Film Noir in 24 hours

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SeanEmer

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Tried my hand at the Apple Insomnia film contest today... working with a team of 5. We combined the contest with my college's own contest, so in addition to the three resources required by apple, I was assigned a random genre by my college. To my luck, it turned out to be film noir. I finally got to play around with some interesting lighting! We started pre-pro at 9am, and we were shooting by 3:25pm. Wrapped shooting around 9:30pm. Finally finished at 7am. Here's a few grabs from the final film... my first 'real' shoot with the HVX.


http://www.doodlesofamadman.com/video/TwoMinutes.html


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I bet those 24 hour film contests are pretty fun, challenging, and intense.

My last shoot was about 24 hours, but what was worse, it was a reshoot. I don't even want to get into that, but the original shoot and the reshoot were 24 hours. I got up at 6 a.m. the first time, got back home to my place at 5:30 a.m., so almost 24 hours. Next time I got up at 5:45 a.m. and didn't get home until well after 5. That kind of thing is brutal, I swear it takes time off the end of my life.

Prior to this year, I smoked only every once in a while, like twice a week basically, when I had a few drinks. But on a 24-hour shoot I probably have 10 cigarettes and 3-5 Red Bulls, just to stay awake and keep focused, basically, it's bad. By the end of the day I'm totally worn down but if I like the project it's not too bad, I guess. You gotta do what it takes, ultimately.

Film noir is such a cool genre, I love the old film noirs from the '40s and '50s, Touch of Evil, Double Indemnity, etc.
 
Yeah, we were going nuts writing the script and getting props and actresses together... let alone locations. Then we had to shoot it all on different deadlines for different actors.

It was a blast though! I can't wait to do it again next year. After some sleep.
 
Thanks for sharing! Cool lighting!


Here's some screen caps from mine "Frag",.. about pwning noobs.

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We opted for no gore,.. but it was inevitable!

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Poor kid had to go get 7 Stitches. After that my buddy's car got borken into while we were editing, his mac book pro, iPod and change was stolen. The HVX, lights, and mics were in the car too, but I guess they're useless to low-lives.

Good luck man!

- Greg
 
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I agree, good stills but get the link down. Both of your guy's shots look a lot better than most of last year's top 25. I also competed in this year's insomnia, shooting directly into some Macbook Pros via Firewire with the HVX, my first project using it (no P2 available). Forgot about a lot of things, shot in video cam mode for a lot of it, not sure how much of a difference it made, it still looked good to me... hopefully I'll get stills up eventually (it was edited on my friend's setup).

A Macbook Pro stolen? That is awful.
 
lol thanks guys, I didn't even think twice about posting that link... *duh*

very cool screenshots Greg! Where did you get thos props? I'm in the market for WWII stuff.
 
I produced a WWII short last summer (which is still in the works) called Anthems of War. (Link is to a rough teaser)

I collect WWII guns, so all the guns in the 24 hour were mine, which sucked because my carbine got worked from that kid falling multiple times. In my other short about 5 guns were mine, 3 were my old boss (who was also a producer) and the rest were paintball guns with mods on them, i.e the Thompsons and MG42. The .50 in the 1/2 ton was a dummy gun that the owner of the 1/2 brought with him.

We did Anthems of War for under $3k. $1k went to the HDX-900 rental.

All the costumes we got from Army / Navey surplus stores. Most of it is non-authentic. The helmets were from a pile of thousands out in a near by army surplus junk yard. We literally dug down till we found some that looked pretty good.

Only a few things were custom re-makes like my Tanker Jacket, and M1 Garand Clip Belt.

I think we spent $500 on the costumes, which was amazing considering we had 12 costumes with random bags, back packs, gas mask canisters, pouches, cleaning kits, etc. etc. We spent $90 on the blank-fire 1911 pistol.

Let me know if you need help, I might be able to lend or sell stuff.

- Greg
 
Dewy-dB said:
Poor kid had to go get 7 Stitches. After that my buddy's car got borken into while we were editing, his mac book pro, iPod and change was stolen. The HVX, lights, and mics were in the car too, but I guess they're useless to low-lives.

Good luck man!

- Greg
Click to expand...

i had a dream my Hvx got stolen...... I woke up in a panic and ran, nearly crushing my girlfriend to see that its ok.... it was.
 
I liked your overall goal. But a couple things gothered me. 1) This is a period piece. But the typicallyt they spoke really fast, and your seemed to be missing that to me. 2) The Background audio hanged a lot. (I would make sure to record at least 3 mins of background without ANYONE making any noise. In Fact have everyone but the camera man leave. :) 3) I would have framed the 2nd shooter out of the frame. Here a shot and then reveal the 2ns shooter. (I know it is typical story line, but it sells and people love it) 4) in the beginning (hallway sequence) I just feel it was dull. I needed more. It needed more shots, and also a Cut showing his watch, and a nice Dolly out shot. There are some homage shots you could have gotten for Alfred hitcock without loosing the period peice to it, but would have intensified the peice. (Just the producer side of me, and my producing opinion) LOL

Light was great.
 
We couldn't get a dolly on such short notice, we had a shot of his watch but it didn't flow well so we took it out.

Also, I'm a visually oriented person, so all of my gear is oriented towards lighting (which IMO was the best part of the short). I don't own an audio kit, so of course out audio stunk. To our credit though we did take down a good 30 seconds of roomtone... which logically couldn't have worked out (oops).

I agree with what you said about the dialogue being a bit off. We wrote it in the style as much as we could, but our actor wasn't actually an actor, and we were in a rush with the two actresses so we didn't have time to give a lot of acting direction - though we probably should have.

The hallway shot we actually did guerilla in the food services hallway underneath my school's cafeteria center, so we were rushing to get out of there before somebody stumbled upon us. Also, we couldn't find a lightswitch so we had to go with the natural light in the hallway.

all in all though you've hit every aspect of the film where I sort of subconsciously thought "damn, we could have done better here"

Thanks for the feedback! That's the kind of stuff I like to get!
 
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