'Desecration' trailer - G35 footage

[reflex]

yeah , definately very nice. With out seeing a scene yet, it looks like a movie that I could actually get drawn into. But I'm biased to horror movies.

 

[PANA-MAN]

Not harsh at all, thank you for your comments (I'm the director).

The central goal of teaser "Trailer 1" was quite simply to be creepy, and not to concentrate on the story. It seems that it succeeds in that respect quite well with particular people, and not at all with others. It's been quite interesting for me to hear feedback- lots of people initially think there's a monster trying to break down the door, and I've heard about 10 different interpretations of what's going on with the shadowy figure at the end (both were planned ambiguities).

If you have the time, I'd love to hear some more from you on what could be improved on in terms of imagery, pacing, or anything else that comes to mind.

I'm curious about your "detail in the shadows" comment, and I'm wondering if perhaps your monitor is set a little darker than most. That's one of the most difficult things about shooting a dark film- everyone's monitors and tvs are calibrated differently, and if the settings are off just a little bit, it can ruin the whole effect. I'm not too big on blue lights = night and decided to take the "true darkness" risk, and worked with Norm to try and give the film as realistic a presentation of darkness with as much detail as possible. I'm interested in how the technique we used could be improved.

As far as Session 9 goes, I personally think that it was a failure in the sense that it completely wasted all of the fear generated by such an amazing setting. While the premise of an asbestos removal team was quite good, the follow through didn't work very well. It was like they set up the film, then just moved into a story that could have worked in, say, an abandoned office building. The secondary plot with the patient recordings came off as both hokey and trying too hard. And they shot during the day!

The story of this film (which we admittedly just barely touch on in the teaser trailers) is quite different , and really tries to emphasize the asylum aspect of the film, rather than just use it as a convenient environment. I have a BA in psychology myself, and really want to make good use of the history of mental facilities and the torturous treatments of the past in order to really evoke fear. Mental illness is still somewhat taboo in our culture, and this film really seeks to delve into how we perceive those that are mentally ill. How in the past they were locked away out of sight, how a lot of treatment was literally torture, and how their minds were even destroyed through unscientific psychosurgeries. It also draws parallels to how our culture perceives and interacts with the mentally ill today.

Our main character is a veteran urban explorer who actually has a mental illness. Urban explorers, if you're not familiar with the term, are individuals who break into abandoned buildings to discover the artifacts within left from the past. They don't go in to hunt ghosts, find money, or escape a rain storm- rather they venture into these places because the very nature of their dilapidation and history fascinates them. It's through this exploration that the true creepiness of the film builds a strong base upon which we can terrify.

I also didn't like how Session 9 wasted the prefrontal lobotomy. They used it as kind of a cheap plot device and murder weapon, whereas I wish to really disturb people through the recognition of what a horrible tool it was, and how it completely destroyed the lives of people, some of whom had no real mental illness at all. And the lobotomy will only be one of the many treatments that are parts of this film- hydrotherapy, primitive electroshock therapy, and many other less well known types of "therapy" will be utilized. It's just that our budget didn't allow us to film those for the trailer.

In light of all of that, I'm quite confident that the actual film will come out quite different from Session 9, and hopefully do the setting the justice it deserves. I do recognize that the trailers make it seem that the two films are quite similar though, which is unfortunate.

But yeah- if you have any more ideas or comments, totally let me know. They're extremely helpful to hear, and I really appreciate your earlier post.

Thanks!

No problem, thanks for the response to the crit. I can see where different monitors will yield different results.
I shot a scene for my short the other night which looked good on the monitor but took it into the house the next day to show friends on a TV and the blacks were way to dark with no detail.
I will say I do have the brightness cranked on my monitor (Apple 20" cinema display) but it didn't seem to help. Maybe the Apples simply run darker.
I want to clarify too that I think the cinematography as a whole is well done.
Obviously, there are well above average talents at work here.
Norm always seems to do a bang up job. My only crits with him have been if that he goes dark, he should get ahold of some 1k's and rim light shapes here and there to define geography and form within the scene.
Even a few "peppers" here and there strategically placed can help shapes to register and pop.
Not too say this is necessary all of the time, sometimes near total darkness can be effective. But I saw many scenes where a little more creative sculpting with backlighting might have made things pop more.
Another way of making things pop is to manipulate reflectivity.
For instance, in the trailer, take the room with the ladder by the door.
Glisten up just the edges of the ladder with vasoline so a small focused light can catch just this and makes the edges register better and define its shape. This way you do not always have to generate a lot of "obvious" light to bring out a shape but rather change the reflectivity of a surface to do so.
John Alton went dark a lot too, reeeaaal dark, it's what he was known for, but he never forsaked the high contrast of a strong key or gradation of a fill, backlight for consuming darkness.
As you said, however, it is easy to lose a sense of naturalism when stuff looks "lit".
Trust me, Norm probably knows more about lighting than I do and could show me many things.
My ultimate goal is to be a screenwriter so I defer to anyone really going after the craft of cinematography.
I look forward to the day when I see the letters ASC behind his name.
Good luck :thumbsup: