Winner Best Cinematography - ILLUSION - Beverly Hills Film Festival

[Tim Lüdin]

Congrats. The pics and the grading look very nice.
Well done.
Looking forward to your next project.:emote_happyhappy:

Best
Tim

 

[Patrick Grossien]

I said it and will say it agin: U rock! Congrats, mate!

 

[Steve Gibby]

That's great news Phil! You should get some solid marketing mileage out of that award...after all this is a business, and the prime reason to enter festivals and award competitions is to hopefully score something to help market your services looking forward.

Again, way cool - and well earned )

 

[Dave Weber]

Congrats Phil! And to think I was there in the lobby at RED when you picked up your beloved "Skully". Cheers to you and your crew!

 

[Björn Benckert]

Nice!
The stills do look smashing. Really want to see the film. You should give us a little sneak peak at least. Send us a little private message to a vimeo login or something like it. NDA. a little reduser viewing.

 

[Phil Holland]

Thanks guys. Means a lot to me. I've been busting my butt for a while and it's sometimes difficult to take in things like this. Really nice hearing some of the feedback from the short.

Any trailer online I could check?

There is indeed a trailer cut up here:

http://illusionshortfilm.com/

Congrats Phil! And to think I was there in the lobby at RED when you picked up your beloved "Skully". Cheers to you and your crew!

Heh. That's a day I can never forget Dave.

That's great news Phil! You should get some solid marketing mileage out of that award...after all this is a business, and the prime reason to enter festivals and award competitions is to hopefully score something to help market your services looking forward.

Again, way cool - and well earned )

Thanks Steve. The whole festival thing is more or less a new experience. Producers I've worked with over the last year have been submitting a few projects I've worked on and it's been fun meeting folks at the festivals for sure. Always interesting questions about the process of shooting a project.


Illusion itself was challenging for me as it is an extremely feminine story that is difficult for males to really "feel". I love a good challenge though After a few meetings with the director, producer, and writer we were able to discuss the concepts that were a bit difficult for me to grasp initially.

I'm actually completely fascinated by this whole thing. I feel that there is a fair bit of difference between a male and female imagination. I see it in portfolios from students at workshops and I've experienced it on productions several times. A good friend of mine even constructed a gigantic womb for people to walk through and explore when she studied at CalArts and let me tell you the rest of the concepts behind that were about as foreign to me as speaking Klingon. I'm attracted to creative concepts I don't fully grasp.

It's been getting a good bit of press. Illusion was recently mentioned in a Huffington Post article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/galtime/10-top-female-directors_b_3288598.html


Here's one of the more entertaining BTS shots during the shoot. There's a portion of it that takes place in the sky and we fall through the air. I tried doing a lot of motivated shoulder work to play with the framing during some of the more chaotic moments where Laura is falling. In this take she darts off to the crash pad and we end a bit closer on her materialized father.

Fun stuff. Although I told the Director to put her shoes back on ASAP. Never a good idea to barefoot on a live set If you look closely in the background those are some of my students from Gnomon hanging out at Video Village. They visited and actually got to see lighting and shooting on a blue screen, then I brought some of that material in to demonstrate some keying. I put them to work while they were there though. Somebody had to put up all those tracking dots!

We also had a fair bit of aerial rigging fun too. Both Tommee and Ryan were troopers as these harnesses aren't exactly comfy.

All the blue screen was shot with tungsten and I used a Schneider 1/2 CTB in the matte box to help provide the cleanest possible image for the pull. We were also matching to actual daylight so that was also a consideration.

I'm really happy I could bring this one to life for the filmmakers. It's always a challenge, but they wouldn't call it work if it wasn't.