My short narrative scene on a 5D

T

tfg

Well-known member
I remember seeing some requests for narrative work shot with the 5DM2, and while this certainly doesn't count as a full "movie" I figure I might as well share with you guys.

"She Showed Up With My Best Friend"
http://www.vimeo.com/5516261

A short scene that I directed/shot/edited just for fun. I asked a friend/actor to write a short script that could be performed with 2 actors. He delivered the script, and we shot it the very next day. Actors only had about 2 hours of rehearsal time before shooting began. Editing began the same day and the next afternoon all was finished.

This was my first narrative directing attempt in almost 7 years. There were no other crew members except a sound recordist. All natural light. All shot with a Sigma 50mm 1.4 lens. Edited on Final Cut Pro 6. (On a 5D Mark II of course)

And as a side note: the script wasn't nearly polished so please don't rag on it too much :)
 
Simple but effective. I think you did a great job and the actors too! Glad to see some more narrative work! Im so sick of TESTS!
 
Good effort but some technical notes on the 'desire for narative' and why this is still not a perfect example mainly because of these first two points..

1) It is one location, you have not undertaken the challenge of moving to another location - the arrival to that location you dont follow focus you rely on an arthouse look of them arriving at the focus plane

2) Your CU shots are a little loose to really challenge your use of focus

(In the mid length shots Im not sure why you back off to nearly but not quite show the gesticulating hands)

I think sticks should have been used - HH is for moving or more dynamic scenes ?

There is some ugly top light/panda eyes and you are having some continuity issues with the sun and shadow -more intelligent choice of locaton could have sorted those problems - again maybe a little more thought on the colour scheme and arrangement of the costumes (did he need his distracting V in his shirt)

Good effort

S
 
In my opinion, this is great work, congratulations. I was sufficiently engaged in the dialogue that the production side became transparent, which is the whole point. The timing was just right and I actually loled at the point where the male is trying to get back into the females pants.
 
Pretty cool. I liked the pacing of it, well edited together. I was expecting her to slap him or him to say something incredibly inappropriate, but I liked the thing overall :)

Only niggle is I'd have liked to see more wides that are in deep focus, because it's always weird to have big long/mediums shots where it's so shallow. You only see that kind of cinematic language in fantasy dream sequences...
 
Agreed guys -- I got a little too obsessed with the DOF of my sigma lens ... we actually had a good laugh about that fact after the fact. I won't do it again quite like that ... but hey... I had to try to show it off just once.

Morgan -- thanks for the notes. All those points are things that we purposely avoided so that we could keep it simple (first narrative I've attempted in 7 years). Baby steps, right?
 
Indeed planning your shoot KISS (keep it simple stupid) is an part of the 5d and low budget art

My concern is working for a director who does not understand the issues

The footage that is 'missing' is footage succesfully operated on a 5d that met a directors ignorant requirements

S
 
i thought this was great. well directed and i thought the actors were good too.

great job.

what did your sound recordist use to record?
 
chadfarmer said:
i thought this was great. well directed and i thought the actors were good too.

great job.

what did your sound recordist use to record?
Click to expand...

We had a boom that dangled about 1 foot above the actors' heads (usually dead in between them). We never moved the mic location except when the actors moved (no adjustments between wide or CUs) - this made the sound perfectly consistent in acoustics/volume between takes, no matter what framing. It was a tremendous help to do it this way since I am not a seasoned audio editor. The audio cut together beautifully, though I still had to spend several hours smoothing out the wind noise.

As for the recording device -- he had some kind of hard-disk recorder that captured 16bit 48k WAV files. We synced them up later in post.
 
great wee movie.

Loved the line "you took sex even when you knew it was wrong" :nads:

cannot want to pop my bubble with my 5D2
 
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