HVX used on Sherwood Pictures "Fireproof"

KyleProhaska

KyleProhaska

Veteran
I had the opportunity to talk to Tracy Goode, associate producer of Facing the Giants and second unit director of Fireproof which is being shot on the Varicam as was Giants. I thought I had seen a glimpse of the HVX in their BTS shots found in a few articles about the film...he had this to say:

"Yes...we are using them to shoot the behind the scenes stuff for the dvd as well as rigging them to the top or side of the firetrucks for the driver POV shots. This is easier and less costly than hanging the varicam on a rig!"

So when/if you see the film in Aug when its set to be released, keep and eye out for these kinds of shots! Another score for the HVX on the big screen I suppose. :)

- Kyle
 
I get a daily email from a Christian Filmmaker's forum and this was in it,
about "Fireproof" - it will be of interest to anyone who uses P2, and also
audio techs as one of them wrote it - seems this movie is "making history"
in the way it is being recorded:








Hey everyone,
>
> I've been asked to share some on the making of the
> movie Fireproof, the
> next movie project from the Kendrick Brothers. The
> story line involves a
> couple who are not Christians, he is a fire fighter,
> she a hospital
> spokesperson. After 7 years, their marriage is
> dissolving, him handling
> the stress of firefighting with material possessions
> and an addiction to
> the internet, and her life is all about her career
> and taking care of
> her parents.
>
> Principal photography ended last Saturday in Albany,
> Georgia. Needless
> to say, this was quite different than the movie
> Facing The Giants. On
> Giants, we worked much of the time as Bob and I
> would have for NFL
> Films, a two man camera and sound crew in
> documentary mode. Fireproof
> was shot more like a "real" film would be, though
> again, with a minimal
> crew. This time around we had a few more folks,
> including the gaffer, a
> key grip, a dolly grip, several swing guys
> (grip/electric), and A/C -
> Steadicam operator, and I had a real boom operator.
> My sound designer
> also visited the set twice for the big special
> effects scenes to record
> surround sound using a stereo shotgun mic and a
> Holophone mic:
>
> http://www.holophone.com/products.html
>
> a 7.1 mic with 8 elements in it recorded directly to
> computer. This will
> be used to build the 5.1 theater sound for the large
> scenes involving a
> car wreck/train scene and the burning house scenes.
> I also used two 416
> shotguns in x/y pattern to walk through a real
> hospital emergency room
> to get stereo ambience for an emergency room scene.
>
> The movie was shot over a six week schedule, again
> on the Panasonic
> Varicam, using Panavision prime lenses. No zooms
> were used except for
> some b roll shots of the burning house. But this
> movie was recorded in a
> fashion we are being told that has never been done
> before for any
> picture. On location, we had a video capture
> engineer, who took an SDI
> feed from the Varicam, complete with embedded stereo
> audio, and captured
> it directly to an Apple G5 Pro computer and OWC hard
> drives. The whole
> movie took 8 TBs of storage including backups. The
> capture software was
> a brand new program from Apple called ProRes 422,
> which lives in Final
> Cut Pro6. We were being told by Apple that we were
> the first motion
> picture to capture SDI video and audio directly from
> the camera to a
> computer for storage. They called us their guinea
> pigs. We also ran DV
> tapes in the Varicam as a backup just in case.
> ProRes records HD,
> uncompressed, including uncompressed audio. Here's
> some info on it:
>
>
http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/finalcutpro/whatsnew.html
>
>
http://www.appleinsider.com/article...ok_at_apples_new_prores_422_video_format.html
>
>
http://www.digitalpictures.com/images/ProRes_422_WhitePaper.pdf
>
> I can't tell you how WILD this was. I did not record
> any principle sound
> to separate media. It was very scary. Either it was
> on the hard drive,
> the dv tape or it wasn't. I was constantly running
> to video village
> between set ups to make sure "it was there". When
> playing back a scene,
> we used JBL reference speakers to listen and the
> engineer could pull up
> the waveform to look at it and make sure we didn't
> clip. Brothers and
> sisters, it's a new world that is upon us! What this
> meant was that in
> between set ups or scene changes, Bill, the capture
> engineer or Alex
> Kendrix would be editing the movie. Can you dig
> this? They started
> cutting the movie together while we were making it,
> on set, between set
> ups. They would take all the camera angles, and
> other footage that had
> already been shot, and edit it together, with wild
> lines, sound effects
> AND music and have it ready to view in minutes time.
> We were constantly
> being told by studios, editing facilities, execs,
> post houses, that no
> one had done a movie this way yet, especially a
> Christian film. So get
> ready, this is where we are all headed. And I can
> truthfully say YOU
> WILL LOVE IT! You can instantly see if what you have
> is going to work or
> if you need to do something different. All of us old
> timers were blown
> away. We traditionally are resistant to changes like
> this. But we all
> were so blown away by the ability to actually see
> the movie as we were
> making it. They had nearly all of the movies scenes
> edited in rough cuts
> by the time we wrapped last Friday. Just
> unbelievable but enough on
> that. If you have any questions, please let me know.
> I'll do my best to
> answer them.
>
> So my job was as the production sound mixer and not
> recordist. I did use
> my Sound Devices 744T hard drive recorder to pick up
> some sound while
> riding on the nose of a freight train (definitely an
> E Ticket ride),
> while zipping through town in a fire engine (a boy's
> dream finally come
> true), and for various hospital beeps and whirs. But
> the computer was my
> recorder.
>
> Issues on this movie were confined to mostly weather
> (we got rained out
> several times) and noise. First of all, our grip
> package came with a
> generator on a flatbed truck. This was not a
> theatrical generator with
> baffling, it was your standard everyday industrial
> monster that you
> could hear for blocks. So we parked it as far away
> as I could get the
> gaffer to put it (they only had so much banded), put
> blankets everywhere
> and did the best I could but there are still genie
> sounds in many
> scenes. When it gets to theater, see if you can hear
> it. My sound
> designer, Nick Pallidino says he can take a lot of
> that out. We'll see
> what kind of wizard he really is.
>
> Most of my trouble came from it being a low budget,
> independent film,
> which does not "own" the locations we shoot in. On
> large budget films,
> you rent locations and you pay for expensive permits
> to lock off
> surrounding roads with police, shut down factories,
> turn off a/c units
> for whole buildings, etc. On this movie, we shot in
> free, donated
> spaces. So we had virtually no say in handling
> background noise. We shot
> a week in a real hospital wing. We couldn't turn the
> a/c off and most of
> the dialog lines were whispered (this is a
> whispering movie!). So we
> lived right on edge of frame, blew some takes
> because of dipping in
> frame, but some scenes sound like the starship
> enterprise (background
> roar). Oh well! I finally had to come to the place
> where I just got what
> I could and went on. Not easy for a perfectionist!
> And I had to use
> wireless as principal sound in too many shots. Hate
> the sound and the
> hassle of using them. Plus, we didn't have the time
> to work with a real
> wardrobe department to create under garment rigs for
> the wires. So
> again, it is what it is. Most lines we got in
> coverage so they'll use
> that sound instead. But still, on a few scenes, it's
> only the wires.
>
> Another issue was shooting in small, quiet rooms
> with a video camera.
 
Excellent! I had read some of that stuff on their blog but not all of it. I knew they were cutting on set with a dedicated editor but man, thats sounds cool.

- Kyle
 
cool stuff, this is obviously interesting to me, as I'll be producing a low-budget faith-based film this Spring.
 
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