DV Info Net - My new teaser trailer (edited with Vegas 5)

Hi Glenn,

Glad you liked it!

"The only shot I thought felt a bit odd was the cu shot of him waking up"

Yes, this wasn't the best of shots. I'm probably going to edit quicker on it in the final movie as I'm not too happy with that one.

"1) I really liked the subtle truck moves (ie Park Bench Sceen) used a dolly?"

Yep. We used a Hague tracking dolly with a Manfrotto tripod attached. Worked brilliantly and allows for some very slow and smooth tracks.

"2) Some of the sweeping shots (ie Gun fight in the woods) looks like a stabilizer was used? Is this so- or was it a dolly again?"

Yes. I use a Glidecam 2000 Pro. Basically this movie will probably be my XM1 and Glidecams swansong before I move onto the full size camera and rig.

"3) Liked the aspect- very cinematic. Was it shot with anamorphic adapter or 4:3 and cropped down?"

It was shot using an Optex 16:9 anamorphic adaptor and then cropped down to 2.35:1 using the Vegas crop function. When the footage and project is set to anamorphic within Vegas you will need to create another preset to be able to do this. I can't remember the exact pixel setting offhand, but I used Vegas' 1.85 setting as a basis to be able to make an exact 2.35 crop.

"4) You edited in Vegas but what did you use to encode. I've always wanted to crop my 1:85:1 pan/cropped pieces to be that exact size in WMP (in WMV or MPG1 format) is this possible? Or is the quicktime encoder the only one that allows you to do the crop? Please explain."

This is an odd one as I did it by trial and error. Quicktime seems to allow you to crop to a certain point. Or it maybe that Vegas uses the crop information that the picture is set to and lets you crop down to that point with the Quicktime encoder. I'm not sure. I had to keep adjusting the height of the Quicktime encoding until the borders were clipped off. It took a few goes. Though make sure it's set to square pixel. I used the Sorenson3 codec with the keyframes set to 250.

I'm not sure this kind of cropping can be done with MPEG1. I have yet to experiment much with WMV, but I will probably give it a go as it's a nice codec. I encoded to Quicktime mainly because most PC's have it installed and Mac owners can also view them. The downside being that with Quicktime the files sizes meant we used more than double our allocated monthly bandwidth allowance on the web server in one day!

"5) Filters. You spoke of using MB. Did you use the MB plug-in for Vegas (Magic Bullet Editors)...or the Magic Bullet Suite in conjunction with AE? I really liked the color and filtering used. Definitly added the filmic quality."

I used Magic Bullet Editors. At the moment with limited time I'm just finding it easier to have everything in one filter. I can replicate the looks quite easily without it, but the real power of Editors is it post and pre adjustments which can give drastically different results depending on how they are used and in which order.

"6) What kind of a crew?- What kind of a budget? How many shorts/features have you shot? Was it done for fun, profit, or to enter in festivals?"

We are using a skeleton crew, with a budget that goes up as we go along :-) The movie is made purely for profit. I'm a full time camerman/editor as well as doing fight choreography, and at the moment I really need money (don't we all)! So yeah it's being made purely to appeal to action film junkies. Particularly those who like their action truely Hong Kong flavoured (or rather Sammo Hung flavoured). I've done more shorts than I care to mention, and we just sold our last feature Insiders to be sold in the US via outlets such as Amazon. We made that one a long time ago though and it's nowhere near representative of what we do now.