The chase

filmman

filmman

Veteran
http://www.felliniesque.com/The_Chase/

This is a trailer I just edited today to begin this thread. Your comments will be appreciated.

This is a movie I shot last year with three actors: Nicole Lamahns, Jason Teague and Judson Sapp.

I ran the casting notice in Actors Access. I spent a few afternoons meeting actors at Starbucks and the shooting itself was three days on location at the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica, California.

I wrote the script one afternoon prior to placing the casting notice. It was 16 pages and called for extensive improvisation. The three actors were perfect -- excellent at improv. I was literally amazed at their skill at improvisation.

I was going for a feature, but there was just not enough time. I ended up with a 40 minute movie -- my first short.

One of my actors was working two jobs and eventually had to leave this area -- just too much effort and not enough acting opportunities. He gave me a gift for using him as the lead. I was amazed at his dedication and hope to bring him back to work with me when I get back in the game and can afford to pay actors and do SAG projects. (I'm making a comeback :-)
 
That looked really good Vic. I like the look of it a lot better than Butterflies, it was more modern, really sharp, no grain or scratches.

Can't wait to see the whole thing.
 
Well, thank you, Jim :-) BUTTERFLIES IN THE WIND was telecined from an edited work print. I saw no need to touch the negative. The digital version of the film looks more filmic, because it's a one light telecine from the contrasty work print. I actually like the look of 35mm work prints better than the movies transfered from negative.

Anyway, THE CHASE was shot with the Sony Z1U, in glorious 1080i 60i :-) And it's sharp and smooth just like the best videos shot by professional videographers.LOL

To tell you the truth, as a few people in this user group have already said, I like the look of digital all by itself, independent of my love of the 35mm film. In fact, I've even concluded that digital and film are not the same medium at all. I mean they are quite often two different art forms.

Now, your film, FOUR YEARS, is really mystifying, because it has the clean sharp look of video, but I know it's 35mm, so the only thing I can think of is that you must have made a HiDef transfer from your 35mm negative and used that to output from. No doubt you must have also manipulated the look of the movie some more in the computer. I wonder which system you used?

But it has the right look. They call it Noir as you know. I guess that's what you were going for?

The story is well told. I actually like the message of the movie. I agree with it. I find it original in treatment. The exploitation filmmaker would have had the guy kill the other man brutally and go for the violence angle; but I'm happy you didn't. Maybe it's more commercial to have had blood all over the place, but you made the right choice in my opinion. You made the choice of a true filmmaker, a true artist. Your movie will be remembered and cherished, but millions of violent movies will be forgotten as soon as the hard drives they're on fail or become obsolete in a few years.

Truly congratulations on making a serious movie. To find something critical to say about it, I'd improve the music. I think you should use more compelling music, because the emotional content and originality of the story's outcome could use a beautiful balad or a dynamic score.
 
Yep, it was an HD transfer to 1080p Quicktime. Then to H264. All color correction was done by the colorist. I just lowered the brightness level. I might have boosted the reds a little bit. There was grain on the night footage, but that went away when I darkened the footage.

Thanks for your input, I appreciate it. I was definitely going for a noir look.

Video and film are two different mediums, just different tools for artists to choose from. I prefer the look of film, even 16mm, over video... but it is expensive.

I will making another short in June and due to the material, I will need more coverage than I got with Four Years, which means due to financial reasons, I might have to shoot on the Red.

Not too thrilled about it, but the alternative is to not make the film at all, which isn't really an option.
 
Many filmmakers are having problems with the Red. It takes longer to shoot with it -- lots of things to figure out, too complicated. Why use it? It looks more like film? But film is film and if it's cheaper to shoot, why use the Red and add to your problems as an artist?

Short Ends is the way to go if you're an indie. That's why I use short ends and that's why I sell them. I've been selling a lot of short ends lately. I think there will be no more after digital becomes the dominant format. Digital isn't becoming dominant because it looks better than film; it's becoming dominant because the digital equipment manufacturers are subsidizing it. Once film is gone, they will jack up the prices. Mark my words. There is a window of opportunity now -- to shoot film and end up with a library of a few films that will continue to go up in value over the years.
 
2 hours of 35mm film are 10,800 ft. @15 cents per foot average 35mm price, that adds up to: $1,620.
Negative developing overnight for 10,800 is 10 cents per foot. That's another $1,080.
Total for two hours = $2,700.
Telecine to SD = $500. (HD is higher).
Total=$3,200.

Can you buy a Red for that? Can you buy a decent HD camera for that? Why deal with technology that is obsolete in 6 months or less? And the footage you get with HD, what is it? 29.97 frames per second? What does that mean? Every second you lose a .03 portion of one frame? Have you ever seen a single 29.97 frame except as displayed on a monitor?

I prefer to be able to hold a frame to the light and look at it. Does that make me a dinosaur? LOL
 
Where in the world are you getting processing at .10 a foot? They are charging me .16. Don't forget the prep for video transfer, that is usually .03 a foot.

Let me know, maybe I need a new lab.

And $500 for telecine? They usually charge 2x the running time, so 2 hours would be 4 hours X $400 = $1600.

Where are you getting that done?

If I could get those prices, it would make my film a lot cheaper/more feasible to do on 35mm.
 
Hey, email me, Jim. vic@felliniesque.com and I will give you my phone number. I will answer all your question about saving money on 35mm.

DeLuxe Labs in Hollywood (branches in Toronto and London) develops 35mm for 10 cents per foot. Magic Film in Burbank telecines 35mm at $150/hr. Prep? Just splice a leader on the negative that comes from the lab and don't rewind it unless you have a super clean room. Negative right out of the chemical soup is pristine.
 
Good Stuff man, would like to see the whole story sometime!

The trailer piqued my interest, however I will say the audio was a little weak. More intense music may have helped, or maybe changing up the audio with the cuts.
 
Thank you, Root! I appreciate your critique. The music was intended for the full version of the movie. You're right; it should be discarded from the trailer. I'll look for new music tomorrow and I'll cut it in later tomorrow or the day after.
 
Also 35mm you can telecine at higher and higher resolution as digital technology advances. Although it will never catch up to film quality, digital technology will allow film to be telecined at higher than 4000 k resolution in the near future. Digital technology is very useful for exhibiting movies over long distances using satellites.
 
The latitude of Vision 3 film has been increased two more stops on each side, so now you can rate a film emulsion, without hardly any change in the grain structure, across at least 6 stops. Try that with Red. LOL
 
The film look is best achieved with film and the video look is best achieved with digital. Film vs. Digital. Digital vs. Film. Google it! It's all a game.LOL
 
It's been well-established through debate in DVXuser that both the digital look and the film look are useful in the right movie or film. It's just that most people go for the film look and nobody has come up with a plugin to simulate the video look for a filmmaker to include in a scene where a video is playing on a monitor or on a TV set. Maybe somebody can do that and make a fortune? I don't know....LOL
 
Does anybody here recommend the Magic Bullet program? What are the different versions all about? Is the first one okay for film look? I think there are three of them. What changed? I'm looking for a used one that has the film looks so I can make THE CHASE more film like. Do you other recommendations? Click on the link below and watch the trailer, please.

http://www.felliniesque.com/The_Chase/
 
filmman said:
Does anybody here recommend the Magic Bullet program? What are the different versions all about? Is the first one okay for film look? I think there are three of them. What changed? I'm looking for a used one that has the film looks so I can make THE CHASE more film like. Do you other recommendations? Click on the link below and watch the trailer, please.

http://www.felliniesque.com/The_Chase/
Click to expand...

I recommend Magic Bullet Looks. There are quite a bit of pre-determined looks, and they all can be adjusted.

Or you can create your own.

If you know what you are doing though, you can do some good stuff in your editing program. You might want to see if somebody can do it for you.

Or... you can let people know what program you have, send them some footage, they can correct it for you to your liking, then... they can give you the settings to input into your copy of the editing and you can render the whole film out.

Just by adding an s-curve to the video and dropping the pedestal/blacks, you can get a good film look yourself.
 
Oh, thanks, Jim. I know all about S-Curves. I've been using Photoshop for twelve years. I only knew of them as Curves in Photoshop. But the article was really good in explaining the parameters, which I didn't know, because I never read the manual -- just played around with it.

But how do you set curves in Final Cut Pro 5.04? I must get the Premiere, right?
 
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