HQ footage from my new project

J

Jon_Band

New member
Here's some footage from my latest project: "Gratuity."

First of all, this is NOT the final trailer. It's something I threw together to showcase some of the footage. Think of it as a "footage-slideshow" of sorts with an extra scene thrown in for the hell of it. This footage might be of interest to many of you because I filmed much of it during the night in low light. I must say that the DVX performed beyond my expectations.

It's a fairly large file because I wanted to demonstrate the quality acheived with the DVX.

Here's the link (you might need to right click and "save as"):
http://www.bonnymethod.com/ami/gratuity.mov
 
Re: HQ footage from my new project

Rock on Jon, that footage looks fantastic. Looks like it will be an interesting film. How long is the film going to be? The sound is fantastic and the lighting wasn't bad at all. The talent seemed top notch. A lot of posts on this site are ruined from poor talent. Overall I can't wait to see the completed project. Could you give us some details on the equipment you used, behind the scenes info? Do you have any pictures? Please let me know when this project is done so I can watch the whole thing!!! Keep up the awesome work.
 
Re: HQ footage from my new project

Holy crap that took forever to download :p

Looks like this could be cool. The sound was great BTW. Keep us posted.
 
Re: HQ footage from my new project

"holy crap that took forever to DL" indeed. Remember some of us are on crap connections on far off continents. I know you don't want to degrade the quality... but c'mon now. :p

Very dope looking teaser... thing... whatever you wanna call it. It made me wanna see more (I think that's the best compliment I can pay it).

And what Kyle said about the talent is so true. So many of the little indie projects get ruined when the FIRST line is said, cause the acting just isn't up to snuff. But the little glimpse here in your pseudo-trailer seemed like it was going to be highly entertaining.

And let's hear it for simple, straightforward, nice looking titles. I've been spending the past week or so on a ridiculous opening title sequence thing with a gajillion layers doing all sorts of glowy s%$# and zipping around every which way... and then I see something like this... and it's so clearly superior. Elegance... 'less is more' they say.

Definitely let us know when we can see more.
 
Re: HQ footage from my new project

Thanks for the compliments - they are very encouraging. This is my first "real" effort in filmmaking and it's been quite an interesting trip these past few months.

Here's some quick "behind the scenes" tidbits:

- I'm a 19 yr old film fanatic with no formal training that decided he would get off his ass and try to make a decent short.

- I'm a 19 yr old film fanatic with no formal training that soon discovered he was way over his head. :eek:

- I rented all of my equipment in the downtown Atlanta area (I go to Georgia Tech). I found this site extremely helpful in my preparation for this short - I lurked around for months trying to soak up any info on the DVX and the additional equipment needed for the project. The DVX settings changed drastically from scene-to-scene so I can't really post any helpful information on this subject.

- For sound I used a Sennheiser MKH-416 Shotgun. I can’t rave enough about this mic. For lighting I used several Craftsman halogen worklights. Several blue and orange gels were used for the campfire scene. During this scene, the lights were hooked up to a power-transformer on a truck (this allowed for about 30-seconds shoot time with the engine off before the warning-alarm sounded :mad: I also made use of a doorway dolly for most of the tracking shots.

- All locations were eventually acquired for free (this is both good and bad). For the diner scene, I managed to secure a great location in the downtown Atlanta area - The Disco Diner. The manager was kind enough to let us film there but was quite annoyed when we kept asking him to turn the music off. And then we hauled in the doorway dolly ;D He was about to lose it but we somehow managed to finish shooting there. Ironically, I think we might have actually brought in some business that night.

- As for talent: Being a college student and only having college kids to work with (for free), I knew that an appropriate script would be essential if this short was going to be believable. So basically I wrote the script with specific actor-friends in mind (and they did a pretty fantastic job). I posted the script on studentfilms.com a while back if anyone’s interested.

- And the music. I scoured the internet for a about a month, downloading any royalty-free or local-band song that I could find. I'm a firm believer that an appropriate song choice can tremendously boost the emotional drive of any movie (Tarantino). So after going through hundreds of mediocre songs, I stumbled across "Feeblow" by The Loft. I didn’t let off their manager until he gave me rights to the song. Check out www.lovetheloft.com if you like what you heard.
 
Re: HQ footage from my new project

Hey Jon,

Awesome stuff dude. I am a neighbor of yours here in ATL, and actually a fellow Jacket. Are you familiar with the Delta Campus Movie Fest? I am wondering why you didn't enter, you could have done great. My team and I actually won the event with our short, "Diametric". Maybe you are familiar? All I know is that if you had been in the competition, we would of had some steep competition.

Anyway, you have a great eye for this, and would love to talk to you and possibly collaborate some time. Email me if you want, or respond here on the board.

Treadted2@mac.com

If you wanna check out "Diametric" u can at:

http://homepage.mac.com/treadted2

It was shot on a GL2, so I'm not showing off the powers of the DVX100, but I did just buy one! And as you probably know, everything was done in one weeks time, and all the editing was done in iMovie, per contest rules.

Let me know if you wanna chat. I have a startup small scale production firm in ATL now, so who knows what way you might be able to help me.

Look forward to talking to you.

Ted
 
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