Siren, new feature shot on DVX

filmmaker58

filmmaker58

Well-known member
Siren (www.sirenthemovie.com) has just been completed and submitted to the Sundance Film Festival. Check out the trailer on the website.

I directed, shot, and edited the movie, starring Erin Gray, Gary Graham, and introducing Michele-Fiore-Kaime, who also wrote the screenplay (along with screenwriter Robert Gosnell) and produced. We shot on the DVX100A (sometimes several of them) and used DV Rack for over 80% of the film. I edited on Sony Vegas6 with over 600 gigs of material.
When I came aboard, Michele intended to shoot on HD, but I convinced her to use the DVX because of the many musical numbers, where we would need multiple cameras, (and couldn't afford a bunch of HDcams) and just the fact that within the budget, we could use a less expensive format, and have a longer shooting schedule, thus making a better movie. Add to that the extra expense of posting on HD, and we definitely made the right choice. The DVX holds up great, and I don't think we sacrificed much, if anything by choosing this format. I shot a screentest with the DVX to convince her, and we were underway.

I was fortunate enough to have Barry Green on the film as one of the producers, and technical advisor/dv rack operator. (It was cool to have the guy who literally wrote the book on the DVx on set. I didn't have to read the book..I just asked Barry).

We had a limited, but talented crew, a 4 man lighting crew, with one of them doubling as boom operator sometimes for Chuck Bejarano, our location, and post production sound supervisor.

We used a jimmy jib crane, and a glidecam extensively, along with a homemade dolly.

We worked for a week back in March, then Michele lost 30 pounds for the role, and we shot again for 4 weeks in May/June, finishing principle photography June 13th. We had three days of pickup shots, and have been editing nonstop since then. Vegas6 was outstanding, except for a couple of minor glitches, it held up perfectly working with over 600 gigs of material on 4 external USB/firewire drives.

Musical scoring is being done by Michael Shapiro (www.mikemusic.com). Who had done a great job in blending the underscore with the songs produced by Ben Obi.

This was a great experience and opportunity for me, and I'm glad that it's done, but sorry that it's over, if you know what I mean.
 
A big congratulations on completing your movie! The trailer looked great and I would love to see the completed film. I'll be attending Sundance (in support of a few films my daughter was involved in) and would definitely put this one on my must see list. I assume that you will, but do keep us informed on this forum so we can keep up with the films progress.
 
oh man that's awesome! Congrats my man, congrats! I hope to follow the same path and hope to be as lucky as you to have such a talented cast and crew. The trailer looks great.

Question for you:

How does it work when you submit to Sundance? Do they view it and approve/deny your submission?

Also:

What was the total budget for this movie?
 
I can at least answer that one ... you can submit (which you have to pay for as well), but it can be passed on. That's why you'll see films saying official selection of such & such festival ... because they made the cut at least, even if they don't win something.

Hopefully this makes a serious mark there. Great job on it all!
 
Looks great.

What are some of the technical details camera wise. I assume that it was done anamorphic 16X9. Is this correct?

Good luck!
 
Not anamorphic -- we shot letterbox/24pa/thin. We had at times four, maybe five cameras running, and getting five adapters and dealing with the issues was just something we decided not to do.

There were some shots where we wanted the Z99/f2.8 shallow DOF look, and the anamorphic wouldn't permit that either.

Cameras were all DVX100As, some custom scene file settings included a little bump in color temp and a drop in master pedestal, cinegamma/cinematrix across the board. Heavy use of the Century .6 wide-angle adapter as well as the ZOE zoom controller, Glidecam 4000, and a 30' Jimmy Jib. Everything was recorded to DV Rack whenever possible, and it was that process that got me to declare that I was done with tape! It's just such a wonderful workflow once you get the tape out of the equation...

We had something like a terabyte of external hard disks to record to. We almost always had a "video village" with a CRT monitor, so the laptop just set next to it; I got a battery-backup power supply for when the cart couldn't be plugged into AC; all other times we were able to run some stingers and have AC power. There were a couple of occasions where I just held the laptop handheld, running off its own battery, and we recorded straight to that...
 
You got to work w/ Barry Green! Lucky bastards, lol. I did watch the trailer and although it looked very good, it didn't look very filmic to me (keep in mind that I'm a dumbshit). Not saying you were shooting for that, but there was just SOMETHING about the trailer that actually made me not want to watch it. I don't know if it was the acting (some of it was good, some bad), or the story or what. Just seemed kinda cheesy. Huge congrats on doing the feature and having it shown at Sundance. Good luck w/ it, let us know how everything goes.
 
Yeah, we got to work with Barry Green...heh. We're not in Sundance yet, but have high hopes. As far as the technical questions....uh, yeah, what Barry said. As far as the budget....they're still counting but I can tell you it's a bit over our original 200k.
I'm working on another project now and am digitizing footage......Never again. I'm with Barry, tape sucks. It's nice to have it as a backup, but it's DV rack all the way for me from now on.
 
Ok, so I'll bite into the DV rack situation...... Is this done with a stock DVX directly through firewire into the laptop or is there a modification to the DVX that needs to be done?

Also, what program is needed on the laptop to be able to record direct?
 
..watched the trailer and looks like a job well done guys! some good stuffs. good luck with the festivals! and let us know what happens.
 
Nice trailer, seems like its going to be one of those empowering/positive message kind of films and that's never a bad thing.

OK, I am confused... was this SUBMITTED to Sundance or it has been SELECTED for Sundance? There's a pretty big difference.

I mean I submitted my film to Sundance 2006 for consideration as well, but the announcement for entries isn't until December, so I am just curious if you received early notification or if everyone here is just jumping the gun a bit (he he). Cause if you got early notification you should have that plastered all over this trailer and website.

No matter what though congrats and I wish you and your film the best! GOod luck with the festival circuit as well!
 
wow man. i'm impressed. the lead girl looks incredible too. congrats on finishing and goodluck at the good ole' Sundance.
 
This movie sounds great is that location or adr? If it's adr what percent of it is adr? What audio setup did you guys use?
 
Submitted, not yet selected. As John pointed out, nobody knows if they've been selected or not yet. I think Pat was just most excited about getting it DONE! :)

For audio, almost all of it is location sound; a few segments were ADR'd, but Pat would know better than I as to which ones were. We had a very talented sound person handling audio, and he did a great job of capturing it and an even more amazing job in post with it.
 
Ran it into the DVX, then to DV rack. Most of the audio came from the boom (I think it was a Senheiser, I'll have to ask Chuck Bejarano, our sound man) although we usually had lavs on people also. Some was a mix of both. Everything in the trailer was location sound. (except for the song, which was playback and lipsync) Basically he used a good eng audio package. A nice boom and two lavs going into a Sure mixer, and then to the DVX.
Get a sound man who knows what he's doing, and don't forget to get roomtone.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top