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Frame 137 - Cyberpunk Film

J

Judd Tilyard

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Hi everyone
I wanted to share the trailer for the short I Produced and Directed recently using RED and a set of Lomo Anamorphic Lenses. It was made for $10K and shot over 3 days with a lot of favours and support back in Australia, and features our ten year old star doing some crazy ass stunts. Love to know your thoughts, feedback and any questions.

Im also keen to meet any fellow RED users and particularly any RED Owners based in Toronto as I've just moved here from Australia and also actually bought a set of Lomo's I was so happy with the look on the RED, and I'm hoping to be involved in several productions with them this year.

Link to the trailer is here, cheers.
 
Matthew Bennett said:
Wiiiiide!

Great art direction man!
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Cheers man, I have to give huge credit on the production Design to Sam Hawley, amazing kid 25, now he first production designed a feature for me at 21, on less then $300 where he took an abandoned building re-wallpapered it, aged it, did props the whole thing, amazing job, and most impressive he had no production experience just an amazing attitude and the unlimited creativity of someone who doesnt know some thing "cant be done" on that budget. think i got a music clip or two shot in the same space.

If your interested though in the frame production design theres a cool doco Sam put together that shows the whole thing being built by Sam and myself its on vimeo at http://vimeo.com/8255232
Cheers.

PS the extra wide format was from using the anamorphics on a pre-build 17 model RED, with the 16x9 4k setting, and was done specifically for the trailer, to show off some of the wider moments not used in the short which is all 2.35:1
 
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Its like Kick Ass, but with a boy, very very cool.
 
The trailer looks great! Congrats.

I wish it told us something of the narrative.
 
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Very cool!

That's an extremely widescreen video. What made you decide on that?
 
Ryan S said:
Very cool!

That's an extremely widescreen video. What made you decide on that?
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Thanks man.

We recorded everything that wide but framed for a 2.35:1 marked up viewfinder, due to the Camera we hired being Pre-build 17 which introduced the native Anamorphic viewing and filming i believe.

I've since used the subsequent builds on Ayz Waraichs films the Divine River: Prologue, and Divine River itself both of which look amazing thanks to the respective skills of cinematographers Macgregor and Chayse Irvin, big thanks to both of them, and notably its much nicer watching things back in the correct aspect ratio.

The primary reason the trailer footage is so wide, is that on the day we were fortunate to have a complete set with lots of practical lighting and about 50 extras, so whenever practical for stunts etc I tended to fill the entire bar and hence the visible frame, meaning there would be a lot of material in the short that people would simply never get to see, some of which like the 22mm wide of everyone drawing their guns on Jonny, were frankly pretty impressive, so the teaser trailer became a way for me to use some of those shots that simply wouldnt be the same in the film OR shots that were misframed for 2.35:1 and hence wouldnt get used in the film but had some of the cooler action etc, so for me having the teaser super wide was a way of giving people a taste of not just the film but also the process behind it, while showcasing some of the material that had found its way to the cutting room floor.

I recently put together a second trailer which is 2.35 and features some of the performance and will be uploading it shortly, though I rather foolhardily left my laptop power cable in LA so I'm waiting on it being shipped back before I can reopen the project files and make a few tweaks before I post it online. The short itself should follow fairly shortly after, though I still do have some work to do on the post in between other projects.
 
Scott Crawley said:
The trailer looks great! Congrats.

I wish it told us something of the narrative.
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If anyones interested in the narrative the facebook fan page has a bunch of info on the film, including digital copies of the original comic from James O'Barr.

The website and a trailer with some actual narrative should also be going up once I have my laptop up and running to be able to access the files.
 
Steve Das said:
wow..do you have background in stunts...?
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This was actually my first time directing Action and one of the main motivations for making the film was to really demonstrate that I was up to directing action, and despite having produced an action horror film with an Ex-WWE champion just prior to this, its honestly very hard to convince buyers and sales agents, that you can "direct action" regardless of your background unless you have a reel that literally shows you directing action.

To pay due credit though, I had the great pleasure of working with some of Australia best Stunt Coordinators and Stunt guys who traveled from across the country to be a part of the film such that we had about 30-40 Industry pro`s on our 2 action days. Infact my 1st AD Gulliver Page was actually a stuntman / Rigger who had never AD'ed but who really understood the process well.

While Robert Reitano an actor I'd worked with several times, is also a charismatic and respected Stuntman in Brisbane and was truly instrumental in bringing so many great people together, he also notably remained behind the scenes on Frame 137 to act as chief fight choreographer, and we spent a good 6 weeks plotting out the action revising and of course training Sam, who while being a national champion Gymnast, actually had no martial arts or stunts experience prior to the film.
 
Judd Tilyard said:
... and we spent a good 6 weeks plotting out the action revising and of course training Sam...
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thanks for reply...6 weeks..yeah..it definetly shows in final outcome..
must have been fun to edit..cause knew you really captured it..

Curious how you co-ordinated camera shots/storyboards with the
action. Did you just think where to place camera while watching the
action rehearsals ? ..or was it different process..?

..also this song rocks..reminds me of some iggy :lurk5:...
 
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Steve Das said:
must have been fun to edit..cause knew you really captured it..
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The trailer was heaps of fun, I actually cut it on Vegas having already cut the rough of the film in Final cut.
Rather more painful was having to convert the entire project over to Vegas because I didnt have access to a mac system in LA and needed to fine tune prior to sending it off to FX and post people etc.
And even less fun again is the fact it now looks like I may have to go back to my final cut version and re-edit that, to match the recent Vegas Fine cut, but we'll see.

Steve Das said:
Curious how you co-ordinated camera shots/storyboards with the
action. Did you just think where to place camera while watching the
action rehearsals ? ..or was it different process..?
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I'm not sure how typical the process is but basically I initially wrote out in detail an overly elaborate action sequence, that really involved already knowing the action and shots I "wanted" but had no idea if I could get particularly with the time / budget we had.

I then spent a few days with Robbie and Martin McCormack, an ex SAS soldier / master martial artist who together created a fighting style based on what i wanted to see that combined cold blooded effective "kills" with a few showy moves for the camera, I was conscious though of not wanting it to be all wind ups and big openings, I wanted Jonny to just put these guys down as fast as he could.

After refining the action with them, I rewrote it all out again in detail and it was shortly after that we began training Sam, initially we were worried he may not be able to master everything in time but he was just a natural only things he couldnt do were things where he just wasnt physically large enough to actually do it (eg there was a sequence with the hair twirling women where he flips over them binding them together and strangling them in the process as per the trailer, then pulls their head to the bar stabbing the knives in the end of their hair into it to pin them down before pulling the sword he impaled the previous guy on free and stabbing them both through the throat, we had cutaway bar, fake knife, even a throat rig for blood all set up and the day before shooting when we got sam to rehearse in location we realised he wasnt physically tall enough to get the sword high enough that the blade would be positioned to go through both their necks and the bar, so we ended up doing a few intensive reworks like that.

But yeah specifically in terms of the shots, I guess I kind of knew what i wanted to see and had enough knowledge of practical FX to know how things could be done / seen convincingly so we tried to shape the action to that. On the day we still had to block the exact angle for the camera but almost the entire film was shot on steadicam with most of that being at Sams height, to really give things a subjective feel, so because of that things had to be fairly well planned before hand.

Steve Das said:
..also this song rocks..reminds me of some iggy :lurk5:...
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Yep its a cover of Dog Food an old Iggy pop song, I'd wanted to use the track from the outset since its specifically referenced in the comic and fortunately James is a friend of Iggy's. The cover is actually from Nick Oliveri (Queens of the Stoneage) and Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters) and frankly ROCKS. I also just heard they're planning to release it as a single soon I believe (hope its official enough I cna say that), anyway fingers crossed the rest of the world will get to hear it in full soon cause Damn its good.

Cheers.
 
Mad props from a fellow lover of the cyberpunk genre.

I hear Neuromancer the film is still in development...
 
noahvolek said:
Mad props from a fellow lover of the cyberpunk genre.

I hear Neuromancer the film is still in development...
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Neuromancer is an all time favourite, I love the density of the writing, and the depth of the vision behind it. Was a book I always hoped to translate into a film some day, but that said I was really excited when Chris Cunningham was attached, and I`m still definitely curious to see what Joseph Kahn might do, but who knows its Hollywood and its hard to get anything truly amazing made through that system.

ODD FACT: James O'Barr who created Frame 137 was actually talked out of releasing the full 3 book 192 page series of Frame 137 by William Gibson, who said Cyberpunk is a dying art, because as artists, even visionaries artists, technology is advancing so fast its almost impossible to keep up.

That said I picked up the Blade Runner 5 disc box set and honestly that is a film that nearly 30 years on, still stands up as a masterpiece, much like 2001 at over 40 years, so i dont think things are quite so bleak for sci-fi it just needs to be done right, unlike so many "CG driven" attempts that look dated and fake when they are released.
 
Judd, my friend and I have watched this trailer several times now. Aside from the fact that we love the post apocalypse sub-genre, this movie just plain looks awesome. Seriously can't wait to see it.
 
Jonathan Stevenson said:
Judd, my friend and I have watched this trailer several times now. Aside from the fact that we love the post apocalypse sub-genre, this movie just plain looks awesome. Seriously can't wait to see it.
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Glad you enjoyed it, I should have another trailer with a bit more story upsoon, so will post a link in here when its out.
I'm glad people here are liking it because honestly I would have sworn by film for anything "serious" till using the RED, but I got to say the amount we shot in the time we had, particularly the action, just flat out would not have been possible if not for the RED. And while I've had a friend rave about the Arri, I saw some stuff off the Mysterium a few weeks back, and it loves the shadows, nearly as much as I do.

Cant wait to play with that hopefully for the feature if everything comes together.
 
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