FX1 horror short film
 

Hello,

I am rather new to these boards in a 'sign-up' sense, yet have visited for well over a year. I would like to show you some stills from a horror short we are working on called IN THE HEADLIGHTS. We are using the FX1, and it is basically us learning the camera.

The story focuses on a young couple trapped in their vehicle, alone in unfamiliar territory with no way out of the horror they become a part of.

http://www.francisbros.com/headlights.html

Thanks
Jamie Francis
Double or Nothing Productions
http://www.francisbros.com

Now all you need is Wham! stuck in the CD player... (happened in Orlando about 20 years ago - teen trapped in car for 18 hours and Wham! was playing over and over where he could not turn it off.)

The captures look GREAT!

Jamie, looks promising, if it's finished, be sure to post something in our DV for the Masses forum, where you can show your work.
Good luck!

Thanks a lot.

I am very impressed with the camera. I have been using a TRV-900 for about two years and this blows that camera out of the water. Not that it would really be any comparison. I have been reading up on the FX1 ever since it came out and was very eager to shoot something with it. I believe, despite the negative comments on the lack of XLR inputs and no-24p, that this is a great camera that will look better than any regular DV camera. I get a little bored of the talk about test shoots and the jargon that comes with this camera and really wanted to see what it could do if say you actually shot a movie with it.

Shots look good Jamie. Keep up the good work. Just curious. Which program(s) are you using for post?

That we are still figuring out.
We are capturing using CapDVHS, and are going to create degraded quality AVI's with Vegas 4 from the captures to edit in Premiere 6.5 (I know there is a term name for this, but it passes me), then dump the AVI's and make 6.5 read the full quality mpg files after completion of editing.
Sounds confusing even to me, and I know there is a better way to describe this concept but I have no idea how, haha.

What would you suggest?
I am a HDV newbie of course.

Since you already have Premiere 6.5 you can purchase an upgrade to P Pro 1.5.1 which has capture and editing cabability of HDV. It's still early in it's stages and will not allow movement into After Effects (unless you purchase Aspect or Connect HD for even more money). But, it would give you native editing capabilty. But hey. if you can do a good job with what you already have, then go for it!

I was just curious because I have the FX1 too. I use PPro and Avid but I'm just waiting on Avid to send thier update to edit HDV natively.

Good luck with the film!

Adam - I too am on an Avid system, have you pre-ordered the upgrade to HDV compliant Pro HD?

If so, would you do me the kind favour of posting/emailing me as and when it actually hits the shelves (or hard drives)?

Have you heard anything about a likely street date?

Hi Dominic,

I'm using the Studio version of Avid so my upgrade came out a little later than yours. I have ordered the HD upgrade, but like you HDV is still not out yet for Avid. I talked to an Avid rep about 3 months ago. He said to shoot for late summer for HDV. But, boy will it be good for us after that. The codec, from what I've heard and read, sounds incredible.

I'll post something as soon as I hear that HDV is supported by Avid. Hopefully soon. :)

So what's your reasoning for including Vegas 4 in the workflow? I just don't understand why you don't do all the editing in one NLE.

If Premiere is what you intend rendering the final from; then do everything in Premiere.

I'd also suggest you get a hold of Cineform's AspectHD (for use with Premiere) or ConnectHD (for Vegas) demoes, as you can convert to CFHD *.avi using the supplied HDLink capture tool. I think you'd find the workflow available to you after installing the Cineform demoes a lot less stressful than what you're considering.

As for the working with proxies (the term you were looking for), that's up to you... I find it quicker to edit the CFHD *.avi files and render out any sequences I desire to view on HDTV to either the FX-1 or to DVD MPEG2.

It's difficult to explain the advantage of not using proxies while putting a HDV project together... but I'm sure if you were able to work with both, you'd prefer not having to deal with proxies...

Once upon a time, magazines were put together using low-rez proxies for the high-rez finals... Thank God those days are pretty well gone in the publishing industry!! WYSIWYG doesn't come from viewing proxies, but if that's the road that you feel you must take... then that's what you have too do!!