Short film - Headshot

hahaha, wow, i thought that was really good. i like shortfilms like these, they're very interesting. good job.
 
Yeah man liked it lots.Good simple camera work.Letting the characters do the work.Great story also.What did u record the audio with? I thought it was particularly clean.Shows wat decent actors can bring to a simple plot.

Very good dude.
 
yea i am interested in what your audio equipment is, thanks.,

also, was this recorded in squeeze mode? i noticed it is widescreen and it looks pretty good.
 
Yeah, how'd you go about obtaining the aspect ratio? It looks wider than even 1:85...Matte? Anamorphic? Looks like you used a 35mm adapter as well...What model?
 
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You're production logo I thought was confusing. It sounded like the opening sounds of the movie put over the logo instead of the sound that was supposed to be playing for the logo. (Hope that made sense)

Opening dialouge I didn't think too much of. Didn't like the writting or acting for it, but both got better throughout the short.

I thought the opening conversation was rather boring with just two shots intercut. If there was a lot of subtext to it, then it would've held my converstaion but it just seemed rather stereotypical and boring. Now, it did clash with the gun scene pretty well, but to make a boring section of a movie just to make it clash with a later section seems silly to me. You could've had a few more shots to intercut in the conversation, but kept them all tripod shots and then gone to handheld shots and gotten a lot closer to highten the suspense.

Shallow Depth of Field didn't need to be used for most of this. It would've been better to have it deep for the conversation and then had shallow DoF for the gun scene to make it more powerful. It looked like you just wanted to show off a 35mm adapter instead of use it right.

If the title of the film is headshot, you should've had a bullet wound in his head. If you didn't want to do the gore FX, then you could've shot at a different angle so you could've seen blood flowing from around his head, but his forhead itself blocked by something.
 
I enjoyed it.. what type of lighting did you use and what mic did you use for sound. And what did you edit this short on?
 
noonansboy said:
Yeah man liked it lots.Good simple camera work.Letting the characters do the work.Great story also.What did u record the audio with? I thought it was particularly clean.Shows wat decent actors can bring to a simple plot.

Very good dude.
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Thanks for the good words.

The audio was recorded with an Audio Technica external mic, directly into the XLR of the camera. I'll get back to you with the exact reference of the mic.
All voices were recorded that way with no additional sound during the shoot.
All the other sounds were recorded afterwards and added in post using the same mic.
Then the music was added, recorded on a Mac with Garage Band.

The sound could have been better. The day of the shoot, the sound person was sick and couldn't hold the mic so we had to put it on a stand, sometimes a bit too far away from the actors, or more exactly, not at the same distance of each actor's mouth, triggering a bit of a reverb and difference in sound levels that had to be adjusted in post to be consistent through out the scene.
I'll look for the mic's reference and will also answer the other questions later today.
 
noonansboy said:
What did u record the audio with? I thought it was particularly clean.
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So, the mic was a shotgun Audio Technica AT897, mounted on a K-Tek K-GPS shockmount

ShotgunMicAudioTechnica01.jpg


The whole thing being placed inside a Sennheiser windscreen, mounted at the end of boom pole. I keep the same setup for indoor and outdoor to avoid manipulating parts. I just add a long hair windsock when I'm outside.

ShotgunMicAudioTechnica02.jpg


Then the XLR cable goes directly to the DVX camera.
This is for all the voices. Sound effects are recorded the same way in post.
 
Heero said:
was this recorded in squeeze mode? i noticed it is widescreen and it looks pretty good.
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It was recorded in 4/3 and cropped in post to 720x306 to get the 2.35 aspect ratio.
In the production stills you can see that we used some tape on the monitor to frame the shots correctly. It could then dynamically be reframed in post:

Headshot%20Production%20Second%20Day%20002.jpg
 
awsome stuff Viz! i really like the simplicity with the camera work. I know i edit way to much. (tony scott fan) But i love minimalism.
Question: What would be the advantages of using 2.35 aspect ratio? or was it simply for aeshetics? it can be very awkward when on a 4x3 Tv....
 
Bezakor said:
is that screen upside down because of your adapter? which one was it?
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Yes, it is because of the adapter. It's a Redrock Micro. They might have created different versions. This one should be the M2.
I'll ask the DP for confirmation.
Here's a picture of the setup on the camera.

Headshot%20Production%20First%20Day%20024.jpg
 
Gohanto said:
Shallow Depth of Field didn't need to be used for most of this. It would've been better to have it deep for the conversation and then had shallow DoF for the gun scene to make it more powerful. It looked like you just wanted to show off a 35mm adapter
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That's a very personal choice. There are always so many ways that different people would chose to shoot a film, each one being unique and interesting.
I don't know if "better" if the right term actually. To be more accurate, you'd have prefered a different artistic choice, but that's not the one we wanted to make.
The point was certainly not to show off a camera or adapter. I did not even mention the adapter in the title of this post by the way.
The point was to tell a simple story, have fun, and hopefully entertain a few and ideally make them smile or laugh which seems to work.
 
VizPictures said:
Yes, it is because of the adapter. It's a Redrock Micro. They might have created different versions. This one should be the M2.
I'll ask the DP for confirmation.
Click to expand...
I was the DP on the film.

We shot with a DVX100a and the Redrock M2 (SD version). Therefore we needed to flip the lcd (Nebtek 7" Panasonic) to see the image correctly. For some shots we attached an external 17" monitor to provide better focusing support.

On the M2 we used Nikon lenses; 50mm, 24mm, 55-200mm zoom, and a macro for the clock closeup. The mattebox is a Cavision.
 
Viz, yes I did jump a bit by using "better", however, the reason I found it strange was that I couldn't see a reason for it. It's why no one would make a film with everyshot a dolly-zoom with the same framing. Yes, you can do it and it would be art, but most likely it wouldn't serve the story. My opinion is the shallow DoF didn't serve the story here.
Then again, I consider myself more logical than artistic in making films. If I can't think of a reason to have something I don't put it in. I'll never put random stuff in for art's sake.
 
Gohanto said:
I'll never put random stuff in for art's sake.
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I do it all the time. Love doing it. I'll never stop. What's the reason? I wanted it there. I'm the producer. I can do whatever I want.
 
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