Folks, I would like to present a project (Burmese feature film recorded on HDV to be filmed out) I am working on. It's on the one hand about sharing the experience I had during the last 2 years but also about asking you for your inputs. I would like to give you some background information on the movie I am producing. Having a Swiss father and a Burmese mother, but living in Switzerland, I decided to produce a movie that takes both my roots into account and plays in Switzerland and in Myanmar (Burma). The movie is aimed for cinema release in Myanmar. Although not having a movie background, I always was fascinated by movies.
Now, the standard of Burmese movies is quite low. A lot of productions are just for the video market and features (on film) are usually shot for below 80'000 USD. Video productions usually have a budget of 20 to 30'000 USD. Burmese movies usually have a bad sound (and I mean really bad) as no money is spent for scoring and for good sound capture during production and for sound effects. My aim was to produce a Burmese movie with a new level of quality for a Burmese movie. I have no illusion to produce a Holywood movie. For a Burmese movie it was a premiere to be shot in a Western country (it depends if Japan counts as a Western country ;-)). In preproduction phase, I read as much as possible in books and internet platforms (such as DVXuser) about shooting a movie. Although my production belongs to the most expensive Burmese movies up to now, it is still a low/no budget production for Western standards. However, I could persuade one of the famous Burmese directors and the leading Burmese actress to participate in the project.
In order not to overstrain my budget during the production phase, I chose to shoot on a Canon XH-A1 HDV camera with a 25f setting (with a Brevis depth-of-field adapter) instead of shooting on film. Principal photography took place in January 2008 in Myanmar and August 2008 in Switzerland. Since shooting, the movie was broadly covered by Burmese media so that the movie is highly anticipated by the audience. And this really gives a good feeling
. In December 2008 we started cutting in Myanmar on Canopus Edius. However, having limited holidays, the cutting has been stuck with 95 percent already finished. In two weeks, however, I am leaving Switzerland for Myanmar to finish the final cutting and to procede mainly with sound work.
Although I cared to have good production sound quality (using a Sound Devices mixer and decent microphones), the typical lack of care and inexperience of Burmese crews for sound lead to disappointing results in my eyes. The signal to noise ratio (hiss) is too high in my opinion. I guess that this comes from a too low recording level in the camera. But not only the system noise is unsatisfying, also the environment noise is often too high. In January, all actors were invited for looping. You cannot imagine how difficult that was. I didn't find any sound stage that was quiet enough for recording. Either there was a power failure, generator noise or too high reverb. As a last resort, I rented a large hotel room with a thick carpet and placed mattresses on the walls. The ADR was done with a computer hidden in the other room and the actors repeating their lines. The sound was recorded through the mixer to the camera. I was quite happy that the main actress is that experienced with ADR sessions so that she can match the orignial voice track quite well. My sound man in Burma has no cleaned the recorded voices and will match the recording to the footage. I am a bit fearing that the ADR will sound quite unnatural. Would be glad if someone of you can give me some insights to his or her experience.
Now, sound is the one thing, the other is the filmout of the material. A Swiss company will do the color grading and filmout (laser) of the material. We already did a test on intermediate and film stock. The filmout on film stock looked softer but seemed more organic and nicer. The workflow for color grading and filmout will be as follows. The cutting in Myanmar on Canopus Edius will be used just as an offline-cutting. The files are captured as Canopus HQ-avi files. However, the project will be rendered and used as a guide video for the online-cutting. For the online-cutting, we will recapture the HDV-casettes into uncompressed pictures. In order to save high costs in Switzerland, the company advised me to prepare following workflow in Myanmar:
1) Recapture the material as native files without conversion to HQ-avi
2) Line up all to be used footage in the same sequence as the offline-cutting (so cutting away all not used footage)
3) Don't apply any composites or transitions to the footage
4) Play out the material on an HDV casette
5) In Switzerland, the company will recapture the casette in an uncompressed format
6) The transitions and composites will be done according to the guide video
7) Color correction will be done in Baselight
8) Titles and finish will be done in Smoke
9) Filmout
However, in this process, I am not sure if Edius will really be able to play out the captured material on the HDV casette without changing too much. I fear that even when not doing any composite work, Edius will somehow internally convert the material so that it will be rendered losing quality when played out to casette. Let's take for example the case where I would take the in-point within a GOP. What will Edius do in this case? Will it fully describe the first frame of the sequence and set up a new GOP from that frame? I hope you understand what I mean. Having anyway to recapture and line up the material from beginning, I also could use an other editing software as Vegas, Avid, or Premiere. Does somebody know how these programs will treat the native file?
If someone has useful inputs on any aspect of my project, don't hesitate. I am also still looking for people who would like to contribute to the project in some kind. Especially, still much work has to be done on Sound FX, Foley, noise reduction of the original dialogue, ADR. I cannot pay much as the budget is really tight, but if your contribution to the project is really valuable, I would of course honor it. Also you can expect credits in the movie.
I already a preliminary trailer with temp-music that is to be replaced. You can download it from the following FTP-Site (don't look at the homepage, it is absolutely outdated and is not really designed yet) :
Server: thura.ch
User: musik@thura.ch
Password: musik
Trailer_Musik2.mpg is the version without music.
ShadowsPast.mov and ShadowsPast.mp4 are identical trailers with the temporary music. In the version without music you can hear disappointing quality of the production sound. If someone is willing to try to improve the sound quality, feel free to play with it.
Enough is said, I am awaiting your feedback.
Now, the standard of Burmese movies is quite low. A lot of productions are just for the video market and features (on film) are usually shot for below 80'000 USD. Video productions usually have a budget of 20 to 30'000 USD. Burmese movies usually have a bad sound (and I mean really bad) as no money is spent for scoring and for good sound capture during production and for sound effects. My aim was to produce a Burmese movie with a new level of quality for a Burmese movie. I have no illusion to produce a Holywood movie. For a Burmese movie it was a premiere to be shot in a Western country (it depends if Japan counts as a Western country ;-)). In preproduction phase, I read as much as possible in books and internet platforms (such as DVXuser) about shooting a movie. Although my production belongs to the most expensive Burmese movies up to now, it is still a low/no budget production for Western standards. However, I could persuade one of the famous Burmese directors and the leading Burmese actress to participate in the project.
In order not to overstrain my budget during the production phase, I chose to shoot on a Canon XH-A1 HDV camera with a 25f setting (with a Brevis depth-of-field adapter) instead of shooting on film. Principal photography took place in January 2008 in Myanmar and August 2008 in Switzerland. Since shooting, the movie was broadly covered by Burmese media so that the movie is highly anticipated by the audience. And this really gives a good feeling
. In December 2008 we started cutting in Myanmar on Canopus Edius. However, having limited holidays, the cutting has been stuck with 95 percent already finished. In two weeks, however, I am leaving Switzerland for Myanmar to finish the final cutting and to procede mainly with sound work.Although I cared to have good production sound quality (using a Sound Devices mixer and decent microphones), the typical lack of care and inexperience of Burmese crews for sound lead to disappointing results in my eyes. The signal to noise ratio (hiss) is too high in my opinion. I guess that this comes from a too low recording level in the camera. But not only the system noise is unsatisfying, also the environment noise is often too high. In January, all actors were invited for looping. You cannot imagine how difficult that was. I didn't find any sound stage that was quiet enough for recording. Either there was a power failure, generator noise or too high reverb. As a last resort, I rented a large hotel room with a thick carpet and placed mattresses on the walls. The ADR was done with a computer hidden in the other room and the actors repeating their lines. The sound was recorded through the mixer to the camera. I was quite happy that the main actress is that experienced with ADR sessions so that she can match the orignial voice track quite well. My sound man in Burma has no cleaned the recorded voices and will match the recording to the footage. I am a bit fearing that the ADR will sound quite unnatural. Would be glad if someone of you can give me some insights to his or her experience.
Now, sound is the one thing, the other is the filmout of the material. A Swiss company will do the color grading and filmout (laser) of the material. We already did a test on intermediate and film stock. The filmout on film stock looked softer but seemed more organic and nicer. The workflow for color grading and filmout will be as follows. The cutting in Myanmar on Canopus Edius will be used just as an offline-cutting. The files are captured as Canopus HQ-avi files. However, the project will be rendered and used as a guide video for the online-cutting. For the online-cutting, we will recapture the HDV-casettes into uncompressed pictures. In order to save high costs in Switzerland, the company advised me to prepare following workflow in Myanmar:
1) Recapture the material as native files without conversion to HQ-avi
2) Line up all to be used footage in the same sequence as the offline-cutting (so cutting away all not used footage)
3) Don't apply any composites or transitions to the footage
4) Play out the material on an HDV casette
5) In Switzerland, the company will recapture the casette in an uncompressed format
6) The transitions and composites will be done according to the guide video
7) Color correction will be done in Baselight
8) Titles and finish will be done in Smoke
9) Filmout
However, in this process, I am not sure if Edius will really be able to play out the captured material on the HDV casette without changing too much. I fear that even when not doing any composite work, Edius will somehow internally convert the material so that it will be rendered losing quality when played out to casette. Let's take for example the case where I would take the in-point within a GOP. What will Edius do in this case? Will it fully describe the first frame of the sequence and set up a new GOP from that frame? I hope you understand what I mean. Having anyway to recapture and line up the material from beginning, I also could use an other editing software as Vegas, Avid, or Premiere. Does somebody know how these programs will treat the native file?
If someone has useful inputs on any aspect of my project, don't hesitate. I am also still looking for people who would like to contribute to the project in some kind. Especially, still much work has to be done on Sound FX, Foley, noise reduction of the original dialogue, ADR. I cannot pay much as the budget is really tight, but if your contribution to the project is really valuable, I would of course honor it. Also you can expect credits in the movie.
I already a preliminary trailer with temp-music that is to be replaced. You can download it from the following FTP-Site (don't look at the homepage, it is absolutely outdated and is not really designed yet) :
Server: thura.ch
User: musik@thura.ch
Password: musik
Trailer_Musik2.mpg is the version without music.
ShadowsPast.mov and ShadowsPast.mp4 are identical trailers with the temporary music. In the version without music you can hear disappointing quality of the production sound. If someone is willing to try to improve the sound quality, feel free to play with it
.Enough is said, I am awaiting your feedback.