" EPOCH " Shot by Christopher Probst on RED MONSTRO 8K

[Jarred Land]

A few months back I asked Christopher Probst and Director Rich Lee to take Monstro 8K out and do a little something to put it through it's paces, just for fun.

This is what they came up with.

Enjoy

Vimeo:

Youtube:

 

[Samir Patel]

Fuck my life

 

[Christopher Probst]

Thanks Jarred!

I have some additional details I'd love to share once peeps have a chance to watch the film!

Though the Monstro sensor has been delivering pretty steadily now since January (and I've been using it since October on commercials and music videos), my projects shot with it are only really finished in HD and belong to some other client. So when Jarred asked if I could shoot some material on the Monstro to showcase the new sensor's capabilities, I didn't necessarily want to go down the same ol’ camera-test route, or take it out into the city at night and shoot available light. I always find those sorts of films missing the mark. I wouldn't shoot a real film production in that manner (with multiple shadows on some person's face, no augmentation to the light…) I would LIGHT it, and control it.

So for me, a better demonstration of the Monstro camera is to put it through its paces on a real project and subject it to several varied lighting conditions and harsh production environments. Getting my hands on one of the first Monstros delivered, I called my long-time collaborator, director Rich Lee, and asked if he had any small passion projects in mind that he'd want to team up on and use this new camera. Turns out, he had the very such thing. In short order, we sent several drafts back and forth on a short film idea that would place the cameras in a post-apocalyptic world, with harsh, dusty exteriors, dark, desolate nights and just about everything in between. Thus Epoch was slated to be our first venture shooting with Monstros. On the actual production, we ended up shooting in 100+ degree heat with four 4' Ritter fans pummeling the cameras with dust, I'd shoot the day work with vintage spherical glass and the night work with the most modern of anamorphics, the Arri/Zeiss Master Anamorphics.

In this fashion, would could showcase many of the camera's qualities, its range as well as two different sensor modes between 7/8K spherical widescreen and 8K anamorphic. We also would not restrict ourselves with the storytelling. We wanted to create a full-fledged short MOVIE. This meant we were using dollies, handheld, drones, gimbals, visual effects, makeup effects, creature work, the whole gamut. In order to also give Jarred and Red a demonstration film free from studio or agency entanglements, we produced and finished the project in 4K entirely in-house at Rich's post/vfx facility, Drive Studios.

Epoch was a beast to pull together and the shoot was minimally staffed and among the more challenging in my career. Post production presented similar hurdles in its own right and though it took longer than any of us would have liked, we are happy to present it here for you all!

 

[Samir Patel]

Wow need to take another look at the Zeiss Anamorphics. Thanks for the insight Christopher. Beautiful work!

 

[Jarred Land]

Wow need to take another look at the Zeiss Anamorphics.

not gonna lie.. I was a little surprised as well

 

[Christopher Probst]

I actually use them quite a lot. They're great if you're not looking to go all J.J. Abrams with the look and don't necessarily want massive distortion.

 

[Maik Müller]

Wow! Now that is raising the bar for "little somethings"...

I'm blown away! Serious, WTF!

Fantastic work and thank you for sharing the insights Christopher.

 

[Christopher Probst]

But wait, there's more... Here's some frame grabs as well as some behind the scenes pics from the making of the film out in the desert almost an hour outside of Indio, Calif. Basically, the middle of fucking nowhere.


House:

Our main location for the shoot was a closed former iron mine that featured some crumbling buildings as well as an adjacent “suburb” town where, when the mine closed, the houses were boarded up and left to decay slowly. We started the film in a tight bathroom set inside one of these houses where actress Whitney Wagner wakes up amid a dust storm.

The paint was peeling off the walls, the roof was starting to cave in, but it was all amazing texture for the film that production designer Maile Cassara and her team did an amazing job dressing out. Below, Rich and I are lining up a shot inside the front living room of house that opens the film. It was a brutally-hot first day (102-degrees OUTSIDE), and when you walked out from shooting inside, it felt COOL. So it was a veritable sauna inside. The cameras performed flawlessly and read deep into the shadows as well as held the blasting rays of sun I directed in with a pair of 4K HMIs. There is some Red BTS footage of this location floating about for the keen eyed…

Exterior House:

We selected a different house exterior street for our character to exit from. This was both to accommodate our schedule to be in backlight, as well as we liked that particular street’s view and texture.

Starting in the morning, first up we grappled with our uncooperative Ritter fans. Dust was as important to me as any lighting tool, and it was mandatory we have a lot of it. So we brought out several ritters and hid them down the street to kick up as much of a dust storm as possible. In the pic you can see Rich in a cowboy hat and our first AD, Saleem Beasley in the white shirt.

I opted to shoot with vintage Canon spherical lenses here mainly for the vintage lens’ contrast and veiling glare properties. I wanted the lenses to cream out a little and it was also a nice pitch to have multiple shooting formats for our “camera demo” film…

In the pic above, first AC/drone operator Jeff McCoy came out and helped us immensely throughout the shoot. In the pic, Rich and I are watching playback on one of our pre-call drone shots with vfx supervisor Louise Baker Lee looking on.



Store:

The script called for our hero to scavenge through an abandoned store. We found one candidate 15 minutes from our main location. This was still a functional street with a post office right next door. They weren’t too thrilled when we sparked up the ritters and whipped up a dust frenzy.

Trying to protect the cameras, we wrapped them in garbage bags, but the dust still got in and on everything. Here my grip Brian Deutsch is guiding me backward for a handheld shot.

The interior of the store was very sparsely lit. I had a Joker 800 bounced into the ceiling for a little top light fill, and ended up pinching the doors way down and add scrims to set the right level. We then had 2 4K HMIs aimed through the boarded up windows to send in some shafts of daylight. I also threw around a few Quasar tubes here and there when I needed a little fill off camera. This scene was still shot spherically.



Wastelands:

Trying to create a post-apocalyptic world on a budget takes some creativity. At our main iron mine location, there were these strange concrete brackets standing on the barren earth. We decided to shoot some aerials of our van driving through these and added our destruction around those later in post, which were completed back at Drive Studios with the aid of Louise, and digital vex artists Anika Morris, David Chan and Holiday Kirk.

For a scene where our hero has camped out in her van to wait out the harsh daylight, we found a spot with some rutted earth on the edge of the Salton Sea about an hour from our home base in Indio. This scene was shot on our 4th shooting day with a paired down skeleton crew of 5 people. Our main production and electric trucks were wrapped after our gas station scene the night before and sent packing back to LA. So in order to kick up the dust we needed, Rich took his Jeep and was doing donuts off camera. It actually worked pretty damn well thanks to some fortuitous wind.

(continued)

 

[Christopher Probst]

Gas Station:

The gas station is a good middle of the film sequence where the tension starts to build and you realize something is up and our hero may not be entirely safe, or alone.

With the idea that there was cataclysmic event that wiped out most of humanity, there wouldn’t be lights or cars or civilization around our hero. The gas station we found was relatively remote, but it also turned out to be a popular resting spot for dozens of big rig semi truck drivers looking to crash out. I lit this scene very minimally and had 2 M18 HMI behind the building up glowing the sky behind. The van itself featured much of the on-camera lighting units inside and on top of the roof rack. I added in a practical LED work lamp that she used to siphon gas with and then just augmented the scene with a scrimmed down 1K through an 8x frame for a little half-light.

This scene is the first instance where we switched to the Master Anamorphics. We weren’t looking for any dramatic flares per se, but the anamorphic compression and bokeh added a subtle shift in the visuals in the film. It’s actually surprising how well the two different generations of lenses and formats blend together in the project.

Compound:

This compound set is what we called the “Silo.” In our minds, that big disk structure was the top of an expended missile that launched during whatever event wiped out humanity. This location was part of the iron mine’s grounds and offered some pretty rich production design. One motif throughout the film is our character’s avoidance of light. She tries to sleep during the day and move when the sun goes down. But trying to pull the film off entirely at night would have been cost prohibitive so for this location, so I proposed we shoot the scene in two parts. When our hero arrives, we would create an extended twilight feel that progressively darkened, and then toward the climax of the film, we’d transition into bonafide night.

This approach did present its own challenges, as we only really had just over an hour of daylight where the sunlight was shadowed around our compound. We couldn’t afford multiple condors to be trucked in from LA, as well as the large lighting units to execute a more stylized “Hollywood” style night exterior, so I approached from a more realistic, stripped down feel. Pushing her arrival to a twilight feel helped in this regard, but we had to be ready to shoot the moment we were in shadow and had to move quickly to get our shots before we lost all of the twilight sky lighting from above. And all the while I would need to be adjusting exposure, filtration and any fill (bounce or negative) levels to blend this transition.

This sequence also marked another switch from our daylight spherical lenses, to our nighttime anamorphics. In this pic, 1st AC Brad Rochlitzer readies the camera into anamorphic mode as we wait for the sun to drop.

As I mentioned above, being a few hundred miles out from Los Angeles, and with a stretched budget as it was, getting condors shipped out there to us wasn’t really possible. In order to blend the night transition with the twilight day work, I had to be creative and ended up using an off-camera building as a large bounce source to provide ambient fill light as the sky levels darkened.

My gaffer on the film, Spencer Scranton brought out a sodium vapor practical lamp that he and Anthony Najem rigged to the building that would motivate the end scene’s look and color. Also, up in frame right you can see an 8x frame ratcheted to a Max Menace arm to “attempt” to create a little top moonlight, although about 60’ shy of where I’d ideally want it.

Here’s a handheld frame of Whitney following actor Al Spencer after we transition to night…

And here’s a fun little BTS video Jeff McCoy shot while I was operating handheld during this sequence. Watching this, it even amazes me how little the camera moves on the walk…

Interior Van:

The interior of the van was wired up to be almost entirely practical with lighting. Using fixtures bought at home depot, we gelled and aged them. There was a greener 4’ fluorescent above head, and a cooler LED unit mounted above the cage. Then, to pop out our victim character, played by Laura Hanks, we rigged a cheapo clip-up light and put a HUE bulb in there, dialed into a kind of salmon-orange color.

We shot much of this interior material in the parking lot of our gas station at the end of our third shoot day and matched the sodium vapor lamp in front of the van and a subtle amount of toplight behind the van to allow the desert in the background to fall off.

 

[Akin A]

Great visuals!
Nice job on the lights.

Keep that BTS coming, thanks, lol.

 

[Bob Gundu]

You sure maximized all production value in a short time. Efficiency, quality and delivery is what keeps you working in this biz.

 

[Note Suwanchote]

Awesome write up. Thank you!

 

[Jeff McCoy]

That was such a fun and crazy shoot, including some of the longest days and shortest turnarounds I've worked, but in the end it was totally worth it. Amazing work Dr. Probst; and Rich too of course. You sure know how to maximize your resources. Thanks for having me on the project. I love seeing these breakdowns too. Reminded me how crazy-busy that gas station was and yet you were still able to shoot around the chaos and make it look and feel totally authentic.

I didn't think I was going to upgrade to Monstro and after the first day working with it, I decided to get two. Ha. Red has really outdone themselves (and their competition) with this one. If you haven't shot with Monstro, you really need to get your hands on one. It's truly a totally different experience than any Red sensor you've used before.

 

[Eric Lange]

Really loving the whole deep deep deep blacks and shadow / composition within some of the shots... LOVE LOVE LOVE the texture and MEGA texture ... (peeling paint, and dust and decay and more decay) I'm such a whore for that !!! Drewling :drool5: The set dressing seems flawless and love how some of the built sets (I'm guessing here incorporate/ integrate so well to specific location. Will keep watching to get a few more clues as to how that is all fitting together so nicely ! ).

Just watching that again and again and again... Shame you can't come to New Mexico as we have tons and tons of wind right now! And dust storms for free and loads of post apocalyptic locations... But I do understand the rules and "Radius" on the map for permitted locations.

Skin tone close ups / medium shot look incredible with sweat (real or simulated)... Reminds me of what KODAK photographically are trying to roll out with some of their newest film stocks in terms of skins tone, lower light, depth and sweat and complex lighting effects BUT in these sequences I prefer what I'm seeing here from MONSTRO than what KODAK is trying push right now... A few things that make your hair stand on end there... Wonderful wonderful work!

Marvelous show case and project (Big Time) !!! Will keep watching it again and again over the next few days...BUT thinking MAAAAN I wish I had a better like 8k monitor and direct playback / source to really see what's going on...

Amazing and lovely... DID have a very close comb through the credits too. (Great stuff) LOVED THAT DRONE SHOT !!! (was that real??? or composite or what?)

So much great stuff packed in there...

Maybe I stop gushing for a while...

Really really enjoyed and will continue to enjoy really takes your breath away... Just fantastic and some really challenging looking mixed lighting...

__________________________

At some point I have to "Map" out the anamorphics (being slow and stubborn on that) but looks really incredible especially on the wide shots!

 

[Homer Dulu]

Thank you so much Chris, not only for the amazing video, but for this cinematography masterclass. People pay good money for these types of master cinematographer insights and we're so privileged to have access to this information. Definitely something I will be studying!

 

[Robert Gustafsson]

Really great! Thanks a lot for also sharing the BTS.

 

[Aaron Lochert]

Post-apocalyptic is one of my favorite settings. Really really well done. I'm glad you insisted on dust because that really made those outdoor scenes feel desolate.

I wish there was somewhere I could watch this with a little less compression/banding.

 

[Christopher Probst]

Aaron, which version did you try? YouTube or Vimeo? We have a great debate going on which has less banding... Though I hate Vimeo, for me I see less on that version. It's a total gut punch when this thing looks exquisite in 4K...

 

[Jarred Land]

Post-apocalyptic is one of my favorite settings. Really really well done. I'm glad you insisted on dust because that really made those outdoor scenes feel desolate.

I wish there was somewhere I could watch this with a little less compression/banding.

Take a drive up to LA, and watch it in our theater at the studio in all it's glory

 

[Christopher Probst]

^^ My name is Chris Probst and I condone that message!