DEATH OF SEASONS - Gabriel's Teaser Unveiled

Chance White

Chance White

Well-known member
The first official teaser trailer for DEATH OF SEASONS has been unveiled. Gabriel's Teaser is available in standard and high resolution Windows Media and Quicktime formats and is also available for your PSP or video iPod.

Also newly added are 4 new production stills.

The release date for Aaron's Teaser has been slated for March 15th.

Click here to visit the official web site.

DEATH OF SEASONS is a low budget independent feature film shot on the Panasonic DVX100A in or around Atlanta, GA.

I appreciate any and all feedback.
 
Looks very interesting.
I like the concept (if thats the right word). It's something that interests me.
Looks like it put together well.
 
Looked awesome. What did you light the opening monologue type scene with? Flo's? Did you use any special methods in post to sharpen it up, or uprez it?
 
wow
would like to know all of your setup, numbers, equipment, etc... looks great by the way.

did you use a 35 adapter?
 
Thanks for the comments so far.

The monologue was lit with just one JTL 500 watt soft box. Delfo is standing about 30 feet in front of the wall, and the camera is about 30 feet away. The light was pretty close to him, about 5 to 8 feet away. I started with a three point lighting set up which also looked great but I decided on using just the single source. Didn't use the flo's there, but I used them for the scene you see very briefly (twice I think) inside the car.

Lighting setups overall, used natural light whenever possible with little else. Lighting kit consisted of 3 JTL soft boxes that could be converted to harder sources via reflector dishes and barn doors, 3 100 watt Reveal clamp lights (which we actually used more then anything else as they are so mobile, we got quite creative with them in some scenes) and cheap Home Depot battery operated flos (only used for the car scene).

No 35 adapter but we did shoot with the 16:9 Anamorphic Lens in letterbox mode to get full 2.35:1 in camera. In the future I would just further crop the 16:9 in post if I want 2.35 but it was helpful seeing exactly what I was getting on this.

Cut on Sony Vegas. Everything is Magic Bulleted, though I tried not to over do it. I also ran Deartifactor over the whole thing. Man that thing adds some render time. I mixed in 5.1, Vegas and Soundforge just make working with sound an awesome experience.

We had virtually no budget.

Thanks again for the comments, keep em coming, let me know if there's anything else you'd like to know about DEATH OF SEASONS.
 
My plugin chain in Vegas:

Sony Levels - Sony Curves - Sony Color Corrector - Sony Secondary Color Corrector - Magic Bullet Editors

Just extensive tweaking of all of these to achieve all the looks... Magic Bullet is just extremely versatile and powerful, people should rely on the presets less and play around more. I generally would start with a preset and adjust it extensively to get the look I wanted.
 
Thanks for the kind words.

Unfortunately, as an ultra low budget feature, we didn't get many behind the scenes photos... This is an area I won't neglect in the future.
 
Trailer looks great. Well edited, and well composed technically. The film also looks like it was well made as well. However, I said this after seeing your first footage of the film and still feel now...I don't get what the film is about in the slightest from watching the trailer. That isn't a good thing. It means you may hook in the techies or the indie filmmakers that want to see 'how this guy got those cool looks' etc, but a general movie watcher may or may not be interested because the trailer doesn't really have a focus narrative wise. Just my thought. Well done.
 
Thanks for your feedback Rokoko.

This is the first 'official' teaser trailer. I only intended to give a general impression of tone, mood, especially character, and very subtle hints of the story.
The trailers will give you a much better impression of the story. The objective of the teasers for me is primarily to build intrigue and interest.

This is also the kind of movie where I can only reveal so much, as it is extremely unique. The less the audience knows about how the story turns, the more effective the film will be... so it is somewhat of a balancing act.
 
Nice cutting on the trailer. Trailer looks intriguing.

Good tips on camera and lights.

I'm curious about your audio set-up. How did you manage on a low budget?
 
I basically walked into my local shop here (SHOWCASE) and asked for the best shotgun boom for 400 dollars. I learned much about location sound and sound editing. I used Vegas and Soundforge which seemed to work really well for me. Sony's Noise Reduction is the best plugin for that purpose I have found so far (I've tried Audition, Bias Soundsoap, don't have access to Pro Tools)

We basically had a 3 man crew at all times so it was either Matt or Coop swinging the boom most of the time, sometimes just attached it to the camera for some of the more 'aggressive' handheld stuff. I bought a boom pole but it actually didn't fit the boom so we had to ghetto rig it with duct tape...

For future projects I definitely hope to have a Sound Recordist and Boom Swinger, dedicated. It was just one other thing for me to be mindful of, it was tough juggling so many things at once but we did the best we could. We fooled around with using a minidisc with a mic on some wide shots but it didn't work very well. I respect the craft of the good audio people much more then I did before, it is such a thankless job but is just invaluable. Bad sound is just unforgivable (from the audience perspective).

I highly recommend Jay Rose's book on Audio Production. I just couldn't have done the job without it.

We got extremely lucky in retrospect and only had to loop about 10% of the movie.
 
novelt said:
ditto...and that goes for continuity, grips, lighting, and everyone who works on any project.
Click to expand...

This is true, but it seems much harder to find good sound people when you're low budget/no budget.
 
We're about to submit to film festivals, from there hopefully we will get a distribution deal... so hopefully sooner rather than later. Thanks for checking it out.
 
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