offloading as we shot all day eliminating the need to log and capture later. With time running out (the sun going down early this time of year) we decided to break up into an A and B crew. The A crew went to one location to shoot the main scenes, while the B crew went to get insert shots elsewhere. We reconvened at the last hour of sunlight to pull off the last shots. We barely made it, but it all got done thanks to the prep work and camera tests we did beforehand.

While on location, footage was offloaded to a Macbook Pro. Toward the end of the day we sent someone back to headquarters to offload the rest of the footage to the edit suite's internal drive and then a back up onto the e-sata drive before we began cutting. Once the picture was locked we exported a low-res version and all temp audio tracks so that the sound designer, Chris, could get working on the Macbook while we did the effects for the last shot and color corrected. I did basic shot-to-shot correction with FCP's 3-way color corrector and then nested the edit in a new timeline where I applied a customized Magic Bullet look (using MB for editors).

Stills
still1.jpg

still4.jpg

still6.jpg

still7.jpg

still8.jpg


I am on set now, but I will be posting behind the scenes photos later tonight.

The link will be put up tomorrow when we have it from Apple. You need an Apple ID to be able to view and vote. You do not need to pay for a .mac account for this. Registration is free and if you've bought music from iTunes before, you already have one.

Thanks! Can't wait to hear people's comments/criticisms. Help us bring a win to the DVXuser community!
 
Last edited:
The original post has been updated with Still frames. And here are some of the BTS photos I promised.

bts1.jpg

bts2.jpg

bts3.jpg

bts4.jpg

bts5.jpg
 
Really nicely done. Pacing, acting, choice of shots, images, angles, dp work - all good. I'd prefer something slightly less conventional for soundtrack (what's there is soooo expected and soooo tired), but that's no biggie. The concept is pretty strong, though the ending is weak - I mean we expect him to croak, but you are cheating slightly here... you set up this mystery, and then you basically don't answer it - if you showed something that was unexpected, yet made perfect sense, then you'd have really achieved something here story-wise, and the challenge would be to avoid all obvious cliches (car accident, getting shot, etc.) - as is, you declined the very challenge you willingly set up, and so you lost the ending game.

That said, again, I really liked how this was shot. The way the psychiatrist was shown was f-a-n-t-a-s-t-i-c... just the right angle... inspired. The look between the girl and the narrator - nice. There's so much nice material here, it's hard to pick what stands out. Almost all choices were right on - I even liked both the look and the performance of the main actor (which doesn't happen often on amateur productions).

Very impressive.
 
Mad props man, very well done. My only question, did you get contracts on all the people used in the images? If so, that is amazing that many people agreed to it. Besides that, great work.
 
Just wanted to let everyone know that we are finalists in the competition and made the top 25! While it's not official, official - that will be announced on Monday, we are listed on the site as being #19. We won't win the popular vote, but we've still got a 1 in 25 chance of winning the judges vote. Thanks to everyone who watched and voted.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top