FEATURE: Exit 101 - beginner filmmaking journey

Well, we had our Cast and Crew wrap party this weekend. We were lucky enough to get hooked up with an amazing location that was actually a Haunted House attraction, that included blacklight putt putt golf. The amazing folks at the "FEAR FACTORY" haunted house, got their actors together and ran us through the attraction, which was very fun. I got the CRAP shocked out of me, on this thing called the "Strong Man Test" which feels like your getting electrocuted in the chair. Then, we showed two entire scenes and 15 minutes of outtakes on a 300" screen using an Epson HD projector. We wound up exporting the clips as MPEG-2 files from Apple Compressor, and since they were all smaller than 4 gigs each. I put them all on a 16GB USB drive and brought my PS3 to play them from. We connected an HDMI cable from the PS3 to the projector and the AV cable to a HUGE sound system, with 4 subs.. etc. I got chills seeing it on a big screen. It was just so weird seeing my movie up on a big screen. We had about 50 people there, and not all of them were part of the cast/crew (we allowed them to bring one guest each) but the response was overwhelming. People laughed when they were supposed to, grossed out at the right places, and cheered after every scene, and were sad when it was over because they all wanted to see more. The reaction like that makes all the long hours and grueling work to film this thing worth every minute of it. I think I've definitely found my "calling" after jumping around from "hobby to hobby" looking for a place to call home. I've learned so much from you guys. Just wanted to share my excitement.
 
Big congrats! That sounds like it was alot of fun and your setup there sounds like it was wicked cool! Did you see anything on the big screen that looked different from what you've been editing - like some shots too bright or too dark or anything like that?
 
Yeah, some of the darker shots were alot darker on the projector. They did not look that dark on my HDTV nor any of the Monitors we've been editing on. Not sure what that was though. Noone seemed to care though.
 
Azmyth said:
Yeah, some of the darker shots were alot darker on the projector. They did not look that dark on my HDTV nor any of the Monitors we've been editing on. Not sure what that was though. Noone seemed to care though.
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It's called: callibration.

You have to callibrate your monitor so that the color "red" for example is the "official red"

I'm not that much experienced in video, but if you search for "callibrating monitors" you'll see what I mean
 
Azmyth said:
Well, we had our Cast and Crew wrap party this weekend. We were lucky enough to get hooked up with an amazing location that was actually a Haunted House attraction, that included blacklight putt putt golf. The amazing folks at the "FEAR FACTORY" haunted house, got their actors together and ran us through the attraction, which was very fun. I got the CRAP shocked out of me, on this thing called the "Strong Man Test" which feels like your getting electrocuted in the chair. Then, we showed two entire scenes and 15 minutes of outtakes on a 300" screen using an Epson HD projector.
Click to expand...

This is so cool man! Where are you going to premiere it? Or are you going the festival route? What do you plan to do for distribution?

-Nate
 
Nathyn said:
This is so cool man! Where are you going to premiere it? Or are you going the festival route? What do you plan to do for distribution?

-Nate
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We are premiering it in Cordele at the Cinema here. We have run into a snag though that I'm trying to work out. I was told on multiple occasions that our cinema was all digital now, but we've learned just recently that they are still 35mm film.. and of course we do not have the budget to do a film out. So in order to show it there, we are going to have to come up with some other method. The theater is willing to work with us though.

We have a potential distribution deal on the table already, but I can't say much about it. Whether we go that route yet or not depends on how good the deal is. Otherwise I think we are going to do a limited amount of genre specific festivals, and do more Horror conventions than film festivals.. such as Orlando's Spooky Empire.
 
Azmyth said:
Yeah, some of the darker shots were alot darker on the projector. They did not look that dark on my HDTV nor any of the Monitors we've been editing on. Not sure what that was though. Noone seemed to care though.
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I asked, because I've been there before. Something like that always happens - you end up seeing something different on the big screen and you're like "Arrgghhhhh!" LOL!
 
Marlon Ladd said:
I asked, because I've been there before. Something like that always happens - you end up seeing something different on the big screen and you're like "Arrgghhhhh!" LOL!
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Yeah, I've got to figure that out because I don't want it that dark. I mean, noone said anything at the party, but it bugged me just a tad because I knew it was supposed to be alot lighter.
 
Haven't posted anything in a bit.

Still editing.

Here's some grabs. How's the Color Correction look?

Untouched

2i6mp03.jpg


Corrected

qn7e2r.jpg
 
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Looking for a few Scene viewers, to check out some recently edited scenes. Need some film maker feedback.
 
Hey, I was shocked to see us back on the first page lol.

We are wrapping up post, and are meeting with the local cinema this week or next to discuss the premiere date, which should be in mid to late October (Halloween time!)

more info is on Facebook!
 
Nice. I'm trying to keep up with all the films I knew were in production.
 
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Thanks guys! Anyone got any experience using the projectors theater's use to show ads on to show a movie on? Our theater here still uses 35mm projectors and well thats not happening for us. They do have those smaller digital projectors in each house, that they use to show the ads. I always thought it looked decent enough. My partner is insisting we figure out how to rent an HD projector, but outside of professional digital cinema projectors that cost several thousand a day to rent.. I don't think we are gonna be able to show this in HD in theaters that don't already have the capability to do so. I don't think it will look bad. We showed clips from it at the wrap party on a wall, with a home theater projector and noone complained. Of course with that we had to get the projector really close to make it as big as a theater screen would be.
 
You can't rent HD projectors for cheaper than that? I also want to see how a film shot on the HV40 looks.

-Nate
 
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I've been looking into it all morning.

to rent a 10000 lumen digital cinema projector for 1 day would cost 2200.00 a day.
 
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