Tree of Life

[Chris McKechnie]

Hey guys. Here's a little film I put together for Easter. It was a last minute shoot/concept, and on the afternoon of the shoot, our lead actress bailed out, so we had to scramble to find someone else, but we made it happen. I wanted it to feel very organic, so I tried to maintain authenticity through the piece. Enjoy!

iOS Link: https://vimeo.com/213426018

Shoot details:

Shot on RED Weapon 6K for an hour on Friday as the sun was setting
6K WS - all at 72 fps
Used a spherical Lomo 35mm lens along with my home-made easy rig
Had no crew
Edited in FCPX
Used IPP2 Low Con R4 for base grade
Graded with Color Finale
Added a bunch of grain

 

[Brian Timmons]

Very nice piece.

Brian Timmons
BRITIM/MEDIA

 

[Gunther Meisse]

Great job, awesome message!

 

[Nathan Grubbs]

Looks great. Would love to hear more about your homemade easyrig.

(Also the "/settings" needs to be removed from the end of your iOS link)

 

[Mark Phelan]

Great job, Chris, like it very much.

BTW, when I was in college, I worked at The Tree of Life bookstore here in Atlanta.

 

[Chris McKechnie]

Very nice piece.

Brian Timmons
BRITIM/MEDIA

Thanks Brian!

Great job, awesome message!

Thank you sir!

Looks great. Would love to hear more about your homemade easyrig.

(Also the "/settings" needs to be removed from the end of your iOS link)

Thank you. I'll post a shot tomorrow of it. My engineer is already working on version 2

Great job, Chris, like it very much.

BTW, when I was in college, I worked at The Tree of Life bookstore here in Atlanta.

Thanks Mark. That's so cool!

 

[Joel Arvidsson]

Hi Chris, I think it would looked better without the added grain and a little lift to the shadows (not to get the milky hipster look but adding back a few details in the shadows). My favorit grade you did (from memory) is still the boy that became fire men at the nature reserve. I understand you wanted a more contrasty pale look for the story thoe. But I have not minded a little details in the darks and little more color.
//Joel

 

[David Battistella]

Chris,

Lovely piece. Lovely message. Nice work. Tone texture, music, spot on.

Happy Easter.

David

 

[Chris McKechnie]

Hi Chris, I think it would looked better without the added grain and a little lift to the shadows (not to get the milky hipster look but adding back a few details in the shadows). My favorit grade you did (from memory) is still the boy that became fire men at the nature reserve. I understand you wanted a more contrasty pale look for the story thoe. But I have not minded a little details in the darks and little more color.
//Joel

Thanks for the advice Joel. Yea, I wanted it to be gritty/grainy so it was the specific look I was going for. Plus, the rapid turnaround, I didn't have a whole heck of a lot of time to tweak the grade, but I'm happy with the result.

Chris,

Lovely piece. Lovely message. Nice work. Tone texture, music, spot on.

Happy Easter.

David

Thank you David! Appreciate it!

 

[Chris McKechnie]

And here's my homemade easy rig V1...V2 in the works.

 

[justin ahlmann]

loved the storytelling & the message. great work, Chris!

 

[Chris McKechnie]

loved the storytelling & the message. great work, Chris!

Thanks Justin.

 

[Steve DiMaggio]

awesome, would love to see or hear more about what you used in CF

steve

 

[Chris McKechnie]

awesome, would love to see or hear more about what you used in CF

steve

CF? Guessing camera filtration? I didn't use any since it was me as the sole crew and I didn't want to be swapping ND constantly. Also, was battling clouds/sun, so the exposure was changing every few minutes. Would have been a nightmare. So I just did a big no-no and increased my shutter speed. Luckily I was over cranking everything, so that helped a bit with exposure.