Red | White

We were way the hell out by the Pennsylvania border. Here, in fact.

I have it down to six minutes now - just tinkering with some things to make it work better. i need to lock picture by tomorrow around noon for my composer, and so i can move on to sound design and color work.

Jason, the wide shot by the water is the prettiest shot we got. I'm very happy with it.
 
Thanks, Jon. I definitely have some vignetting to correct in some shots, but it's not too, too bad. I am planning to use a 1.85 matte, which actually helps a lot with those dark corners.
 
Okay, this is weird: I can;t believe I haven't even commented in this thread. Must be slowing down. Anyway, things are looking good here Will. Glad you made the cut and you're almost ready. Good to see another film completed and I'm definitely looking forward to see how you pull off the outdoor shots.

I'm too much of a wuss to do that many shots out in the wilderness.
 
Hey Rodney, thanks for stopping in. The toughest thing about shooting outdoors was trying to keep the camera equipment dry. It adds a whole new level of stress to a small crew - but we fought through it and got all of our shots.
 
n oissues with the frozen fingers? Looks like you were doing mostly handheld shots, so mostly run and gun I suppose? Or did you use the tripod at all, especially for those long lenses?
 
Actually it was mostly locked off on the tripod, but some handheld. It wasn't really that cold out there - about 25 or 30 degrees F each day. Most of it was shot with a 50mm or longer. My favorite lens is my 85/2, and I used that one a bunch.
 
That's funny. I;d also planned to go handheld but ended up going on a lot of tripod shots, and it was mainly because we were outside as well. In the wilderness of the city of Toronto. Brutal. :grin:

Which lenses did you end up using? You'd mentioned wantingto rent some Cine glass but my impression is that you didn't go that route.

The shots look great. are you going to thow up any creen grabs with the 1:85 matte on? that's GOTTA make any wide shot look even MORE cinematic.
 
I will put the screen grabs up with the matte after doing CC next week. That's my job for Monday - Wednesday.

We ended up using my Nikons for two reasons. One, I didn't want to take a set of Zeiss lenses worth $50k or more out into the woods in inclement weather. Two, I have a Lensbaby for a Nikon mount. I didn't want to swap to the PL mount on set because it is kind of a PITA and time-consuming. I had to get those Lensbaby shots, so we just used Nikon for this one. The main drawback for me in using the Nikon glass is the amount chromatic abberration... Hopefully it won't be too distracting in the end.
 
So, I never posted screen grabs with the CC and the widescreen matte, but I'll do that tomorrow. Right now, Compressor is doing its business with my film, and I'm hoping that in about 20 minutes I'll have the final Quicktime ready for upload (my last attempt came out at 51.7 MB - so close!).

I updated the first two posts with all the final information for cast and crew, and with some BTS shots taken on location. I hope you enjoy - please feel free to ask any questions about what you're seeing in those BTS photos.

And now, a word on post-production:

This is the hardest work I have ever had to do in post. Starting with the cut - my first assembly was 10 minutes and 15 seconds, so I had to shave more than four minutes off to get to the final dvxfest cut. We had already agreed before shooting that we would make two cuts - one for dvxfest and one for other festivals - but I had no idea how tough it was going to be to get it down to 6 minutes. And now that it is 6 minutes, of course I have no idea how it's going to get longer and still be good. I think I will probably just start over. It's a unique opportunity to get to go back and really do everything over, and I think I will take advantage of it. I can improve my workflow, and hopefully do everything a lot more quickly.

Color correction on this one was a lot of fun. I am really getting the hang of working in Color, and I must say that it is now one of my favorite parts of the whole process. I really made an effort to make the color grade a part of the storytelling on this one. Hopefully you will agree that I succeeded in at least that. I am going to start looking for some side work as a colorist - start off with low-budget and student stuff and see where it takes me. May be a viable new path for me, we'll see.

Sound design was a real PITA. I have never done so much sound work on anything before. This piece really needed it (you'll see why), so it was worth all the effort, but I am really not as good at sound as I am at the other pieces of the process. I'm getting better, for sure, but this is one area that I feel should probably be left to other, better-trained folks than I in the future. I'm glad I know a lot about it, but if this is the last project for which I do post sound, I'll be totally ok with that.

Finally, working with my composer is awesome. Jim is a good buddy of mine who recently left his position at a major ad agency so that he could focus full-time on composing music. He has written music for several national commercials that you have probably seen, and he is finishing up work on a documentary right now that is simply amazing. This is our second colloboration, and I feel like our working relationship is improving beautifully. His grasp of the concept of the film is always immediate, and he listens and responds very well to any notes I have for him. He also gave me some great notes on the sound design which I incorporated. He is one of the guys where I feel like, as long as I am making films, I want him to be the composer.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with what we turned out for this fest. We definitely had too much story for the 6 minute limit, but that's ok. I hope you enjoy watching it as much as I enjoyed making it. I can't wait to see all the other entries.

And with that, my compression is done, and YES - it's just under 50MB. Time to upload.

Good luck to everybody!
 
Some grabs from the final cut:
 

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Beautyfully shot (pun intended) and edited.
I think, some more carefull color grading would have brought out the mood better.

I have to confess, that I did not really get the story - but otherwise, grat job Will.

Frank
 
Thanks, Frank. I was afraid of that. We had to cut a lot of the story to get down to 6 minutes.

I'm curious, how would you have changed the color grade?
 
I think the inside shots are to yellow - it does not meet the story and the mood.
A bit more neutral with slightly greenish shadows is what I would have done.

The outside shots on the other hand could use a bit more "frosty" look with a hair of bleach bypass, even the morning scene. The night for day could have a bit more night in it - but that´s just my taste.

I also think that keeping the skin tones constant (unles the story calls for someting different) is also important.

Would you please enlight us on the story? I would like to understand it.

Frank
 
Thanks for the specific comments on the grade. I will be re-cutting this one to be a little longer and I will probably re-shoot one scene, so I will also probably do the color grade again from scratch. I agree about interiors - a green cast might help a lot.

I'll send you a PM about the story right now. I am reluctant to post anything about it here until others have commented - know what I mean?
 
I enjoyed it. I didn't quite understand it either. But if you told me I would probably feel like a dumb ass for not picking it up. Good film either way. I liked that dude had a full pair of panty hose on his head.
 
Interesting spin on the idea of exploring a person's unconscious vs conscious mind and what happens to someone in such physical and mental trauma. The use of a man marooned in the middle of the natural world, having to fend for himself and steadily losing himself plays out very well against the actual event of him being shot by the misguided and misinformed thugs.

It plays out in an allegorical manner as well, representing a philosophy of man desiring to be next to, or as close to the natural world as possible while life is fading, and you hit it on the head. Although, his experience certainly is not a positive one.

I almost wish that instead of flashing to bits of information, the film might have shown the other objects (alcohol, letter, clock) as something tangible in his penitentiary of a dream. But, the flashes weren't abrasive, so it works.

I felt that the performances were a little stiff, but it was certainly still viewable and enjoyable.

Very nice job here. :beer:
 
Jon, you have hit the nail on the head. That's pretty much how I feel about the film too - in fact, we are planning to reshoot the ending with some other actors (and a little more from the lead) before recutting for a festival run.
 
Will Clegg said:
Jon, you have hit the nail on the head. That's pretty much how I feel about the film too - in fact, we are planning to reshoot the ending with some other actors (and a little more from the lead) before recutting for a festival run.
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Sounds like a good plan. I think you've got a really solid film in your hands and I'd love to see it receive even more fine tuning. Good luck with that, and let us all here know how it goes. :)
 
This is an interesting film that examines it seems a subconscious narrative that is taking place (as an earlier poster states) during a period of mental trauma.

In that manner it works (and i too did a similar thing for a film relating to male teen suicide - *ahem* a very crude short - that was my first that i will pm you Will Clegg if you like.

The difficulty is always in ensuring that the subconscious element has something meaningful to say - and is not just a kind of surreal visualisation of what is otherwise happening for real. It has to be more than an aesthetic representation - otherwise we are simply waiting for the big reveal.

In this i felt that was kind of happening. I could construe meanings for example, our man is out in the wildnerness in a tent and fire - he is 'trying to survive' and so he is for 'real'. But even then, that is a plain visual metaphor, and i feel that maybe something more could have been said.

As it stands I kind of felt like i was 'waiting' for the end, and the quality of the visuals, and acting i think demanded a better response (from me anyway) than me 'waiting' for the next bit.

That said the cinematography, and other technical elements were attractive, and some of the wilderness footage was startling and yummy.
 
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