Sundance 2020

[Brendan H. Banks]

Wanted to see if anyone is heading out this year. Would love to meet up! If anyone is going or has a film in, drop some info below.

I shot a feature called Scare Me which is in the Midnight category this year. Shot on Epic-W Helium with a personal set of modded Canon FDn lenses. Can't share much outside of the image below for now, but I am happy to go into any details of shooting, camera stuff, lighting, color, etc if anyone is curious. I've always learned so much from everyone on the forum so I'm happy to share anything I can.

 

[Matthew Riggieri]

Dude that’s awesome. Congratulations!

 

[Mike Quill]

I'll be there this year. Would love to meet up for a beer. Email me at mike@quillfilms.com

Mike

 

[Brendan H. Banks]

Here’s the teaser - https://youtu.be/nPmZLKZE80o

 

[Karim D. Ghantous]

I'd love to go to Sundance some day. Maybe next year.

 

[michael fetner]

Looks aweesome man! was the whole movie shot in that cabin? was most of it "fire light" or were there a lot of other setups?

Congrats it looks great!

 

[michael fetner]

Also, which FD's did you use for it? I'm trying to build a set myself!

 

[Cameron K]

Sharp trailer man, not everyone can. Good work.

 

[M Harvey]

I'd love to go to Sundance some day. Maybe next year.

The bad news is, probably not gonna be a traditional Sundance to go to in 2021.

The good news is, the plan for 2021 is to have events "across the U.S. and beyond"-- which means maybe more of us will get to participate in some way, rather than just read about it. Here's a recent announcement:

https://www.sundance.org/blogs/festival/2021-sundance-film-festival-approach-tabitha-jackson

 

[Med D]

This is not the same Scare Me film, also from 2020, that is currently streaming on Amazon Prime right?

 

[Brendan H. Banks]

Looks aweesome man! was the whole movie shot in that cabin? was most of it "fire light" or were there a lot of other setups?

Congrats it looks great!

A lot of the film was shot in the cabin, sort of a bottle movie with some exterior scene and a few jumps in reality. Most of the light was in fact firelight - custom built fire light rig that fit into the hearth. We ran a flame bar for 2 days and shot out that axis in a row to save time (poor talent had to jump across scenes from the whole film). Lots of moonlight through all the windows too, we shot day for night and tented the entire first floor of the house and put quasar tubes in each window to provide moonlight.

Though we were really in similar lighting setups, we did alter things on a per-shot basis and I played with ratios depending on what the scene was and how it played against the emotions of the scenes.

I spent the year prior to making the film building a set of 4 FDs - theyre the 1982 FDn - 24mm f2, 35mm f2, 50mm f1.4, 85mm f1.8. I had them send to Ron Sim at Simmod to get the Ed Mika EF mount, declicked iris, gear rings, and matching 80mm fronts. I asked Ron to make some custom ring extenders to play nice with a mattebox and bellow setup and he accommodated the request (and now sells ring kits on his site). Can't say enough good things about their work.

Thanks!

 

[Brendan H. Banks]

This is not the same Scare Me film, also from 2020, that is currently streaming on Amazon Prime right?

Correct. Unfortunately when we did our title clearance they weren't on the map and there doesn't seem to be a way to disentangle our two films I can assure you ours is very different than theirs.

 

[Brendan H. Banks]

And here's the full trailer!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeYWT7CnFK0

 

[Matt W.]

A lot of the film was shot in the cabin, sort of a bottle movie with some exterior scene and a few jumps in reality. Most of the light was in fact firelight - custom built fire light rig that fit into the hearth. We ran a flame bar for 2 days and shot out that axis in a row to save time (poor talent had to jump across scenes from the whole film). Lots of moonlight through all the windows too, we shot day for night and tented the entire first floor of the house and put quasar tubes in each window to provide moonlight.

Though we were really in similar lighting setups, we did alter things on a per-shot basis and I played with ratios depending on what the scene was and how it played against the emotions of the scenes.

I spent the year prior to making the film building a set of 4 FDs - theyre the 1982 FDn - 24mm f2, 35mm f2, 50mm f1.4, 85mm f1.8. I had them send to Ron Sim at Simmod to get the Ed Mika EF mount, declicked iris, gear rings, and matching 80mm fronts. I asked Ron to make some custom ring extenders to play nice with a mattebox and bellow setup and he accommodated the request (and now sells ring kits on his site). Can't say enough good things about their work.

Thanks!

Very interesting...

Out of curiosity were they all 1982 date codes? I'm trying to figure out if coatings changed after that year. My older nFDs have prettier flares imo, not sure it's coincidence or not.

 

[Brendan H. Banks]

Very interesting...

Out of curiosity were they all 1982 date codes? I'm trying to figure out if coatings changed after that year. My older nFDs have prettier flares imo, not sure it's coincidence or not.

Oh yeah the older FDs have some extra flavor to them, but I was looking for a certain pricepoint to build out slowly. I believe all of them are 1982, there might be one 1984 (I had to get a ton of copies before I found ones without fog or fungus on them). It could be, also the way they age or were stored can affect the look. I'm really happy with my set as a go-to set when we don't have the budget. Just shot K35s the other day and though the FDs are similar, there's still some extra magic in the K35s.

 

[Matt W.]

Oh yeah the older FDs have some extra flavor to them, but I was looking for a certain pricepoint to build out slowly. I believe all of them are 1982, there might be one 1984 (I had to get a ton of copies before I found ones without fog or fungus on them). It could be, also the way they age or were stored can affect the look. I'm really happy with my set as a go-to set when we don't have the budget. Just shot K35s the other day and though the FDs are similar, there's still some extra magic in the K35s.

Thanks, very interesting. I have some FDs and the oldest one (24mm f1.4 FD L from 1983 or so) is also the best one imo. It was also the one that seemed to be stored least responsibly so maybe I like a little haze in the image? The newer ones from 1990 or so are more clinical, but they're fine.

My 35mm f2 and 28mm f2 have haze and my 24mm f2 I bought before the FD L has play in the focus ring... was going to sell with the skyrocketing prices but didn't take into account how hard it is to find clean samples.

Yeah the K35s I dunno. The designs seem to be the same and yet the 85mm K35 has thorium glass but not the 85mm FD I think? So surely not identical in every way, plus you get the elusive 35mm f1.2...