The Blackout: Just Wrapped Feature with XLH1

The movie is DONE. Thank god. It took a year to get this sucker through post-production. Been working on it evenings and weekends. But it's finally finished and we're negotiating with distributors currently. So, with a little luck, everyone will get to see it soon.

We will be holding a private screening at Cinespace in downtown Hollywood in early December. Depending on space I'm sure there will be room for a few L.A. based DVX'ers.
 
The trailer was graded in FCP using the standard 3-way color filter. The movie itself is currently being graded in Apple's Color. The finished movie will look a little different than the trailer (not dramatically, but tonally).

When I watch the trailer I notice the "look" shifts from shot to shot a little too much for my taste. But we wanted to get a trailer out there sooner rather than later since buyers are currently checking it out.

Let me see which frames might best underscore the before and after. In some cases it's subtle. In other's it's quite dramatic. I hate grain and the H1 is pretty noisy. So we definitely over-exposed a stop or two to get a denser 'neg' and then dialed in the blacks in post. Definitely the best way to go if you're shooting a dark movie. Get as much light in there as possible and then crush it later.

That's the biggest lesson I learned.
 
As usual robert, I love your work. Great looking images. One thing I'm constantly amazed about with this project is how I never realized you didn't use an adapter until I thought about it. It doesn't seem to be lacking dof, the images are fine as they are. Makes you think.
 
That's an interesting observation. Not using an adapter was a bit of a controversy amongst my colleagues at the time. And it really came down to the fact that I didn't want an extra layer of equipment/technology that needed attention, noodling and futzing with. We were on such a TIGHT schedule that we had to setup and shoot as fast as possible. And it turned out to be a very grueling shoot. I couldn't imagine it with yet another layer of front-end preening. From what I understand today's adapters are much easier to use and require a lot less attention.

At the end of the day our 6X, 20X and 16X Manual got the job done (just don't ask our focus puller what he thought of the 6x and 20x ;) ).

But don't get me wrong, there are times where I see shots and I scream, "Everything is in focus! Argh!" But to be bluntly honest, most of the time you don't really notice. And because we were using lighting and ND to control exposure our DOF characteristics mostly resemble an F900.
 
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Some before-and-after of the grading. The "before" images are right out of the camera.

39c_03_before_grade.jpg

39c_03_graded.jpg


99a_100f_07_before_grade.jpg

99a_100f_07_graded.jpg


119F_03_before_grade.jpg

119F_03_graded.jpg
 
Awesome grabs, I'm pretty surprised with how much colour you guys were able to bring back from such blue images.
 
I was surprised too. It was the cinematographer's original intention to go with an "uncorrected HMI" look. A kind of "James Cameron" look. But, like all filmmakers, we changed our minds. It should be noted that we can't push the image much more than this.

We put a lot of Red back into the blacks (which oddly brought the flesh-tones back), pushed the midrange into the green a little, and left the whites relatively untouched. We crushed the black about 8 points, dropped the gamma about 10 points to .90, and pushed the whites up about 15 points (270). Crushing the blacks and dropping the gamma pushed up saturation considerably, so we brought the whole saturation level down about 20 points. Plus a ton of vignettes.
 
"The Blackout" will be screened at Cannes on Thursday, May 14th at 5:30pm and on Sunday, May 17th at 1:30pm (both screenings in the Gray 4 screening room). Contact Michael Paszt at Cinemavault Releasing for more information at the Cannes Booth Riviera G5/H8. Tel: +33 (0) 4 92 99 32 15.
 
Hi,Robert!
That's a great work what you did.Because i want to buy the XLH1, So I Find you website when i search the informations about XLH1,I saw those pictures which behind the scene,I can feeling professional you are,The lighting looks nice,although that not through viewfinder:)
Today i find this forum through a Taiwan's forum.Very lucky i think,because i meet the informations of the film again~~I got many useful things,really nice!
Hope see you film in some day.
I'm planning buy a XLH1 for a documentary of Beijing shooting,Could you give me some suggestion for XLH1?Thank you!
 
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