Any advice appreciated: First fiction film I shoot on RED

[Antonio Forjaz]

Hi all,

Just want any advice you may think would help.
I will be shooting my first big project on the RED. It is a 30 page script. Mostly day exteriors, might have 1 night interior, a couple of day interiors and quite a lot of sequences in cars and minivans. I am thinking that most of the day exteriors will be hand held, as that is the feel of those scenes, but the interiors can be more on the tripod.
We don't have many lights, we do have bounce.
We planing on 2 crane shots.
I have NIKON lenses(see below in my signature), 8 and 16GB CF cards, and a RED DRIVE 640GB.
I do have a matte box and follow focus from RedRockMicro.
I have Format filters (3,6 and 9, plus hot mirror and 1.2 w/hot mirror).
It will be a 6 day shoot, that is roughly 5 pages a day. All in the same city.
In terms of camera crew it will be me, one AC and one DATA manager.
I have a MacBookPro for the field and will be transferring all footage at night to the MacPro at home that has 4TB of hard drive ready for this project (will this be enough???)
Sound we will do using 2 Sennhaiser mics on Booms connected to a portable mixer connected to the RED.
Well, see any big holes in my production?
Any special thing I should account for?
Thanks in advance for any advice.

 

[Brandon Fraley]

dunno, sounds pretty good to me. You'll probably need some lighting for your interiors, day and night. 4tb will be more than enough if your shooting ratio is at all reasonable.

 

[Antonio Forjaz]

dunno, sounds pretty good to me. You'll probably need some lighting for your interiors, day and night. 4tb will be more than enough if your shooting ratio is at all reasonable.

I usually don't do more than 3 or 4 takes maximum...I know what I want and need from a shot, what can mess me it is the actors sometimes...

I want a kind of dark interior look, so I will stick to small lights, 300's Tungs, does that sound like enough? The interiors are smallish...

 

[Brandon Fraley]

I want a kind of dark interior look, so I will stick to small lights, 300's Tungs, does that sound like enough? The interiors are smallish...

a couple 300s should be fine for most small areas. I'd say test and see if you're fine with the amount of noise. Either at the location or even at your own place just to see how your fixtures work with the camera.

 

[Antonio Forjaz]

a couple 300s should be fine for most small areas. I'd say test and see if you're fine with the amount of noise. Either at the location or even at your own place just to see how your fixtures work with the camera.

Thanks for you advice

 

[Antony M]

Your spec sounds very similar to a shoot I recently finished. Ours was 7 day shoot for 25 pages of script.

We also put mics through a mixer, but sent the mixer's output to both the Red and a digital audio recorder (the Marantz). Glad we did because we had some problems with the levels on the Red. This was with Build 17.

Our footage took up just under 300Gb, so your 4Tb should be more than enough.
However, I would suggest making TWO copies, not just one. So get yourself another drive.

How many batteries do you have?
We only had 2, and that got us in trouble once, on a remote location.

Antony

 

[Noah Kadner]

I'd go to this or get the DVD:

http://www.webfilmschool.com/

-Noah

 

[Matthew Murphy Karges]

make sure your script is GREAT.
good luck

 

[Antonio Forjaz]

I was planing of making 2 copies.
I have 2 RED batteries, plus 6 other V lock batteries, (1 sony, 3 Global Media Pro and 2 of another make)

I don't have another way of recording the sound, but I will look into this and see what I can do... I did test my RED with my sound set up and the levels seemed ok.

Your spec sounds very similar to a shoot I recently finished. Ours was 7 day shoot for 25 pages of script.

We also put mics through a mixer, but sent the mixer's output to both the Red and a digital audio recorder (the Marantz). Glad we did because we had some problems with the levels on the Red. This was with Build 17.

Our footage took up just under 300Gb, so your 4Tb should be more than enough.
However, I would suggest making TWO copies, not just one. So get yourself another drive.

How many batteries do you have?
We only had 2, and that got us in trouble once, on a remote location.

Antony

 

[Antonio Forjaz]

humm, it is not my first film... it is my first film with a RED camera....

I did goto film school, I did graduate in 1995 from Columbia in Chicago...

I'd go to this or get the DVD:

http://www.webfilmschool.com/

-Noah

 

[Antonio Forjaz]

I think it is an interesting story, it is based on real events, when our local arsenal blew up, and I shot some footage and took some picts that ended up on CNN, and got second prized for photo of the month, so I think it is a griping and interesting story...
here are 2 links to one of the photos I took of the arsenal blowing up:

http://www.powmadeak47.com/n7/7moz0324ammodump.html

and

http://edition.cnn.com/exchange/blogs/notebook/2007/05/citizen-journalism-makes-waves-in-april.html

make sure your script is GREAT.
good luck