Mayans vs. Reptilians Short Film.

The highlights are clipping bad in the majority of the scenes, and the blacks are so crushed, it's impossible to see any detail in the shadow areas, not to mention the blacks are crushed into the mids as well. I would have guessed the entire film was shot on the af100. I honestly dont think I see any footage where there's a latitude advantage of the red.

I know first hand how tough it is to shoot on a sunny day in the forest, it's almost impossible to footage thats not ultra contrasy. My suggestion would be to use a low contrast filter in the future if you shoot in the same circumstances.

I thought the film was really cool, the effects wern't so bad either, I see the same quality as some tv shows that have heavy cgi. Now if the exposure was on target, it would have looked much better.
 
Dang... this looks really really good. Definitely seems like you had a pretty decent budget here. Can you expound on your setup / workflow? I agree most of this footage has a classic AF100 feel to it, but with that said... it looks down right incredible. What lenses did you use? And what mic did you use for dialog? Sound design is most excellent!!
 
Thanks for the comments guys. The budget was 12,000 dlls. It was a kickstarted funded project. We did it on the Red and I believe two shots on the AF100. Prime PL lenses were used. We didn´t use any mic at all. No sound was recorded on set. Everything was ADR and SOUND design.

Maran, Do you really think this could have been shot with the AF? The only reason we didn´t do it on the AF, was because the VFX´s. AF does not give you much room to play with the image. No?
 
As I said, the highlights are really clipping badly, which is a tell tale sign of the Af100. But if you say it was shot on RED , then it was shot on Red. I guess you can chalk it up to BAD LOCATION scouting. Coupled with shooting at the wrong time of day. I didn't write an honest post to insult you. It was based on what I can see, thats all. In the future it might be best to keep my mouth closed.
 
Dude, please don´t feel like I was insulted. I honestly wasn´t and I totally love when I get critics, because its always good to improve oneself. My question was in all honesty, asked as a surprise, because I really had a hard time deciding if to shoot in AF or RED. If you really think that this could have been achieved with the AF, that is actually a GREAT thing for me to know.
 
You're after criticism but I don't really have anything to add on what has been said. The lack of detail highlights and blacks is particularly telling on a cheap LCD screen.

Other than that about the worst I can come up with is that the texture maps on the back of the reptile stood out as cgi for a few frames in a couple of moments but that is nitpicking and better lighting in the live footage could have helped it blend better. The cgi was far better than I've seen in any big budget documentary and your usage of it was outstanding, working around the limitations of your model. The only reason I could even spot the limitations is by deduction because you didn't show what it couldn't do. A monster has to be shown on screen for the right amount of time, too little or too much and it's not a monster anymore. You balanced it perfectly with your reptilian.

The acting at worst was adequate and for the most part much better than that. They did a fantastic job with such physical parts and so little dialogue. You did not fall into the trap of forgetting emotional development in an action/fx piece and the man in particular really carried that. The costumes and makeup looked great. Not amateur looking at all. The dirty lived in look was done better than a lot of big budget movies I've seen.

The sound design very slick. The action editing didn't draw attention to itself and simply told the story of the encounter. I had reservations about the ending, holding up the head and then the spaceship seemed a touch corny when I first watched it yesterday. But I have completely reversed my opinion on that since. Those two images in combination are powerful and have stuck with me, keep popping into my head. The trophy head alone would have been corny. The spaceship alone would have been tacked on. But together they have genuine impact and escalate the scale of the movie dramatically.

Thanks for posting this. Sometimes I feel like I'm doing the favour, to watch and comment on a user film. But this one definitely felt like you were doing me the favour.
 
Thanks "Egg" I really appreciate your comments. Im very happy that you liked it. I took it down to fix a glitch that I saw and decided to edit a bit, so I will put it back tomorrow. Thanks again man!!!
 
Pretty useless comment coming - I loved it!

Sorry not much technical there...

To add my 2 cents I could see nicely into the blacks on one of my monitors and not on the other. (time to calibrate!)
I also believe that YouTube does weird stuff and I don't trust it for technical looks.

You should be very proud of the work.
I want to see it!

Best Regards,
 
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