David Kiang
Well-known member
Shot for the 168 Film Festival this year in May 2017 with the screening and awards program Sunday, August 27 at the 700 seat Regal Cinemas LA Live. Over 50 teams around the U.S. and world competed to make an 11 minute film in one week (168 hours) with 10 days pre-production time (writing based on the theme this year of "Love of the Father", casting, locations, crewing, etc.)
Honored with 13 nominations: best speed film, best directing, best screenplay, best cinematography, best editing, best original score, best sound design, best production design, best makeup, best actress, best supporting actor x 2, best scriptural integration.
We won 5 awards: best speed film (runner up), best editing, best original score, best production design, and best makeup.
First time working in the musical genre though you could argue that the music video is a cousin once removed; we had a blast making the film even though I got very little sleep for 3 weeks. I had written three treatments for a sci-fi film, military drama, or musical. When polling friends, they encouraged me to do a musical as I've never done one before but had done films more like the other two pitches, though some did try to dissuade me from doing the musical as it would involve a lot more work, increase the time crunch pressure, and be much more difficult to cast at the last moment over Labor Day weekend when many would be unavailable and it's much harder to find actors who can not only act but sing / dance.
Ended up wearing too many hats as it was over Labor Day weekend and my usual crew / help were not around or were unavailable. It's always a gamble wondering what might go amiss when you're the producer, writer, director, cinematographer, editor, 1st A.D., DIT. Not generally recommended but sometimes you do what you got to do to get it done. Plus I got to have flashback memories to my first semester at USC grad film school.
Shoutout to my skeletal crew: Brayton Austin - Gaffer, Dennis Wong - Key Grip, Preston Phillips - 1st A.C., Megan Mantia - Art Director, Johnny Kubelka - sound mixer. It's a testament to their talents and professionalism that we shot it over two days on a no-budget, pulling this all together at the last minute schedule. I'm so grateful to all the crew and cast who donated their time and energies to this film. It is never a one-man show but a collaboration of so many talents and efforts; it's one of the things I love the most about making films.
Also, so proud of my cast, many of whom were cast the day before camera rolled. Choreography was done the day of the shoot. As this is a musical, you have to record the songs before you shoot so that doubled the time pressure on production. While recording the songs, I had the lead actresses I was considering for the part come in and record the songs while auditioning them right after the recording. Multi-tasking madness.
I cannot also sing enough praises about my dear friend and composer, Guy Moon (known for his work on Nickelodeon's Fairly Oddparents, Danny Phantom cartoon series) who took time out of his incredibly hectic work schedule to score the film and produce the songs as well as do the submitted sound mix of the film. He did such a fantastic job and richly deserved the Best Original Score award he received.
I also am so grateful to have Bill Dean, M.P.S.E. donate his prodigious talents and time to do the final sound mix of the film as well as the sound editors and sound design by Daniele Carli. As Coppola remarked, sound is 50% of the film and poor sound robs you of the immersive power to engage your audience.
Lastly, having great art direction, set dressing, and makeup are crucial to the cinematography. It is the foundational tableau that the camera is recording. I found my art director Megan Mantia through multiple referrals as most of the art department people I were soliciting were unavailable. It was through a recommendation of her roommate that we got connected. I was blown away by her amazing eye, work ethic, and talent as she had to juggle doing all the art direction, being propmaster, fabricating props, designing posters, and set dresser with only one helper.
I shot on the Epic-W on the beta firmware. I would never do that on a paid gig, but as this was my show, I could take the risk and not suffer the wrath of paying producers for any calamity. I'm happy to report that the camera performed flawlessly and the IPP2 color science is a revelation. Kudos to Graeme Nattress and the team at RED for their phenomenal work.
I recorded both R3D and 2K ProRes HQ. As I was on a time crunch, I was so grateful to not have to transcode the R3D to editing proxy after wrapping. It saved me countless hours of time. As I already lost a day (we were allowed to roll camera at 11 am on Friday, May 26) as I was busy recording songs and casting at the same time, I could only shoot a maximum of 2 days (Saturday and Sunday) as I had to lock picture by Wednesday morning so I could turn it over to sound and the composer with the sound mix scheduled for Thursday evening to Friday morning with the upload deadline of 11 AM looming. One second late and the film was disqualified from competition. I also had to make sure I didn't go one frame over 11 minutes as that was grounds for dismissal as well (a lesson I learned the hard way one year when seven frames of music reverb over black disqualified me).
While I had the peace of mind having the flexibility of the R3D files, the 2K ProRes HQ files looked amazing with the beta IPP2 color science setting of RedWideGamutRGB / Log3G10, REC709, Tone Map Curve: High Contrast and Highlight Roll-Off: Very Soft settings. I ended up not having the need to go back to the R3D files.
So thankful for Matthew Duclos at Duclos Lenses and Dan Kanes at Atlas Lens Co. who were so generous to lend me their demo lenses of the Tokina Vista Cinema lenses (35mm, 50mm, 85mm) and the prototype 65mm Orion anamorphic lens. I decided to use my short film as a great opportunity to test these lenses and see how they performed. I used a ¼ Hollywood Blackmagic diffusion filter as I found the Tokina's super sharp with excellent contrast and overall good skin tones. The Orion 65mm anamorphic surprised me with its performance. Check out the tests and reviews on Sharegrid's Anamorphic Lens Tests (https://learn.sharegrid.com/lenstest). I used it in two scenes. See if you can spot which ones. Lastly, I used my Zeiss ZF.2 21mm lens for the opening bedroom scene and the interior car scenes as I needed a wider angle lens. Kudos to my 1st AC Preston who had to swap out the PL mount for the Nikon mount for those scenes while we were rushing to make the day.
Frankly, with the IPP2 color science, Epic-W sensor, and these lenses, I didn't have to do much color correction. I also didn't apply a LUT to the final color grading so what you see is pretty much what you get with straight-up shooting with the exception of increasing saturation here and there and warming up some images.
Shot 1.9:1 for Pan and Scan, REDCode 8K 2:1 (8192 x 4096) 8:1 with final display aspect ratio of 2.39:1 (shot with 8K 6:5 for the 65mm anamorphic lens).
We had a small lighting grip package from Wooden Nickel supplemented by my own gear. I used my Digital Sputnik DS3 light kit for the first time and love these lights. It saved me money in not needing specialty gels and I could dial in the color I wanted using the Digital Sputnik app on my iPhone. They are small and bright with the added flexibility of using singly, doubly, or combined three lights; I recommend them wholeheartedly. Used the Dana Dolly slider and a Kessler 10' crane but other than that it was on sticks. I might have used Steadicam for the dance sequence but my operator's wife just gave birth and he was unavailable. Even so, other than that scene, I wouldn't have used Steadicam. I wanted to stick to the musical genre visual "rules" for the film. What those rules are differs from filmmaker to filmmaker (Robert Wise (Sound of Music) vs. Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge) vs. Rob Marshall (Chicago)).
Edited on FCPX and was super grateful for that NLE's awesome Multi-cam so I could cut the songs and dance sequence quickly and easily. Each NLE has it's strength and weaknesses, but in the end, it's a tool so swing the hammer that gets you to build the house as quickly and professionally as possible. Used ColorFinale Pro plug-in, and 3rd party X2Pro to send the AAF to ProTools.
I loved shooting on the Epic-W with the IPP2 color science. When I shot the interior car scene, I was a bit concerned when I saw the histogram and image on the monitor. It was dark. While I had an LED for their faces, I didn't want to blast them with light and make it look lit. I wanted it naturalistic so I dialed the LED way down. When I brought it into the NLE and used color corrected it, the image didn't fall apart as I raised the exposure (and this is with the 2K ProRes HQ file). The Helium S35 sensor is amazing in the dark. Great job RED!
As always, if you have the time, you should test the camera, lenses, makeup, wardrobe, lights, etc. for your projects. Unfortunately, I didn't have the time to test anything, so to shoot on beta firmware on my Epic-W for the first time with lenses I had never shot with before was risky, but it was a chance I could take on my own personal project. But, as I stated before, the camera, lenses, and IPP2 color science performed flawlessly.
So be bold and brave. Push the envelope. Don't settle for always doing what you've done. Dare to dream and work hard to manifest those images, words, and ideas into reality. You may not only surprise others, but yourself as well.
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