GH3 Feature shot on GH3 and GH2 debuts online,

Elvis Deane

Elvis Deane

Active member
Hi everyone,
We just released my first feature Separation Anxiety this week. It's available to stream at August Project or as a download at Bittorrent Bundles.

The film is a throwback to 50s Hitchcockian thrillers, made for under 10 grand, with a crew of no more than 3 people on any day. We put together a series of videos that goes through some of the problems and solutions we came up with along the way. I'll be adding another one about camera and gear in a few days. It was mostly shot on the GH3, but the camera wouldn't turn on after principal photography, so a lot of the chase/steadicam scenes were done with the GH2 while the GH3 was getting repaired. We used a mix of Panasonic and Samyang lenses.

Here's a teaser
 
Hi Elvis,

I just finished watching the downloaded film, enjoyed the story, the way you presented it, and the production quality you managed to bring to it. You and Sara are to be congratulated on getting it done. I especially liked the "look" you achieved, a bit on the dark side which went right along with the mood of the film and the story. I found the acting to be very good.

I especially liked the video series you and Sara did explaining some of the problems and how you solved them. I'm looking forward to the segment on the gear you used. Thanks for sharing and for making the whole film available for viewing.
 
Hi Bruce,
Thanks for watching! I'm hoping those behind the scenes videos help people avoid some of the mistakes we made. We did this one to learn and see if we could actually make something, and now we've got to try something bigger.

Jim, I'm having the August Project guys look into it. I'm wondering if it's a region setting on Vimeo, though we've had other viewers in the USA.
 
Elvis Deane said:
Hi Bruce,
Thanks for watching! I'm hoping those behind the scenes videos help people avoid some of the mistakes we made. We did this one to learn and see if we could actually make something, and now we've got to try something bigger.
Click to expand...

OK, here's some more observations. My wife and I watched it on our big screen last night (copied it to a thumb drive and plugged that into a WD media player connected to the TV with HDMI). The good news is that the visual quality looked very good, better than it looked on my monitor when I watched it the first time.

The not so good news is the audio had some problems. Music often overpowered the dialog. Your G3 mics were obviously great for the way you worked, having no boomed mic to draw attention, but they did not record as clean and crisp as properly positioned shotgun and cardiod condenser mics do. If you can go back to the timeline edit you could try pulling the music level down significantly where you have dialog.

The music was very good and supported the mood of what was going on, but the dialog is just as important and needs to not be "fighting" from under the music. My reference "standard" for a great balance between music and dialog is the movie "Ivanhoe" with Robert Taylor (rich resonant voice!), George Sanders, and Elizabeth Taylor. You can hear clearly every spoken word of dialog in that film.

I don't mean to be "putting down" anything about your film, I'm in awe of what you accomplished with it. The visual "mood" you created is very, very good.

I will admit that at 76 I'm getting a bit hard of hearing but my wife's hearing has always been more than excellent and she felt the same as I did. If you can go back to the timeline try pulling the music track down in increments where you have dialog, bring it back up where there is none (make the changes in level smooth) and see how it works.

I hope you find this helpful, which is the only way it's meant.

Bruce Foreman
 
Very entertaining story. I commend you in what you guys on what you set out to do and accomplished.

But on a side note, story was great, but some of the dialogue put me off but was able to look pass due to a good plot and at times well executed acting and emotion. Ending was sketchy, but can live with that as well since there was so much to like about this film that a remaining few minutes would not break it.

I love the whole alfred hitchcock style you had here as I grew up on that, but If ou could have added a little texture in post, you would have really sold this to me. Overall great job, and look forward to more great stories from you all.
 
The audio editing was definitely my biggest struggle. Up until a few weeks ago, the sound effects in most scenes were a lot louder as well, but Sara forced me to turn them down as they were a little too obviously foley. I tried to get the right levels with audio and music for the mix, but in all honesty I was doing a lot of guesswork as to what was right. It's one of the many reasons we got a sound guy on our next project, and he'll do the mix so that I can't mess it up again :)

reem12, thanks for the comments! I agree on the ending being sketchy. We had planned on re-writing some of that characters moments to make it all work better, but time got away from us. And that punch moment will always bother me. We were literally watching the sun start to rise as we were filming, and I had to lose a few shots to get everything in the can. An alternate ending had been proposed to me by a friend that I think may have worked better, and I'll always wonder what if I had gotten those two or three extra shots that would've made it an option in editing.

I get what you mean about texture, the executive producer said as much along the way. I experimented with a lot of things in hopes of getting a Vistavision look, but wasn't able to capture it and ultimately went with a FilmConvert look that didn't deviate much from its default settings.
 
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