WWII War Epic - HVX/M2

pia12254

pia12254

Well-known member
So, I intended to get something together in time for the Drama Fest (even have a character named Eric)...but like many DVXUSER Fest projects this one took on a life of its own and is now headed to becoming a full-blown short film (30-40min.).

1169095606.jpg


We threw together a trailer to try and get something submitted to On the Lot. I would REALLY appreciate feedback and constructive criticism on this trailer. I hope to re-edit it and would like some thoughts on ways to improve it. I know there are a couple of people on here who edit trailers professionally so please chime in!

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=1958390417

Sorry for the crappy Myspace quality...working on getting the website up so I can post a higher quality Quicktime version. (If anyone has a suggestion on reliable, cheap hosting programs with lots of bandwidth...let me know) :beer: Music for this trailer was done by Edgen...another DVXUser!!! Thanks to him for his hard work and quick turnaround!

Here is a link to some of the posts/pics I uploaded for Drama Fest.

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=81868&highlight=wwii

Thanks!
 
Wow man,that was awsome.Even on myspace it looked stunning.
[SIZE=+0]Damn if it looks that good on myspace I wander how it looks on a big screen.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=+0]I have one word for you excellent.[/SIZE]
 
Nice stuff! Looks like a pretty damn well crafted WW2 piece! I must admit the trailer-V.O felt a bit cheezy though.
 
Wow! Looks like a stunning recreation of WW2! Extremely impressive, especially at the indie level. I'd really love to see the full thing
 
Thanks for all the kind comments!

We had a great crew...not necessarily experienced but definitely dedicated...and a phenomenal DP (Eric Meisner).

Kyrre - Yeah, I gotta agree with you that the VO especially pushes it a little in the cheeze direction. I think that's because when I get rushed and don't think through what I am writing I tend to go cheezy really quickly! :huh:

Thanks!
 
Great audio and great production. This would be extra amazing with some nice Ziess glass on the m2 instead of the guassian BG blur the nikons produce. That's pretty cool getting all that period stuff together. Spielbergs gonna love it.
 
Matthew: Yeah...if we had some Zeiss Superspeeds for this I would have wet my pants!!!! Maybe our next film...

Slimothy: I think I just uploaded a 640x480 Quicktime and then I guess they convert it to Flash Video somehow...

If you think that looks good I wish I could show you guys an HD version!!! Glorious...epic...you know, that kind of thing. ;-)

If anyone happens to have extra web space lying around and would like to host the HD version temporarily I would love to upload it...hmmm, anyone?!?!

Also, do you guys seem to get the gist of what the storyline is? Does it need to be more clear? Less obvious? Does it catch your attention?

Any thoughts in this direction would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!
 
Matthew Bennett said:
Great audio and great production. This would be extra amazing with some nice Ziess glass on the m2 instead of the guassian BG blur the nikons produce. That's pretty cool getting all that period stuff together. Spielbergs gonna love it.
Click to expand...

You notice it as well, huh? Why does that appear on so much m2 footage?
 
Man just your wardrobe budget would have been to much for me to spend. Great qualiy thou. I think is the first film that I think would benefit from a little bleach bypass.
 
Kudos are in order, my friend. Just wanted to echo the other sentiments here.... Excellent work, so keep it up!

Well thought-out and executed. You should be proud of this ambitious vision.
 
It seems like you had enough material to go feature-length with it. I guess it's too late to do that now (or is it?) but features are easier to sell.
 
You should sell the dvd with some bonus features!! I'll be the first one to get it. Great work mate! I still think you could make the look less cheesy and bit more gritty, you could achieve this by desaturating the footage a bit, throw some grain, crash blacks a bit and maybe a bleach it a bit. I did that to one of my friends short and it look heavenly. The HVX kicks arses when use it correctly. KUdos!
 
that is really good.

1 work that trailer over, better music, more build and release will make it even 1000 times better
2 the vo actor is ok, but you can get better, for next to nothing,....look around you can find them.
3 use more overlap in editing, more layers will = high budget feel overlay actors voices with lots of footage, more action when it's called for and the slow it down..rise and fall...rise and fall

from the looks of the trailer you have it all, now it's polish time, make it SHINE!!!!!!

one last thing, color time it !
 
Great Job

Great Job

from the looks of the trailer you have it all, now it's polish time, make it SHINE!!!!!!
Click to expand...
It does indeed look as though you have a true winner here! I can't begin to imagine what the budget was that you were working with. I would love to have seen this on a High Def monitor. Whithout question, I want to see more of this movie! Overall, fantastic job man. Can you and the DP give us some info. on your experiences with working with the HVX/M2 combo along with other equipment used? Thanks again for sharing such a beautiful piece of work.:thumbsup:
 
Alright, I will try to answer some of the questions posted...

Happy Gobo: I have thought about going feature length version with it but have not done that yet for several reasons. Because all the positions are unpaid I thought I would have a tough time keeping cast/crew around for a feature shoot. Also, I think it is hard to keep the quality top notch on an indie film with very little budget. It seemed more manageable in a short. Of course, if someone sees the short and wants to give me lots of money to turn it into a feature...I'm there! :beer:

Abalex: Yeah, we only did some very minor CC tweaking in the trailer. When we rework it I would like to spend more time CC to make it more like what the finished film will look like. We got a lot of really great BTS footage so hopefully we will have some Bonus features and the like and be able to put out a DVD!

Obin: GREAT THOUGHTS! I agree with the music suggestion. I think with more build/release and a change of pace/feel in the middle it would really take you on more of an emotional journey. However, I think I gave Edgen about a day to pull the music off so for his short time frame I was very happy to get what we got!!! The VO actor is actually a really respected VO talent...does a lot of the biggest video games, some recognizable trailers etc. But I tend to agree, it doesn't really fit this film as well as I would like.
What do you mean by layers/overlap in the editing?

Cookester (and others): Budget for this probably ended up being around $3,000+., mainly due to a couple of "big ticket" items. Namely, a couple of locations required us to purchase production insurance which was about $600+ and we bought the HD achromat for the M2 which was another $400(?). So that was about 1/3 of the budget. :-(

The M2 is a great piece of gear for what it does. For interiors and controlled environments where you can have access to a good reference monitor (flipped updside down of course) it worked fine. However, shooting in remote locations where everything we used had to be battery powered (and wanting to shoot more handheld for the action sequences) it became quite a challenge. We had a really crappy vehicle DVD screen as our monitor and it was horrible. I would love to have something like the Marshall monitor but our budget didn't allow for it. If you were able to afford all the gear to make it work I think it could probably be a perfectly fine workflow but without the proper ability to monitor etc. it became a definite challenge to overcome.

Lighting is not really my thing but I know we had a couple of Kino's, some old 1K's, an HMI and a few other assorted lights and a variety of grip gear my DP "borrowed" for the shoot. We had some interesting setups and hopefully we can get the DP to talk about his lighting setups on the DVD Bonus Features or something.

Thanks again for all the feedback!!!!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top