Grabs from short film - no adapter - lit with 3 home depot lights

GND

GND

Well-known member
Update: movie found here: http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=134261

or www.4shortfilms.com - click "on to heaven"

This is my 3rd short film, shot with the DVX100b - no adapter or anything.
I was originally going to post these images in a thread I found where someone was talking about how they don't think anything done with worklights/home depot lights would look good or as good as people with arri kits and such.

now I'm not saying this looks any better then certain things, but I am very proud of the look I managed to achieve with just 3 75 watt trouble lights. 75watt.

White balanced on a cherry-red piece of construction paper.

I'm the white guy in the shots (I wrote/directed/acted...then edited and was the DP....I had my other friend camera operate, and most of the time the camera was on a tripod setup by myself. )
....only reason I wore so manny hats was because it was a project "just for fun" ....my friends and I were bored and tired of waiting for our longer script to get finished (by me...yeah, writers block. oh well).



any other questions I'll answer.... I'm posting here because I am a frequent lurker of this site and respect many of your opinions. I've seen some great work on here(love fest winners...very great.)

The story outline is: "Two men play Russian roulette in hopes that it will save thier life. They want to be free, away from this world where everyone else has labeled them "insane". No more lonliness. No more pain. No more medication."









 
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one more:





and here is a (terrible) set photo....you can see 2 out of 3 of the lights and how there was no boom operator....mic taped from cieling in between the two of us.
worked rather good. no complaints about the sound from who's seen the movie. (which includes guys from delux labs post production in toronto*)
*my dad's been a color timer/corrector there for 30 years.





...and I just re-read my message and to me it sounds like I have some huge ego and am showing off. - that isn't my intent! I'm only typing what facts are true about the production.
...sorry if it came off that way.
 
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I think it looks great, and I too believe lot's can be achieved with 'ordinary' lighting, as I have done it many times before. The color is fantastic, it wasn't Color Graded in any way? After all, your Dad is a professional, lol. When you say 'trouble lights', what lights exactly are they?
 
Trouble lights are : http://www.supplyhero.com/_FileLibrary/Product/43182/sl425.jpg

thanks for the compliment.

All the grading that was done, I did it in FCP using the 3-way color corrector and just lowered/crushed blacks a tad and moved the whites up. then I desturated down a few notches so "toxic waste" lime-green looking. I didn't actually do anything to change the color.

I did this short without my dad's help, though I asked his opinion of the footage and when I got the "thumbs up" , that was it. (for grading/changes)

He did color correct my first short film at his work using the Da Vinci. we were able to go there one saturday night for free.
Since it was "the first" and had a great concept (or so he and his work buddy thought) they allowed for that to be done at the work.

but for my second and this third one, I was on my own since the da vinci room was booked solid.
....and the 2nd/3rd films are all one location and I and my dad figured it wasn't worth the effort and time to da-vinci it. ...just get the right look in FCP.
 
Your welcome.

here is two stills from my first short film - color corrected on Davinci. (I cropped the letterbox out a while ago...don't know why. I liked images with out it for some reason).

Bad compression/noise for some reason....or maybe thats how it was, I forget. Afterall, it was my first.
All DVX100b - stock lense and home depot lights

here is the first: UN-corrected


now: Da-Vinci correction:



the second UN-corrected:


now: Da-Vinci correction:




this last shot is a dolly camera...it moves closer and to the left. In motion the details on the face are clearer as the camera gets closer on the "lit"/left side.

....those are the only two images from that film I have on my computer at the moment.

edit: one thing I did on this short was I had master ped to +2. yeah...bad move (though turned out fine I guess). On the "Green" one posted here, I had it set to -7.
 
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Nice grabs, I like the green look. It's tough to judge color correction when the look is so extreme (since you aren't held to getting the flesh tones just right), but I like it. Good composition and lighting.
 
Yeah I understand that about flesh tones. Due to such a messed up white balance primarily, but you are correct.

I posted the first grabs mostly for lighting judgement, as it was my "answer" to (an old...found using search, now I can't remember it) thread where someone was saying that home depot lights can't look good.
 
here are 4 grabs from the first batch - before color correction (done in FCPro)

Un color corrected:







As you see it's not much difference...just contrast (blacks down, whites up) and some desaturation...which helped tone the lime-green down a bit. - except for the shot
of the bird (hanging from a fan), I added green since it was a new location/different light style that originally came out bluer.

and on a couple shots, I made a matt using 8-point garbage matt...and darkened some of the background (crushed blacks) more.


how I did this was...for example, using shot #2 in this post - make a duplicate clip and put it above the original in the timeline. Then
on the new clip, matt (using 8 point garbage matt) out the part of the background I want to darken. Then on the bottom original clip, crush blacks some more.
and don't forget to feather/blend the matt's edges in the filter's options.
 
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I don't have it online....I've sent it off to a bunch of festivals and am waiting on answers, and they all asked for the movie to not be online in full.
...I guess I could put part of it up -- in fact, I wouldn't mind putting the whole thing up just not youtube or something.

main problem is I have no place to upload it and tried googling a free place...oly ones I found (2) both asked for the clip to be under 100MB or something. my file was 162. and it's 14 minutes.

anyone know a good spot I could upload my stuff? (must be free, and not have any strange rules like "such and such site owns the movie for a ____ amount of time and it may not be
taken down/offline until that time is up .etc..)
 
Yeah man the stills from the russian roulette flic look great, I'd love to see some of that in motion!
 
Thanks guys, I found a potential place to upload it...

so now I'm just going to have to convert my FCP movie to quicktime....my computers oftly slow so I'm going to do it tomorrow sometime. the vid should be up on the weekend sometime.
 
i know you've already found a place to host your file, but filemojo.com is a cool place....
 
hey, I've been having some problems with the upload...and filmmojo says my file is too large, but thanks for trying dg1.

I've always been through trouble just converting my file to quicktime...my comp. keeps freezing. but I have an old version of the film...not much is changed except for 2 sound parts that I never liked that I fixed for the "Festival version" (nothing too big though...no one I've showed the film too noticed it. ...but this is DVX user, I figure someone here will. )

and the whites on some of my shots are a tad blownout (again, not too bad looking...no one's complained yet. but since this is dvx user...haha)

I can get that file to work...otherwise I'll have to keep trying and wait for the slightly fixed version.
but first...I need a place to upload it! I've got one guy helping me via pm's (thanks)...but so far my computer doesn't seem to like the site.
 
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