DeadChannel

Okay, so hopefully I've been here long enough to do this.

Some of you know that I sometimes make short films in my spare time, but I don't think I've ever posted anything I've ever done on this forum.

Thus far, I've shot five shorts, ranging in length from a minute and a half to ten minutes.

I just finished up shooting a four minute piece titled "Final Breath. The film was produced as part of a two week intensive filmmaking course with a local av company called watershed productions.

Along with writing and directing, I had to op camera and deal with lights. While I like the control that being a DoP (director of photography) gives me, I'd like to work with a larger crew on future projects.

That is to say that the crew on this project was criminally skeletal. For the majority of the shoot (two days, about three hours per day), it was just me, my sound recordist Aydin and my actor, Shane Hainessworth. For part of the second day, I had someone come in to hold sheets of cardboard over Shane to help with the day-for-night effects that I was going to do in post. That's a pretty ghetto way to get that effect, but imo it looks pretty decent in the film.

Working with Shane was great. He's the first properly professional actor who I've had on a film, and I think it really shows. He was able to give a really solid performance in my opinion, but he also helped things go faster by being technical. Blocking out movement with him was easy. That's something that was of particular importance on this project, because the performance had to be so physical. I was able to get all of the angles that I needed, and cutting between them was a breeze.

Aydin is not a professional, but he did a good job. For the most part, the audio we got was clear enough to use in the film. Unfortunately, the wind started picking up on the second day, and because our rode ntg2 boom + Zoom H4N recorder combo (courtesy of Watershed Productions and Nelson Selkirk College) didn't come with a deadcat to cut some of that out, a lot of the audio was unusable. Fortunately, my camera is more resistant to the wind, and I was able to pull scratch audio from closeups for some of the shots. In the end, there was enough there to get a pretty decent sound mix, although I'm probably going to have to invest in a proper audio kit of my own, complete with deadcat.

I shot the film on the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera that I got about a year ago, when they were half off. While there are a lot of issues with the pocket cinema camera (crap battery life, no audio meters etc), the ability to capture raw or pro res, plus the stellar dynamic range tends to give the image what is, for my money, a much more filmic, cinematic look than most dslrs that I've used. Plus, I get to say "is that a blackmagic camera in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me" on set. I'd buy that for a dollar.

Attached to the end of the camera was a 28mm vintage contax/yashica lens that I got at a garage sale. It's a nice lens, the image is typically very clear, it's fast enough to shoot a bit of low light stuff, and the bokeh is very aesthetically pleasing. However, 28mm is a little bit too long, considering that the blackmagic has a super 16 size sensor, cropping the image and meaning that the lens is actually functioning similarly to how a 84mm lens would on a full frame camera. This wasn't a huge problem because we shot outside and I could move the camera wherever I wanted, but it can become tough to shoot indoors. I'm increasingly tempted to drop the cash on olympus's $500 17mm f1.8 mft lens, but I'll probably have to go with the cheaper f2.8 one because I'm basically broke at the moment.

Tomorrow, I'm probably going to come back and talk about post production, but for now you can check out the film, as well as some of the stuff I've done in the past on my youtube:


You can also give it a gander over at the watershed productions film camp page, which also has some stuff from some of the other people who took the course:


At a later date, I'll probably post to talk about the two films that I was the DoP on.

Until next time.

Ol’ Qwerty Bastard

That was pretty cool, good work man! Looking forward to hopefully seeing some other stuff.

Frownland

I thought your movie was really well done. A bit simple conceptually (unless you Kubricked up some parts, which I missed), but I really liked the way it was shot. I think it could have really benefited from a soundtrack, it would have made the going a little easier for the audience since it has slow pacing and no dialogue.

I'll be following this journal, I'm always interested in getting insight into members' art.

__________________

Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.

DeadChannel

Glad you both enjoyed it. I actually had intended to do a soundtrack, and even wrote some stuff on my guitar, but the recording wasn't great, and I was having some trouble making it jive in post, so I had to toss it. Definately something I want to do on a future project, though. I've got a camera op tentatively signed on for that project, so hopefully it happens soonish.

DeadChannel

Hey everyone, sorry about how I haven't been updating this journal. I promise that I'll throw some stuff up about post production of Final Breath, as well as the other two films that I crewed on recently. Maybe some stuff about past projects as well. You never know.

Right now, thought, I'd like to announce my next project. I'm planning on doing a short documentary called "Where did the Dead Tapes Go?".

The Dead Tapes are, or rather were, a short lived garage rock duo that I got into last year. Together, they released some of the rawest, hardest hitting garage punk/blues rock/whatever that I've heard in a while. Between bandcamp, youtube, soundcloud etc, they released about enough music for a full length album before they vanished off the face of the earth. Not only did they vanish, they took down all of their social media. For a while, you couldn't find any of their stuff anywhere if you hadn't already downloaded it. They had developed a cult following though, and their music quickly began being shared among the community. However, it seems like Aaron didn't want that to happen, and started sending out copyright warnings to anyone on youtube who posted without permission. This makes me a little concerned about the film, but I think that I'm going ahead with it anyway. Better to ask forgiveness that to ask permission.

You can find a bootleg, with just about all of their tracks, here: https://www.reddit.com/r/thedeadtape...leg_15_tracks/

So, this is a case where there is an interesting story surrounding a band that I am a casual fan of, and no one else seems to be telling it. On top of that, I've been meaning to try to do a doc at some point, and there seems to be a built in fanbase surrounding the group, so why not, right?

I'm in the research phase right now, and I'm trying to get the ball rolling with fans of the duo. I'm also trying to find some of the missing videos, which has proved challenging.

Further updates pending.

Ol’ Qwerty Bastard

Never heard of The Dead Tapes, but I'm excited to see where this goes. I love a good music doc, and the added elements of the mystery surrounding the group makes it even more interesting. Best of luck on your research!

DeadChannel

If you hadn't noticed, I'm putting the doc off for a while. I'm not sure what direction the Dead Tapes story is heading, so I'm gonna wait.

However, I'm about to move into pre-production on a pair of short films that will hopefully move into principal photography in mid December and be out by Christmas. I'm still trying to get some people on board, so we'll see, but the plan is for me to write and direct one, and a friend (probably Aydin Long, sound recordist on Final Breath and director of The Meeting, which I served as DoP on) to direct the other. As soon as that person is ready, I'll talk to Amy at Watershed Productions about gear and casting. We'll see how this goes.

In other news, I'm considering resurrecting Our Feature Presentation because I've been deep into some pretty dope cinema. In particular, exploring contemporary Korean movies and some of the less well known non-Leone staples of the spaghetti western.

You can see Aydin's latest effort here:



I might write a post about doing the photography on this film. Maybe.

Tristan_Geoff

My apologies. This all looks really appealing to me, since I love short student films (anything video in general though) and make some clips myself. But alas, I haven't really found the time to sit and watch all of these. I did see part of one but I forgot the title. It was very well shot whatever it was. I'm really going to make a conscious effort to do it soon though, keep up the good work!

DeadChannel

That's totally cool. If you feel like it, go ahead and give 'em a watch, but nobody's holding a gun to your head.

Tristan_Geoff

Well, I finally got around to watching your channel and I have to say, I'm pretty impressed with where you are at with it in the little time since you started. I especially live the shots you did, pretty nice.

What kind of camera do you use?