FEATURE: Rise of the Beast-the new feature from STARS Pictures

Great idea about shadows for the insert shot!

Glad you guys like the commercial. I used a wired lav on it, straight to my Rebel. No gain hacks or anything. The rest of the sound work was just done in Vegas. I made the music in Mixcraft. Once the sound was good, I tossed the EDL into AE to do the effects and grading and rendered my master from there.
 
Glad to see you're actually getting some work on the side too. This looks very good. I may get a T2i myself at some point.

-Nate
 
You totally should!

On the ROTB front, I was hoping to get our last two days in this month, but due to the holidays, the conference room I was going to rent is booked until January so looks like we'll be wrapping early January. This has become the movie that won't end. I hate weekend filmmaking. lol
 
I'd work longer on that composite. The actors are obviously not in that environment. I'd chalk it up to the harsh and unflattering lighting.
 
It is great seeing how this movie is progressing. Keep up the good work!
Thank you!

Worked on some more music yesterday and designed our first one sheet today. I'll probably do a few of them before I decide on a final one. Pardon the compression-the upload to facebook did that. Also, while at a bible study tonight, my friend played a song she wrote called "Truth" that totally fits with the message of the film. Even included the phrase "take the leap of faith". She's going to come over and record it on Sunday so be looking for it in an upcoming promotional piece for the film.
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Hey Chris I found this video today while surfing the net, made me think about you and your film. You have probably already seen it but I know that you are heavy into parkour and would appreciate such a talented guy. Hope all is going well with the film, any idea when you will have a new trailer out. Time wise I know how you are feeling, we shot our feature for 4.5 months and I have been editing since September and still have a couple months to go before starting the ADR and audio work. Wish you the best. God bless.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yH4MbnRYQOQ
 
Sweet vid. More freerunning/tricking than parkour, but still good. Not sure yet on a trailer, but I will have a promo/music vid coming out before the end of the month featuring the song we recorded today =)
 
Hey, I have a new character I created, but I have no place in my film for her. You want her for your new film since it's about the media and all?

-Nate
 
From the Production Journal:
Tuesday, December 20, 2010

The past few days have been pretty interesting, as far as our camera is concerned. A company called Magic Lantern (they hack DSLRs and create new firmware) has been releasing a bunch of updates to their T2i firmware. What does that mean? It means that our little camera now has crop marks, no AGC, zebras, a stellar ISO range, audio meters and an adjustable bitrate! I’ve been waiting for this for a long time, so I took the plunge and hacked the camera. Now, since the hacks/updates are free, I’m technically still using a kit Rebel, so we’re still the first feature using the kit lens, and the majority of the film was shot with an early Canon firmware. I’ve been playing with the “new camera” all afternoon and so far I haven’t been able to crash it. I do have one issue though-I like to format my card after each use to clear the contents. The way the new firmware is set up, if you do that you’ll lose it and have to reinstall Other than that, I love it!

This new ML release is great news for us and the independent film community!
 
Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Day 28

Had my friend Kim come over today to shoot the news reporter scenes. We shot it greenscreen and used my laptop as a teleprompter by using “Prompt 7.0″. After a bit of coaching, Kim caught on pretty quick to reading from the screen and how to move her head to hide the fact she was reading. She also did a great job with a Spanish accent. Why the accent? To help open up the movie so it doesn’t seem like it’s all American. Gives it more of the "worldly scale". For sound, I decided to shoot dual system because her lines were basically mini monologues. We used the Yeti, and since the shots are going to be a news style setting, I just set it on the desk in front of her. The audio was recorded onto my music computer and we used my clapperboard to slate the takes. It was our first day shooting with the Rebel ML as I’m now calling it (a Rebel T2i running Magic Lantern) and had no issues with it.

I did however have some issues with the transfer and backup process. My backup drive took the footage just fine, but I spent nearly two hours trying to make it work with my primary. Finally I did succeed with getting at least the takes I needed. Coincidentally, When I went to see how much footage I shot, I saw that I had used 6.66 GB of space on my 16 GB card. On the last film, I had problems with file 666. The digital demons are back harassing us again. Good. It means I’m doing something right.
 
I really like it. The Rebel ML is now, in my opinion, a better camera than the 7D, with the exception of the build quality (but even then it's pretty good). If you do go for it, just keep in mind it's still in beta, so you might get some bugs-I've been lucky in that I haven't yet. But for sure, when the first official release comes out, you should most definitely get it!
 
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Hey everyone! So pre-orders start today. As many of you know, DVD replication is expensive, so we're trying to offset the cost. All pre-sale DVD's will be signed and numbered. The two disc set will be rocking four commentaries (director, shot by shot, actor and theology), a feature length making of, bloopers and more! Order yours here: http://starspictures.wordpress.com/order/

Along with the new presale campaign, we've also released a new set of grabs on our facebook. Some new, some old. Click the link in my sig to check them out
 
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