Cell - Feature length, future-fiction psychological "noir" thriller shot in full HD
Hey all,
I'm in the process of wrapping up Cell. This is my first movie. We're on track to be done and to the festivals in Spring.
Production blog site (with lots of fun production pics) http://www.cellthemovie.blogspot.com
Here's the synopsis:
In a not-too-distant, not-too-utopian future, JAMES (Dave Narby), a leftist journalist covering a civil war in an unnamed, undeveloped country, finds himself thrown in a cell with VANESSA (Anette Nørgard), another reporter – Or so she claims. When James learns she is a spy for an undisclosed intelligence agency, he blames her and her kind for the war and many other geopolitical incidents – Even as Vanessa finds James' naiveté and blind hatred to be equally loathsome. They struggle past their differences as they work together to escape their captors, including the sadistic INTELLIGENCE OFFICER (Isaiah Tanenbaum) in charge of their increasingly brutal interrogation… But their cooperation is threatened by Vanessa's discovery of James' own shocking and horrifying secret, one that proves to be more dangerous to them than even their captors. Vanessa must ultimately decide – Does she trade James for her freedom, and hope that her violent captors will honor their deal? Or does she trust James’ word that he also wants to expose the dark conspiracy behind his secret, and use his help to escape the cell?
Whew. That's about all you need to know regarding the plot (after all I would like people to enjoy some of the plot twists and turns).
Equipment we used:
MISC EQUIPMENT - I bought a green screen from these guys http://www.imagewest.tv/ , it keyed fine and was a good deal, and I bought a jib from this guy http://stores.ebay.com/Bargain-Camera For $300, you can't go wrong. We only used it in a few shots, but they came out great.
SOUND - I bought a Rode RONTG2K2 NTG-2 Shotgun Microphone because all the user reviews I read said it was the biggest bang for the buck. It's a great mic.
LIGHTS - I bought the Indy Filmmaker kit from http://www.pclightingsystems.com/ . If you buy from this guy, buy months ahead of time. The only good thing I can say is that it was a pretty good deal... Which got made better because my credit card company eventually agreed with me and took $250 off my order with pclightingsystems because of his abysmally poor service and lack of delivering on all the equipment I paid for.
Lesson learned - Check DVXuser before you buy ANYTHING...
CAMERA - I used the Brevis35 35mm adapter. I can't currently recommend them because of an issue we encountered developed during shooting. Cinevate was aware of the issue prior to shipping, but neglected to mention it in the manual. If they had, I would have been totally satisfied with the adapter.
In brief, the Brevis' light would come one but the motor would not, requiring a sharp tap to get the motor working. Eventually we just decided to leave it on all day and replace the batteries in the auxiliary battery pack each morning.
More serious was that the tooling on their imaging element was noticed in some of the shots. Unfortunately, we noticed this 3/4 of the way through shooting principle videography and did not have time to rectify it. It is a subtle, but noticeable flaw. Whether or not it's big enough to actually detract from the final product is debatable, and I suspect in the end it won't matter, but it was still something that really would rather not have had to deal with during the final crunch to get principal vidography done. The adapter does perform well, except ours had the aforementioned issue. This may or may not affect all Brevis35 adapters.
The lesson here is that you need to thoroughly screen test your equipment extensively prior to shooting. I thought I had done this, but it turned out I had not. As the producer I take responsibility for this half of the issue.
MORE CAMERA - We used the Sony HVR-V1U for 95% of shooting - Going tapeless by by capturing full 1920x1080i HD direct from the chip:
http://bssc.sel.sony.com/BroadcastandBusiness/minisites/HDV1080/HVR-V1U/index.html
I settled on this camera because even though it interpolates for HD, it has three chips (better color reproduction), and Sony has a patent on what they call "clearview technology", which basically means the pixels on the sensor are set diagonally (rotated 45 degrees) instead of a typical grid layout. This means the interpolation is more accurate, supposedly giving better results than the Panny HVX200.
I also purchased a Canon HV20, a far less expensive full single chip camera (but one that has a full 1920x1080 array). It actually looked damn good, but not quite as good as the V1U (colors not as vibrant and it looked slightly grainy compared to the V1U), and the V1U gave us a lot more camera options to work with (audio level control, etc.).
However... The main reason? The V1U physically looked more impressive sitting on the tripod, and I didn't want the crew to think Cell was going to look like s**t because we were using a teeny weeny little toy camera. I used the HV20 for a secondary camera during the fight scenes, and for B-roll and behind the scenes footage, so it was worth it. I had also planned on using it for an underwater shot (in the event of catastrophic camera enclosure failure, I thought it better to kill a $1000 camera than a $4000 camera, and if it happened at least I could finish the shoot because... I had two cameras.), but that proved to be too ambitious and I bagged the underwater shot. I may do it this Spring if we think it's worth having it.
The only reason I bought both of those is because they have HDMI output, which combined with this card http://blackmagic-design.com/products/intensity/ in a fast computer with a 4 disk RAID-0 array allows you to capture full uncompressed HD 1920x1080 (instead of HDV, which is 1440x1080) by bypassing the compression algorithm that all pro-sumer "HD" cameras use before they record to tape. Think of it as "poor man's HD-SDI". Turns out we didn't need the RAID-0 array for other reasons... But it's nice to have anyway, because it speeds up the computer during typical usage (files load 4x faster with a RAID-0 array, and I was handling some very large files).
We had some issues with this setup:
- We had to loop and tape the HDMI cable into the camera, as it wasn't designed to be used that way. The cable kept getting bumped and we had frame drop issues, and go figure that it was me who had to tell our camera guys to loop the cable around the camera, tape the damn thing down, and tape the connector at the camera so it wouldn't move. No problems after that.
- We had to use Blackmagic's JPG compression codec instead of recording uncompressed HD because of monitoring issues. When recording in uncompressed HD the monitor exhibited serious lag and stutter because it was being processed through the computer. When we shot using Blackmagic's HDJPEG codec we could monitor the camera on a 22" widescreen monitor in real time with no issues. If we had had an HDMI monitor this wouldn't have been an issue, but you don't know what you don't know...
This actually turned out to be a good thing, because even with Blackmagic's HD JPG codec, we needed all of the 1.2 TB of disk space I had on the "recording deck" computer that I built to capture the live camera feed. Turns out for uncompressed HD I would have needed ~12TB of initial storage, and then another 12TB for a single backup. I would have been up to my ass in hard drives and have spent $7000.00 just on storage. Theoretically I could have done it with the storage I initially purchased, but it would have required using the digital storage with the same frugality that you use with film, and in the end it was better to get it done faster (multiple takes w/o stopping, not worrying about if the camera was left rolling, etc.).
- The DP/Director bitched constantly about having to be cabled, etc. This was probably more an issue with the fact that he is a dear friend who's more than comfortable speaking his mind to and at me, and someone who bitches constantly when he's tired and stressed out (which was arguably my fault because... Well... I talked him into making my movie. He's fine now.).
The lesson here is... Well, the lesson here hasn't been completely learned yet. I suspect we are going to get better picture quality in the final product, but the proof is in the pudding. At any rate, we didn't have to buy and keep track of a bazzillion tapes, we were able to easily back up all footage at the end of the day via external hard drives, and I know we've got 1920x1080 images instead of 1440x1080 images.
ACTION - We shot 90% of this in 14 days on a soundstage I built in in the basement of the Parish Center in my home town (I live in NYC, but shot it in Cortland NY). This was due to cost concerns about shooting in NYC, and the fact that the director lived in Cortland, our DP lived in Syracuse, I could use my Dad's house to house the actors in and his living room as a production office, and we got the basement for free for the duration of the shoot.
Also, the Parish Center had a kitchen upstairs and a large conference room which we were able to use for the duration. Needless to say this was a huge advantage. I'm looking forward to doing a benefit screening of Cell for St. Mary's of Cortland for their generous use of their space.
The exterior shots we did guerrilla style at various locations in the county. One other big advantage is that outside of NYC and the Tri-State area you are extremely unlikely to get hassled shooting in public spaces.
Another advantage was because of the home town angle was that I got one location for free because the property owner knew my Dad (I did have to agree to give him some DVD's once we finished)... AND we got our first press during production, which was a nifty 1/2 a front page article with two color photos from the Cortland Standard: http://www.cortlandstandard.net/articles/08242007n.html
This helped IMMENSELY with the morale of the cast and crew (even more than the well above average Indy film shoot food I fed them, which included (among other tidbits) shrimp cocktail. ...OK, shrimp was on sale at the local supermarket, but it was still $5 a pound. Mmm...).
Filmmakers pay close attention: If you ever get a chance to sing the praises of your cast and crew to a newspaper reporter, make sure you gush all over them..!
Lesson here... You can't beat free locations or the home field advantage. People love to help out a local boy trying to do good.
What advice can I give at this point? If you think you've spent enough time in pre-pro, you're wrong. If I had spent more time in pre-pro, a lot of these issues would have been non-issues, we wouldn't have had to dodge as many picture-killing bullets as we dodged, and I'm sure our final product would be better. However, I'm confident that our final product will be something we are all proud of and worth watching AND that will make money.
Oh... And JUMP OFF THAT CLIFF - GO MAKE YOUR OWN DAMN MOVIE. It's a blast.
Best regards to all now and always,
Dave Narby
PS I'll get into distribution strategies at some point in time on another thread.
Hey all,
I'm in the process of wrapping up Cell. This is my first movie. We're on track to be done and to the festivals in Spring.
Production blog site (with lots of fun production pics) http://www.cellthemovie.blogspot.com
Here's the synopsis:
Cell is a future-fiction psychological thriller set in a war-torn third world country.
In a not-too-distant, not-too-utopian future, JAMES (Dave Narby), a leftist journalist covering a civil war in an unnamed, undeveloped country, finds himself thrown in a cell with VANESSA (Anette Nørgard), another reporter – Or so she claims. When James learns she is a spy for an undisclosed intelligence agency, he blames her and her kind for the war and many other geopolitical incidents – Even as Vanessa finds James' naiveté and blind hatred to be equally loathsome. They struggle past their differences as they work together to escape their captors, including the sadistic INTELLIGENCE OFFICER (Isaiah Tanenbaum) in charge of their increasingly brutal interrogation… But their cooperation is threatened by Vanessa's discovery of James' own shocking and horrifying secret, one that proves to be more dangerous to them than even their captors. Vanessa must ultimately decide – Does she trade James for her freedom, and hope that her violent captors will honor their deal? Or does she trust James’ word that he also wants to expose the dark conspiracy behind his secret, and use his help to escape the cell?
Whew. That's about all you need to know regarding the plot (after all I would like people to enjoy some of the plot twists and turns).
Equipment we used:
MISC EQUIPMENT - I bought a green screen from these guys http://www.imagewest.tv/ , it keyed fine and was a good deal, and I bought a jib from this guy http://stores.ebay.com/Bargain-Camera For $300, you can't go wrong. We only used it in a few shots, but they came out great.
SOUND - I bought a Rode RONTG2K2 NTG-2 Shotgun Microphone because all the user reviews I read said it was the biggest bang for the buck. It's a great mic.
LIGHTS - I bought the Indy Filmmaker kit from http://www.pclightingsystems.com/ . If you buy from this guy, buy months ahead of time. The only good thing I can say is that it was a pretty good deal... Which got made better because my credit card company eventually agreed with me and took $250 off my order with pclightingsystems because of his abysmally poor service and lack of delivering on all the equipment I paid for.
Lesson learned - Check DVXuser before you buy ANYTHING...
CAMERA - I used the Brevis35 35mm adapter. I can't currently recommend them because of an issue we encountered developed during shooting. Cinevate was aware of the issue prior to shipping, but neglected to mention it in the manual. If they had, I would have been totally satisfied with the adapter.
In brief, the Brevis' light would come one but the motor would not, requiring a sharp tap to get the motor working. Eventually we just decided to leave it on all day and replace the batteries in the auxiliary battery pack each morning.
More serious was that the tooling on their imaging element was noticed in some of the shots. Unfortunately, we noticed this 3/4 of the way through shooting principle videography and did not have time to rectify it. It is a subtle, but noticeable flaw. Whether or not it's big enough to actually detract from the final product is debatable, and I suspect in the end it won't matter, but it was still something that really would rather not have had to deal with during the final crunch to get principal vidography done. The adapter does perform well, except ours had the aforementioned issue. This may or may not affect all Brevis35 adapters.
The lesson here is that you need to thoroughly screen test your equipment extensively prior to shooting. I thought I had done this, but it turned out I had not. As the producer I take responsibility for this half of the issue.
MORE CAMERA - We used the Sony HVR-V1U for 95% of shooting - Going tapeless by by capturing full 1920x1080i HD direct from the chip:
http://bssc.sel.sony.com/BroadcastandBusiness/minisites/HDV1080/HVR-V1U/index.html
I settled on this camera because even though it interpolates for HD, it has three chips (better color reproduction), and Sony has a patent on what they call "clearview technology", which basically means the pixels on the sensor are set diagonally (rotated 45 degrees) instead of a typical grid layout. This means the interpolation is more accurate, supposedly giving better results than the Panny HVX200.
I also purchased a Canon HV20, a far less expensive full single chip camera (but one that has a full 1920x1080 array). It actually looked damn good, but not quite as good as the V1U (colors not as vibrant and it looked slightly grainy compared to the V1U), and the V1U gave us a lot more camera options to work with (audio level control, etc.).
However... The main reason? The V1U physically looked more impressive sitting on the tripod, and I didn't want the crew to think Cell was going to look like s**t because we were using a teeny weeny little toy camera. I used the HV20 for a secondary camera during the fight scenes, and for B-roll and behind the scenes footage, so it was worth it. I had also planned on using it for an underwater shot (in the event of catastrophic camera enclosure failure, I thought it better to kill a $1000 camera than a $4000 camera, and if it happened at least I could finish the shoot because... I had two cameras.), but that proved to be too ambitious and I bagged the underwater shot. I may do it this Spring if we think it's worth having it.
The only reason I bought both of those is because they have HDMI output, which combined with this card http://blackmagic-design.com/products/intensity/ in a fast computer with a 4 disk RAID-0 array allows you to capture full uncompressed HD 1920x1080 (instead of HDV, which is 1440x1080) by bypassing the compression algorithm that all pro-sumer "HD" cameras use before they record to tape. Think of it as "poor man's HD-SDI". Turns out we didn't need the RAID-0 array for other reasons... But it's nice to have anyway, because it speeds up the computer during typical usage (files load 4x faster with a RAID-0 array, and I was handling some very large files).
We had some issues with this setup:
- We had to loop and tape the HDMI cable into the camera, as it wasn't designed to be used that way. The cable kept getting bumped and we had frame drop issues, and go figure that it was me who had to tell our camera guys to loop the cable around the camera, tape the damn thing down, and tape the connector at the camera so it wouldn't move. No problems after that.
- We had to use Blackmagic's JPG compression codec instead of recording uncompressed HD because of monitoring issues. When recording in uncompressed HD the monitor exhibited serious lag and stutter because it was being processed through the computer. When we shot using Blackmagic's HDJPEG codec we could monitor the camera on a 22" widescreen monitor in real time with no issues. If we had had an HDMI monitor this wouldn't have been an issue, but you don't know what you don't know...
This actually turned out to be a good thing, because even with Blackmagic's HD JPG codec, we needed all of the 1.2 TB of disk space I had on the "recording deck" computer that I built to capture the live camera feed. Turns out for uncompressed HD I would have needed ~12TB of initial storage, and then another 12TB for a single backup. I would have been up to my ass in hard drives and have spent $7000.00 just on storage. Theoretically I could have done it with the storage I initially purchased, but it would have required using the digital storage with the same frugality that you use with film, and in the end it was better to get it done faster (multiple takes w/o stopping, not worrying about if the camera was left rolling, etc.).
- The DP/Director bitched constantly about having to be cabled, etc. This was probably more an issue with the fact that he is a dear friend who's more than comfortable speaking his mind to and at me, and someone who bitches constantly when he's tired and stressed out (which was arguably my fault because... Well... I talked him into making my movie. He's fine now.).
The lesson here is... Well, the lesson here hasn't been completely learned yet. I suspect we are going to get better picture quality in the final product, but the proof is in the pudding. At any rate, we didn't have to buy and keep track of a bazzillion tapes, we were able to easily back up all footage at the end of the day via external hard drives, and I know we've got 1920x1080 images instead of 1440x1080 images.
ACTION - We shot 90% of this in 14 days on a soundstage I built in in the basement of the Parish Center in my home town (I live in NYC, but shot it in Cortland NY). This was due to cost concerns about shooting in NYC, and the fact that the director lived in Cortland, our DP lived in Syracuse, I could use my Dad's house to house the actors in and his living room as a production office, and we got the basement for free for the duration of the shoot.
Also, the Parish Center had a kitchen upstairs and a large conference room which we were able to use for the duration. Needless to say this was a huge advantage. I'm looking forward to doing a benefit screening of Cell for St. Mary's of Cortland for their generous use of their space.
The exterior shots we did guerrilla style at various locations in the county. One other big advantage is that outside of NYC and the Tri-State area you are extremely unlikely to get hassled shooting in public spaces.
Another advantage was because of the home town angle was that I got one location for free because the property owner knew my Dad (I did have to agree to give him some DVD's once we finished)... AND we got our first press during production, which was a nifty 1/2 a front page article with two color photos from the Cortland Standard: http://www.cortlandstandard.net/articles/08242007n.html
This helped IMMENSELY with the morale of the cast and crew (even more than the well above average Indy film shoot food I fed them, which included (among other tidbits) shrimp cocktail. ...OK, shrimp was on sale at the local supermarket, but it was still $5 a pound. Mmm...).
Filmmakers pay close attention: If you ever get a chance to sing the praises of your cast and crew to a newspaper reporter, make sure you gush all over them..!
Lesson here... You can't beat free locations or the home field advantage. People love to help out a local boy trying to do good.
What advice can I give at this point? If you think you've spent enough time in pre-pro, you're wrong. If I had spent more time in pre-pro, a lot of these issues would have been non-issues, we wouldn't have had to dodge as many picture-killing bullets as we dodged, and I'm sure our final product would be better. However, I'm confident that our final product will be something we are all proud of and worth watching AND that will make money.
Oh... And JUMP OFF THAT CLIFF - GO MAKE YOUR OWN DAMN MOVIE. It's a blast.
Best regards to all now and always,
Dave Narby
PS I'll get into distribution strategies at some point in time on another thread.
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