The Blackout: Just Wrapped Feature with XLH1
 

We just wrapped our feature film "The Blackout" last week. It was an intense 27 day shoot (6 day weeks) in and around downtown Los Angeles. We shot in loft apartments, dank and dirty basements, rooftops with cranes and finished with stage work in Hollywood.

Wow, what an experience.

We shot with a fully outfitted XLH1. We bypassed HDV tape altogether and tapped into the camera's HD-SDI output and ran the feed directly to a Kona LHe card in a quad-core MacPro running Final Cut Studio 2. We captured everything using ProRes 422 HQ. The capture station was setup and configured by Promax in Irvine and performed flawlessly throughout the entire shoot. We never dropped one frame or crashed once.

From the Kona card we ran a loop-through feed to a Blackmagic HDLink converter which fed the 1080P picture to a 23" Cinema Display with a Vesa mount attached to a c-stand. We setup the HDLink with a custom LUT. Plus we used a modified version of the Disjecta custom camera preset.

We did not use any DoF adapters. We used primarily the Canon 6x HD lens and the 20x lens. Because of the nature of our film (taking place primarily during a power blackout at night) we knew we'd always be pushing the exposure envelope. So keeping the iris fully open and using longer focal lengths when applicable kept our depth of field relatively shallow. Additionally we couldn't really afford to lose an additional 1-1.5 stops with an adapter. Also our shooting schedule was so aggressive we couldn't afford any additional time futzing with back-focus and spinning ground glass.

We did have one critical camera failure half-way through the shoot. The mounting sleeve was accidentally ripped out of the base of the camera. Thanks to our friends at the Canon repair center we had a replacement camera within two hours and were shooting the same morning. Thank you Canon!

All of our behind-the-scenes video was shot with a Canon XH-A1 camera in 60i, HDV, and a custom preset applied. We also used Canon's wide-angle lens adapter, which surprised us to it's picture quality. We shot 30-hours of BTS! All photography was shot with a 5D, 30D and RebelXT (nearly 2000 photos).

So this was a pretty big Canon show. That was not our intention, but it ended up that way. Both XLH1 cameras performed very well. Both exhibited the same strange Viewfinder issues. Canon's replacement camera displayed slightly better low-noise performance than our camera, but both cameras inter-cut flawlessly.

Also, the A1 is a remarkable little gem of a camera. I often found myself using the A1 as a director's finder. It's so small and so light weight that it was very easy to use the flip out LCD, find my shot, show it to the DP and AC and they'd setup the H1 accordingly. And now I'm thinking about picking up an HV20 for this exact purpose.

Frame grabs and BTS photos to follow.

Congratulations Robert, looking forward to seeeing some of the rushes!

Is there any chance you could make this preset available? Thanks!

Sounds awesome. Will you be using Color to grade it?
How did you remove the pulldown to make it 1080p? Or did you mean 1080i?

WHat do you mean by 'strange viewfinder issues"?

Sure. I'll have to pull the preset off the camera when I get a chance. I'll work with Chris to help add it to the master list as well.

Off the top of my head the preset is the same as the Disjecta (Stephen Dempsey) preset with a little more blue added.

Yes, we will definitely be using Color. We've already done some sample grading using Color and we're very happy with the power Color provides. It's a great tool (a dangerous tool).

The 24F HD-SDI stream coming out of the camera is 60i. We're using Cinema Tools to properly remove the pulldown. I've heard that the new Compressor has a good "guesser" and can do batch conversions, but we've been having some problems with Compressor and 10-bit codecs such as ProRes.

There seems to be a short or loose connection somewhere within the viewfinder. Whenever the viewfinder is handled or touched the display suddenly exhibits strange chroma smearing, a complete loss of color information altogether, or a loss of the entire signal. If you tap/thump the viewfinder it corrects itself.

I found it funny that the AC would bring up how nice it will be to have Canon fix the viewfinder after we sent it in and then to find that the viewfinder of the replacement camera exhibited the exact same problems.

Thanks Nick. I was just getting ready to post some images when the producer stopped me. Hopefully we'll get something up soon.

Looking forward to the theatrical release of "The Signal".

Sure it just wasn't the exact same viewfinder? I hadn't heard of this problem.
Working with my partners xlh1, we are using the FU-1000. No color of course, but much sharper and easier to focus. Using a monitor for color checking.

I believe the viewfinder issue is one that I've run into several times. the cable actually works itself out of the port on the camera body. If you fully remove it then slowly push it back in , then feel for the snap of the internal locking ring it usually fixes the issue for some time. The main problem is if you look at an XL2 and H1 side by side you will notice that they have the 90 degree cable coming out and going slightly forward on the XL2, the H1 has the 90 degree going straight up, then turning another 90 degrees back out the front. This produces extra stress on the cable under normal use and works the cable out. causing weird viewfinder issues.

Otherwise congrats on the feature, love your work flow. thanks for adding all the details.

Huh. That's something I'm going to try tonight when I get back home. Thank you for the heads up on that.

I really wanted to upgrade to the FU-1000 (worst product name ever), but that money was better spent on makeup and wardrobe.

Robert,

did you use any filtering? And was a matte box and follow focus used also ?

looking forward to the BTS and some clips....

Congrats !

Also...what kind of budget did you have for the production ?

We used a Chrosziel matte box and follow focus, base plate and iris rods by Birns & Sawyer. No one makes a focus gear for the 6x lens so we bought a gear strap from Zacuto and it seemed to work well.

We used .3 and .6 ND, a polizer for exterior daytime shots, and a black Pro-mist.

Here are some downrez'd JPEG's of some shots from the movie.

Love the screen grabs!
Very nice night-look colour grading :)

I'm curious as a HV20 owner with real 24fps/1080p - what would you say is the ballpark resolution you get with 24F matted to 2.35:1?

I just hope the next generation of Canon prosumer gear features chips at least as good as the HV20 :)

Good times!

I've seen a couple different resolutions. I personally use 1920x816. I've also seen 1920x814.

Great lightning, Robert!
Those screen grabs look very atmospheric!
Is it a thriller or a horror movie?

I've got the first of a couple Teaser Trailers posted on our website. You can watch the embedded Flash version or you can download Quicktime HD versions.

I'm in the middle of a more in-depth Feature Trailer, but it was taking too much time away from editing the feature. Again, this is only a small sampling of the movie itself. Because we're in the middle of finishing a ton of FX shots, some of the more bad-ass stuff can't be cut into any of the trailers yet.

http://www.starwaypictures.com/thebl.../trailers.html

Enjoy!

Rob

Congrats Robert! Looks Great!

Jim Martin
Birns & Sawyer Inc
"At the ArcLight"

Thanks Jim. You guys sold me the camera package!!!

Yes, I remember when young Bobby Sanders came in to get his first camera. But that was a long time ago when I had more hair and the girls still looked at me. He came in full of wonderment and..........

Jim Martin
Birns & Sawyer Inc

Robert,
the image quality is great! I saw it in 720. Amazing shots of the buildings!
One thing, IMHO the gamma(CC), color treatment in various shots
looks like it's from different movies, thus somehow the emotional flow is
diminished...

Regards, Oleg.

wow
 

Robert it looks Fantastic !

Thanks for your thoughts Oleg. I'll take another look at the grade on some of those shots.

Thank you for the kind words, John.

Robert:

What settings did you use in camera to cut down on video noise in the many low light shots?

Or was the low-light look done more in post.

Nice job - very tense and mysterious look.

We took Stephen Dempsey's custom preset (disjecta) and futzed with it a little to our own liking (a little bluer). We didn't use too much noise reduction in-camera. We basically over lit all sets, stopped down in camera, and then dialed down the blacks in post.

At first my DP and gaffer were lighting specifically to the Cinema Display on set. But the Cinema Display had no LUT applied and appeared too bright. So I loaded a custom LUT on the HDLink converter box so that the image appeared 1 to 1.5-stops darker. This basically "fooled" the gaffer/dp into over lighting slightly. Which is fine because I'm basically serving as colorist also.

Got any news or new movie grabs?

Hey Alain - for the time being I don't have much more than the teaser trailer. We just locked the cut and we're handing it off to the composer this week. We're beginning to tackle the 221 visual effects shots now. With a little luck we'll be done in a couple months.

I'm also working on another teaser trailer and a full-length trailer. But I can't guarantee when those will hit. It's tough doing all the post-production work pretty much solo.

Thanks for the info and good luck with the production.

I've just posted a new trailer for our film THE BLACKOUT. It is a more traditional theatrical trailer.

WATCH THE TRAILER HERE

You can also download a 480p and a 720p version.

Looking really good Robert!
Nice to still have the XLH1; it rocks.

Good luck

Carl

That looks really good robert. I'll be excited to see it when it comes out.

Thanks Carl, thanks Nick.

We're in discussions with distributors now. Which is a relief considering that it took a year to get this sucker through post-production. One thing for sure, I'm finding out that bypassing HDV and going straight to hard disk is turning out to be a blessing. I'm finding out that distributors are increasingly weary of accepting projects originated on HDV and will not accept anything on MiniDV. In their opinion (erroneous as it is) HDV is not "true" HD. All we said was, "We shot straight to disk like Fincher did on Zodiac" and they responded, "Fantastic."

I think HD-SDI to IOHD ProRes (or equivalent full raster codec) is the "safest" workflow for smaller 1/3" and 1/2" cameras.

We have tickets available for the premiere at The Landmark in West. L.A. if you're interested in attending.

The trailer looks great, too bad not showing in Moscow, Russia!

Awesome trailer, and great music... is the score in the preview an original piece or stock music?

Most of the music in the trailer is from the library. However, the score for the movie was done by Justin R. Durban. He did an amazing score for the movie.