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 :)

BEYOND THE BLACK RAINOW Trailer (My 2nd feature)

NormLi said:
I can talk shooting experience, but nothing regarding the film. I would literally be castrated if so! They are super secretive about it...

Norm
Click to expand...

That's cool...

But get talking! Keep it tech and ambiguous if need be ---- but talk!

Seriously, I expect at least 200 words here... fellows, back me up...

Really it's great work though, love the use of mist and smoke throughout, the weird framing of the car shot, the out of focus silver man at the end, the white on black... the weird ink tank stuff - it's just an embarassment of visual riches!!!
 
Norm, you've got me intrigued. I like this teaser and look forward to seeing the movie.

It's interesting to see film still being used to great effect. That's why I hope it never dies as an option for a DP.
 
Steve Das said:
Shooting days...size of crew & light package...sources of
inspiration from director...were you able to work much w/ production designer..?
...mmm..can't think of anything else..
Click to expand...


We had 20 shooting days, I spent about 2 hard weeks of prep and about 2 months (if I remember correctly) of continuous meetings with the director regarding visual style. Originally he and the producers wanted to shoot RED on this movie, but from all of our meetings and his visual and film references, everything had a very distinct film look, and I just didn't feel that RED (Although I love it!) was the way to go for this particular film. I fought VERY hard to shoot film on this and did my research first and talked to my contacts at Panavision Vancouver, Technicolor, and Fuji. Got quotes and discounts on everything, but since we were shooting 2-perf, it really was a great savings on film stock and processing. Literally 50%. I came back to them with the numbers and somehow convinced them to shoot film! Walla!

We shot on Fuji Eterna400 for it's lower contrast feel, similar to the feel of the era he wanted to film in. Also, we tested different Panavision lenses but went with their oldest 'softest' set...and most of the time we filmed with at least a 1/8 or 1/4 BPM, but sometimes we stacked as many as 4 specialty filters. Most of the color was achieved through lighting and some filters, and we enhanced or tweaked a bit in the DI but we had a base color to work with. Our production designer, Bob Bottieri, did a fantastic job creating these sets. I worked very closely with Bob and the director Panos on different set materials and colors. We had about 60 spacelights or so to light all the hallways and rooms but sometimes had to juggle them since we didn't have enough to light all rooms at once. We also used maxibrutes to light overhead as well. We then supplemented on the floor with whatever to get a pretty image :) I'm talking about all the studio stuff. We also shot on location which you hardly see in the teaser but for that we had 8K and 4K balloons at night to play with as well.

Alot of the film we purposely flared the lens consistently in one fixed position (from various angles) via our custom made "Panaflare" device...which was basically just an adjustable arm we clamped onto the camera that had a little xenon flashlight at the end. We made little matteboxes for it that we gelled different colors to compliment the overall lighting scheme or also the emotion of the character at the time. For example, if we had an overall RED look for the "restricted" mode of the institute, we would flare it with a blu gel flashlight, or sometimes yellow...depending on which character was on screen. 90% of the film is like this. We also shot a lot of things out of focus on purpose. Some scenes are super out of focus and trippy...

Luckily with 2-perf we could shoot in native 2.40. I believe it's actually 2.66 (David Mullen, chip in?), and then we had to punch in a bit to make it 2.40.

The sets were crazy reflective with aluma-panel shiny black and white walls, glass walls, plexiglass, etc...everywhere there were reflections which we had to hide ourselves from ALL the time. It was annoying at the time but it looked great :)

3 camera crew and about 8-10 G&E crew.

I'm very proud of this project and that we really had a chance to mold the look we wanted via extreme experimenation and degradation.

My last 4 features after that have all been RED MX though! Hopefully I can shoot a few more 35mm features before everything goes EPIC :)

Norm
 
Gavin Greenwalt said:
Very cool. A lot of the cinematography feels a lot like what Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris would have looked like had it been shot 40 years later.

Almost a Solaris meets Muhalland Drive. Which sounds like a great combination.
Click to expand...

That's a nice compliment :)

Some say it's THX1138 meets 2046...
 
Thanks for those notes Norm!
You are a true gentleman for responding with some interesting information...
A lot of posters just sort of 'drop a link and bugger off' - but you've really contributed some great thoughts here.

And of course the work stands for itself, but it's so amazing having some BG information on a project I really respect.
Cheers man!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top