SHORT: Santa WARFARE (Don't Mess with Santa!)

P

PaulGriffith

New member
When evil, South Pole elves try to sabotage Christmas, Santa deals with them... Rambo style!

Totally nut-so ridiculous but a lot of fun. As always, would love feedback and if you like it please share!

Thanks DVXUser!


Invision-Media-Santa-Warfare-Poster-web-v1.jpg
 
Thanks!

Quick experience summary:

We knew we wanted to do a Christmas video in July, and let the ideas stew of what it should be until the middle of October. Did a quick draft of the script, sent it to one of our more experienced writers to finesse it then started the normal Pre-Production stuff. DP and I sat down and talked through basic shots. Once we had the location secured a couple of weeks before the shoot we went through and diagrammed every shot as to where the cameras, actors and basic lighting would be to match the shot list. This helped a lot because we had 3 cameras going sometimes (4 if you count the gopro/spycam) and they never interfered with each other. We have a pretty set crew, so scheduled them all 4 - 6 weeks out for the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Talked to aradanicostumes.com and they heled us out with the elf ears, bought a lot of other pieces for $15 or less per character at oriental trading! Put a casting call out on craigslist a month in advance asking for video auditions. Got a lot, but only a couple were a fit so we filled the rest of the roles with actors and friends from previous projects. Didn't have Santa until 4 days before the shoot and our loaner costume fell through, so had to rent one last minute.

One of the craigslist actors bailed at 10PM the night before the shoot, so we filled it last minute with one of our teams brother and man he stepped up, did better than the first! Build a lot of props, recycled others, bought a few. Painted some airsoft guns gold, the bazooka was PVC used in another video, painted it from olive green to candy-cane. Tweaked an existing nutcracker holding a baton to hold a little wooden camera we built. Spent most of thanksgiving (when not eating) wrapping empty boxes. I think I wrapped around 60, two of the camera guys brought around 20. Spent the day after Thanksgiving decorating the set with the production designer, brought in a lot of free for the weekend decorations from our church, others were mine and bought a few. We only wanted to shoot one day and one of the elves had to leave around 6, so we started setup around 6:30 AM, started rolling around 9 and thanks to the very thorough shot list and diagrams we wrapped all the elves right at 6! Only had to shoot the Santa screen stuff after.

I took the footage home and had to edit around some existing work, the other producer/dp/vfx artist tackled the exterior scenes. Composer started right after we shot too. We finished that with some really rough sound last Tuesday or Wednesday, sent it to post audio for sweetening while the DP and I worked on color, and literally launched it after getting the mix back and pairing it with the new color and credits.

So wrote in October (final, final draft the week of the shoot).<br>Shot November 26, about 16 hours from set-up to strike.
Location was a friends brand new house. They'd lived in it for a week or so. Blacked out the windows so it stayed "night" all day. Really messes with your head.
We had 4 Canon 7D's on set built on rigs. Two tripod setups (rails and FF), a RedRock Shoulder Rig and a Glide Cam. Had a dolly there as well. Had some Canon 24-70 2.8's, 50 1.4s, a Rokinon 85mm 1.4 and a Tamron 17-50mm 2.8 for the extra wide and Glidecam stuff.
Clocked somewhere between 60 and 80 hours for editing and VFX, another 12 for the Audio mix and sound effects.
Edit, effects, color in Adobe CS5.5. Sound mix in Nuendo.
Was a really fun project in general, if we can we'll do more holiday stuff in the future too!

Thanks again :D
 
Last edited:
It starts good, so I will continue looking, but with a "detail in sound".

Stuff like the framing, editing, props, clothing is very nice.

In general you've pitched the sound up a little to have those "voices" ? Here and there I also hear reverb that has been added ?

And sometimes the image and sound aren't 100% sync (quarter frames), I can see if something is sync or not with 1 frame and even 1/4th frame :-p

00:10, someone is shouting someting, but do we have to understand it ?
00:23, the room sounds... Well, as a room... not much you can do about...except having curtains, blankets to cover some reflections in sound...
Have you used a rode NT1 or so ?
00:30, I would have taped the bells of the heads, and added the bells later in post.

00:46, the "direct sound" suddenly "drops down"... I hear you try to "save" it with the music, but I hear it drops down...

00:59, the "hitting" with the stick... Do the soundclip -4 frames (so to the left) and it wil be better... Now you've watched where in the image the sticks hit the stomach and put the sound
there, but you have to watch it and position it by feeling. Now it's like the sound is slightly to late.

1:30 "Hurry up we don't have much time" not sync... picture is to late... so sound about 5 frames to the...right.

1:47, I hear the "cut" in sound...little more fade or so... But it's a detail...

2:00 "just give me a cookie", here you're already fading out the sound ? And then the direct sound is faded out... artistic or because of technical isues ?

2:06, I know that sound/music frome somewhere...But I can't remember :-p

3:01, when the male elf stands up and says "And he know when you're awake"... after his line, is he re-positioning himself ? It's like he knows he's just on the border of the frame and
does one step to his left....

3:47, funny, the elf looking... people think "he will save them all (well at least the living ones) but then..... :-p
Only the "splash" sound is a little to late... about... 5 frames or so.

The SFX are nice.

And nice ending also.
 
Thank you for the details it adds so much more to the experience, very interesting stuff. If you ever do another film and choose to share a pre production log, if I see it in advance I will follow. Keep up the good work. The speed of the voices was something that did stick out, but also felt like it was an editing choice, yet it did feel a bit over the top. Set, story, acting was very enjoyable.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top