Fear of God - A low/no budget feature

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hungercultfilms

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hungercultfilms
Hi all,

After reading many excellent and informative threads here, I thought I’d begin my own journal of our daunting journey into the world of producing a low/no budget feature. We’re around 55% done on principle, which is a minor miracle in itself having to shoot mainly on weekends and sometimes in the evenings after the dreaded day job.

Anyways, here are a few scaled down screen grabs from ‘Fear of God‘. Of course, they’re not yet how the final movie will look, but we’re still shooting principle so we’re in no rush to finalise anything in post just yet. I guess you could loosely call the film ‘Lynchian’, though the film’s narrative is (hopefully) clear and well defined. We tend to describe the film as “Inland Empire meets The Wicker Man“.

Editing is done on Vegas pro 9 (In spite of general opinion, I think it’s a great, intuitive editor). We also use Photoshop and After Effects.

We not shooting on a DVX of any kind as we can’t afford one, we’re using the humble and overlooked little gem, the JVC GZ HD40. You’ve gotta make the best of what you’ve got, right.


We’re looking to have a website and teaser trailer up as soon as we can manage this. But I’ll also post any updates here, in case anyone is interested.

Thanks.

http://s1005.photobucket.com/albums/af175/hungercultfilms/?action=view&current=needlescaled.jpg

hungercultfilms
hungercultfilms

http://s1005.photobucket.com/albums/af175/hungercultfilms/?action=view&current=showerscaled.jpg
hungercultfilms


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http://s1005.photobucket.com/albums/af175/hungercultfilms/?action=view&current=diggingscaled.jpg

http://s1005.photobucket.com/albums/af175/hungercultfilms/?action=view&current=dancing1scaled.jpg

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http://s1005.photobucket.com/albums/af175/hungercultfilms/?action=view&current=office2scaled.jpg


hungercultfilms
 
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Right on! Glad to hear that you're using Vegas, and also using what equipment you can get your hands on. Many people would wait until they have "the right" camera. Those people are talkers. Not you. You're a doer! Rock on!
 
Thanks for the encouragement! Regarding the camera, I've seen way too many terrible movies made using the 'right' camera to know it's not simply all about how much money you throw at a project.

Thanks again :)
 
Absolutely - plus having limitations often leads to creative solutions that may be even better than what you would have gotten, had you more money and the "right" camera. The camera matters to the extent that it can meet the basic requirements of "being" a camera, but that's it, I'd say - the DP matters much, much, much more.

Your shots look nice.
 
Thanks for the comments.

Here are a few more rough screen grabs from the principle we've already got in the bag. You know, one thing i've found we've really got over the big guys is time - because of this i've found that scenes have had time to develop before they are shot, not only thematically, but visually - little details have been added which, had we been up against a strict time-is-money shooting schedule, I think we would have missed.

Anyways, here's the links to the grabs. (I can't figure out how to embed them here...)

http://s1005.photobucket.com/albums/af175/hungercultfilms/?action=view&current=phone1scaled.jpg

http://s1005.photobucket.com/albums/af175/hungercultfilms/?action=view&current=handsscaled.jpg

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http://s1005.photobucket.com/albums/af175/hungercultfilms/?action=view&current=bodybag2scaled.jpg

http://s1005.photobucket.com/albums/af175/hungercultfilms/?action=view&current=coffin1scaled.jpg

http://s1005.photobucket.com/albums/af175/hungercultfilms/?action=view&current=lipstickscaled.jpg

http://s1005.photobucket.com/albums/af175/hungercultfilms/?action=view&current=woods1scaled.jpg

http://s1005.photobucket.com/albums/af175/hungercultfilms/?action=view&current=murderscaked.jpg


Thanks again, guys - still learning so much from this forum!
 
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agreed on the camera idea. I have a dvx100b, and while it a super nice camera, it isnt what gets our shoots done. its dedicated people. so many people on these forums have insaine amounts of equipment and resources, but just waste it on "tests" and "trailers" with out ever actually making anything. its annoying. good job at actually going for it. cant wait to see the finished product
 
I suppose I should chime in here. I'm the writer of this film, and the lead actor, the clueless-looking dude with the beard (I'm also the brother of a 36 year old director who cannot spell the word 'strictly' (gimme strength).
I'm currently building the website which will (drum-roll) launch in Jan 2010.
I don't mind the lengthy shooting procedure, or the amount of energy spent performing mouth-to-mouth on a script that wants to die on me, but learning dreamweaver and Flash CS4, man I didn't sign on for that.

My brother has a head full of lofty artistic ideals and misspelled words; me I'm in it for money and (dark haired) chicks - I'm the honest one.
 
...don't you just hate those simple little creatures who feel a sense of superiority in pointing out other people's typos!? Please, forgive and forget the above rant, it was posted under the influence of a cocktail of mood stabilising medications. Clearly, the current dosages aren't working... How he escaped his chains and made it to the PC is a bloody mystery!
 
We shot a new scene today - an important scene in which two characters meet alone for the first time. In total we filmed over 60 individual shots for a 3 - 4 minute scene. I like to keep my options wide open when it comes to the edit. I've found it's amazing how the entire tone/feel of a scene can be altered from one edit to another. In fact I sometimes do two or more different edits of a scene and then let them sit awhile before I go in and finalise the scene.

I'll post a few grabs soon.

Thanks
 
If I hadn't made it to a PC we wouldn't have a goddam website, and my medication is my own business.
As for the prognathon who said the stills look dark and raw, dark yes, that's the mood we are aiming for, but if you think they look raw then you know f*ck **** about cinematography (or magic bullet for that matter).
But feel free to offer more opinions for us to completely ignore.
 
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