Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

"The Widow's Might" shot by RED

Crowd-787868.jpg


This grab is awesome.
 
Interesting.... I drive back into civilization and get 'connected' only to find someone else
posting about the movie I'm working on.

THE WIDOW'S MIGHT is a light-hearted comedy / musical with a serious undertone about
the plight of those who are faced with loosing their land to the ever-increasing burden of
taxation. The project is being lensed in and around Scurry / Crandall TX, by HeuMoore
Productions and is written / directed by John Moore, who also plays the lead.

The crew and I have been living in a rented farm house with no communication links to
the 'outside'. Hence, my surprise at seeing this post.

This is a low budget production, so crew is limited to myself as DP, Charles Lake, Gaffer,
Teddy Hallaron, Audio and Ferric Hallaron, boomer. My AC is Mike Thorn [this is only his
second feature] Everyone else is a volunteer with limited, or no, experience. It's been a
good mix and everyone is learning from the process. Those of us with more 'history' in the
business are mentoring the next generation whilst using one of the best imaging tools I've
ever had the privilege to work with.

With the extremely tight budget, we're fortunate to have a one ton grip truck. My lighting
package is limited to 1-575 HMI, 2-1200w PAR HMIs, 1-4' KINO and 2-2' KINOs [daylight
and tungsten bulbs]. Luckily, we've been able to illuminate each of our locations without
much difficulty --when we've had the circuits available-- even though it usually means
working wide open. At the opposite end of the illumination scale we've had to deal with
the extremely brilliant and harsh summer sun. But even the blown out sky doesn't look
too bad with the RED ONE's latitude. [looking forward to the release version of Build 16]

The camera has performed quite well considering the extreme heat and humidity. The
people at HeuMoore are extremely pleased with the image quality. Actually, they've been
blown away. I've had some focus and CA problems with a rented zoom that has a loose
mid-element, but hey, one works with the tools one has in hand.

Teddy is a stickler for pristine audio as he knows there is no budget for ADR. So all
interior shots are sans air conditioning or any other technology that might otherwise make
the small cramped spaces more hospitable. Believe me, 10-15 people in a small farm house
without air conditioning or fans for hours of production can make for some very uncomfortable
moments.

The trade off is some of the best location audio of any show I've ever worked on. We're record-
ing everything in camera --that should quell any of the doubters that still say this camera is
incapable of good audio-- with the occasional wild DAT recording of ambient elements.

I'm using Build 15 and the only problems I've encountered are the occasional boot-up that
stalls and requires pulling the power cable before beginning a new start, a RED LCD that
won't engage on boot up or only fires with blue pixels [that's a new one on me]. Pulling the
cable from the body and reinserting it usually fixes the problem.

We're using CF cards for 80-90 per cent of the shoot but even with the limited RED DRIVE
use, the camera LEMO connector has become loose and spins in the body. I've had a
couple of files refuse to playback from the drive-- I get a big RED audio file corruption
warning message, but the files play fine in FCS.

I know these little 'bugs' tend to get written about quite frequently, but the image out of this
camera is so phenomenal it easily overshadows the few remaining drawbacks, which in time
will be improved on. This is the first feature for my camera and has proven to be a good initial
shake down for it.

The images from the film that have been made public are low rez QT proxies exported as
png or tiff files.
 
Joseph Hutson said:
I LOVE the NGL trailer by the way. Was it just me, or was one of the shots just a hair out of focus?:shiftyph34r:
Click to expand...

I'm sure some of them were... it's tough running two cameras with a camera team of two lol. Pulling your own focus as all times..

Glad you enjoyed the trailer...


So, I'm looking at the grabs above, and I see the film overall has a very soft feel to it, I like that, I think that soft quality makes it more filmic, as opposed to super sharp images.

Can you tell us about that?
 
Hey Brandon, thanks for the 'awesome' compliment above.
I relied on an old film trick of combining two halves to create a whole.
Lock down the camera, shoot 10 seconds, move the people and shoot
another 10 seconds. Do a soft edged wipe and presto... a theater full of
people. ....Something one must do when less than half the number of extras
show up for the shoot.


As for the overall 'soft' look, these frames are from QT proxies which are not
as sharp as the original R3D files. I've also added a bit of diffusion and played
with some different looks to reflect the moods of the story. It is, after all, a
comedy with a large Old West musical interwoven between the contemporary
segments.
 
Cool. Yeah I didn't mean "soft" as in out of focus... but I like the soft edge light on the actors... it looks good.
 
'Soft' has been a problem at times. I've been working with a rental zoom lens
that has a loose element somewhere in the middle grouping. But, yes, I've
intentionally tired to make certain scenes play with soft light, others with more
contrast.

One of my more favorite shots is the one of horses just after sunset on the 4th
of July. It usually gets an 'ah' from anyone who sees it and gets the most com-
ments of being very 'filmic'.

The crane shot of the car pulling out of the widow's yard forced me to hope
for the best when pitted between the harsh, glaring sun and some deep shadows. But the RED did a great job of holding of the important imagery.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top