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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

THIS PLACE I HURT TO BE - LOMO's - directed by AYZ

Ayz Waraich

Ayz Waraich

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www.dimeworth.com
UPDATE: Twitchfilm.net posted an article on the short, along with a mention of the kickstarter campaign. Thanks to Todd Brown over there! http://goo.gl/fb/eFyG9

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Hey guys,

I haven't posted this before, but here's a short I wrote and directed out in Death Valley with a tiny cast and crew. It was shot on the RED with Lomo anamorphics. There's a very personal note attached underneath the Vimeo Video, that will put the short in context I think. It was born out of a really hard time in my life.

Now here's a link, along with an in depth personal note below the video: THIS PLACE I HURT TO BE

stephensmaller.jpg


The thing is, we've just launched a kickstarter campaign for my first feature, which is going to be in the same vain as this short. I thought I'd post the film here, and if any of you liked it, maybe you could come donate. We could use all the help we can get, as we only have 2 weeks to raise the cash. There's some awesome incentives, and we've got to raise about 30K in 14 days, so as not to lose the amazing cast and crew we've got lined for a small window in April, who are all donating their time for their love of the script. It's a total passion project, so any help would be very appreciated. It's called TO OUR BRIGHT WHITE HEARTS, and the kickstarter can be found here: LINKAGE

Also my director's reel if you're curious: MY REEL

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WOW WOW WOW.... looks absolutely fantastic... great cinematography, great grading... these are pictures how RED can look.... who made CC and finish ???
 
nice images. There seemed to be a decent amount of wind. How did you get such clean audio? Is the audio from the field or was it ADR'd?
 
Thanks guys. Very appreciated. Spread the short and kickstarter link if you can. We're in a jam, and need to get it moving quickly in order to not lose our window with cast/crew. But thank you again... :)

Rainer Fritz said:
WOW WOW WOW.... looks absolutely fantastic... great cinematography, great grading... these are pictures how RED can look.... who made CC and finish ???
Click to expand...

I worked with Mike Burton, who handled the grade and finish. I'll try and get a link to his company, and post it here soon. He did an amazing job, and understood exactly what I wanted.


Michael Panfeld said:
nice images. There seemed to be a decent amount of wind. How did you get such clean audio? Is the audio from the field or was it ADR'd?
Click to expand...

Believe it or not, there's no ADR. I moved some lines around, but they are all production sound, and a lot of the takes could be considered unusable in other hands. Gavin Little at ECHOLAB worked some magic and painstakingly cleaned up all the audio. It was a night and day type diffrence... But I think it sounds great in the end. All credit to Gavin at http://www.echolab.tv/
 
Yes - really (really) nice. Great to see such a considered short film too... leaves you wanting to know more - and, with the layer of ambiguity in terms of characters/situation, it allows for a lot of personal/viewer projection regarding emotional content.

Good luck on the full project!
 
Ayz Waraich said:
Thanks guys. Very appreciated. Spread the short and kickstarter link if you can. We're in a jam, and need to get it moving quickly in order to not lose our window with cast/crew. But thank you again... :)



I worked with Mike Burton, who handled the grade and finish. I'll try and get a link to his company, and post it here soon. He did an amazing job, and understood exactly what I wanted.
Click to expand...


Thanks for the kind words. I'll get the website link up here soon. Just finishing a new version of the site now. Glad you guys liked the film. This was the first project that Ayz and I worked on together and it was a very intimate and elegant glimpse into his passion for filmmaking.
As for the technical, we cut on 720p ProRes files in FCP. Once we had picture locked Ayz and I spoke briefly about the look and feel he wanted to achieve. I then rendered Full Debayer DPX files and graded the show. This was fairly early on with original M sensor and I think it's a good example of what the original RED One was and still is capable of.
Since then Ayz and I colaborated on his upcoming sci-fi short "The Divine River" which you all are gonna love! Help out the Kickstarter campaign if you can, Ayz is one of those rare directors that if given the keys will drive it home for us all.
 
Mike thx for the info. Can't believe that this was shot on the M sensor... thats fantastic too... can you give us or me a little bit more infos regarding your post workflow... so you rendered DPXs and then ????? would be very interesting for a lot of people i think....
 
Really nice Ayz. A pleasure to watch. Good luck with your debut feature, speaking from experience, it's the best thing you'll ever do.
 
BIG UPDATE: The short and the kickstarter campaign is starting to get some cool mentions:

TWITCH FILM just posted an article -- Big thanks to Todd Brown over there for the kind words. http://goo.gl/fb/eFyG9

DIRECTORS NOTES mentioned us. Thank you's to Marbelle for writing an awesome post: http://bit.ly/dUhqCf

VIMEO just featured us on their kickstarter page: https://www.kickstarter.com/vimeo

Stu Maschwitz of PROLOST.COM, also made a very encouraging tweet. Big thanks.: http://bit.ly/ewkLpC

So, right now we really need to get over that 10K hump on our kickstarter campaign ASAP, so we can gain some momentum and possibly get featured on the kickstarter front page. If anyone knows any potential big backers, please do let them know about this. Need all the help we can get.

Thanks for all the support so far guys. We're all feeling really encouraged over here right now. :)
 
Rainer Fritz said:
Mike thx for the info. Can't believe that this was shot on the M sensor... thats fantastic too... can you give us or me a little bit more infos regarding your post workflow... so you rendered DPXs and then ????? would be very interesting for a lot of people i think....
Click to expand...

Sure, sorry I'm responding late to this, got the flu this week. I prepped the R3D files with a white balance, reset all metadata and used Camera RGB / REDLOG as my output settings for the Full Res Debayer DPX files i rendered. I used an early version of Clipfinder to render just the edited bits into DPX since the REDROCKET didn't exist at this point.

The whole show was shot well, nothing but the specular highlights were clipped on the cars which wasn't out of the ordinary. There was a lot of room to manipulate the images in post and all the credit goes to Drew Suppa the DP for that. The opening shot has a feathered vignette to accentuate the gradation in the sky and give it a bit more interesting tones. It was important to keep the skin tones consistent on both leads, our female lead has a more pale milky complexion while our male has a more tan warm skin tone. I used a few windows to keep this consistent as much as possible and control their skin tones when necessary. The two lead closeups I did a HSL key on the sky, small hue adjustment and saturation increase on the sky to give it the blue we wanted. The last shot (wide shot) I put a window on the ground plane and on the sky and adjusted the color, hue, saturation to taste. Overall, it was a great project to work on and glad to hear that you enjoyed it!

Here's a link to the offline editorial prores files compared to the filal grade
http://gallery.me.com/mikeburton#100127
 
It was a pleasure getting to meet you and work with you two years ago, Ayz. I hope to do it again in the future.

Thank you for the warm comments as to my cinematography. I have to give credit to Ruari Robinson for lending us the camera over the weekend, and whoever's decision it was to get a LOMO anamorphic.

I've long been a fan of the characteristics of their lenses, but had never paired one with a RED One before this shoot. I feel that with all the resolution this camera has (and now even more with the EPIC), the focus on sharp glass has gone a bit too far. Cinematographers need to focus on the feel of the lens more, and the Lomo's are always going to be my first choice. I wish I could afford a set of them.

Mike, as I've only had limited contact with Ayz and the rest of the crew since, I have always wanted to meet you, as I heard a professional grade would be done and I shot the way I did specifically for you... to give you as much room as you could possibly play with while still retaining just a touch of true white.

I have been a DIT since the day the RED One came out, and although I don't have the most impressive rig around, I have learned what works and what does not, exposure-wise. I thank you for the job you did. You really brought the images Ayz and I came up with to life.

Send me a PM with your contact information... I'd love to hire you in the future.
 
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