Chasing Kangaroos - NEW ENTRY

Noel Evans

Noel Evans

Mod V3 New and Improved
Staff member
Hi all. So here it is. Again, thanks for the support thus far. Thank you to Alex for a killer effort in helping get this into shape.


POSTER.jpg



CAST
Samaya - Samaya Murray
Garrett - Jackson Bradbury
Mother Voice - Nicole Holland
Father Voice - Lawrence Moorefield

CREW

Production
Screenplay - Alex Whitmer
Director / Cinematography - Noel Evans
AD - Sherie Johns
Hair & Makeup - Karen Dionne
Grip - Nick Lanning
Grip Assistant - Jordan Murray
Production Sound recordist / Studio Recording - Loz Moorefield
Boom - Melanie Fieldman
Craft - Takako Nagaoka

Post
Score - Herman Witkam
Editor - Noel Evans
Color Grade - Noel Evans
Sound Editor - Loz Moorefield

Produced by - Scarlet Digital Cinema​
 
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TUESDAY 09 June

With our script locked (mostly), Ive hit the shot list and SB's hardcore.
Into the studio last night to record some O.S. audio - only three lines.


Wednesday 10 June


TEST SHOTS - Locked in the camera settings and basic color grade thats to be applied to locked cut.
More shots and storyboards today.
Everyones set to shoot. Looking up!

Sunday June 14

Most of the shots in the can - couple of easy pick ups scheduled for wednesday then wrapped. Had a lot to get through today, and in the end I feel we rushed a scene a bit too much - but we used the time we had the best we could.

Some BTS from today

SKIP - SDC MASCOT!

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2k window pane
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Ghosts in the picture?
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Updated Grabs - June 28

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Monday 29 June - Notes on Cinematography and style

This is a pretty short short. So one of things I wanted to try and do is really connect the audience with the protagonist and her view in this piece, theres not a great deal of time to do so, so I felt important to keep her the focus - and by that I mean in lens terms and shot structure. So you will notice early on I really try to connect with her eyes and actions in the shot, this meant shooting fairly tight. I also wanted to the audience to feel right in there and thus shot most of this handheld - nothing crazy like Bourne, in fact much of it was stable and I used only the nuances of my natural movements such as breathing etc by staying connected to the camera.

I did a lot of things in this short that I dont normally do in composition as I really wanted to push my own comfort zone and see how far I could take that before it was too much for me.

When creating my shot lists I did a series of storyboards first from the scenes, a lot of which were scrapped. I took the good boards and then translated the in betweens onto the shotlist. Noting the appropriate focal length in terms of direct comparison to 35mm. We shot on the 500 and so I turned to my trusty Panavision lens conversion chart. As this is narrative, I wanted to mantain a level of audience perception as far as AOV and what a cinema audience would most likely be used to seeing (just my personal choice and I dont believe theres wrong or right in doing so or not doing so. On a lot of stuff I shoot I think, I have a zoom lens, why not utilise those lengths not commonly available on fixed primes - seems more of a bonus in many cases.

The 500 helped me a lot in some areas as far as getting the shot I wanted. Heres how and sorry for the technical specs. The 500 has 2/3" sensors and has pixels that are 29 microns. Relatively speaking thats big and thus the ISO rating for the 500 in the scene file set up I was using (whilst not measured) would be around 500ISO, maybe more. This means that whilst using an equivalent 35mm AOV I was able to maintain a pretty close to 35mm DOF by using my aperture at a lower fstop. To put it simply, lets say your shooting 35mm at 80mm at f4-5, I can emulate this pretty closely if not almost precisely by selecting the converted FOV on my lens and opening the aperture up much more than f4-5. This also means I needed a lot less light for this piece. One of the great conveniences when shooting on the 500. My way of thinking says a lens adapter for the 500 would be a waste of money, others will most likely disgree. But with the 500's ISO it makes life much easier in doing this.

So onto lighting. The first decision I made was that I wanted to complement what was naturally available. I took lots of loacation photos at diff times of the day to see how it played out on a sunny and cloudy day. As it turned out one shoot day was sunny and one was cloudy. The location had windows that got plenty of sun, so I either boosted light coming through those at different times of day or shut it down depending on where and for what I was shooting and to maintain continuity. I also wanted to overdo a dramatic feel, to give it some punch in the short time frame. We used gelled smaller tungsten fixtures inside, and placed large fixtures on the exteriors. This was a pretty small space to shoot in.

To display mood and character position I used the cameras angle quite a lot positioning one player higher or lower in the frame and using relative angle of the players eyes to each other as well.

Thats some rough notes. Was I successful? Personally I feel in some cases more than others, but I'll leave the final judgement up to the viewer and did it help them see action take place as I intended.
 
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ZazaCast said:
Welcome...take 2...rollin'!
Click to expand...

Cheers mate and everyone else.

As an FYI - I have the next four days off to concentrate on my shots and storyboards. Going through and breaking down elements now. Its going to be a tighter shoot schedule than envisioned but we'll get there.
 
Welcome back dude. Time to really get cracking now. July is looming ahead... Since you have most issues sorted out, you should be fine and rock n' rolling!
 
Cheers Rodney.

On an update issue there is quick piece of dialogue that occurs O.S. - we got that recorded in a studio last night.
 
Damnit Alex stole my idea!!! I had Chasing Koala Bears down for my Questfest entry, then you Noel and your sexy hpx500... and Alex with his sexy girlfriend comes along and steals my very serious erotic drama... set in ancient Rome, it had Malcolm McDowell and many Koala bears... but now i guess we'll never know.

I hope your both happy with yourselves!

Anyway yes - apart from that this is high up on the watch list - Noel is a talented cinematogrpaher, director, i have no doubt, and Alex is an exceptionally skilled writer!

Good luck gentlemen!
 
Cheers Lawrie, but how did you know? You gave the story up!

Yes its a semi erotic thriller with a cast of thousands .... of kangaroos, but we have Mickey Rourke. Think Wild Orchid meets thousands of kangaroos.

Got all my shot lists done, all people in place, all equipment in place. Need to grab a couple of readily available props this afternoon and we are set to shoot this weekend.
 
Cheers kyrre.

Heres a couple of screen grabs to give a glimpse :)

Moved to 1st page.
 
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Rough edit is done. Going to grab two pick ups tomorrow then go through it again with AD at which point we should be able to get a locked edit. Then off for sound edit and score and I will polish it and get all the grading done. Looks like we are on track.
 
Looks great! Nice grabs. Can't wait to see what this one is all about. Congrats on the wrap!

:thumbsup:
 
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