Some good news might very well be on the way. We’ll know more very soon…
Till then, a great trailer has been made for this feature movie and is now available for viewing. Visit the Antibody Films website or the “Dead Air” website (it’s a very cool site worth visiting on its own merit). You can also view it at this link.
Recently my friend (and director) Clay purchased a Letus35 Extreme for his commercial and music video projects but also for a short film we’re shooting next month. The Letus is an adapter for using 35mm lenses on non-35mm cameras. He brought the adaptor up and a Panasonic HVX200 for a little test and fun. So what did we learn?
Well, for his camera at least, our settings were 73 on the zoom, 50 on the focus, and the iris on the camera is set to wide open, which is approximately ƒ/2. First we wanted to see what the Lensbaby would look like. The movie below is with the Lensbaby and no iris ring (ƒ/2). If you notice the vignette on the left side. That’s the adaptor’s ground glass. We know that we’re seeing it because we didn’t zoom in enough but what we don’t know is why it’s not centered. If we were to zoom in into the ground glass to clear the left edge of the ground glass, we end up with lots of room on the right that would go unused. Research time. The Lensbaby was manipulated by hand.
Here we shot with a Nikon 50mm prime lens. It was at end of the day with the clouds in the sky after a day of rain. We poured water on the ground and shot the falling water at 60 f.p.s., preset the white balance to 3200K, 12dB gain, shutter at 1/250 (35.6° 35mm equivalent*) and the taking lens set at ƒ/1.4.
Letus claims that their lens adapter has a 1/2-stop loss of light and by our estimation, based on how we set up the camera the camera, we rated his camera set-up at 200 E.I.
Conversion formula:
Shutter speed to shutter angle: 24 x 360 / inverse of the video shutter speed = shutter angle equivalent => For example, 1/250 would be: 24 x 360 / 250 = 34.56 shutter angle equivalent
Shutter angle to shutter speed: 24 x 360 / shutter angle = n where , 1/n is the shutter speed equivalent => For example 180° would be: 24 x 360 / 180 = 1/48
FYI, the 24 x 360 = 8640
If you live in Los Angeles or New York City and you have Time Warner Cable, you can watch “The Utopian Society” for the next 30 days on Pay-Per-View. It’s true. The movie is finally getting out there. If you can order it, it’ll go a long way to helping the film. It seems that if enough folks order, it might get a longer play. If you do order it, thanks for watching.
UPDATE: It might be on more cable systems then just Time Warner Cable. Check your cable or satellite provider’s pay-per-view listing and see if “Utopian Society” is being offered in your area.
Update:
Color grading took place at Roush Media in Burbank, CA with colorist Keith Roush. We’re grading the HDCam footage using Apple Color and so far, it’s looking very good. Reference images were pulled from the movies “Shoot ‘em Up” and “Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang” - the later happens to be a film that Corbin appears in. This is my first real world experience with Color and I’m very pleased. (I had done two short film previously with Final Touch, the predecessor of Apple’s Color.) It does primary and secondary color correction, still store, key-framing, power windows, etc. etc. etc. - all the base stuff you’d expect.
So what did we do? Well, mostly we crushed the black levels and brought up the mid-tones giving it a “crisper” look. The saturation on many scenes were brought down and several scenes, namely the outdoor shots, were given a blue/cyan or gold/green look. Since there are many televisions and monitors in the movie, a few “power windows” were needed to balance the monitors with the scene. Other than that, it’s balancing the levels from shot to shot. Keith has done a great job with the coloring of the show. I look forward to the screening when everyone on the crew gets to see it.
The score for the music is also fantastic - it’s little bit California beach music meets 50’s bossa nova. I’ll try to find out who the composer is in the next couple of days.
Posted: 18 January 2008: 4:07PM
The editorial is finished and now it’s time to color grade the film. I’ve got a copy of the film and I’ll be viewing it all weekend long, working out my notes for the coloring session.
We’ll be finishing on HDCam and grading on Final Cut Color. It’ll be my first long form project with this version of the software. (I did a couple of short films that were colored on Silicone Final Touch before Apple bought them and made an acquaintance of mine very well off.) I’ll be playing with the software this weekend as well to better understand what to expect.
Not much to report beyond this except that, yes, Toby and Melissa (opps, and yes, Supercop Jessica) you did make it into the final cut. Nice.
Finally it’s arrived and finished. Truly finished. No more phone calls about needing something to be done on the film. Done. Finito. Tetelestai! Consummatum est! (Don’t believe me, I’m sure there’s more.)
THE UTOPIAN SOCIETY
It’s a hell of a thing to see that big WB logo show up at the start of the DVD. Even after all this time it’s still a fun, well put together and very good looking film for such a small budget and limited time and resources.
Utopian Society tells the tale of six college kids whose path cross to finish a class assignment. Think “Breakfast Club” just not high school and not detention but plenty hijinks, sentiment and discovery just the same.
The excitement of its arrival and viewing was tempered with some disenchantment. While our crew may have been small, it was efficient and busy making the shots look as good as can be given the circumstances. In the commentary track, the director makes a few comments that particular scenes were naturally lit when in fact much work went into lighting those shots and making them look very natural. I understand it comes from both A) it’s been several years since we shot this film and B) a lack of the technical knowledge that went into making those shots possible and look as natural as they do. It would be like someone making the comment that the “the actors were so good that they didn’t need any direction” - a statement that would completely discounts all the time and input the director actually did invest into steering their understanding of their characters. I wish I could have attended the recording but work keep me away.
Regardless it’s a great show and I am happy about the end product. I hope everyone gets to see it (the soundtrack is included with the DVD. Maybe I’ll set up a movie night at my house and we can all enjoy the show (but we’re not listening to the commentary track).
My heart felt thanks to everyone who worked on the film and to all of those who have stuck by it over the years.
In my continued pursuit of photography aimed at shooting food shots for my wife’s upcoming book, I got a new toy to make very sexy shots. It’s a photographing tent made of a shiny, translucent plastic. Very shui. It’s great for any kind of small item, table top work.
It’s similar to a tabletop, seamless photo cube I purchased late last year for photographing a sample of my father-in-law’s tastevin collection. A tastevin is a small, very shallow silver cup or saucer traditionally used by winemakers and sommeliers when judging the maturity and taste of a wine. After cleaning up the images and composing them in Photoshop and Apple Aperture, the final pages were brought into a program called BookMaker and then uploaded to MyPublisher.com. They then printed the book which we gave to my father-in-law as a Christmas present. As nice as the pages look on the computer it’s amazing how great it looks when it’s on the printed page. It’s real, it’s physical, it looks wonderfully professional. All this stuff is especially fun right now that there isn’t much work in town. It helps keep “my technical chops” up to snuff.
I hesitated for a very long time to purchase this software. SunPath is a software that generates a report detailing the time and location of the sun’s path in the sky over a day, week or month. Typically, I’ve used a couple of pieces of software and the internet to do what this software does instantly. Doing the research worked for me and it’s was fun creating these reports even though it was time consuming. But now time is a bit more precious thus the need for the software. I have to say it doesn’t disappoint. The reports are clear, concise and very useful. Everything I would have included.
Here’s a report I printed out as a PDF for an upcoming project.
At long last it’s final being distributed in America. The Utopian Society is being released on January 15 by Warner Home Video. (It’s a feature length movie I shot more years ago than I care to admit.) The movie features Malin Ackerman (The Heartbreak Kid, 27 Dresses) and Austin Nichols (John from Cincinnati, The Day After Tomorrow).
I’ve pre-orded my copy through Amazon (hopefully, I’ll see a free copy come my way very soon after also).
Six days and counting, tic-toc-tic-toc…
New year, new toy. I first heard about the Lensbaby from my then 1st AC Koji about two years ago. After much longing for one, today I finally got my Lensbaby 3G. It’s a lens for shift/tilt “like” photography. It creates a “sweet spot” of focus whose size is determined by various shaped iris rings. Here’s an example from paying with it today.
click to see a larger version
Primarily, I got it for shooting food shots of my wife’s cooking. But then, “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” used a Lensbaby 2 for the opening scenes that was modified by Arriflex - Lensbaby now offers a PL version. (My shows have to get bigger budgets.) A friend of mine has been hoping to shoot with one for at least a year. (His shows need bigger budgets.)
So now I’ve got one. We might have a music video shoot in the next couple of weeks. We’re gonna see if we can use it with a 35mm lens adaptor (like the Redrock Micro). Let’s hope it all works out. More to follow.
Here’s another pict from today’s play.
A few more from day to of learn by doing…
: : A butterfly at death’s door.
: : Portrait of my friend, Justin. A lucky grab during a production planning meeting.
(So far one of my favorite portraits.)
I’m getting more used to it - learn by doing. I’m finding, as other have, that ƒ/5.6 very nice working stop for the focal length of the lens. The last three photos are all using the ƒ/5.6 ring.
Well it’s year number five of this blog. Where does the time go?! To all my friends and family, I bid you a joyous and prosperous new year.
Despite all gloom and doom in the headlines, I have to say that I’m hopeful and excited for the new year. (Come back in a week and see if I’m still optimistic.)
“An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves.” ~ Bill Vaughn