FEATURE: Epitaph: Bread and Salt Feature film

My goal this time was to have ALL martial artist in the film. We shot this thing in a day. All the people who've seen have gone crazy over it more than any other fight we've done, even the Brain Kung fight. In fact someone said it was like Steven Seagal, which if you know me you know that's big compliment. The hand work with some smooth editing gave the effect I was looking for. But hadn't been able to get before. Our DP covered all the bases, with close up and all the angles.

I've cut some things tighter since posting this on Youtube and added a sound effect to Satsu's disappearance. I'm also varying up sound effects of the punches and kicks. BTW this is a private link. But you all can take a look.

What I didn't get is a scene of where my character gets cut in the head. I actually did get scratched by the blade, but don't worry, the blade is a blunt prop weapon and the blood is fake, LOL. But the wound did throb a little so it was perfect for what I needed. Adam dripped a little blood from my trusty mix on it, then it mixes with the sweat and there you have it. I was actually supposed to be cut on the face in the script, but good enough. With it being a private vid I can't embed it.

-Nate

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_f2VXAIIRwo
 
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Nathyn said:
My goal this time was to have ALL martial artist in the film. We shot this thing in a day. All the people who've seen have gone crazy over it more than any other fight we've done, even the Brain Kung fight. In fact someone said it was like Steven Seagal, which if you know me you know that's big compliment.
-Nate

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_f2VXAIIRwo
Click to expand...

Scene looks good Nate. I'd rework the sound, but I'm sure you guys may do that for the final mix. A good tip someone had on the site for hits is to copy the sound 2 to 3 times on 3 seperate tracks. one one track play the hit normal. On another track play the hit with more bass. With the final track play it with more treble. When you do this you amplify the hit sound and make sure all audio channels get a piece of the hit sound. We only had to use the technique a few times in our last piece, but it works very well. Should work very well for you.
 
Thanks. I'm going to actually do something like that, but also vary the punches, so some will have more bass others not so much. Kicks will be louder and slaps...well...are slaps. I've also tightened the editing, like at the end where he sees the gun, now I just have him move for it. I find this keeps the flow of the scene more. I also added a sound effect when Satsu teleports out.

-Nate
 
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jls4 said:
Scene looks good Nate. I'd rework the sound, but I'm sure you guys may do that for the final mix. A good tip someone had on the site for hits is to copy the sound 2 to 3 times on 3 seperate tracks. one one track play the hit normal. On another track play the hit with more bass. With the final track play it with more treble. When you do this you amplify the hit sound and make sure all audio channels get a piece of the hit sound. We only had to use the technique a few times in our last piece, but it works very well. Should work very well for you.
Click to expand...

Why couldn't you just add a slight notch filter on the original track so that just the bass and tremble are amplified more, and up the gain? That's the same thing as making three copies and doing the same thing.

Our fight scenes, we use multiple different hits on top of one another to build up variance in the sound. Also, one of the people we work with spent a great deal of time building up a library of hit sounds. If you do a search for foley work with fight scenes, you can find some AMAZING resources for generating foley on the fly (like a foley artist would do) to add to the realism.

We had 3 different people work on the fight sounds in our film (Dogs of Chinatown), all I can say is, wow, it's a lot of work! :) Of coure, cutting fight scenes to a beat makes the most difference. It's amazing what that adds.

Near the ends of this, the warehouse fight scene, those are some of the better sounds we did.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddun-TIXMaA

Another trick I do, and not sure what you are editing in, is I take the audio hits and I filter them in a separate piece of software where I really filter them a little different so each on sounds different, then I can have a lot of variety to chose from. Then I just watch the scene over and over to place the hits.

Btw, fight looks great though! Good job. I notice you've got some rainbow aliasing on the top of the garage door, but that is the only one that stood out.
 
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Dude, nice work work. I've seen this many times before actually. When does it come out? I'm a fan of Eric and the crew. It's cool to see him do a serious role. The sounds on that were really tight too. I will definitely play around with the sounds and vary them up. I'm editing in Final Cut Pro so it's working very well. Also I noticed your greenscreen stuff. It looks a lot like how we're g-screening. This is a GS shot from the film. What do you think?

-Nate

62518_1639889564030_1440511983_3417891_5178230_n.jpg
 
The film is available for purchase from Eric I believe (I'm not involved in the distribution part of it), it's been done for awhile now. Micah is working on a directors cut, but with our 'Metal War Gear Solid' parody videos we are working on, he hasn't had time (Just shot all weekend so we are in full production now for Part 3 of our series).

All our audio was edited in Final Cut Pro, Digital Performer, Sound Track Pro (NEVER USE!) and Logic Pro. Final was audio was done in Digital Performer. (Sound Track Pro was a mistake, though it was better than it was, SO MANY BUGS).

Eric did a lot of the fight audio as well for us. Might message him for advice as well. We were VERY impressed with his fight cutting and sound.

Your green screen looks GREAT!!! Hehe, the only thing I'd work on is the clouds, as they look like the clouds out of photoshop. :) Grading is AWESOME.

Look at this picture:

http://www.asylumstudioproductions.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/ral-compfrac.jpg

This is a sample frame from my trailer for my film Relativity. This is no where near done, but you can see how the clouds have an illumination from above look. From the moon in this case.

Also, would you believe I made that water from scratch? There is train tracks in the original image where I just cut off the bottom and left black behind it:

http://www.asylumstudioproductions.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/ral-orig.jpg

Now here it is with more building in the back that I color corrected, new sky, and I tried a water plugin that I did not like AT ALL

http://www.asylumstudioproductions.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/ral-comp-psunami.jpg

If you are curious how I did my water, it's the same filter you used for the clouds, but as a 3D plane in aftereffects. I duplicated the above image, flipped it over and then blurred vertically. Then using the additive feature of the layers. The video was a pan, but I made it look like a LONG dolly shot.

Hopefully I'll get my trailer done sometime before 2080!!! :)
 
Thanks man! Getting better at AE over time, it's such an art form. Using Maya now as well for particle physics and fluid physics (explosions). I'll let you see some of the new stuff soon, about two months out really.
 
Color graded the fight scene. I couldn't get the look right after fiddling around with it in AE. The look was nice, but almost black and white with some color added. Plus everything was too black, so my trench was as black as Joseph's shirt. I liked it, but I wanted something more and to retain some color. I did a little more work, but then got the idea to stack the image on top of the original in FCP then changed the composite mode to screen and bam!

-Nate

Original
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Graded
33643_1647100264293_1440511983_3433512_3309738_n.jpg
 
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That's the look for this fight. The whole fight has that look actually. I desaturated it and stripped much of the color and detail in AE. I added some back in Final Cut. The figures completely stand out from the background and the look is minimalist.

-Nate
 
Think CSI Maimi when they do the bright day time shots and work with the fast shutter, at least I believe it's CSI: Maimi, but I'm really not sure and can't seem to find any clips to show you, but I know Black Hawk Down had some scenes like it. Our DP kicked up the shutter speed, so I just did the rest. We want the night scenes to look like Vincent Laforet's "Nocturne". Don't know if that can happen because the of the special lens he used (which cost much more than me or my DP have). But we won't be able to have that fast shutter for those fights and the grading will be more saturated and have all that detail you love. LOL. By the way, I did switch up on those punch/kick sound F/X and it's much better.

-Nate
 
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More press on the film, this time Far East Films dropped some news on the people about the movie. I did the press release a week or so ago and it's still getting around. But I'm hitting the action and horror sites.

-Nate
 
Wow, interesting morning. Got news from one of the site admins that had posted a story about the movie that an internet stalker was posting negative comments about my actors and me on one of the articles that had been written. They were obviously intentional as they used multiple IP addresses. The site owner banned the IP addresses and deleted the posting. They said they'd worked with one of my actresses and had nasty things to say about her. She has been on time and has done the job and done it well. She can be overbearing sometime, but she is professional. They had some not so good things to say about me too, but I ignored them especially considering the feedback I'm getting about the rough edit of first fight scene I'm not even sweating it. Sounds like someone wanted to be in the film and got turned away and now their mad because the movie is getting heat. Keep in mind these weren't reviews about the film as it hasn't come out yet, these were personal attacks.

-Nate
 
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That's crazy. I don't know why somebody would act a fool like that. It sounds like the issue they had was with the actress anyway, so why take it out on you? Guilty by association, I guess.
 
And I know what the post actually said. I was like, "Wow! Where did that come from?" I was going to ask the actress did they have any enemies then I decided that it wasn't worth it. I also know the person is in the industry because they said they'd worked with her and criticized me for casting myself in the film. That's why I think was an actor. Person felt I wasn't right for the role and said so in an unpleasant manner (interesting, I'm not right for a role written for me. How does that work).

But Victor doesn't become mr. superhero until later. The next film he'll look and act different. Right now he's a normal guy (aside from the super powers he doesn't really want) in his late thirties, balding, with an a-hole boss, in love with a cheating live-in GF who has "no place to go" who he was planning to marry. Now he's being told, "Oh by the way, demons are coming to kill you. You should fight them. God put you here to do that."

I did the slender toned martial arts action hero thing in 2007, now I'm doing something a little different. In fact he doesn't start training until the end of the film. He just happens to know some martial arts and is decent at brawling because he's had to fight these things every since high school. I don't just pull a movie out of my butt. I sit down and think it through. Sometimes things are thought out, sometimes they just work. But I believe the motivation behind the attack it the green-eyed monster. We all know what that is. And I've been known to tell actors, "You want to act, then make and star in your own film." If an actor learns to make movies they'll always have parts. I'm an action hero, not specifically an actor. I'm not going for an Oscar. Just doing what I love.

-Nate
 
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