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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 :)

Independent Feature shot on Red Epic. Trailer.

A

AndyRydzewski

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Hey folks, I wanted to post the trailer for a film I shot this last fall in Barcelona on the Red Epic. The name of the film is, "The Wine of Summer"

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It was an independent feature with a ton of locations and a large cast, so we were moving quickly, but somehow managed to come in just under budget and under time, thank you very much.
I was the cinematographer and this was my first feature for director Maria Matteoli. We also had reduser regulars Anthony Augustinack (DIT, Camera Tech) and Joseph Hutson (1st AC) on our crew.

Questions, comments, etc would be welcome and lovely. I've always prided myself on my lighting and this project gave me a lot to play with and shooting in the lovely streets of Barcelona sure didn't hurt.

Our lenses were Super Speeds and we shot a lot of the film darn close to wide open.

- Andrew Rydzewski
http://www.filmandy.com
 
Such great memories. Thanks for sharing this, Andy. It was such a pleasure being there at your side for a month. You are one cool dude. See? I still say great things about you in spite of making me pull focus at T1.3 almost the whole time. Ha!

No, seriously. I hope to get the opportunity of working with you again...
 
not one "run of the mill" (hopefully this is the right phrase for "standard or normal") shot seen in this trailer. one shot nicer than the others... looking forward to see your film, hopefully there is a chance for it here in austria / vienna...

congrats...
 
This looks fantastic, and I feel your aesthetic choices as far as the lighting and grade really complement the story (from what I could glean from the trailer) Kudos to you and your team. I especially love your high contrast scenes (the theater with the lights going off, his face lit by the poster.
I'm looking forward to catching it on a big screen. Any word on distribution?

Also would you be willing to share some of your experiences working with the Epic?
 
Joseph Hutson said:
Such great memories. Thanks for sharing this, Andy. It was such a pleasure being there at your side for a month. You are one cool dude. See? I still say great things about you in spite of making me pull focus at T1.3 almost the whole time. Ha!

No, seriously. I hope to get the opportunity of working with you again...
Click to expand...

Great focus there Joseph!!!

Did you use any focus assist monitors?

:))
 
As always, you are too kind.

I'd like to point out how brutal Joseph had it. We shot most of the movie very close to wide open, so our depth of field was always ridiculously shallow. On top of that, we shot handheld frequently and our director is a firm believer in very few takes, as well as not having rehearsal. This creates all sorts of challenges for camera, but nowhere more than focus. Joseph was thrown into the deep end and I'm happy to say that he learned to swim very quickly.

As I was doing my research/prep for the film, I watched the behind the scenes of "The Social Network" and they were saying similar things- shooting wide open (they shot on a Red One) created tons of focus complications for the AC, so they would do many, many takes until it was perfect. Joseph and I didn't have that luxury, so it's amazing to me what we were able to accomplish with so many obstacles. Cheers to you, Joseph!

- Andy
____________________
http://www.filmandy.com
 
We shot on Zeiss Super Speeds. 18, 25, 50 & 85, I think? I'm already forgetting. The 85 was stunning for our close ups, which we had very many of.

The lenses were great and had a beautiful bokeh to them. One of the visual themes that the production designer (Jody Sekas) and I worked to achieve was to have points of light in our backgrounds. The film is supposed to be a beautiful- almost magical- journey to Spain, so we thought soft, small points of light would add a magical element, almost like golden stars. These lenses really aided us with this task.

Also, these lenses had a tendency to soften and ghost when completely wide open. Sometimes we would try to stop down just a hair to sharpen, but this is where the Epic was great. Out of all the cameras out there, the Epic is certainly the resolution king, so combining that resolution with the softness of these lenses (when wide open) made for a lovely, but still sharp, image. It was almost like adding an ever-so-slight pro mist filter to the lens.

- Andy

____________________
http://www.filmandy.com
 
First of all, I'm just realizing that these responses are posting to the bottom of the thread regardless. I thought they would post directly underneath the comment I'm replying to. My apologies for the three posts which could easily have been one.

So, to reply to Ambarish--

Thanks for the comment on the high contrast scenes. I have to give credit to Maria (the director). She does not shy away from darkness. Most directors get very nervous about it, but not her. Both she and I love to play with intense contrasts and let darkness play as exactly that- darkness. This allowed for some very fun lighting, particularly with this aspect ratio. We could layer some of our images. The left could be fully lit, then fall into darkness and then, in the distant right, we could have small pockets of light, creating layers and separation between characters and spaces. It was great fun.

No word on distribution. Post just finished, so it's now going to be submitted to festivals and things will go from there. I'm a film nerd, so I'm hoping for a little life at a few festivals, just so I can go play with other nerds!

As far as the Epic and my experience with it, I have to say that it was fantastic. Between Joseph and Tony (both Red experts), I didn't have to worry much about any technical issues. If there was some kind of issue, like the image going a little funky on the lcd, we would just restart and the problem would always be solved. The ability to create unique builds to the camera allowed us to have varying styles of handheld. There were bigger shoulder mounts, with monitors and focus gears, but there was also the total stripped down version- just the camera, a lens and the lcd. We shot in places without permits, so being able to really strip it down to its bare bones was invaluable.

The two biggest issues were:
1) Fan Noise, which seemed like we took care of for the most part. The sound mixer (Ferran Mengod) was great and we really only ran into issues when we were in very tight quarters.
2) The Bomb EVF simply died one day in the middle of the 3rd week (of 4 weeks) of shooting. That wasn't great. Tony and Joseph rigged me up some good builds so that I could use the lcd under a black cloth to good effect, but losing the Bomb did hurt. We weren't able to get a replacement until after the shoot wrapped.

Other than that, the Epic was amazing. We shot at 5K and cropped into our final aspect ratio. If there was more time in post, I would have loved to do some subtle re-framing, but it was a tight post schedule. The camera's size was absolutely my favorite part. We had large builds, small builds and medium builds and for this shoot, that was amazing. Certain days required completely different approaches and the Epic was up to all of those tasks.

Also, if you look at the beginning of the trailer, you can see some water splash up into the shot. There was a day where I was shooting waist-deep in the ocean and at one point the camera was hit by a wave. We wiped it off, cleaned the lens and went right back to it. It was a beast!

- Andy

____________________
http://www.filmandy.com
 
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Good work Joseph. why you needed dp6? didn't you have red touch screen? is red touch screen not sufficient for focus?
 
Dave_S said:
Good work Joseph. why you needed dp6? didn't you have red touch screen? is red touch screen not sufficient for focus?
Click to expand...

I think it's pretty standard to have a second monitor for the 1st AC, with the camera operator looking at a first one. But to answer your question, I needed to do different things such as zooming in to the picture while recording to get very critical focus. You can't do that with the RED LCD while recording. Also, you can't do that to the camera op's monitor because he won't know his proper framing.
 
Great work

Great work

The film and your lighting looks great. Andrew you mentioned that many of your set-ups were 'on the go'. What was your ideal lighting kit for your 'on the go' set-ups?
Joe
 
Another thing to note, we shot everything on REDvolts in the SideHandle. Not a brick was on set. This was a big key to keeping things super small and light.

On day 1, we spoke about how much we wished we had playback. We said "As soon as we finish, I'm sure RED will enable it." It turned out that at our final wrap party, I was checking REDuser on my iPhone when Jarred was announcing a new firmware with playback. Needless to say, we all had a good laugh that night...
 
Joe D'Arcy said:
The film and your lighting looks great. Andrew you mentioned that many of your set-ups were 'on the go'. What was your ideal lighting kit for your 'on the go' set-ups?
Joe
Click to expand...

For our smallest 'on the go' shoots, we had a few approaches, but mainly we chose our locations carefully. We were very thorough about our scouting and pre-production. For the locations we knew we would need to be small, we either chose places that had lighting of its own that we could take advantage of (like specific Barcelona streets/alleys at night) or we were very careful about choosing the time of day, so as to take advantage of the sun. That was difficult, though. When we were in the streets of the city, the sun barely poked through. The alleys were so tall and narrow that the sun would only give you about 15-25 minutes of light.

When we couldn't get away with just that, we had a fancy version of a china ball on a boom pole. This was used for steadicam shots that traveled through the streets to keep the faces looking lovely. We also had a few small led panels, however they actually didn't get used much.

However, the small size of the camera wasn't always about being incognito. It was often about mobility in small spaces or in spaces with a lot of extras. When the situation allowed for it, we would do a thorough lighting of the entire space , or at least 3/4's (we did this at 2 bars & a couple apartment spaces), and then be ready to shoot in almost any direction with minimal adjustment. That created a few challenges, but as time passed, we got more and more used to this system.

I will say that one of the lights I fell in love with was the Arri M18 hmi. It's a small (under 2000 watts), but ridiculously powerful light.

This shoot was also my first shoot where I really embraced HMI lights. I'd always resisted them because I wasn't fond of what they did to skin. On this project we needed the extra kick of light that they give, though (we did a lot of lighting in daytime). It took a little bit for me to find my groove with them, but I am very happy with how our actors came out and the power from those HMI's was addictive! It really aided us with our high contrast look.

- Andy

____________________
http://www.filmandy.com
 
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