Niko Pueringer
Well-known member
If some of you frequent the YouTube scene, you may be familiar with our channel Corridor Digital. We specialize in action/vfx-packed shorts, usually inspired by video games. This fall we had the opportunity of shooting an official short film for Assassin's Creed 4, and we pulled out all the stops.
I wanted to make a thread about the project, as it's a culmination of all the knowledge we've gained over the years, from making content on tight budgets and schedules, to shooting RED and trying to nail that cinematic look.
First off, we had the pleasure of having RED join us on set, where they filmed a short documentary on our process. They did an amazing job, and you guys might enjoy checking it out:
We had only three days of production, and with the scale of what we were trying to achieve, Sam and I ran double coverage for the entire shoot. We visualize and direct through the camera, so it was very liberating to have two light-weight camera kits floating around. We could indulge our ideas or visual experiments without having to sacrifice time to our set-ups, since one camera would always be capturing a master angle.
I've picked out some favorite stills from the shoot, and posted them below. Everything is in 4k, so feel free to view the images directly if you want to see them in their full glory!
We shot on a variety of tall ships. Those of you familiar with San Diego may recognize the Star of India, a 150-year old ship where we filmed our interiors. Keeping our camera rigs small made it much easier to maneuver through the tight rooms and passageways found in the cabins of the ship.
Everything above decks was shot on the open ocean, aboard the Spirit of Dana Point. Shooting on the actual ocean is nothing like a greenscreen studio, and if you watch the piece, you'll see that the horizon is constantly moving, much more than something like Pirates of the Caribbean would lead you to believe. Sam and I were too focused on filming to think about getting sea-sick, and quickly found our sea legs, tottering around deck with an EPIC on our shoulders.
We made a point to shoot everything on RED, including our aerial shots. There's nothing quite as nerve-wracking as seeing an octocopter lift a scarlet past the rigging of a ship, only to then fly the camera out over the ocean. Needless to say, the shots turned out great.
The tavern scene was shot with a lot of natural fire, enhanced with some LED panels and the occasional tungsten. We ran a light pass of Neat Video, just enough to clean the image up a bit without removing too much of the fine grain.
Flintlock weapons look fantastic on camera.
I do most of the color grading on our work, and went with a slightly more traditional coloring process for this piece. Using DaVinci, I worked in log while viewing the output through a Kodak LUT. For those of you looking for more tutorials, check out http://juanmelara.com.au/, it's got some great stuff on nailing that filmic grade.
Can't wait to shoot some night scenes on the Dragon!
And finally, here is the finished piece. If you can, I'd recommend watching it on a TV while kicked back on a couch!
In regards to post, everything was edited in Premiere CC. The ease in which that program handles raw R3D files is amazing. If your computer has a decent GPU, and you're running RAID'ed hard drives, you can get real-time playback at decent settings, even with many filters applied. It's pretty incredible how far things have come. With how easy it is to fix many issues in the raw files, I'd actually say it's faster for us to work with R3Ds than most any other codec.
If anyone has any questions on any aspect of the project, I'd be more than happy to answer them. I would also love to hear what insights and critiques you might be able to provide. We're always looking to improve, and there are a lot of very knowledgeable people here that I'm constantly learning from!
I wanted to make a thread about the project, as it's a culmination of all the knowledge we've gained over the years, from making content on tight budgets and schedules, to shooting RED and trying to nail that cinematic look.
First off, we had the pleasure of having RED join us on set, where they filmed a short documentary on our process. They did an amazing job, and you guys might enjoy checking it out:
We had only three days of production, and with the scale of what we were trying to achieve, Sam and I ran double coverage for the entire shoot. We visualize and direct through the camera, so it was very liberating to have two light-weight camera kits floating around. We could indulge our ideas or visual experiments without having to sacrifice time to our set-ups, since one camera would always be capturing a master angle.
I've picked out some favorite stills from the shoot, and posted them below. Everything is in 4k, so feel free to view the images directly if you want to see them in their full glory!
We shot on a variety of tall ships. Those of you familiar with San Diego may recognize the Star of India, a 150-year old ship where we filmed our interiors. Keeping our camera rigs small made it much easier to maneuver through the tight rooms and passageways found in the cabins of the ship.
Everything above decks was shot on the open ocean, aboard the Spirit of Dana Point. Shooting on the actual ocean is nothing like a greenscreen studio, and if you watch the piece, you'll see that the horizon is constantly moving, much more than something like Pirates of the Caribbean would lead you to believe. Sam and I were too focused on filming to think about getting sea-sick, and quickly found our sea legs, tottering around deck with an EPIC on our shoulders.
We made a point to shoot everything on RED, including our aerial shots. There's nothing quite as nerve-wracking as seeing an octocopter lift a scarlet past the rigging of a ship, only to then fly the camera out over the ocean. Needless to say, the shots turned out great.
The tavern scene was shot with a lot of natural fire, enhanced with some LED panels and the occasional tungsten. We ran a light pass of Neat Video, just enough to clean the image up a bit without removing too much of the fine grain.
Flintlock weapons look fantastic on camera.
I do most of the color grading on our work, and went with a slightly more traditional coloring process for this piece. Using DaVinci, I worked in log while viewing the output through a Kodak LUT. For those of you looking for more tutorials, check out http://juanmelara.com.au/, it's got some great stuff on nailing that filmic grade.
Can't wait to shoot some night scenes on the Dragon!
And finally, here is the finished piece. If you can, I'd recommend watching it on a TV while kicked back on a couch!
In regards to post, everything was edited in Premiere CC. The ease in which that program handles raw R3D files is amazing. If your computer has a decent GPU, and you're running RAID'ed hard drives, you can get real-time playback at decent settings, even with many filters applied. It's pretty incredible how far things have come. With how easy it is to fix many issues in the raw files, I'd actually say it's faster for us to work with R3Ds than most any other codec.
If anyone has any questions on any aspect of the project, I'd be more than happy to answer them. I would also love to hear what insights and critiques you might be able to provide. We're always looking to improve, and there are a lot of very knowledgeable people here that I'm constantly learning from!
