HVX-200 FEATURE on APPLE TRAILERS!

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davidbluegarcia

New member
With the prevalence and quality of DSLRs and the ubiquitous RED I can barely recall strapping heavy pieces of metal and glass to the front of my HVX-200. But I did two summers ago.

Now our film "Artois the Goat" has distribution through indiepix and is humbly standing alongside films such as "A-TEAM" and "Hot tub time machine" on the apple trailers website.

Here's a link: http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/independent/artoisthegoat/

In 2009 we premiered "artois" at the SXSW film festival but didn't win any awards. Since then we've had some success at a few smaller festivals. I'm just glad that our uber-low budget film (very much under six figures) has done as well as it did and that the HVX-200, Letus Extreme adapter and my dad's old Canon FD lenses held up on the big screen.

Please check it out if you get the chance!

David Blue Garcia
Director of Photography "Artois the Goat"
www.davidbluegarcia.com
www.artoisthegoat.com
 
David,

I saw this trailer a few days ago and I'm very excited to see the film.

Fantastic cinematography!

Can you fill in some of your technical details here (camera settings, adapters, lighting package and so forth) because the board is always clamoring for good examples of how these cameras are used in distributed entertainment.

Proven again by your film's trailer - story is what really matters and how you tell it technically is significantly less important.
 
technical stuff...

technical stuff...

Most correct. The story, namely the end result, is the most important part of any movie. But as filmmakers we are always interested in the paths and processes leading to that result.

Initially the two directors (brothers) and the producer had planned on shooting the film themselves. There was to be no crew whatsoever. But after a few attempts at shooting scenes, mostly for practice, the filmmakers realized that this could not be done easily without a D.P.

So they called me. That single phone call pulled me out of my safe haven, a salaried job as a DP/editor at a small advertising agency and back to Austin, Texas. I will never look back.

The camera for the film was to be the HVX-200 and that was that. I think the camera is great but for a feature we thought that we needed a bit more control over the look. Perspective, Depth of Field etc. We chose the Letus 35 extreme 35mm lens adapter and used some Canon FD lenses that my dad gave me. A 28mm 2.8, and a 50mm 1.4. We also used a wide angle lens that I can’t remember the make of. We shot 720P 24PN.

Our basic lighting kit consisted of some ARRI lights; two 650 watt fresnels and a 300 watt fresnel, some “Chinese” lights which were a trio of off brand 650 watt fresnels and our biggest light was a blonde 2k for punching through windows. We had two china balls with 250 watt photo floods which we used as general fill and as a light source for dinner scenes. We had little to no grip equipment. Maybe 3 C-stands and an 18x24 flag/net kit. There were a few night shoots for which we rented extra 1K fresnels but other than that we stuck with our stripped down kit.

There was no designated gaffer on set. We had some help in the grip department but they were mostly untrained in lighting. The producer and I, having taken the same cinematography class in film school, took care of the lighting. I prefer bounced or diffused light but we could not always achieve this look because of the combined shortage of stop between the Letus extreme adapter and our tiny lighting package. Most of the light was spotted directly at the actors with 250 diffusion on the barn doors. By the end of the shoot we knew the best angle and light fixture for each actor’s face. Ideally we would have lit for each space and then added light for an actor if need be but this wasn’t always a possibility.

I hope this gives an idea for how scant our resources were and how far we stretched them. I’m always inspired when I hear of other low budget successes such as the recent “Tiny Furniture” win at SXSW. http://tinyfurniture.com

Good shooting,
David Blue Garcia
 
David,

I'm surprised there hasn't been more response to this trailer here. Thanks again for sharing and I look forward to seeing a wide-release for your film!

Best,

e
 
I'm pleased to hear this. And remember Crank 2 was shot on the Canon Xh-A1 and a bunch of HF models, Cloverfield had a little help from the HVX200 and "Paranormal Activity" was shot on the Sony FX-1, so we'll be seeing more of this. Congrats and I'm glad to see you guys doing it up. Good luck on future projects.

-Nate
 
David, I love movies like this. The trailer is excellent. Very European flavor to it. (Pun intended).
 
Looks great! Congrats. Glad to see all your hard work is paying off. I love stories like these. They make me smile....
 
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