Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • 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 :)

Kung fu feature 'Blood Money' teaser

Dan Graetz

Dan Graetz

Well-known member
Joined
Jan 31, 2007
Messages
240
Reaction score
0
Points
16
Location
Brisbane, Australia
We are currently halfway through principal photography on kung-fu feature 'Blood Money', being shot in Brisbane, Sydney, Hong Kong & Miami. The film is the debut for Shaolin wushu fighter Zheng Liu. I'm editing the film in 2K in Final Cut Pro and grading in Apple Color using the new Log&Transfer native workflow. My company, graetzmedia, is supplying our two RED camera kits, on-set data wrangling and technical consulting. The film is being written & directed by Greg McQualter and DP'd by Dan Macarthur.

This teaser is by no means an official trailer (as there is still half of the film to shoot) so there's no structure or dialogue - just a preview of the quality and variety of setups. Keen for all honest feedback. The edit was a major rush job - 1,260 mins of footage down to 2 in 10hrs (including grading). We relied heavily on our new Final Cut Server system for logging and shot selection.

Looks like RedRelay is down at the moment so I've just uploaded medium res clips to my own webserver in the interim:

WARNING: This will be an R-rated feature so there is a hint of skin in the teaser....but we're all adults here.....

Teaser (640x320 - 33mb):
http://www.graetzmedia.com/Teaser_081221.zip

Side-by-side comparison of raw RED footage against the graded & stabilised finished product (800x808 - 30mb):
http://www.graetzmedia.com/BM_grade.zip

I've attached some pics from the Hong Kong leg below FYI.
If you want to see the rest of the behind-the-scenes shots check out my Facebook galleries at:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=64420&l=0e979&id=555215778
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=64427&l=396d6&id=555215778
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=64737&l=ddd30&id=555215778
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=64739&l=2b517&id=555215778
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=66446&l=a421b&id=555215778
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=66704&l=395f5&id=555215778

This is my first real feature film involvement - so please excuse any extraneous exuberance or surplus information ;)

Cheers,
dan graetz
 
Ah, finally I get to see some of what mi amigo y cabron Jordi's been working on for soo long.

Looks like a great shoot, I wish I could've been there for Hong Kong, never the less I look forward to seeing you in Miami with my baby#194 Dan! That is if you'll be joining us?
 
Alexander Nikishin said:
Ah, finally I get to see some of what mi amigo y cabron Jordi's been working on for soo long.

Looks like a great shoot, I wish I could've been there for Hong Kong, never the less I look forward to seeing you in Miami with my baby#194 Dan! That is if you'll be joining us?
Click to expand...
ah nice one! drop me a line sometime so we can talk through the kit for Miami...
 
Looks very good, congrats! If you need any assistance with Producing duties in Miami let me know, I'm local and I'm aching for some field work as I have nothing but months of script and storyboarding work ahead of me...
 
heavy good light!

very good job.
 
beautifull atmosphere, definitely thanx for sharing
 
Thanks for the positive feedback guys - really appreciated.

For ZiaoSu Han - the film has been financed by a consortium of private businesses.
 
Thank you so much for posting that RAW/Graded QT!

Shots 6 and 7 are very encouraging for me, I might be dealing with similar days, and I am considering a Color workflow.

About the two shots towards the end at 1:12 and 1:14, there is a ton of detail on the sky... would you happen to remember how many lights were working on those shots?
 
USlatin said:
Thank you so much for posting that RAW/Graded QT!

Shots 6 and 7 are very encouraging for me, I might be dealing with similar days, and I am considering a Color workflow.

About the two shots towards the end at 1:12 and 1:14, there is a ton of detail on the sky... would you happen to remember how many lights were working on those shots?
Click to expand...

The interesting thing about those two aerials is that they're only graded off ProRes HQ - whereas most of the teaser used the native R3D workflow within Color. Because of the Smoothcam filter I needed to render the shot out and re-import it before going to Color. If I had more time I would have gone to DPX - but it still held up remarkably well. I think Smoothcam is a phenomenal tool - especially having it right within FCP.

In regards to those two sky detail shots - I've attached pics of the lighting setup. It was basically a single bounce light (2k HMI from memory) into some poly. As you can see from the second shot there wasn't a great deal of daylight left. The DP, Dan Mac has got skills to the pay the bills...;)
 
Wow... Dan, I suppose you bumped up the ISO on that shot then... very encouraging for low light with Red. Can't wait to see your finalized project.

About smoothcam and your helicopter shots:
What did you use for support? Of course the 10mm goes a long way to help with that, and I may have to rent something along those lines for mine...

Your posts are helping a lot! Thank you for sharing!
 
Actually, aside from some of the early Brisbane Biker shots, we shot the film in RAW color space on the camera - which meant we couldn't lift the ISO to compensate for low-light (in a monitoring sense).

From memory I lifted the exposure slightly on the R3D controls within Color on those shots around 1:12. The sky is starting to clip a little - but given the time constraints it seemed passable.

The Hong Kong aerials were handheld or 'Dan-held' as we ended up referring to it. I held the harddrive on my lap to cushion it from dropping frames - as well as the EVF so I could monitor the drop-frame indicator. Dan Mac used the 7" LCD for framing and shot the whole thing from his lap. The pilot had some serious crabbing skills (I think that's the right term?!) so we were able to get semi-nose-mount-style shots.

Sydney was a continental nose-mount. 6" drive & EVF cables up into the cabin to avoid dropped-frames from the harmonic vibration. Unfortunately we were bumped up from 200 to 2000 feet by air traffic control just as were about to roll on a low-level fly-in to the Harbour Bridge. Hence the slightly soft shot of the bridge (which has been reframed and stabilised in post).

Now that ET has their shockmounts for the drives available, you could avoid the long cable runs into the cabin. Having the EVF is still nice to double-check settings, drop-frames, shutter speed degrees reporting etc. - all the stuff you don't get on the split. I've finally received my Carrion 8.4" LCD - so I'm keen to get a 6-10' HDMI-DVI run so you can get all the status info (histogram, traffic lights etc.) on the split for the DP. I'd also highly recommend shooting 90 degree shutter if you can afford the light. 180 gives you too much motion blur for decent stabilisation.

Can't remember the BB gun manufacturer - but gee they're realistic. Good enough to hold up on screen - and with enough weight to give the actors some realism too.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top