"Contracts" wrapped ... Next up, "Work Release" ~ Feature Film

Contracts has come and gone - a truly wonderful filming experience. The footage is luscious, and the producers and director are happy.

The success of that picture has driven my continued pursuit of feature projects ... and now my writing partner and I have completed the first draft and business plan for the new film "Work Release" - a gritty Bronx story of street lord drug gangstas, crooked cops, family, love, murder, and betrayal.

The script is pretty wicked and we've got some pretty awesome stars lined up for this flick - talent you've seen before, but never like this! Shooting begins January 23rd and continues through the 13th of February in NYC. RED MX all the way, with the possibility of some super 16mm on Kodak 7222 stock with an Aaton XTR Prod - very exciting image nerdery on deck - Super 16 super speeds on this setup.

Check back for more updates as we close in on production - you WON'T be disappointed! We have a behind the scenes crew working through pre production documenting the filmmaking process, so count on some pretty in-depth stuff.

And it begins - Filming "Contracts"

I have the good fortune to know some amazing folks in New York and through one of them, I am now starting work on the feature film "Social Contract" penned by Christina AlPastore, Produced by Mikkel Kastberg, and Directed by Roni Ezra. It is being shot on the new RED MX chip recently inserted into my camera, and gives me high hopes as the cinematographer to work with such a keen bunch of folks. Oh and the cast is beautiful too!

We will be shooting mostly with Zeiss Super Speeds (after a test, I was surprised to see how much I liked them on the new MX chip - didn't like them on the old RED One Mysterium chip). Mostly long lens work, a considerable amount of hand held, and some very long nights. I need to find some LEDs to work with...

Most interesting things...

July whizzed by - and now August is doing the same - a traditionally barren time in production in NYC has been untraditionally productive for Red Razor Films so far. An industrial piece for a major Carlyle Group cog, an award winning spec commercial, Smoke on MAC work, color grading and retouching commercials and a short film, a show opening for a new series on the cooking channel, editing a national commercial - and plenty of writing -

but the most interesting things to the visual nerdist in me - EPIC is cracking the door and rays of holy RED sunshine are gushing forth - and Scarlet is close behind. Nuke has added support for the Mysterium X and new color science, Davinci is almost here with their software only version, and things are getting interesting-er. The Foundry's Storm is on the way, Stu Maschwitz has released Colorista 2 for CS5 (Fast and very nice!), and workflows are catching up to the need for RED Speed.

I have dreamt of these moments in some distant past - when holding my old Eclair ACL or Canon XL1 - hoping to some day have tools that matched my dreams in their capabilities - and now, I have to have dreams that step up to my tools! From DSLRs up to RED - the world is a very exciting place for making motion pictures everywhere.

Now I just need a really solid storyboard artist to help me crank through all these pitches and I'm golden!

Abandoning Exposure Room for Vimeo

Well, that does it. Final nail in the coffin for Exposureroom.

Nothing worse than sending a client to a link - a dead link that was fine a few days ago - especially with a client that had every intention of funding a feature film a friend wrote. That deal just walked off the table - and I have only Exposure Room to blame. Very embarrassing! SO now, Vimeo is the only video server we will be using. I can't begin to express the level of my irritation with Exposure Room's service.

stills from "Eat Me!"

"Eat Me" wraps!

We shot 36 set ups over 14 hours the last day - stunts, Michael Bay knock off shots, and rain - all wrapped up in Zombie makeup and a semi fascist new American sub culture determined to take the country back ... from the undead. Long days, but a great crew and some AMAZING shots (I promise you, you will be slack jawed once Rocco gets this thing chopped).

I shot mostly on Zeiss lenses the second weekend as I needed the glass to match across many lens changes. The 100 macro is a new favorite and a must have piece of glass for a RED owner with a Nikon mount, I promise you. It excels at macro work, and is a reliable workhorse as a portraiture lens as well.

lighting was mostly kinos and 250W practicals being swapped out where possible. I will post more here as we move through the edit, grade, and final comps for VFX. NOTE - Zombie makeup was all done in camera - and it is simply stunning and outlandishly creepy. Susie Prisk made the Zombies up in her witches brew of latex, cotton, and sundry other parts. Excellent work Susie!

Zombies!

Work began this weekend on "Eat Me" - a post apocalypse short zombie thriller shooting on RED with Rocco Nisivoccia Directing - and New Jersey stands in for somewhere in NY. After two days so far, the film is extremely fun to shoot, and the crew is a very dedicated bunch of lovable lunatics. Next weekend should be a great time.

As for lighting, I am mostly relying on a small kino set and a small selection of tungsten lights ranging from 300 - 2K - mostly fresnels.

Lenses range from 15mm nikkor to 70 - 200 Nikkor - with most footage on the 50mm Nikkor.

Sneakers & Soul: Official Trailer

I graded this feature film last summer - it was shot on a P2 camera with a Letus35 adapter. It was a bit of a challenge to work against the noisy blue channel in color at the time, especially for the night scenes. The additional challenge of balancing tones across two vastly different values (one very pale, and the other very dark) was no small task.

We went back and forth a few times trying to get everything just right - but in the end, I think the picture speaks for itself. Sneakers and Soul is playing in festivals now.

This is an example of one of the node graphs I had to use to "fix" the blue channel and bring the luminance back to the image. It splits each of the channels out into its own branch where each channel is adjusted as needed, and then they are recombined with most of the information for the blue channel coming being borrowed from the green in a 3:2:1 mix of Green Red & Blue. These are then blended as needed, then split out into chroma and luma channels where the luma is advanced separately from the chroma and the chroma is processed through a denoise and sharpening combo. Voila - a vastly improved image.

Black and White from RED all over

I had a conversation with someone about how to make RED footage look like a Black And White film derived from actual film - though I haven't really added any grain - I think it comes in pretty close. I added a small grain structure from a Kodak 5218 scan, but I don't think it fits that Kodak 7266 or Kodak 7265 look. Gotta find a good BW film grain scan based on a 16mm stock.

The above was taken in to Nuke, graded, grained, and then processed with a Truelight LUT for Kodak 2302, all working in a 2.2 Gamma against an sRGB monitor LUT.

Verdict? I think it is passable as B&W footage - it has the peculiar flaw of film in many ways, although I suspect the blacks on a film would be a bit more fogged and less exact. That might be changed by doing a less contrasty pass in RedcineX and then bringing it in to Nuke. It isn't going to fool the discerning eye, but it might please an audience looking for that sort of feeling in a flick.

I think my favorite B&W scene from any movie recently has to be the opening sequence from Casino Royale. Very slick, but heavily processed. Anyone know if that was done with a color stock or an actual B&W stock?

Can't wait for The Foundry to get around to including the RED Gamma/Color and FLUT in Nuke. Its surprising that it has been available from RED for some time and The Foundry haven't included it in over several update cycles.

Please no comments on the shooting - I know its wretched, but it was a "just for fun" project and meant to showcase actors and their acting, not the camerawork.

Nikkor 50mm 1.2 on RED One

RED One w/ 50mm Nikkor f1.2 @2.8 with .9 ND & Hot Mirror - quick grade in Redcine-X, original export as Tiff, then to Photoshop CS5 for PNG - original resolution is 4460 X 1980 (RED 4.5K) with Redcode 36. Very happy with the footage - the lens resolves nicely across the entirety of the 4.5K field of the RED Sensor - the only real challenge with this glass is focus - it is so slight of a difference in physical feel between tack sharp in focus and muddy not even close focus at a 2.8 that I couldn't really burden an AC with trying to pull focus without first having them sign a sanity waiver - plus (as with all Nikon lenses) - they rotate the wrong way - so every focus pull takes twice as long to develop a sense for. Grr. Wish someone would get into the business of rehousing these lenses for cine ALL THE WAY - and charge a fair price for it - and attach an anamorphic front while they are at it! Now that wouldn't suck! - Nikkors with an anamorphic 2:1 front? Holy cow!

Actress is Emanuela Galliussi - Italian actress friend of mine that recently moved here from Rome. Check her out here:

http://www.emanuelagalliussi.com/

& here:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1795599/

Glass attack!!! Nikkors on the RED

Finding the right glass for the RED camera is no easy task. To me, the Red Pro Primes just make things too sharp - skin seems to lose the buttery appeal of film and take on a frightful appearance - great for horror - not so much for fashion and beauty work. I had been using the Nikon mount Zeiss glass, but the set I had went to LA with its owner - so now adversity is forcing a revisiting of what I had already settled on. Since my RED is blessed with a Nikon as well as a PL mount (10 minutes and a dust free environment to swap) - I have a pretty amazing wealth of glass to choose from.

I dove in to the Nikkors and have found that a few are absolutely stunning - and possessed of a character that is unlike anything from Zeiss, Canon, or anything else - except maybe the Summilux-super-expensive-sell-my-gold-toilet-seat-to-buy-these-things lenses from Leica (don't get me wrong, well worth the scratch, but its scratch that must go elsewhere for the time being).

The Nikkor 50mm 1.2 is my current favorite - so much so that I went out and bought one at my local Hasidic camera superstore and promptly "de-clicked" it. Smooth iris, incredible character, flares to die for, and an unmistakable clarity of quality - yet without the weird "hyper resolution" of the Red Pro Primes.

Also in the bag currently are the Tokina 11-16mm - though this sucker currently needs a modification by Duclos lenses in order to be truly useful as the iris is not manually controlled ... yet. At wide-open-and-hoping' f2.8, it is an incredible piece of glass - I can't wait to shoot it in the sweet spot at 4-5.6!

The current lineup of Nikkor Glass in the Red Razor arsenal is the sweet sweet 80-200mm ED 2.8, the 17-35 2.8 Nikkor, the 15mm Nikkor (THIS LENS IS CRAZY!!!!!) and the 35mm 2.0 & 50 1.4 Zeiss Nikon lenses.

There is a set of Russian Anamorphics on their way - 35, 50, 75, 100 - all fast, all wide, and all heavy as a fat baby made of lead.

Red Razor in action at Pier 59

Top secret - hush hush - but I can tell you it has been awesome working with Pier 59 staff, Brent from B2Pro and "Ken" on a wondrous new concept for iPads and fashion brands! Wish I could reveal - but the world will know soon enough. Lots of RED MX, color grading and finishing. PS - NOT a fan of the RED Rocket - at least not in the slipshod configuration such as we have.

BEAUTIFUL work by the way - Alex Disuvaro as DP - really knows his light, and Patrick Stroub gaffing gets it done. Can't wait to see it in the wild!