Scene from 2nd Short Shot on Canon 7D

S

Screenforme

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This is a scene from the 2nd short I'm working on using the Canon 7D. I have never shot inside an office except for interviews.
Let me know what you think of the lighting I pulled off and anything you would have changed.
http://vimeo.com/13022499

Password = break
 
I would change the color grade. Frankly, I think it looks ugly and it doesn't seem to match the material. But that's just my opinion. Also it seems like in most of the shots there is a lot of dead space, as if you are planning to crop to 2.35:1.
 
I like the shots, they captured the emotion of the scene well I think.

as per the previous poster, I might try and crop the footage to 2.35:1, I think it would help. The color grade isn't awful in my opinion, but at the same time it really isn't adding anything....

May I ask what the short is about? a bigger plot than just this one scene?

JPM
 
what ISO were you using when you shot this? There is some strange artifacting going on and weird grain spacing that i normally attribute to too high of an ISO on my 7D. The acting seems interesting, and from what i gather it seems that this guy has a mental or speech disability and auditions for movie parts quite often. Am I somewhat right?

The color grade could be better, but at the same time we dont know the context of the scene, so how it plays to mood may be different when put in context.

Also, audio is clearly the onboard mic, do you have another mic source? The operational sounds of the camera are quite audible.

Interesting content!
 
Hey,

I like the way your scene developed and the flip on my expectations. It worked well for what you tried to get across.

As for lighting. I noticed every actor was casting a shadow on the wall. I don't know if that was your intention but I think direct lighting isn't the best choice for interiors. You want soft shadows and ambient light that hits your f-stop exposure level, possibly a little more or less (+/- 1 stop) for a scene like that.

If I were to guess, you were using HMI lights to shoot that and probably put a silk in front but that was not nearly enough to kill the shadows. What I recommend you invest in is a china ball light with a 500w or even a 1000w bulb (have it all connected to a dimmer to assist with stopping it down) in it which will throw an incredibly soft light in every direction. Just hang it from the middle of the room just out of frame and you're golden. Especially good for closeups.

Also, more shot angles, maybe a moving camera might have helped ie: slow push in during the more intense moments instead of a straight cut to closeup. I was also confused as to the sense of space. The widest you ever got in that scene was a medium-wide while the actress was sitting but a wide 2-shot to establish the room, maybe from a profile perspective, or from the opposite corner of the actors, would've helped with that. There were enough cuts in that scene to warrant the need of another position or two though....

I hope this is the kind of feedback you were looking for and it hasn't come across harshly. What you did was good and it worked but I felt it needed a little extra in it.

Cheers!!!
 
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I thought the lighting was a bid odd, Im not going to say it was bad, because I don't know what your going for. But I felt it was way harsh, it just didn't have a soft feel to it. The color grade is a bit to pastel for my liking, but thats a personal choice as well. The acting was good. the set design was terrible. the cheesy posters made it look very amatuer.

Overall, I think it's decent, just make some tweaks next time.
 
I really enjoyed this man. Brought tears to my eyes.

As an actor, the audition process is sometimes very repetitive and mundane. I can just imagine someone, or myself, having gone through a career full of auditions only to be diagnosed with MS at some point but trying to get through it regardless.

Really nice piece.
 
PaPa said:
I really enjoyed this man. Brought tears to my eyes.

As an actor, the audition process is sometimes very repetitive and mundane. I can just imagine someone, or myself, having gone through a career full of auditions only to be diagnosed with MS at some point but trying to get through it regardless.

Really nice piece.
Click to expand...


i agree. those close ups and the emotion of it really hit home for me.
 
Re: Thanks for Responding!

Re: Thanks for Responding!

Thanks for the comments everyone. Here are the details.

ZERO budget short about an actor who gets his big break and suffers a stroke. He is in the hospital for quite a while and comes out with physical impairments; speech, limp, etc. But, he still wants to be the "Actor" he was so he ambushes the casting peeps.

I was the DP/cameraman, audio guy, gaffer, etc with my hungover roommate as assistant. We shot this in 3 hours.

Perhaps I will crop, but I just wanted to establish where they were. The office was wide open with NOTHING in it and those posters on the wall, well. And, we had to cheat the distance, angles, scenes, because we only had the one office.
The color grade isn't final, just something I did to show the director. I'll attach a jpg of the raw.


ISO 400 I believe and yes, that's the onboard mic. I also recorded audio with Zoom H4N, with lavs and a shotgun mic. Hasn't been added yet.

We rented an Arri 4 light kit. 1000 watt, 650 with softbox, 650 no softbox and a 300. Shadows were a *****.

There wasn't any sun coming in the windows nor any overhead lighting that worked and all the walls were booger green.

This is my 2nd narrative piece I have shot. I have experience with events/weddings, and the like but I'm trying to move to narratives so I appreciate the comments.

B
BreakStill.jpg
 
I think the emotion of the piece is good, but some movement really could have added something. Or more buildup with the closeups. Storytelling is the heart of filmmaking so take that as a great compliment, just in the future try to think about how every visual element adds something to the story.

You said you had the H4n, and that will definitly help your sound. Don't forget to lay a room tone so the cuts arent so noticable in the audio.

Continue working at it, your story is there, now your visuals just need to catch up a bit.
 
I loved it. It's a very nice scene and very well acted. But technically, it's not professionally proficient enough.

As regards to improvements and feedback with your role as the DP, and knowing that the film is already shot- I would suggest you do not crop to 2:35 like everyone else is saying.

Nothing about the framing or context of the short film looks like it was meant for 2:35. Forcing it would just look silly. Maybe go 1:85 if you really have to, but that's not necessary. I like the empty space and distance, it signifies there's something missing in his life.

With regards to the lighting, yeah I think it looks very flat. I would remove some lights, and suggest some overheads to cast shadows for moulding their face giving that extra degree of a dimensionality. As a Director myself, I find it very distracting when things look overlit and I see reflections off their eyes that shouldn't be there. I mean, how many offices have eye level lights that double twinkle in our eyes? Don't be afraid to not light...

As to what you can do right now, I'd suggest yourself and the colourist to grade with more contrast, add dirty grain to disguise the arteficing and flatness to make the piece more warm/cold and verite. Maybe push for milky blue or orange shadows. See how that looks. Also because of the minimalistic production design, have you tried using Adobe's Kuler? http://kuler.adobe.com/ That's a very good tool! Hum not too sure about the Chuck Norris posters though, it ruins the bleakness and they don't match. But I'm sure it wont be too much of a problem to grade over.

Everyone else in this thread is talking about moving the camera, but I disagree. This scene demands stillness. Maybe, MAYBE, a super slow move in, but that could potentially look cheesy. Anyway, I know the choice of composition or framing isn't really in the DP's hands, but this is very important for everyone (especially the director) to understand: - y'all MUST bring the camera position closer towards the center of the actor's eyeline. Especially towards the end of the scene, when you're supposed to have the audience really in there, but here they're looking an inch too far to the side. This simple action alone would have made the scene way more powerfuller.

Also yourself, the Dir, Operator, and Editor should be more careful about crossing the eyeline, it happens at 30 seconds, when everyone wants to look left. These schoolboy technical errors really let down the performance, and just a continuity person or a 30 second floor plan/storyboard would have solved it..

Whoever's editing it needs to give the scene another pass to fix as many of this as possible. The start goes on abit too long, and it looks like he's undoing his flies to wee on the receptionist. We also don't need to see the receptionist's extreme close-up before she leaves. And the bit at the end, the actress looks directly at the camera as if witing for the 'Cut!', then she realises its still rolling and re-tries to compose her sad acting and eye dart too much. Eeergh, edit edit EDIT!

But all in all pretty good though :) I wanna watch the completed thing!
 
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