BROKEN ($8000 Action Short - 100 Vfx Shots) DVX100a - MOVIE TRAILER
 

Hey Everyone,

We just finished shooting an action/thriller short film called BROKEN. Shot on the DVX 100a.

Click here to check out the trailer: http://www.whatisbroken.com/broken_trailer_enter.html

Here are some of our Web Docs: http://www.whatisbroken.com/webdocs.html


Let me know what you guys think. Thanks for taking a look.

Alex
http://www.whatisbroken.com
http://www.enigmafactory.com
http://www.alexferrari.com

Looks pretty impressive from the trailer. Website is nice too. Good job.

Is it screening at any festivals or elsewhere right now?

Thanks! We are still waiting to hear from the some 30 festivals we have submitted to.

Alex

That looks great. The trailer makes it feel more like a 'serious' production than a low budget film. Great Cinematography as well.

I'm looking forward to see more of this.

Looks great and VERY professional!

I'm curious to know what software you used (editing, titles, sfx, etc.)?

Thanks for the kind words! All editing was done in Final Cut Pro. As for the color correction, the filter packages I used were Magic Bullet, G Film (www.nattress.com), Stib's Simple Levels and a FCP's color corrector. I found that Simple Levels helped me crush the black in a way that the entire image wasn't affected. I also used garbage matte to cut out sections of the frame and color correct them individually. The key is good lighting and having a design in mind before going into post. I did a lot of experimenting and layering techinques in FCP to get the look. Sometimes I look back and forget how I got there. Just play around ALOT with the tools.

Apple's SHAKE is the mac daddy of composting software. There is a reason Lord of the Rings and the Matrix used this software package. It is built to do one thing and one thing alone...COMPOSITE!! The ease of use and power of the software is crazy. It is a node based system while After Effects is a timeline based system, which is cool for editing but slows you down for VFX work. Anyone who has ever used a 3D program like Maya or a high end GFX box like Inferno can tell you node editing is the way to go. BTW, we did ALL the over 100 VFX shots in about two and half weeks, working nights and weekends, this would of been impossible in After Effects. Shake allows you to render one project and keep working on another. Bottomline, SHAKE is the way to go! Hope I didn't go off too much. ; )

Hope that helped!
Alex

I'm speechless. Very impressive.

Great work!

Hey Alex, I'm curious:
A- What was render speed like with Magic Bullet? Did you ever try to combine that with garbage mattes?

B- Similarly, how responsive was FCP when you were adjusting the controls?

C- When you isolate a part of the image with garbage matte, what adjustments did you apply to that particular isolation?

D- What settings on the DVX100 did you use? The colors look very very saturated and warm.

Glenn,

A- I was working on a Dual 2 G5, so the speed of the render was about 10 min per minute of footage.

B- FCP is EXTREMELY responsive! The tools and controls of the filter packages give you almost as much control as a million dollar coloring suite.

C- When I isolated a part of the image with garbage matte I usually was trying to bring up the dark area without affecting faces or skin tone.

D- On DVX100a we used Mode 6 (24p ADVANCED), we shot it clean and saturated the colors in post.

Hope that helps.
Alex
http://www.enigmafactory.com

A- On PC/Vegas magic bullet is a lot slower. On my 2.6C, it's about 30 minutes per minute of footage (dual 2ghz G5 is 3X faster!?). Of course, this depends on the settings you use.

D- Do you know which gamma curve setting you were shooting with? (there's like 4 of them?)

On the website, the before images look very very saturated and warm comparable to 'normal' footage. It seems to point towards some settings in camera that you tweaked... i.e. the gamma curve which emulates film.

Another question:

E- Doing Bonnie's eyes (in the webdocs page): Did you composite it in using motion tracking, or were you able to use secondary color correction to put the color in?

From what my VFX superviser Sean (http://www.seanfalcon.com) told me, he did it by keying options in Shake and not with tracking.

Alex
http://www.enigmafactory.com

Fantastic work...

Hahahaha

This is great!

I have a feeling that if all goes well our films may end up screening in some similar venues, depending on where you shotguned it.

By chance did you submit your film to the comic-con? (San Diego affair?)

Really looking forward to see it.

By the way -- props on the marketing, can't stress enough how impressive and important good press can be.

GOOD LUCK!

Dean

Very good work! You raised the standards for all of us, and show that SD in not dead at all!
I would love to see the final results on dvd or the big screen.

Thanks for the info Alex. I might bug you with more questions :D