C300: Magazine Issues - Tampa 48 Hour Film Project 2016 Winner

[Eric Coughlin]

This is a 48 Hour Film Project I was the DP for which won Best Picture for Tampa's 2016 competition competing against 31 other local teams. This was my fifth year in a row DPing a 48 Hour Film, and first time winning Best Picture.

Camera setup was two Canon C300 Mark II's shooting in 1080p (I believe 160 mbps). Wide DR since we weren't sure if we'd have time to grade, which we didn't (the director's cut posted here is graded (not by me)).

Lenses were the Canon 15.5-47 T/2.8 for shoulder mounted and tripod shots, and Sigma 18-35, Tokina 11-20, and Canon 24-70 for Steadicam. I would have used the 15.5-47 for Steadicam too, but we didn't have a wireless follow focus on this shoot so the auto-focus was more important, hence the still lens.

As such, we used the two cameras in different setups for different purposes so we wouldn't have to swap out lenses, etc. We did do multi-cam a little bit during one of the scenes when it was getting dark, but it was mostly one camera at a time shooting. For the shoulder mount scenes I had a first AC pulling focus off of the follow focus and SmallHD 702 mounted on-cam.

We had a few Kinos and a Joker 800 available, but stuck mainly with using our Litepanels and Ledgo LED 1 x 1 lights, often on battery power, to keep quick and mobile.

We started filming around 1 or 2pm, and filmed for about 22 hours straight until about noon the next day.

https://vimeo.com/192824690

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xt1UVrdqPm4

A few frame grabs I graded.

Full-size: http://i.imgur.com/YDcKXlQ.jpg

Full-size: http://i.imgur.com/oYbbLNj.jpg

Full-size: http://i.imgur.com/UI2RBeH.jpg

Lots of behind-the-scenes photos can be seen here as well as some below: https://www.facebook.com/pg/TwoSenseFilms/photos/?tab=album&album_id=1094693537303908

Rhino Motorized slider while using face-detection auto-focus. Makes my job easy!

 

[puredrifting]

Nice work Eric. Pretty ambitious for being on such a tight timeline. You must have been a zombie by the time you wrapped?
Just out of curiosity, isn't the weight limit on the Rhino EVO Motion 10lbs? Did your C300 MKII and tripod head go over that? How does the Rhino do with heavy loads? I have one but have only used my 80D and C100 on it. They're such a great tool.

 

[Eric Coughlin]

I tried to take a nap around 6am, but couldn't fall asleep so just laid down for an hour or two. Then I got ready to drive to the next location which was an hour drive away where we filmed the wrestling match until about noon (while the director was back at the studio editing the footage, and the 2nd unit director came along with us), then drove the footage back to the studio to be edited. I think I took a nap at that point as filming was finished and the film was due at 6pm. Of maybe I didn't. I forget now.

Anyway, eventually we had our export, with about 25 minutes until it was due and a 15 minute drive to the drop-off location, so I drove the footage there going 80-100 mph on wet roads since it had been raining. The passenger who was going to run in while I parked was a bit freaked out by my driving, but I was having fun. We also had a second team driving a copy over which was a few minutes behind us. I think we got it turned in with 7-10 minutes to spare.


I didn't know the Rhino EVO Motion had a weight limit; well, I'd never really thought about it, though obviously it must have some kind of limit, which I see now is listed as 10 lbs. I guess I just figured without thinking about it that the weight limit was the limit of the slider rails. The 4ft steel rails have a listed weight limit of 50 lbs.

The C300 Mark II setup is about 10 lbs, plus 5 lbs for the 503 head, so about 15 lbs. Worked fine. The shot was a slow push-in. I haven't tested it, but I feel like the motor could do more than 15 lbs, which maybe I'm just saying based on it handling 15 lbs with no issues. The other setup I've been using has been with a 701 head which is 2 lbs, so 12 lbs, and no issues with that either.

Below are some photos from another shoot of the Rhino with a Red and the cinema zoom, though not with the motion control setup. Probably a 22 lb setup.

The 2 ft setup worked pretty well. The 4ft setup was a bit wobbly from side to side. The rails weren't caving downward, but would sway side to side if you pushed the camera. During the actual shot it actually worked pretty smoothly. For the longer 4 ft setup a Dana Dolly probably would have been preferable if we had one with us, though would have taken up a bit more space and perhaps longer to setup too.

 

[puredrifting]

Thanks for the info Eric, you are definitely pushing the limits, it's nice to see what the Rhino EVO is capable of. Now I won't worry putting a C300 MKII (stripped) on it. I will use my Miller AIR head, it's only 3.1 lbs.

 

[DLD]

What was the shooting schedule like?

Did the wrestling scene take a while to choreograph or were there a lot of takes? What scenes took the longest to shoot?

PS. What's really impressive was that there was a lot of driving and simultaneous editing involved. And I would not recommend speeding during a rain. Last Saturday night, I flopped just crossing the street on a wet pavement. Fortunately, I was not run over by you.

 

[JPNola]

Congrats, Eric!


Just curious- how is something like this funded? Is it all favors / out of pocket expense in the hope that the work will result in further opportunity / eventual financial gain?

 

[SeanHBTVS]

Thanks for sharing Eric! I'll check this later, on a PC with no audio right now.

The rules for the 48 Hour Film Project is that you aren't allowed to pay any one on the project. It's all a group effort and anything given to the project has to be donations or unpaid help.

The site I'm part of competed in the 2015 Louisville 48 Hour Horror Film project, since our site focuses on horror and that competition was horror only. It was our first and only year competing but we managed to take first place. We went to Filmapalooza for the big fest in Atlanta in April of 2016 for it. It was awesome seeing all the other films, the international ones had budgets through the roof. Some truly incredible stuff done in 24 hours that you would have thought took months to prep and shoot.

Shot on a C100 Mark I with a basic set of lenses. The nicest lens we had use of was a 21mm Zeiss that belonged to the assistant director. Also used a Ronin but besides that just went handheld or locked down on a tripod.

We got the sub-genre of b-movie, so we were able to go stupid with it. Here's our project for those interested, I was the director and camera op. We had a super small crew of a few people and limited resources. Our editor did an incredible job with it and worked on it remotely, but this is a slightly tweaked version.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tN9TE-1BcyY

Here's a little site post with more info about it: http://www.housebythevideostore.com/48-hour-horror-film-project-a-brush-with-death/

 

[Eric Coughlin]

What was the shooting schedule like?

Did the wrestling scene take a while to choreograph or were there a lot of takes? What scenes took the longest to shoot?

PS. What's really impressive was that there was a lot of driving and simultaneous editing involved. And I would not recommend speeding during a rain. Last Saturday night, I flopped just crossing the street on a wet pavement. Fortunately, I was not run over by you.

General schedule:
Friday 6pm-Sat 3am: Get genre, write film
Sat 9am-1pm or 2pm: Setup at location, rehearse, procrastinate, get delayed, eat lunch, etc.
Sat 2am-Sun 1pm: Film everything.
Sun 8am-6pm: Edit

More specifically for the shoot schedule:
2pm-3pm: Film protagonist going to door to door selling magazines and getting rejected
3pm-5pm: Film protagonist conversation with girl at door
5pm-7pm: Film protagonist confronting big bully guy on sidewalk while he saves the girl
7pm-8pm: Film protagonist talking with and then kissing the girl
8pm-9pm: Eat dinner
9pm-9:30pm: Film big guy growling at his door
9:30pm-10pm: Voice over
10pm-1:30am: Outdoor night dream sequence on porch and front yard
1:30am-3am: Film scene in protagonist's apartment where he reads letter and talks to his buff roommate
3am-4am: Pack up equipment
4am-4:30am: Drive from house back to studio
4:30am-8am: Write end credit song, record in studio booth, film green screen scenes in studio (I took a break during this period while the director did most of this work)
7am-7:30am: I went off with B-cam and filmed establishing shot of protagonist's apartment at a complex nearby the studio
8am-9am: I feel like I may have taken a nap during this time.
9am-10am: Drive to wrestling location
10am-12pm: Film wrestling scene
12am-1pm: Drive back to studio


Wrestling scene was maybe an hour of choreographing which they did while I setup equipment. We did around four or five takes.

As seen on the schedule, the night dream sequence took the longest to film, primarily because we spent extra time lighting it.

The protagonist's interior apartment and the front porch scene of the girl's house were filmed at the same house, and the sidewalk scenes and the door to door scenes were filmed in the same general vicinity. The studio was about a 30 minute drive from the house, and the wrestling place was about an hour drive from the studio. It helped that we had a 2nd unit director to direct the wrestling scene while the primary director was working on the edit then.

We had a couple additional editors who arrived Saturday afternoon/evening, but they didn't really get much further than converting some files to ProRes, which was frustrating. One of them did help with the special effects in the long run. But ideally we would have had a capable dedicated editor to start on Saturday so we wouldn't be so stressed for time on Sunday. Last year (2015) we had a similar issue with our original Saturday editor not coming through for us so also resorted to a last minute edit from the director, as well as three other editors who tag teamed it to do the whole edit in about 6-8 hours. The two years before that (2013 and 2014) we had a good dedicated editor and things went really smoothly with us turning it in with time to spare. I sure hope we can find a good dedicated editor this coming year. Always nice from the point of view of the DP when the editor has time to grade the footage.

Just curious- how is something like this funded? Is it all favors / out of pocket expense in the hope that the work will result in further opportunity / eventual financial gain?

As Sean said, no one is paid. It's around $150 to enter the competition. Food tends to be the main expense on unpaid shoots, which the producer/director mostly paid for, though some people pitched in a little for pizza. I don't recall what other expenses there were, but the producer paid for it out of his pocket.

For myself, the shoot is good for adding footage to my portfolio, showing the finished film to current and potential clients (including mentioning it won in this case), meeting and working with crew members on set (our first AC was the first time we'd used him, and he worked out really well so we used him on future paid shoots from there (he may be reading this (hi Mark!)), and finally, just having fun making a movie.

One of the things I really like about the 48 Hour Film Fest compared to other times making short films is you have a deadline, so you're not going to put it off indefinitely, and unlike other competitions with deadlines, you know it's only going to take up two days of your time, so you don't have to worry about spending a week writing it, a week filming it, etc., while not directly getting paid for that time.

 

[DLD]

Could you have stretched the edit to 10-12 minutes without making each shot seem like an eternity? (i.e., was there some dropped stuff that could have stayed in?)

And I hope you had 'free Twinkies" written into your rider.

PS. I don't really want to add adjectives such as "awesome" or "cool", especially since I have never won anything anywhere.

 

[Eric Coughlin]

The competition is limited to up to seven minutes. I don't see how this edit could have been stretched much; no scenes were cut. Typically for a 48 hour film you're not filming a lot of scenes which end up getting deleted.

Well, I guess there was this one dude I talked to who said he had enough footage for a 40 minute movie from his 48 hour film. I think they turned theirs in late. I don't know how he could have gotten 40 minutes of usable footage; maybe it was a dialog heavy movie and they improvised a lot.


I believe Woody Harrelson ate the last Twinkie.

 

[indiawilds]

I was under the impression that younger guys with higher testosterone levels do this to get noticed. Never knew people come with such high end equipment and shoot in these 48 hour film competitions.

 

[Eric Coughlin]

You get a wide variety of contestants at the 48. Maybe half are amateurs, a quarter are advanced hobbyists, and a quarter are professionals.

In Tampa there are typically about 30 teams that compete, and each year during the Q&A I ask what cameras they were shot on, with typically one to three being shot on a Red. Often some of the top video companies in the area are in the competition, so it can be fun to compete with other local professionals to make the best film.

It's a pretty big contest too, with about 3,000 films being made for it each year.

 

[SeanHBTVS]

https://vimeo.com/127982767

This was the winner from the year I attended Filmapalooza. Foreign countries seem to take shorts much more seriously and generally produce much better stuff. I've also heard there are a lot more grants in other countries that aren't the US for shorts. The cast and crew for this short was huge! There's a list in the video description. From what I remember they talked about how they are a theater group and all pitched in to work on the 48 for one weekend.

This and even a few others seemed more like Oscar nominated shorts than projects done for a 48.

Glimp was also another favorite of mine. It's a musical which was a category I never really looked forward to there, but this was the most memorable film I saw at the fest.

http://www.48hourfilm.com/films/5841/glimp-by-lucas-camps-producties

 

[DLD]

These shorts are pretty nice, though leave too many plot/premise questions unanswered.

And, Eric, Twinkies are still in production and Woody no longer has first dibs on them.