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"Abheben (Picking Up) - first Austrian short - shot on RED ONE

Robert Niessner

Robert Niessner

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Dear RED fellows, just want to share our project and experiences with you.
Today we wrapped - after shooting for 14 days with little sleep and a lot of hard working hours.

We made a short movie - about 35 min - very low budget (about 25.000 Euros) and thanks to the RED ONE we got amazing images.

The short is called "Abheben" which I think can be translated to "Picking Up" or "Take Off" - I am not quite sure which one is correct.

The story goes about a guy and his deaf girlfriend, their troubles with their relationship, and his restless search for his self.

We got RED ONE no. 1029 with the latest beta build 16 and I can say it worked like a charme - no problems, no troubles. All shot in 4k RED-RAW with ARRI and Zeiss lenses.

I worked as the CLT on set (and postpro wiz afterwards dealing with color correction and compositing), DP was Leif Thomas, director André Keßler. Soundguy was Nadine (she's a girl :D ).
We had mixed crew of professionals and amateurs, which sometimes led to interesting situations to deal with ;-)
The actors where all pros and did a great job, even during 20 hours working days.

As soon as I get some rest I will post some detailed reports, setfotos (I took about 1.000 photos) and stills from the camera - as soon as I get the 1TB of data.
 
Set photos

Set photos

It took it's time to edit the huge amount of set photos and I still didn't get the harddrives I orderd to copy the RED footage.
At least I can show you some impressions from the set.
Click the images for an enlarged view (opens in a new window).


Our DP is rigging the RED onto the car which will drive through the tunnel.


Changing optics on the RED is no big deal. I like the robust mount.


Café "Stockwerk" - a stylish location in Graz.


One of our main characters. I took this photo with my Canon EOS for a later comparision with the RED footage.
 

AC Simon Veroneg, also the producer of the short. We had to use some black wrap to expand the mattebox (unfortunately got it without flags).


That's practically how the weather has been all the time during shooting outside - soacking wet. What a July!


That's me, my beloved toolpack and the lightweight crane from ABC.


Protecting the equipment and interior from damage is very important while shooting low budget ;)
 
Nice work... post some footage when you receive your drive!
 

Shooting a bed scene - thank god the actors have been relaxed and easy - I would never be able to do that.


Our makeup artist used an airbrush based makeup which is ideal for such high resolution like the RED delivers.


This scene takes place at a repair shop. We had to shoot during normal working hours which drove our sound deparment nuts. Well, I guess we fix it in post ;)


The robust cage and handles of the RED make it easy to mount it anywhere.
 

It was funny how fast the other real mechanics at the loaction accepted our actor Felix as one of theirs. He even had to have a drink with them :-)


This is part of a dialog between the two friends - all the time disturbed by the actual noise of the repair shop. But I guess at least it helped the actors to be in their role.


The bathroom loaction - very tight space. We used some small HMI fixtures and a 2-bank Kinoflo. The light outside is a softlight HMI with 1.2k.


I worked a lot with polecats to move the lights out of our way.
 
When reading David Mullen's threads and his claiming to have LOW budget lighting - well then I guess we had NO budget lighting :-D
Luckily we got all the locations for nothing, just had to pay for the traffic signs and barriers to close streets. On public ground you even do not need a permission to shoot.
But even with this limitations the camera is well capable of getting nice pictures. An issue became the lack of a ND filter on those rare sunny days where we could'nt shoot with open aperture for some reduced DOF. In the whole town nobody had a simple 4x4 ND filter for rent.


Lovely visitor dropped by - she's a Red Bull promotion agent and supplied us with a lot of the new Red Bull cola drink for free.


RED and Red Bull - I like the camera more ;-)


She's just doing her job, well uhm...
Having a crisis the main character looks for some hot adventures supported by a prostitute.


Again during preparation of the shooting it started to rain heavily. We wrapped the camera and mounted an umbrella. Some of the lights just had to stay unprotected und luckily they survived. Kinoflos can stand some heavy treatment. Smaller units got a rainprotection, while the larger ARRI HMIs just had some lens protection. You could hear the fizzling noise of water drops vaporizing.
 

After beeing soaked again and 20 hour day DP Leif and me got a bit weird -starting to sing for our light and to protest against the rain. It didn't help, though.


That's what our 'under water' set looked like...
It's been a rapid replacement loaction where I managed a few hours before shooting to get the permission from the owner and some electricity from a supportive neighbour (luckily they had a high-power current supply).


Next stop - sex shop. Camera is used with shoulder mount. Leif was very happy with the RED grips, but for longer usage you have to wear gloves to avoid cockles (is this the right term?) on hands.


Mr. Transvestite is prepairing for his show.
 

DI Alex is backing up the data from the RED drive to our RAID system. Indeed a nice place to work ;-)


This is Silvia, she is going to be the next temptation for the main character.


The latest product from RED - the RED BOY. Just place your orders, ladies and gentlemen - it's strong and sturdy :-D
 
Finally I got the RAW data and did some tests with it - footage looks beautiful. Here are some screenshots directly and uncorrected from RED ONE footage (1080p PNG lossless).
(Click to enlarge.)







 
rameshjai said:
Could you give details of the lens you used? These pictures are a tribute to both the DOP and the lens. Ofcourse RED too.
Click to expand...

The following lenses have been used:
Zeiss standard 2.0 set (16mm, 24mm, 32mm, 50mm, 85mm, 100mm),
Peleng 8mm Fisheye, PL-Mount
RedZoom 18-50mm

All the screenshots show one of the Zeiss lenses.
The RedZoom has only been used for framing tests, but not for shooting.

Haskell said:
Congrats! This looks great, look forward to seeing this picture, let me know when you come to NYC with it.
Click to expand...

When it is finished, we will definately do the festival roundtrip with it - so maybe we can get to some NY festival.
 
I'm not a red ownder but pictures looks a little too soft to me , especially for this small resolution.. Are they from the proxy files or from processing the RAW RED data?

v*
 
viny said:
I'm not a red ownder but pictures looks a little too soft to me , especially for this small resolution..
Click to expand...

Are you talking about the preview pics or the 1080p files?
Anyway - I disabled any sharpening in RAW processing and I did not do any sharpening afterwards. Reason is, that I will sharpen the images for the final output resolution only. Hyper sharp images might look good as stills, but it certainly won't look good when moving.

viny said:
Are they from the proxy files or from processing the RAW RED data?
Click to expand...
Those are directly out from RED Alert 4k RAW processing.
 
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