Eric Coughlin
Veteran
Short film I produced, DPed, and had a small acting role in for the Orlando 48 Hour Film Project. Our genre was silent film, prop was toe nail clippers, forget the dialog and character prompts.
It won Best Film, Best Cinematography, Audience Choice, Best Directing, Best Actress, Best Writing, Best Sound (for a silent film?!), Best Character, Best Prop, Best Editing, and Best Music.
This was the cut we turned in. The director was supposed to make a director's cut as we usually do and he probably still will, eventually, but got tired of waiting so decided to post the cut we turned in. A good amount of the shots the colors got washed out (banding, harsh gradients, etc.), perhaps accidentally double lutted, or the LUT just didn't work and it needs to be graded from scratch to eliminate that issue, so that's one thing that will hopefully get fixed in the final cut. The Arri LUT works in most cases, but gradients can sometimes look bad in strong RGB situations where grading from scratch solves the issue.
Shot with the Arri Amira with Angenieux EZ 30-90 T/2 lens. I had my Canon CN-e zooms with me, but one of our crew members had the Angenieux so I wanted to try it out and take advantage of the T/2 f-stop for the dreamy look of the film. A couple shots with the Blackmagic 4K Pocket camera as well which the director grabbed.
Lots of RGB in this film; I think it worked for this project, but I've found myself overdoing RGB recently in other short films so probably time I tone it down when it's unwarranted. Lighting was Litepanels Gemini, a knockoff Skypanel light, Luxli Timpani, and some Chinese RGB tube lights. We had the Timpani and tube lights on batteries to quickly move around.
Smaller crew than typical for my 48 Hour films; mostly just had six people in total (director, DP, three actors, and PA/lighting guy/AD). Had a makeup artist and a gaffer show up for just a couple hours, which means they weren't there for most of the shoot. One of the actors was also production designer and the other actor helped a good amount with lighting. Then the director took the camera to film the shots I was acting in. He also stopped directing halfway through the night to get to editing, so the directing got split to one of the actors (who does directing as well in general) who directed the second half of filming.
We shot at a sleazy motel and the motel owners thought we were filming a porno, which they were thrilled about because they thought it would bring good advertising to their type of clientele. Sadly for them they later found out we were just filming a regular movie about murder and not sex, as they weren't hoping to attract more murderers to their hotel. We showed them the movie though and they liked it, so all good there.
Think it was around 22-24 hours of filming, perhaps 4pm to 3pm the next day, not stopping through the night. We filmed in Tampa, then had around a two hour drive to Orlando to drop off the movie. Film due at 7:30pm, leaving Tampa around 5pm, the edit was not done and the editor did not want to ride in my car while editing like we'd done for previous films, due to car sickness, so the plan was for me to drive to Orlando, they'd upload the file, I'd download the file, put it on the thumb drive, and turn it in. Problem was, the personal hotspot on my phone had run out, and I didn't know if the drop off venue would have Internet, so I had to go to a Starbucks to download the file around 6:45pm. Parked the car at a 7/11, said customer parking only so the AD ran in and bought a random item, and gave me the receipt. About 15 minutes later I have the file, go back to my car, and it's in the process of being towed. I show them the 7/11 receipt, and they let me off, dropping my vehicle off the tow platform. Then I drive the extra 10 minutes or so to the place and turn the movie in with about 10 minutes to spare. Not even a close call by our standards; our Atlanta 48 Hour our export finished while were were standing in line with laptop in hand about a minute before it was due.
It won Best Film, Best Cinematography, Audience Choice, Best Directing, Best Actress, Best Writing, Best Sound (for a silent film?!), Best Character, Best Prop, Best Editing, and Best Music.
This was the cut we turned in. The director was supposed to make a director's cut as we usually do and he probably still will, eventually, but got tired of waiting so decided to post the cut we turned in. A good amount of the shots the colors got washed out (banding, harsh gradients, etc.), perhaps accidentally double lutted, or the LUT just didn't work and it needs to be graded from scratch to eliminate that issue, so that's one thing that will hopefully get fixed in the final cut. The Arri LUT works in most cases, but gradients can sometimes look bad in strong RGB situations where grading from scratch solves the issue.
Shot with the Arri Amira with Angenieux EZ 30-90 T/2 lens. I had my Canon CN-e zooms with me, but one of our crew members had the Angenieux so I wanted to try it out and take advantage of the T/2 f-stop for the dreamy look of the film. A couple shots with the Blackmagic 4K Pocket camera as well which the director grabbed.
Lots of RGB in this film; I think it worked for this project, but I've found myself overdoing RGB recently in other short films so probably time I tone it down when it's unwarranted. Lighting was Litepanels Gemini, a knockoff Skypanel light, Luxli Timpani, and some Chinese RGB tube lights. We had the Timpani and tube lights on batteries to quickly move around.
Smaller crew than typical for my 48 Hour films; mostly just had six people in total (director, DP, three actors, and PA/lighting guy/AD). Had a makeup artist and a gaffer show up for just a couple hours, which means they weren't there for most of the shoot. One of the actors was also production designer and the other actor helped a good amount with lighting. Then the director took the camera to film the shots I was acting in. He also stopped directing halfway through the night to get to editing, so the directing got split to one of the actors (who does directing as well in general) who directed the second half of filming.
We shot at a sleazy motel and the motel owners thought we were filming a porno, which they were thrilled about because they thought it would bring good advertising to their type of clientele. Sadly for them they later found out we were just filming a regular movie about murder and not sex, as they weren't hoping to attract more murderers to their hotel. We showed them the movie though and they liked it, so all good there.
Think it was around 22-24 hours of filming, perhaps 4pm to 3pm the next day, not stopping through the night. We filmed in Tampa, then had around a two hour drive to Orlando to drop off the movie. Film due at 7:30pm, leaving Tampa around 5pm, the edit was not done and the editor did not want to ride in my car while editing like we'd done for previous films, due to car sickness, so the plan was for me to drive to Orlando, they'd upload the file, I'd download the file, put it on the thumb drive, and turn it in. Problem was, the personal hotspot on my phone had run out, and I didn't know if the drop off venue would have Internet, so I had to go to a Starbucks to download the file around 6:45pm. Parked the car at a 7/11, said customer parking only so the AD ran in and bought a random item, and gave me the receipt. About 15 minutes later I have the file, go back to my car, and it's in the process of being towed. I show them the 7/11 receipt, and they let me off, dropping my vehicle off the tow platform. Then I drive the extra 10 minutes or so to the place and turn the movie in with about 10 minutes to spare. Not even a close call by our standards; our Atlanta 48 Hour our export finished while were were standing in line with laptop in hand about a minute before it was due.
