Teaser for "Fear Lives Here" shot on Canon 5D

M

moviemaykr

Active member
Hello all, I just finished shooting a full professional feature film with the Canon 5D and Zeiss and Canon L series lenses. We did a rough teaser and will be doing an official trailer when we have the rough cut of the movie and audio sweetened and mixed.

It was a lot of fun and and I'm really impressed with this camera and its potential.

Enjoy,

http://kck.st/bCaS64
 
Thanks its a work in progress and we dont want to give too much away. It was an exhausting process but I can truly say that if you plan everything out right and shoot with the best lenses you can and sound equipment, then you will have possibly something special on your hands.
 
Well the sound you are hearing is a Sanheiser ME 66 that was jam synced to the Audio mixers wireless and boom. The trailer sound is not what we will use in the actual movie we have much better audio which still needs to be mixed.
Our sound guy had a killer set of lectrosonic? wireless mics and a Schep's mic for his Boom Op.
Once we are done with the cut of the film and send it to a colorist, we have a good friend in the biz that will score it and my personal friend works in a sound post house and will mix it all for me.
I try to tell people if you really want to make a good film and to make it one step closer to big budget films then you need to pay attention to whats out there and study the best then adapt to your project. The script always has a lot to do with it but if thats good spend the time and effort on a great cinematographer and sound guy. Even if you have to fly them in from other towns its the level of people you work with in which you will be judged.
 
Thanks man but Id be happy if it got me to my 2nd film with double the budget! :)
I had a lot of talented people who are my friends as well as my girlfriends and they all just wanted to help us out. Most of them had just finished some big features and donated their time and equipment for a few days here and there.
When we wrote this script we did not try and reinvent the wheel or be the next Clive Barker, I just wanted to do a film within my budget that was simple but looked good, sounded great and the acting was good. The truth is we got really lucky with our actors and they gelled together very well as if they were friends for a long time. I was amazed at how professional they were and hardly ever missed their lines.
I chose this genre because it didnt have to be perfect and I made it basically 2 locations, but when you shoot in the woods then you can make certain areas look totally different. I can not stress enough how important a data wrangler or assistant editor is on an indie shoot when your using a HDSLR camera. It takes a long while to convert the files to pro res 422 hq and then even longer to audio sync each clip up for each camera.
I knew what were getting into but it still was a lot to take in, not to mention we did 88 pages in 9 nights and 2 days.
 
Yeah we tried Pluraleyes but it was a really slow program and my asst editors were finding some didn't sync up in the end. They also felt they could sync it up faster by going off the smart slate. I think pluraleyes is getting better and I really think next year the post world will catch up with the high demand of HDSLR. A stronger codec would be nice or native pro res 422 HQ out of the camera. Can you imagine when one of the Major companies give us 3k res in an HDSLR.
 
Man that looks so good!

I've been getting snobby remarks from the DPs on Cinematographer's Mailing List about how shitty these HD-DSLRs are... yeah right. They just need to see your trailer. It was awesome.

Saw some jello effect stuff- did you just use it as artistic touch?
 
Yeah there were some issues with the camera but we dialed it in pretty good and played to its strengths. I used mostly Zeiss ZE lenses from lensrentals.com and the Canon 135mm L series and the 70-200mm were great. We had a real 18 foot jib on some shots with wireless focus and also a Glidecam 4000.
I also was sponsored by Zacuto and Small HD, monitors are awesome! We had 10k, 5k, 2k and 650 Mole Richardsson lights, but honestly sometimes it was too much light and of course I will now have to color correct to make it more of a moonlight feel. One thing I can stress to young directors is HAVE A PLAN! Make sure you start with your wides, mediums then tights for coverage. It is very easy with theses cameras to go into video music mode and shoot a ton but you will find out in the edit its a ton of clips to go through!! Make your cameramen stick on the people and angles they are assigned to and dont let them pan back and forth to follow the dialogue. Focus is always tough with these cameras and you can loose moments that comeback to bite you in the edit.
If you can I learned I'm a huge fan of China Balls with 400 watt florescent bulbs as well as kinoflo's or something like it for these cameras. I will try and put some production stills up soon but dont want to give to much up! :)
 
moviemaykr said:
.....
I knew what were getting into but it still was a lot to take in, not to mention we did 88 pages in 9 nights and 2 days.
Click to expand...

Dude... that's absolutely insane. Must have been hell of a shoot! Your teaser looks already very very nice and makes me wanna see the movie. Best of luck for post-pro!
 
Okay, I gotta say it because its really nagging me... Can you throw a shot or two into the teaser that isn't 100% directly out of another established horror film? Looking at that teaser, I think 100% of the shots I saw were already done to the T in a big name horror film.

Maybe its just the teaser?
 
Snazzy Flapper said:
Okay, I gotta say it because its really nagging me... Can you throw a shot or two into the teaser that isn't 100% directly out of another established horror film? Looking at that teaser, I think 100% of the shots I saw were already done to the T in a big name horror film.

Maybe its just the teaser?
Click to expand...

There you go, this film is going to go places...

Remember that people want what they know, making a horror film that will appeal to a large market is a GOOD thing!

(Just IMO) People get caught up trying to reinvent the wheel, I'm not saying that it's a bad thing to try out new concepts, to take a risk... However, people seem to look down on people who are trying to make a film that follows a more established path. In the end I agree with Kevin Smith, you make the money movie and then you make the art movie.

:beer:
 
That wasn't my point at all. I realize all stories are variations on a theme.

My comment was that every SHOT in the teaser seemed to be lifted from an existing horror movie. It wasn't that they are following the same approach as other successful films.
 
You could make that same point about any good film... The shooting can remind you of another film, but the content is different. I know what your saying, which is why I think this film is only following the same formula (just from the trailer, I have no idea what the movie is about but I'd like to know). As far as lifting shots... How many different ways can you place your subject in a frame without having someone tell you it's been done?
 
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