The Life-Guard - For the 48 Hour Film Project

chriscurl

chriscurl

Well-known member
Have a look at what I and several other members of this board did last weekend for the Virginia Beach 48 Hour Film Project, filmed with 2 dvx100s, was quite a weekend and alot of fun.

http://vimeo.com/1467725

The Genre we were assigned was Fantasy, and I think we did something pretty cool with it.

UPDATE:
Winner - Best Art Direction
Winner - Best Costumes
Winner - Best Actor, Anthony Ware
 
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Great work. loved it.

what kind of mic did you use? the sound quality is great.

by the way, do you have to get permission for the location when you were shooting?

also did you have to make your own music and everything within the 48 hours??

it's really unbelievable to make it in 48 hours to me......nice stuff.
 
Great job. I liked your lead actor a lot, and you held my attention for the whole story. If there had been more time to work on anything, I would have tried to come up with SFX to emphasize the idea of traveling between the two "realms" of the story.
 
I'm not going to answer questions for Chris...this was his baby. I'm just here to ham it up and say I was a part of this. :) Yeah...I'm in the credits (modest)
 
Yes our lead, Tony Ware, was fantastic, cannot say enough good things about him, hung in there all day Saturday until 2am.

Rod on the other hand was a complete pain in the ass.

Audio - using ntg2, worked really well besides a couple of issues of us just being too tired to realize we werent set up correctly.

Settings - we used some settings from the settings thread, the outside shot used the "film like" setting (cant remember what they called it in the thread) and the fantasy world stuff used the cyblue settings but i think we lost alot of that in post, also hit the blacks real hard in post, unfortunatrely the copy we turned in isnt as heavy on the blacks so you can see the curtains and sheets, drove me nuts when i saw it on the big screen.

Locations - the coffee shop at the beginning gave us permission, the interior stuff was at my work, the rest of it is a little hazy.
 
yea man you should be picked for your city, most of the ones I've seen for chicago aren't even half as good, and I mean the ones from past years that have won.
 
Thanks, just got the nominee email, we are in the running for:

Best Film
Best Writing
Best Editing
Best Acting
Best Cinematography
Best Use of Characrter: Harold/Harriet Ralston (Lifeguard)
Best Art Direction
Best Special Effects
Best Choreography
Best Costumes

Find out tomorrow night!
 
i actually watched this this morning and was looking at something because i had about 2 minutes before i had to leave for work. i ended up being a few minutes late because i couldnt fast forward it or turn it off because i wanted to see it after the first minute.
great job, you deserve the titles.

also, i didnt see any sort of signs that you were in a real location, looked completely "fantasy" when in the alternate world.
 
I have to credit this forum for helping me find the Rode NTG2 and in turn helping me to convince Chris to get one for his kit. The microphone is ridiculously awesome, especially when you consider the price point. We also use it quite a bit for some local commercials and mini-studio recording and have never been let down by it.

There were some points when we weren't really set or planning to record sound and just had the mic sitting on a boom and it still found bits that we absolutely had to use in the audio track.

Overall, though we had an amazingly cohesive crew that worked hard. I think that went the longest way toward making this what it was.

Some other small notes. We did have Tom Shortridge out and about with a professional level Steadicam, but we ended up shelving that a good portion of the time and using a $50 handi-cam rig that I built with specs from this site.

The chase scene was shot entirely with that very minimalistic set of workout weights and galvanized steel. I'm pretty pleased with that investment.

-Matt Burchfield
"Lifeguard" Co-Director, Co-Producer, Co-Rod Thompson Puncher
 
Great job on the Life-Guard -- I really like your lead actor - cast perfectly. Very creative fastasy setting. Good to see it on the big screen last too.

--Jay, DP of the 'Deep End'
 
Going from handheld to locked down tripod at the end was very effective. Really emphasized a sense of calm after the crisis.
I'm wondering how you guys got away with a sidearm, badge and handcuff case on your actor. Since there is no swat team footage, I'm assuming you cleared it first. Did you guys encounter any difficulties with that?
 
I'm in the Navy, currently working as a MP, so the holster and cuffs came directly from my belt. The gun was an Airsoft.
 
gco said:
Going from handheld to locked down tripod at the end was very effective. Really emphasized a sense of calm after the crisis.
I'm wondering how you guys got away with a sidearm, badge and handcuff case on your actor. Since there is no swat team footage, I'm assuming you cleared it first. Did you guys encounter any difficulties with that?
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What Rod said is true - but I don't believe we had any permits to film with them. We just did some real running-and-gunning. No problems were run into.
 
Though it should be noted that we did the usual safety checks of the weapon for each scene. Tony, our lead actor was really professional about that as well and made sure to show to also check the weapon personally with each person in his scenes.
 
dopeyname101 said:
What Rod said is true - but I don't believe we had any permits to film with them. We just did some real running-and-gunning. No problems were run into.
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Wow, mother luck was definitely smiling on you guys.
Anyhow, great story line and great execution.
Enjoyed it.
 
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