Big Sur

[Steve Gibby]

Dave,

Sounds like an interesting project!

I lived just a short distance south of Big Sur from mid-2004 until mid-2010. From 2007 to 2010 I shot some excellent Red 4k scenics and wildlife at Big Sur - the kind of aesthetic scenes at Big Sur that Kerouac would have meditated upon. Shoot me an email with your mailing address and I'll send you a drive containing some of the best of those clips for your consideration. My email is steve (at) cut4 (dot) tv

Tom - NAB will be a pit stop for Kennan & Karen on the way to me & Pam's ranch in southern Utah. As you know me and Pam have been close friends of them for years. We're looking forward to seeing them at NAB, then afterwards up here, where we'll undoubtedly head out into the wilds for some scenic and wildlife camera sessions

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Keep in mind that the budget is so small that priority is to shoot our own original footage, second would be to buy existing stock shots, which is a decision that would be made in the editing phase when it appears we don't have enough of our own shots to make it work. So I'll pass this along to the editor so he can become familiar with what's available.
Thanks.

 

[Tom Greenberg]

Big Sur is a very special place, and one of my absolute favorites! I shot some video footage there in the mid-90's that was beautiful, despite the format (and operator) limitations. I can only imagine what your 5K Epic footage will look like, David. I can't wait to see it. Thank you so much for letting us peek over your shoulder as you shoot this project.

 

[Tom Lowe]

The thing that really blew me away about Big Sur on my recent trip there was the HUGE amount of detail in shots of the coast, with the waves breaking around all the rock formations in the water, foaming bubbles churning.... That amount of detail would be a test for any camera, codec and lens combination. I think Epic is up to the task. I wouldn't want any other camera for that shoot.

 

[Kennan Ward]

Big Sur

There are some lucky clips that only time allow. Big Sur takes time in my humble experiences. I have made photographs in my backyard here with the first one published in Sierra Magazine in 1974. I still am waiting for the "LIGHT" to happen in several locations.

If it is shot on a Red One in good light it is still worth it.

Kennan

 

[Steve Gibby]

Here are just a few low-resolution pics taken from TIFF frame grabs from some of my Big Sur Red One 4k footage

Love Big Sur

 

[Steve Gibby]

And a few more...

 

[Tom Lowe]

Oh that last frame is beautiful, Gibby. Are there many Pelicans around Big Sur?

 

[Steve Gibby]

Oh that last frame is beautiful, Gibby. Are there many Pelicans around Big Sur?

Thanks

Certain times of the year there are huge flocks of brown pelicans along Big Sur. I've attached some more frame grabs from my Red 4k Big Sur footage - gatherings of pelicans, egrets, and another sunset shot. The sunset shot was from the beginning of a long sequence which I kept running until the sun was entirely gone.

Dave - I don't mean to clutter up your thread with Red frame grabs, but I thought they'd give you a little taste of what to expect in the natural surroundings at Big Sur. Kennan has a lot of great Red 4k Big Sur footage too. These frames may give you some ideas for mood montages of Big Sur for your production. Everyone who has spent time at Big Sur has been enveloped by the energy, diversity, intensity, and healing power therein. I'm sure that's what Kerouac sought, and subsequently found there. Its a very special place...

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Great stuff! I was there today on a scout and as always found the light constantly changing, sometimes I'd compare a photo I took to something a crew member took just a minute later and the light was better in their photo.

Kerouac had a complex reaction to nature, being both a semi-Buddhist and a destructive alcoholic... his big "spiritual" moment on the beach tells him that nature doesn't really need or want him there, he feels somewhat meaningless and transitory compared to the timeless, ancient power of the ocean, the waves, the rocks. At that point, he leaves Big Sur and takes up drinking again with his buddies. But he returns with them, and things do not go well, his moments of peace are short-lived.

 

[Bob Franco]

I thought some of you might like to see some aerial shots of Big Sur. Nothing unusual about it except that they were shot from an airship. Gibby and others will recognize Pt. Sur Lighthouse.
Wish I had a RED one or EPIC when I shot this! Vimeo link http://vimeo.com/21957931

 

[Richard Foster]

David, Thanks for sharing so much on this project. Quick question. Will you shoot timebase 23.976 or 24 fps? And why?

 

[Ryan Glover]

Thanks so much for taking the time to share your experiences on this project David. This thread will be another invaluable resource for many of us.
The work you do with the Polish brothers is always beautiful and moving.
Thanks again!

 

[David Mullen ASC]

End of prep

Tomorrow we finish the camera prep and the movie officially starts shooting on Sunday in San Francisco.

It’s taken awhile to lock all the deals down so I haven’t posted anything new. We are getting our Epics from Tonaci Tran (thanks!) and filling out the package here in San Francisco at Chater Cameras in Berkeley. This seemed to make the most sense even though for awhile it looked like we’d have to get the rest of the package in Los Angeles; it’s a lot better when your rental house is nearby, and it also means we don’t have to fly the 1st AC Paul Marbury down to Los Angeles to prep, and then drive the package back up to San Francisco. Chater made a highly favorable impression on me when we did our test there a week and a half ago.

Lens package will be Zeiss Master Primes and the Ang. Optimo 24-290 zoom, plus a couple of Zeiss Ultra Primes so that when I splinter-off B-camera, I won’t always be stuck either giving them the primes and keeping the zoom, or the other way around, which can be a frustrating choice.

We have switched to Light Iron for the post work; basically they were the only place that could turn around the Epic footage fast enough for my test when I only had two days at the end of last week to return to Los Angeles. Even though I was only able to watch the test on a large 1080P monitor at their facility because all their other rooms were booked, I could tell how extremely detailed the Epic frames were. We also played with the HDR-x function, which is very exciting. My main interest, besides just seeing that the footage converted without problems, was trying a rough pass at what the director and I have started calling “Black Fog”, the post diffusion effect I want to do where I make the blacks halite without losing too much definition. Colorist Ian Vertovic at Light Iron was able to come up with something that seems to be in the ballpark. There is still a bit of a definition loss that we can still work on minimizing, it mainly just comes from the lowering of contrast in the whites that fogging the blacks seems to cause. It’s hard to tell until we start to work at 4K instead of HD.

The HDR mode is great and will only get better in time; right now there is a tiny bit of a (expected) motion artifact when a fast-moving dark edge is framed against a bright background, sort of a faint double-edge that probably can be solved (in my layman’s understanding) by somehow blurring the motion in the underexposed highlight exposure pass, which essentially looks like a shorter exposure/shutter time was used so motion has sharper edge to it than it does in the normal exposure. Anyway, it will be a highly useful tool as long as people don’t start abusing it or thinking of it as a cure-all.

It’s going to be tough at times to pull-off this period setting – San Francisco has some lovely older buildings, but often the ground floors have some modern elements added, and every street is choked solid with parked cars, so “stealing” a street-level shot on occasion is going to be very hard except in parks and whatnot. This is one reason why I suggested that one scene be moved from a neighborhood park near a street over to a park in Crissy Field by the Golden Gate Bridge. Not only, of course, is there tremendous production value of getting the bridge in the background, but it’s also a lot easier to frame out the non-period elements over there.

We’re hoping for some bad weather when we do our exteriors; we don’t want it to get too postcard-like, too colorful and cheerful. You can see the difference in mood from the day I went to Crissy Field and took some photos to convince people to move a scene there, to when we actually took the crew there for the tech scout:

First visit by myself one afternoon:

Second visit earlier this week:

I'm hoping to get something of this feeling, playing around in Photoshop with some photos I took on the first visit:

Have scouted some older bars in the city… many of them have fragile ceilings with old paint and artwork and no way to rig lights above the bar counter, and they are too dim to shoot in without lighting… I may be able to clamp some Dedos here and there to pieces of grills or whatnot in the ceiling, or double-arm some paper lanterns, I don’t know.

The other problem is that so many streets have power lines crisscrossing the sky for the electric buses and whatnot, there are almost no safe spots to raise a light on a condor or something for a night exterior. I’m going to have to rely on the sensitivity of the Epic and using some smaller lights on building rooftops or fire escapes to light some of these street scenes… and I’m going to have to ignore the fact that the city in 1960 would not have been lit by so many sodium streetlamps, there would have been mostly mercury-halide and tungsten lamps.

At the other half of the shoot are the Big Sur scenes – there the biggest problem is the closure of Highway One literally right between our two main locations, Bixby Creek Bridge and Rocky Point Bridge. The mess caused by the landslide won’t really be fixed until right after we finish the movie. I had something of a nightmare on the day of our tech scout there on Sunday. We had to drive way south of our location on Highway 101 and then cut across on the Naciemento-Fergussen Road, and then drive north to Bixby Creek Bridge, a detour of maybe three hours. We went down the night before, stayed in the town of Big Sur (where the local café had to make French toast from whole wheat bread instead of white bread due to delivery problems… talk about roughing it!). So that morning we went to Bixby Creek Canyon, just below the closure, and then drove south to our other locations such as Nepenthe Restaurant and Anderson Canyon… then we drove further south, took the Naciemento-Fergussen Road detour to Highway 101, then drove to Salinas and then over to Carmel, then drove south down to the north side of the closure where we started our day to see Rocky Point Bridge. But here’s the kicker, I got there early after driving, it seemed, like three hours… and noticed that in a few minutes, at 4PM, they were going to open the work site and closure to pedestrians. Local people were gathering on the bridge holding groceries, dragging luggage, it felt like a scene from “War of the Worlds.” So I decided to cross with the people to see the damaged part of the highway, not hearing the police tell the director and producer that we’d have to run back at the halfway point before the road was closed again. So I’m walking, taking pictures, see the crowd that started at the south end at Bixby Creek passing our group… and I lose my group in the crowd. So I keep walking, don’t see them, so turn around… only to be told by a police officer that the road was now closed and I couldn’t cross back until 7 AM the next morning. Well, I’m all by myself and there’s no cell service up there, pleading with a policeman for fifteen minutes to escort me back to my group on the north side of the closure. Turns out that the director was on the north side doing the same thing, trying to get me back. Luckily a woman showed up late on the north side who lived on the south side and was recovering for surgery, and she pleaded to be allowed to cross. So they held up the construction work and did a prisoner exchange, I walked north, passing this woman on the bridge as she walked south.

To top off my day, when I finally got to my hotel in San Francisco after hiking around Rocky Point Creek, I discovered this big-ass tick embedded in my arm under two layers of clothing. That freaked me out.

Anyway, back to prep... We finished this week with the production meeting, locking down our schedule and locations more or less. Our decision was made to shoot our night driving scenes using greenscreen… the reason being that this takes place on Bayshore Highway of 1960 (now people use Highway 101) as Jack Kerouac describes the passing landscape in the dark (farms, tract homes, etc.). I just couldn’t see a way of doing that on a real highway with modern cars whizzing by, plus how could we see unlit farms in the dark? I figured that a combination of dusk-for-night and day-for-night would be needed to see the background, and that would be easier to combine with the actors in a car if they were shot against a greenscreen. Our exterior drive-bys will have to be shot dusk-for-night as well.

 

[Tom Lowe]

Glad to hear you are working with Ian at LI. Awesome guy. I'll be interested to see how this "Black Fog" turns out. Certainly an interesting look you are going for.

 

[Steve Wake]

David,
You probably are already aware, but ticks around here (Bay Area) can carry Lyme disease. Since yours was apparently attached for less than 24 hours it's unlikely it transmitted the bacterium that causes the disease. But if you develop a bullseye rash, please seek medical attention. And if you want to play it safe, give your doctor a heads up and follow his/her advice.
Been following this with interest. Depressing, or as my theatrical daughter would say, "angsty" movies have never been "in," especially during tough times when people are looking for escapes. But best of luck on presenting a side of life people don't like to acknowledge. I'm sure it will be an artistic success.

 

[Terry VerHaar]

Geesh - what an ordeal and you haven't even started shooting yet! Welcome to the Bay Area, David!! We'll be looking for you around the city and south. Holler if you think there's anything a local can help you with!! :thumbsup:

 

[Dane Brehm]

This is already a very exciting project for us not to mention logistical rollercoaster. We've had alot of support from Epic Owners like Tonaci, Billy Summers, and Brook Willard to get those Epics in our hands to prep this film. I will say it has been a unique challenge to find the right camera accessories and support for each camera. I would like to thank John Chater of Chater Camera who stayed open 3 hours later to allow us to get everything organizied and set-up. Now lets hope San Francisco Weather cooperates.

We do have a bit of news that this will be the very first Epic Feature to use the new Colorfront On-set Dailies system (www.colorfront.com). I've been collaborating with Creative Science in LA to build a DIT cart appropriate for this very small movie. I can't thank the folks at Red enough especially Deanan for making this happen with Colorfront.

more later......

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Day 1 on the set with the Epic!

 

[Bill Anderson]

So the rumor that says your nickname is "Davy Sprocket" is untrue. ( :


Seriously: "break a leg", David. Looking forward to hearing about the project and seeing it on the big screen.