Short film: stock HVX200a

GND

GND

Well-known member
Hey,
My friends / family and I completed a short film on the HVX200a in 2010,

I posted a thread here in user films: http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthrea...uot-short-quot-(37-min)&p=2236689#post2236689

But thought I'd post here too, since someone may do what I did and just click the thread for their respective camera (or cam they are thinking of purchasing) to see screens and footage for inspiration or judgement.

www.livesafterdeath.com

Thanks!

Lower quality due to difficulty compressing the large 37 minute film down for the site, but you can view a few screens straight out of FCP (color corrected) in the "gallery".
 
That's pretty good man. Yeah it's stock...but whatever. They story was good and it makes you forget the "stock" look. That's the most important thing. You've achieved something most people fail to do. All too often people get so hung up on the technical and don't spend enough time on the actual content of what they are shooting or vice versa. You have a very nice piece on your hands. Congrats.
 
Hey Jarek,

Thanks for the reply and watching. Means a lot (the kind words), and I feared posting the movie only to end up getting zero views.

I tried my best to do "Stock" HVX justice, trying to create depth in the lighting instead of having shallow DOF.. Also we'd "cheat" with the candles on the table and move them closer to the lens in close-ups of actors.


Glad you liked the content. That was the main thing that kept us (myself / friends working on the film) going. The belief that the idea/story was original enough to get made and have someone sit through it and not be like "so what?" or "looks good, but I've been there/seen this sorta thing 1000 times before" at the end of it.

Once again, thanks for watching.
I know it may have been asking a lot as it's 37 minutes.
 
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Hey, thanks for checking it out.

sorry for the late reply,

no unfortunatly we forgot to get someone to take behind the scenes photos.
the person we had initially left the project after the first day (was horrible, everything that could go wrong, did. It was outside, and it rained off and on, there was a bike marathon that needed our location, it was hot.humid and mosquito's everywhere, the person slipped and fell into a shallow muddy pond, etc... ha bad start.)
They were a friend of a friend (who was the grip / boom operator) and were helping for free, so it wasn't too professional on their part anyway.

Then we just forgot to replace them, and since it was only 4-5 of us at a time(counting actors) and we all had multiple jobs already, no one remembered to pick up the digital camera for photos. ....I do regret that.


But I can explain everything if you want?

basically every scene except those with "reaper #298"(the afterlife), was all natural light and a bounce board (only on closeups of actors). in the car scene we had a white bedsheet flung over the whole dashboard to help reflect some light around the inside of the car.
and the windows were brought down in post (wasn't too hard as the entire frame was a type of green that was selectable on it's own).


In the afterlife, we had a 3 light kit - 2 300w's and 1 650. Each covered with some weak diffusion gel paper.
Also a home depot work light called a trouble light , it was only 75w, and was used in closeups to add more "eye-lights" to the actors.

I had the ND (I believe it was the 2nd to last) on the camera to help make the background darker. We surrounded the room with cheap black fabric bought from fabricland. The room was about 4 meters by 6 meters, not very big at all. ....and 8 foot ceilings.

for pretty much every shot in the afterlife, the lighting setup was changed, or reaper's table was moved so I could get the camera to the right position. (or that part where the girl and guy are standing up talking , the table was pushed into another room altogether).

I would always have the 2 350's blasting the reaper from whichever side was facing the camera, to "rimlight" him as best as I could. Those lights would also act as fill (or even key) for the other actors at the table. Then the 650w was just aimed directly at the actors to give them the flatter and more-lit look. Sometimes we'd also get the boom operator to put the boom on a stand then hold a white bounce card behind the actors to give them a little hair-light from behind (was bouncing the 650w's light), just so they didn't completely disappear into the black background.

And on closeups of the actors we'd add that home depot "trouble light" (basically a house lightbulb on a wire/handle) sitting on the reaper's table, just to add some eye light from below. (we'd put it on a black cooking pan so it didn't burn the table cloth).

And when it turns red near the end (when the girl stands up), that was all done in post color correction, the lighting setup was the same pretty much.


The lights were in almost every shot (the room so small) that I had to matte them out in post. In any non-close up shot, you would see 2-3 lights, and the hand of my grip/friend holding a white board. Like some weird interview location.
....that didn't make the actors too excited when they saw the rough un-color corrected cut. ha

I'll try to find an example screen and post it...

EDIT > damn, I knew I should've kept some old footage. I delete everything but the color corrected stuff and movie itself, since my computer was dieing and needed more space.

Also forgot to mention, due to lights being so low (could only be about 6 - 6 1/2 feet hight due to 8 ft high ceilings, covered in flameable black fabric, we needed to keep the lights lower) there were lens flairs left,right and center that I'd flag out with my
fingers over parts of the lens - over only the spots where I knew I could later matte them out in the all-black background.
 
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I've lurked here for years, but this finally made me sign up.

I loved it. Seriously, excellent work. Caught me completely off guard, in a good way. The look of it was also much better than I expected, and after reading the post about lighting it's quite impressive indeed. Inspiring, even.

Hopefully bumping the thread isn't against the rules. :)
 
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