latest Instant Film, shot with DVX100/Mini35
 

We haven't quite gotten last weekend's Instant Films up on the webpage yet, but I have put up my offering on my goofy .mac homepage in the meantime.

It was shot on the DVX100a and the Mini35 with a set of elderly Zeiss Superspeeds, between T1.4 and T2. As part of the Instant Films festival, the script was handed to me on Saturday morning and was completed and screened 36 hours later. I didn't have my usual editor on this one so I added that duty on to my others as director and DP (plus one more unusual credit, which you will have to watch to the end to get!). This meant two hours sleep for me over the weekend...suffering for the art!

Hope you like.


http://homepage.mac.com/chupap/Film/...Theater28.html

Excellent! I really enjoyed that, Charles. It's hard to believe that you put that together in two days!

I noticed that YOU played the sax solo on the sound track?!

Yep, can't get anything past you Ken!

I had mentioned to the composer that in case the score happened to call for it, it would be fun to lay down a sax track as a novelty (although I wasn't sure how we would make that happen within the time period).

He brought over his digital 4-track, and right when I was in the death throes of the edit on Sunday night, some 90 minutes before the screening was scheduled to begin, I broke away and recorded the sax track in my bathroom. I can't say that I was in much of a mellow musical mood at that point--manic, sleep deprived and flying on adrenaline is not conducive to feeling a groove--but it worked well enough!

Ha, well it worked at this end. Actually it reminded me of the end music in "The Conversation", where Gene Hackman is left playing the sax in his destroyed apartment.

How great is that movie? Love it.

APPLAUSE . . . . .. . !

Charles . . . I'm speechle . .. . . .. that's a first!

The humour and the social commentary on the "workings" of democracy - no change since its inception back in Athens eh? People will do anything to canvass support . . . well YOUR movie's got my vote anyway! .. . Ho, now there's a bit of an Brit irony . . .

Loved the sax solo - I'm a mug for sax solos!

Grazie

Somehow the fact that you shot this with the DVX100 + Mini35 went right past my attention. I realized you used the Mini, as you recently purchased one. Was this your first crack at using the DVX100 with the Mini? How do you feel the Mini performed for you on the DVX versus the XL1?

Ken:

I actually shot a 30 minute short for a director friend right after receiving the Mini and the DVX100a. It was a pretty elaborate 9-day affair.

I like a lot of things about the DVX, and it doesn't seem to lose much clarity with the Mini, even through its own lens. I like the extra control that the DVX affords picture-wise over the XL1s as well as the feature set and self-contained nature of the camera (i.e. built-in XLR's etc), but honestly I still prefer the color pallette and smooth tones of the Canon. Honestly, I find the DVX to be a noisy camera in 24p mode. I'm really looking forward to getting my hands on the XL2 as I think it might be just the ticket for me.

However, I haven't shot a thing with the DVX without the Mini yet! That will be a novelty for me, weird as it seems.

Charles I thought that the camera work was really great. I was wondering what kind of dolly/hydrolic arm or other device you used to get the nice dolly right/boom down when the two characters are talking in the living room behind the book shelf.

Also, what kind of lighting were you using along with the DVX100 with Mini35. I have a vx2100 and everytime I see dvx 24p I start figuring out how I can sell my cam and get a panny.

thanks, greg.

Greg:

The first two shots of the film (title sequence) were done on a Losmandy/Flextrak dolly; the rest of the moving shots were done on Steadicam.

The primary lighting for this film were a 1200 and 575 watt HMI par, two Gyoury lights (small dimmable fluourescents) and a couple of Kinoflos, plus one or two small tungsten units.

The opening scene was the two Gyoury's, one as backlight, the other as the TV light (working the dimmer to create flicker). The walk-and-talk through the "office" (actually a basement room in a house) was ambient daylight plus existing MR16 ceiling spots, with a half-corrected daylight/tungsten China ball Gyoury setup that was handcarried alongside the camera for fill.
The second half of the office had one Gyoury flying above the window on the right as a key for the aide character, and the other down below the frame on the right as the candidate's key light. The rest was ambient.

For Katie's house, which was all shot at night, a 12x12 grifflon frame was put up outside the sliding doors that you can see in the background, and the 1200 was bounced into the griff to create a white blowout to simulate daylight. Normally this would have been dressed with some sort of blinds to break up the solid white panel, but we didn't have anything on short notice. A 4x4 daylight Kino was set as an edge light to continue the window light feel. The window above the sink had a 4x4 frame of 216 diffusion placed against it, and the 575 illuminated it from behind to glow that window and create a key for most of those scenes. A Gyoury was used for different setups as a fill light to taste, and highlighting various other bits of the kitchen.

Overall a pretty simple lighting plan--we had a lot to do without the lighting taking over!

Charles, how much comment do you want? Do you really want us to nitpick or just the general stuff? I saw a couple of things that in retrospect might have been a little different. But that was more into continuity than anything else.

48 hrs? Kick butt for the time frame. Still a great job. BTW, nice Sax.

No, pick away! There were certain things that we knew about and couldn't take the time or deal with after the fact, and I'm sure there were other things that I haven't seen, so I'm curious to hear what you saw, George.

I can't believe you can pull something like that off in 48hrs. Now that I feel totally pathetic and inadequate, I'm going to go crawl into bed and not get out for a few days.

But before I do that, congratulations - it was great!

Imran, IMHO, we are very fortunate to have Charles amongst us, have a look at this lot:

http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0660435/

. . . . "I feel totally pathetic and inadequate . . " don't feel that bad.

Charles, thanks for all your support,

Best regards,

Graham

Haha - yeah I've seen his IMDB. Say, we should start a Charles Papert fan club...