Coulrophobia - a 48 hour film (San Jose)
 

Finally got our most recent 48 hour film entry posted:

Coulrophobia on Vimeo

Genre: Surprise Ending
Prop: Piece from a board game
Line of Dialogue: "Tell me again why this matters?"
Character: Zack or Zelda Alexander, Exterminator

The shoot for this was pretty minimalist and run & gun. 5D, 24-105mm lens, existing lighting plus fill from a Comer 1800 and induro's smallest carbon fiber monopod (couple of tripod shots too but not many). I'm really liking the monopod, still figuring out the best way to use it in some situations but I basically didn't take it off the camera all day. For all handheld & running shots I just shortened it up enough so that it didn't hit the ground and then used it like a poor man's steadicam.

Shoot ran late, and we had some technical issues with syncing the sound, so we started the edit late too and ran out of time to color correct - other than one or two shots this is all straight out of the camera.

Very nice! That's one of the strongest 48 hour films that I've seen. There's a lot to be said for keeping it simple (one zoom, monopod, natural light...) and just plain getting it done.

Thanks! I don't think we could have done this one any other way - as it was we didn't wrap the final shot until 2am sunday morning, and we got it in with 7 minutes to spare.

Our post workflow wasn't too efficient though - we converted clips throughout the day but didn't start syncing or editing until the shoot was done. Next time around I plan to try and coordinate things better so that by the time I sit down for the edit it's already synced and roughed out. I feel like on the last couple projects we've done (we did another one a week before this one) a few more hours for color correction and careful sound mixing would have made a significant improvement.

Evan.... Super job.... that one should hold up well in the competition. Held my attention throughout.

That was great! "Best use of prop", for sure. The main actors bright blue shirt in the dark of the parking garage was really striking.

There was one scene early on where the tripod was visible in the reflection of the glass door. My recent 48-hour practice film had a similar problem -- you can see the entire crew reflected in the sunglasses of the actresses!

I have a heavier monopod, the Bogen 557, that I use as a steadicam replacement, too. It is sufficiently massive that it provide a good bit of dampening. And since it has the same quick-release plate as my tripod, it makes for very quick setup changes.

Nicely done! Must have been quite a rush to get everything done on time. Really forces you to be efficient in your workflow. Looks like you got quite a bit accomplished which means you're well 'dialed in'. The story was well put together and held my attention till the surprise ending. Thanks for sharing.

We just found out we won best editing! Funny because we also won best editing for the film we did the week before (not online yet) - so I guess we've got that part down. We've won a lot of these category awards over the past couple years (11 films total) but have yet to take the overall award, so now it's time to look at our workflow and try to figure out a way to bring everything together in a single project.... time for a training montage in which we go into the wilderness and run in the snow, do pull ups in a barn, and do curls with the 5D and 70-200mm IS in a full redrock rig.