The Muse - short film teaser

Samm_Parnell

Samm_Parnell

Member
we shot this short on the HVX200 at 720/24pn using lots of slo mo.


http://www.waterbearproductions.com/images/musetwo.mov


there is no dialogue so that made things much cheaper and easier of course, but in the end principal photography cost only 1000.00 (minus the camera and tripod which we own) I was the DP and had a cam asst. but that was it, just the two of us, used a warren dolly which worked surprisingly well. had a three light set (1.2k 2x500w) which is a source of worry for me, not sure if i got the exposure exactly right but we were on less than a shoe string.

would love some critiques especially about the grain, I don't mind some grain but with such a limited light package I am worried we have too much in certain scenes and might not blow up well????

samm
 
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adding some notes:

we owned the DVX before and shot several shorts and over 100 interviews with it, was a natural to pick up the HVX and we were not disappointed. I am the type of DP that likes to shoot in camera and have very little grading or color correction in post, as I did the edit as well then I was able to have alot of control over that.

there were some scenes where we had to fake one location to look like another, and tried my hand at color correction for the first time there, basically trial and error, will post screens of those scenes soon for critique. no one has noticed the scenes but I sure do everytime we see it.

one big concern for us is how the film will blow up, grain in certain scenes is a concern for me and we are looking into getting a test screening night in toronto to clear up these worries, anyone have experience with that???

DOF was a major concern for me operating for this piece, the dancer moved alot and very quickly, there was no sense in running tape or trying to plan it out and most focus pulls are manual and spontaneous.

screens to come

samm
 
Shots look really nice and your coloring looks solid. I think your set and actors also look really sharp. I have no idea what this about, but I guess that's not your intention.

Is there a reason your footage is squished? You need to pull out anamorphic footage for the final render.

A minor thing...but I think the GFX at the beginning (the simple AE particle system and font choice) look a little low-rent and bring down your visuals a bit...but that could be just me. Papyrus/Herculanum are two fonts I hate with a passion (along with Comic Sans) ;-)
 
thanks man, good points all,

i think i did the compression wrong for this version of the trailer, reduced the size of it by 50% as suggested from the original which was 720/60, so that it would play faster and still look sharp, to be honest this is a huge gap in my knowledge, we didn't have any anomorph footage so it must be the res i picked, any suggestions would be hugely appreciated.

i like the font and it is also the font we use on our website...lol, webmaster might be against a redesign but you might be right about the gfx itself, i like it as it is reminiscent of a water bear to me, but this is a first attempt at using FCP gfx that way so i think I will look through and see what else might fit, give it a second look, thanks for that point as well.

samm

forgot to add - story is about a poet who is frustrated with his work, the muse's dancing represents (metaphorically) her ability to inspire him to work his art, through the piece he becomes more distant from her and her abilities to inspire lessen until the end when he has thrown his art away completely, damning himself to a self imposed purgatory as well as her to her own purgatory.

it is 18 min in length and thanks to the incredible talents of the dancer Nala Burdyna http://www.nalaburdyna.com/ the story comes to life, as there is no dialogue and no direct interaction between the actors it was a tough job for her but she really pulled it off and also handled most of her own choreography along with directors Blake Peterson and Karen Doherty.

we are still working out the score and are being patient as we feel the score will make or break this film, we are having to get composers to do it for free or on Deff but we have a guy and think we can get that part completed within the next two months. wish I could post the whole short up here so I could get some feedback on what types of scores will work and we have never had an original score before or worked that angle at all so....

samm
 
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