'Aetas' - an Epic Medieval Tale

Shawn Philip Nelson

Shawn Philip Nelson

New member
A Nelson Entertainment & Flying Anvil Films Production
Produced, Story and Shot by Shawn Nelson and Ken Kupelian.
Screenplay & Directed by Shawn Nelson.
Score & Sound Design by Herman Witkam.
Score vocals by Alejandra Wayar Soux
Wardrobe and Makeup: Sarah Nelson
Assistant Camera: Jerry Turner
Latin Translation by Nathanael Blake
Posters By Jeremy Tuttle
Shot with Red #27 and #1443

Cast:
Hunter Jackson as Tristan
Victoria Geil as Elisiya
Janusz Madej as the voice of Serapis
AJ Brooks as the man behind the mask of Serapis

Poster A:
Aetas_Poster_A.jpeg


Poster B
Aetas_Poster_B.jpeg
 
Last edited:
Friday May 2:
We're leaving for the Alvord Desert! This will be a 900 mile roundtrip effort for the first shoot of timefest

Saturday May:
We got to the Alvord Desert, found our hotel in the tiny town of Fields, ate good hamburgers and milkshakes and then made our way to the desert floor. The sunset wasn't all that great due to the Steens mountains, but now we have a good idea for tomorrow's shoot.

Sunday May 4: We awoke at 4:45am and made it to the Alvord Desert floor by 5:39. Yay for us that there was this massive cloud bank low on the horizon so we didn't get our sunrise shot. Then it started raining. Finally the rain cleared, the clouds cleared and we got our shots!
GearSunrise_Alvord.jpg

Red27_Alvord.jpg

Shawn300_Alvord.jpg


Sunday May 11:
Going location scouting today. Still need a deep woods and beach location, also trying for a sand dunes one. I took my wife out for Mother's Day last night so today is all TimeFest!
May11_ShawnScout.jpg

Location scouting went well! Here's me out on the beach figuring out the precise location of our climatic scene, it will be a hike for everyone. We're thinking of assembling Red at the car and loading into backpacks for the hikes, we're really hoping for no rain.

Monday, May 12
Finally locked the cast and planned a production meeting for Wednesday. We hope to finish shooting this weekend!

Thursday, May 15
Had a fantastic cast meeting last night. Victoria and Hunter are going to knock this one out! On the script front, I got the finalized script off to the translator. We are going to have all our dialogue in old Latin! We have a consultant (a friend of mine who studies Latin at an east coast school) who is translating our dialogue and providing MP3s of him reading our script so the actors can prep. I feel this will help give proper weight to our story. On another front, Herman is acquiring for us some voice over help from his side of the pond! That's right, the cast of 'Aetas' will be international. Thanks Herman!

Friday, May 16
Prepping for a big weekend shoot! I'm extremely glad to announce we are adding Jerry Turner (DVXUser Fixitinpost) to our team! So this weekend we're going to be hiking into locations so this necessitated a logistical change. I did some research on Reduser and ended up buying a Kata backpack specifically for my Red. Here's a shot of it!
Red_Backpack.jpg


Monday May 19, 1:54am
Winding down from an exhausting but thoroughly fulfilling weekend shooting 'Aetas'. All the footage exceeded my already sky-high expectations. Hunter and Victoria took the acting beyond what I had even written. AJ, Jerry, Sarah and Ken went above and beyond continually. I'm too exhausted to type more. We now have 120gb of raw footage. I just kicked off a batch of processing today's footage. Will post some BTS pics later.

Monday May 19 9:42pm
Finally got all the Red footage processed into workable 1k proxies (to later conform using Crimson). I was able to go through and get a great idea of what I have to work with. Wow! I cranked out a few stills to show you all what's in store.

Thursday May 22
My sister Sarah (who did an AMAZING job at wardrobe/makeup) also found time to snap off some great BTS shots. Many of them give away too many plot points, but here are some we could show! I'll link to another page so this one stops filling up with my pics
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showpost.php?p=1284849&postcount=64

Thursday May 29
As Herman announced, we finalized casting of Janusz as the voice of Serapis! Go here to read more http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showpost.php?p=1290460&postcount=85
Last night Ken and I got some more editing done and now have a good idea of where to go. We're so tempted to go do one more shoot day but I think we're going to be at 6 min as it is!

Sunday June 01,
Today Ken and I did an epic 12 hour editing marathon. I had the rough cut about half way done when we started so we were able to get the assembly done fairly fast. The majority of the time was then spent fine tuning it. I’m editing on an 8-core Mac with 6gb of Ram and yet I’m still very glad that I am doing a conform process with the Red. Working with 1k Prores files is so nice and so fast, feels like I’m working in SD! A big result out of today was that we have a 22 second gap, so we’ve decided on one more shoot to go get three more shots! But, Herman needs something. So we exported the cut, with title cards in place of the three upcoming shots, and FTP’d it up to a site for Herman to grab. I’m a bit nervous! Even though Herman is a collaborator, he is also the first viewer. Hope he likes it!

Tuesday June 03
Herman loves it! He says he’s now considering getting a soprano to give a Gladiator’ish style vocal accents to his recording. Wow!!!

Wednesday June 04
The location we were going were some shallow caves on the coast that are only accessible during low tide. The tide charts we consulted were wrong by nearly two hours. So we decided to film anyways, which involved all of us wading through cold ocean (on me it was nearly to my waist), all of our shoes and jeans were soaked. We hauled in the full Red package, tripod, audio, costumes, torch gear, etc. Then shot for an hour and had to haul back through even more water! But...we got our shots :). Ken and Jerry were awesome, this was quite a guerilla effort!

Thursday June 05
Picture lock is finished! I dropped in the three shots but then spent another hour or so constantly re-watching and fine tuning the rough edit. My wife Chantelle helped provide a second set of eyes on this one, her insight was very valuable. I then uploaded a 1k version of the picture lock for Herman. I also got word from Herman that he has three possible sopranos that he is looking into, this is amazing!

Tuesday June 10
Herman just delivered the rough cut of his score!!! Wow!! I’d have been thrilled to get this as the finished, I can’t believe this is the rough! I listened to it multiple times, then carefully watched it again and gave him a few minor notes specific to timecode. Herman also emailed to say he’s chosen Bolivian Soprano Alejandra Wayar Soux. I can’t wait to hear what she sounds like!

Wednesday June 11
Finished the conform process! I used Ian Bloom’s Crimson. I had a few small hiccups with fading, time remapped shots and a composite shot, but I figured them out in decent time. I now have a 2k ProResHQ 10 bit version of Aetas for grading!

Friday June 13
I took today off my day job (software engineering) and spent a large chunk of the day grading! I sent the whole project over to Color and had an awesome time. Red footage responds so well to grading its ridiculous. Herman writes me that he had a recording session with the soprano Alejandra and it went really well!

Saturday June 14
A whirlwind day!! I’m personally moving apartments today so this was a challenge. Herman emailed me the final score & sound mix and I dropped it over the finished graded picture. My father & brothers in law were here to help so I screened it for them then quickly exported it and uploaded it to DVXUser. Done!!

Wednesday June 18, 2008
Still no viewing :-(. I hope people like it!
 
Last edited:
The last thing I expected from Timefest was an "Epic Medieval Tale." What's more, your screen grabs look very solid! Would love to hear more information. Definitely looking to be quite distinct from the other entries.
 
Sweet man! I really dig the shots so far. Plus, i'm a sucker for medieval tales :)

Was this shot on the Red?

/j
 
Thanks everyone! We're having a ton of fun making this and hope to bring something never before seen in a DVXUser fest. Edgen, yes it is being shot on Red.
 
AW MAN! You suck!

I quit!!!!!:Drogar-KnockedOut(D

Well, maybe not.... but you still suck!

(VERY nice screen grabs BTW):Drogar-BigGrin(DBG)
 
Looks bloody fantastic, want more. Now I just want the fest to be over so I can watch this. Amazing BTS stills.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top