shot a short film on my new 7D

A

allupons

Active member
I was recently inspired to try my hand at creating a short film for a local horror film festival. I ended up picking up a 7d and this is the film that resulted. Much to my surprise, it ended up winning the award for best overall film 2009.

Disposable: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSWfteDRmCc&fmt=22 (youtube in HD)
vimeo link for those who prefer it: http://vimeo.com/7308322 (had to adhere to a 500 meg upload limit for vimeo, so quality is possibly lower)

It was shot with a crew of 3 people total. It was shot using only the kit lens, and for indoor scenes we used only a few house lamps to assist with the lighting. I hope you enjoy and would love to read your comments!
 
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Wow, really nice.

Im checking out some 7D stuff cause im wondering if i should upgrade from D90.

How easy was it to adjust our aperature / shutter speed to get your shots to look right? Did you do any color correction to the footage at all?

Some notes, i thought that one shot where he walks over to her and is out of focus coudl hve been cut down a couple seconds. (not major just an editorial note)

You have a good eye, i enjoyed it.

The under the table shots were really cool, as well as the glasses. Very creative. Your actors were also pretty good.

hope to see more from you.
 
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Hey, nice job! I loved your decision to make it a 'silent movie' and tell the story with music instead of dialog (which would have probably been hokey in a melodramatic story like this). There were some really nice shots in there, like the one with the red book and also that of the wine glass filling up from below. I'm also impressed with how good it looked from the simple and practical lighting (ie the lights in the scene rather than behind the camera). Some hows looked a bit underlit and you could maybe color correct a little more to match them up, but overall it came together nicely.

The only thing I'd do significantly different (if you put it into any other festivals, which you should) is edit it to run a little shorter. 8 minutes is long for a short film and I bet you could keep all the mood and bring it under 5 minutes. For example, the reaction shots of the guy looking at the camera (and discovering he's just the latest random pickup) are not the best lighting-wise (the lamp on the ceiling behind him looks like a halo) and run a little long.

Minor technical glitches - at the tennis court, it sometimes looked like he was hitting back balls someone else had served - I expected to see another player and was momentarily confused when I didn't. Also, on the shots where she operates the camera, the effect of the flash on the rolling shutter is to create a weird band, due to the way the CMOS in the 7d works. Consider cutting the footage on that frame, removing the single frame and filling the gap by copying the frame just before or after, with brightness and/or some other effect turned up on the whole frame to simulate the flash. It may look a bit fake when the video is paused, but obviously it normally won't be ;-)

You've got something really good here - the only reason I went into detail about some of the technical aspects is because with a little more polishing you can take it from good to great!
 
Great Job! You rocked it! So good to see something made so well and so quickly for so little money. I do think some CC could help. One of my main notes (look wise) would be too many white walls. You could help the look a little with some more CC - but again - totally worked, I never wanted to change the channel (as it were) and I thought it flowed nicely. Where did you get the music?
 
Thanks for the tips. One thing that is kinda funny is that some of the suggestions are on stuff that was done intentionally, heh. Such as the reactions shots, where in post i added some vignetting to give it more contrast and to make the bland off-white ceiling I have not so boring. I do like the idea that perhaps I could push the runtime of it down a little more even, but I suppose it is in my nature to enjoy longer shots that have great patience so that the intense stuff at the end seems all the more so.

And I have also been considering replacing the weird banding that occurs from the 7d cmos recording a camera flash, but for some reason I find the odd nature of it visually appealing. I am still certainly considering such a fix though.

Thanks for all the suggestions though, and I will surely consider them.

Oh, and as a quick answer to the previous post, in manual mode shutter, aperture and iso are all just quick nob turns on the fly, and thus insanely easy to manage.
 
very encouraging. Ive been wondering if its worth dumping nikon and moving or just waiting a while.

Also, i think maybe an edit to 7 mins is more realistic than 5. Alot of the shots are very artistic and you dont want to cut to many. Do you have a photography background? it looks like it from your shots.

jon
 
I really liked how well you told your story with the imagery. Fantastic shot selection and compositions throughout. It's compelling, and you had a teriffic use of music to change the mood and guide the audience which added very well to the tension.

The only improvement I can suggest would be the lighting. It's a noir piece and I think it would have benefitted from more contrast in the lighting scheme. Less fill/high key in the apartment, and more pools of light and shadow areas. Not totally black, but darker, perhaps half of the fill level that you have. Grading might be able to do that for you.
Good reference might be Mad Men at Don Drapers house, or Road to Perdition or Millers Crossing.

My 2 cents. It's a really nice piece!
 
Really cool video.

I think the music & scares worked very well. The pacing made the scares that much more effective. I think the color motif of red is very present and artistic. I agree with the above comment of filming it more noir like, that would have been very complimentary with the story. But, since you used just house lamps I think the lighting was the best you could do.

Awesome story, very classically shot, and a lot of fun. Thanks for sharing.


Cheers
 
Thanks for all the additional comments. I agree with the comments about the lighting being the weak point and for the next time I would love to work with more than a pair of household lamps. Regarding the background in photography, I can't say that I have one. This is actually the first thing I have ever really shot, although I have always been very into watching film. The thing that always appeals to me though is intentional direction, so I am sure that made it into the way I visualize my story telling.

As far as stabilizing the handheld shots; we used the tripod collapsed all the way inward and held the tripod at the neck. This creates a counter weight and thus sort of acts as a cheap glidecam of sorts. It worked out pretty well I thought.

Thanks for all the encouraging comments and I hope to get even more to help me on future projects.
 
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