Robert,

I'm totally impressed with the trailer on your site. I'm awaiting my XL H1a which comes in on the 23rd and can only hope to some day create something that awsome looking.

The lighting created an intense feel. I shoot with an XH A1 now and had no idea it could produce that clean of an image at low light.

Garrett

And it looks amazing projected 2.35:1 on a theater screen! ;)

Garrett, keep in mind that I believe Mr. Sanders used a workflow that incorporated the data stream out of the HD-SDI connected to the HD-SDI input port of a capture card and recorded near uncompressed to a computer hard-drive or raid array. That being said, the well lit HDV out of the H1a and A1 can look pretty darn good in many situations.

Yeah, that was one of the things I wrestled with in getting the H1a, but after long analysis I figured I would not be lugging a computer or deck that could take an HD-SDI feed. I've gotten some pretty good results with my A1 in low light but seeing what Robert was able to capture just shows how good the CCD's in the XL/XH series Canons are.

Garrett

Question for Robert
 

Robert,

Can you tell us a little about sales of the picture? Domestic? International? I'm sure everyone who supports you on this board wants to know how the picture fared in the marketplace, given how difficult the current climate is for independent movies.

Can you tell us with what territories you have sold or got distribution deals? And what problems you have encountered?

Best wishes to you and your cast and crew.

Harry

We're in the final leg of a worldwide rights deal with a reputable distributor. So we haven't had to resort to selling the film territory by territory even though we were fully prepared to do so.

I have, however, been hearing two schools of thought regarding DVD sales. The distributor I'm doing business with is actually quite excited about the future. As far as he's concerned DVD sales/rentals goes up and theatrical box office takes the biggest hit. However, I've heard from a separate international distributor that DVD licensing deals for independents in many European countries has dried up.

Because our film is a science-fiction/disaster film (Cloverfield type) we're being told our market sub-genre is currently under served and is expected to do well. I have definitely heard that independent dramas, comedies with no names, holiday themed, and romance pictures with no names is dead, dead, dead. Certain types of creature features and traditional slashers are not doing very well either. Buyers ARE paying attention to the Friday the 13th reboot, though. If that does well it might be a good time to sell a similar film.

Another thing we've learned is that if you plan on producing an independent film with no names (or barely recognizable names) is that you shouldn't let your budget exceed $500K or you risk not earning it back. If you have a couple decent names then you want to limit your budget to $1M to $1.5M.

Sci-Fi Channel, Showtime, Pay-per-View, and closed circuit hotel chains are still pretty good areas to earn some coin. You WILL NOT get rich on any of these cablers. But they are still buying content. However, they all want names in the cast. If you don't have any names then your execution and production values need to be really high.

Here's my last little piece of wisdom I've learned through the course of making this picture: make sure you have some fees for yourself in the budget. I know it's tempting to forgo fees or to defer all of them in order to help get the picture made. Don't. Get your fees once you're funded. If you don't then it may take a very long time before any deferrals kick in. In other words, if you think you're going to make some fat cash when the film gets sold, you're not. In todays market it will take a year or two before you see all your residuals trickle in. Bottom line: the only way to earn a living making independent films is via your fees. It is NOT on the back-end. Not right now, anyway. So do yourself a favor and pay yourself first (especially considering you're the one doing all the work, getting the ulcers, pulling your hair out over all the legal details and contracts).

Thats a great film Robert, I saw it at Birns & Sawyers a few months ago....keep up the good work!
SW

Awesome Robert. Finished post on our 84 min SCI-FI / Horror feature called "Bio-Dead" a month ago. We haven't officially sought distribution yet (yet two reps have contacted us via AFM). Can you PM me with advice on agents reps? Did you rep the film yourself?
Thanks,
-C

Hey Robert,

Didn't you mention that it was actually projected in 4K? If so, what was the process? Did you upres the material yourself, or was it all done by some hardware system? Also, did you screen from HDCAM, HDV, computer QT/WMV, or even Blu-ray?

Just curious, and congratulations on all your success so far.

Barlow

We encoded the film to a DCP package using the QuVis Wraptor software plugin for Compressor. There were several bugs we needed to resolve. The Sony servers required different file extensions. So we had to manually convert the file extensions and then we had to edit the Assetmap file to reflect those extensions. Otherwise the Sony server wouldn't properly load the package.

The movie needed to be pre-prepped for the QuVis software. The software is limited to 2K. So for a 2K "Scope" presentation we had to scale the film to 2048x858, which is a 7% scale increase. Once loaded onto the Sony server the projector scales the 2K footage to 4K on the fly. Plus the six channels of audio needed to be properly ordered (L R C LFE Ls Rs). I learned that in a theater auditorium the surround channels needed to be about 3db louder and the overall mix needed to be "brightened" to compensate for horn loaded tweeters.

I was really worried about how all this image manipulation would have on the movie. But man it looked GOOOOOD. I was floored. The black levels were spot on perfect. The color rendition was perfect too. The movie looked sharp. The noise looked natural and film like. The HDV footage that was mixed in looked really good. I'm almost pissed off I went through all that trouble to shoot the film straight to disk, that's how good the HDV footage looked. Of course, it was properly exposed daylight footage. But nonetheless, there was no macroblocking present.

So...the big lesson learned is that 1080p is "good enough" for theatrical presentation. I'm not sure how well it will scan out to 35mm. I've never tested it (particularly anamorphic scope). But for digital projection 1080p scaled to 2k looks great. Don't get sucked into the "4K is the only way" hype. Yes, 4K is amazing. Yes, James Bond was jaw dropping in 4k. Yes, 4K RED footage projected in 4K is amazing. But 1080p looks goddamned good too! LOL!

Love the trailer for your film Robert. Just finishing off editing of a picture I recently directed, though it doesn't look as slick as yours.

I was considering going tapeless for my next feature, though it's obviously more inconvenient to lug around the extra hardware.

Do you definitely reckon recording to hard disk makes little difference when compared with miniDV footage?

Could you possibly tell me what editor system you are using? I'm using Avid Xpress Pro HD at the moment with its built in HDV codec and shooting in 1080 25P (PAL) on my XHA1.

Thank you for the kind words.

At the end of the day, if someone tells you that HDV is rubbish and is not a proper "acquisition" codec they're wrong. The HDV footage we shot cut relatively seamlessly into our ProRes footage. However, if you're going to be flirting with under-exposure or very dark scenes then I believe the ProRes footage wins out. The grain/noise is more defined and film like. There is no macro-blocking compression artifacts.

Shooting 90% of the movie in ProRes did give me a lot of peace-of-mind knowing that it's full-raster 1920x1080 10-bit. But shooting HDV sure is a helluva lot more convenient.

I cut the film on Final Cut Pro and mastered it entirely in ProRes.

Thanks for the info Robert.

Think I'll stick with miniDV for now.

Is ProRes an alternative codec to HDV? How does it differ?

I'm using the Avid DNxHD codec at the moment.

ProRes is Apple's answer to DNxHD. They're almost identical codecs and are both DCT compressors (similar to JPEG).

Basically we bypassed HDV altogether and went HD-SDI out of the H1 and into a Kona card. Rather than lug around a RAID we opted to go compressed via ProRes so we could use SATA drives. Brilliant solution, if you ask me.

I understand now. Thanks Robert. Wouldn't fancy dragging a RAID round myself either, I think you'd need a golf buggy to carry a big one!

Hey Robert,

I hadn't checked into your site for awhile, that Blackout trailer looks freaking fantastic. Thanks for generously sharing your experiences. I've been following along since Day11.

Very interesting to hear your take on budgets and distribution. Especially where talent names are concerned. Sadly, I think that it may be easier to sell a piece of crap with recognizable faces, than something far greater with no names.

Keep up the great work. I think this work will catch you a lot of attention that will lead to bigger and better things.

Wait- What?! Hold on, I thought SATA wasn't fast enough for Pro-Res HQ. Were these drives a software RAID in your Apple Box? Also, If you are capturing dallies using a Kona board, doesn't that mean the best it can do is 23.98 over 60i HD-SDI? Didn't you still have to de-interlace via AE or Compressor to create your HD-CAM Master (ie remove pulldown from the Kona's card)?

Also, just so I get a ballpark - how many TB are we talking here - over 3TB for your raw footage? Did you offload / mirror this data?
Were you able to use a 500 ft HD-SDI cable so your capture box didn't have to move much?
Did you use a laptop controller over RJ-45 (ethernet) or just plugin keyboard and mouse / monitor.
Lastly, how did you monitor - going out of the Kona's component?

Thanks Robert - your wisdom on these issues will save me time on the next one. I was considering DNxHD but if it means no RAID - I'll go ProRes instead. Although, the Avid can record true 23.98 on injest.

-C

SATA is definitely fast enough for ProRes HQ. No software RAID at all. Which was very nice and much cheaper. We never dropped a frame. Ever. Not even during editing or mastering.

Yes, the Kona card captured the 23.98 over 60i. And yes all the footage had to be reverse telecined via Cinema Tools (that was the hardest part). We did this to all of our footage before we started editing. That way our edit timelines were 23.98 and our subsequent mastering was also 23.98. However, you can do batches in Compressor.

We shot about 2.5TB of raw footage. Our edit system has about 7TB. We backup all shot footage to internal SATA drives (cheaper) using a hard drive enclosure and then had those drives put in a bank vault.

Our longest HD-SDI cable was 80 feet I think. Maybe 100.

We had a digital capture guy/gal run the FCP station which was a wheeled cart. He would listen for "roll camera" and basically hit "capture" on FCP. Then they'd open the clip and control playback for us. FCP would send the HD-SDI signal back to a HDLink box hooked up to a 23" Cinema Display. Worked wonderfully.

I know the G1 adds pulldown flags to the stream. I don't know if the H1S adds flags to the stream. I've heard it doesn't, but does include audio now and is 10-bit. And those flags are the only real missing component of making a H1/ProRes/IO-HD or Kona solution perfect.

I wondering if this is the same movie available on netflix?

Netflix Online Movie Rentals - Rent DVDs, Classic Films to DVD New Releases

I don't believe it it. The movie on Netflix is Blackout. The movie in this thread is The Blackout.

Zip-tie to the Rescue / Adapter Holder
 

I read elsewhere on this forum that a loose viewfinder cable on an FU-1000 caused it to go (and I quote!) "poof!" That morning, a wrapped my FU-1000's cable to the handle with a Zip-tie.

And here's something I learned the hard way: I broke not one, but TWO, shoulder pads while mounting the Canon "Adapter Holder." The threaded sleeves at the top/rear of the shoulder pad, into which you insert two screws to mount the Adapter Holder, are not held in place by much more than thin coatings of plastic. I mightily overtorqued the first one, and that caused the insert to spin and crack the surrounding plastic. Got it repaired at Canon: $292.00. I carefully torqued the replacement, using a thin lock washer as a torque gauge. Guess what? Broke that one, too! ANOTHER $292.00 repair bill!

Anyone else have this happen, or am I just a gorilla? This sure wouldn't have happened on my old Sony DSR-570!

Unfortunately, no. That's not my movie.

"The Blackout" will be available internationally and Canada very shortly. U.S. domestic and broadcast is being negotiated right now. Looking at attending Fantastic Fest this year.

The AC on our film over torqued the tripod screw and the sleeve ripped right out of the base of the camera. Because the camera frame is titanium it couldn't be reseated and the whole frame needed to be replaced. $895.

"The Blackout" will be screened at Cannes on Thursday, May 14th at 5:30pm and on Sunday, May 17th at 1:30pm (both screenings in the Gray 4 screening room). Contact Michael Paszt at Cinemavault Releasing for more information at the Cannes Booth Riviera G5/H8 +33 (0)4 92 99 32 15.

WOW!

Congrats Robert.

Thanks John. It was a massive effort. But we got through it.

Wow! CONGRATS!
Distro will be assured.
BTW - we just sold Bio-Dead. Thanks for your insights earlier.

-C

All International rights, including Canada, have been sold to Cinemavault Releasing. We're hoping to nab a U.S. distributor there. Fingers crossed. Sony is hovering.

Very exciting.