Hi everyone please checkout the trailer for the Horror movie called Weekend. I was DP on the movie and I've done the grading and postproduction. I hope you like it. The movie is made in sweden but there's not that much talking so the rest of you can enjoy it to:)

You can download it through the links below. Or you can visit the homepage featured below. The wmw version is better quality(40mb).

Here is the link for Weekend trailer.mov:
http://download.yousendit.com/63F0CCB50882B18B


Here is the link for FINAL_Med ljud i cineform-Filmlook klar (med brus) 071207V2_WM_ARCHIVE_PAL.wmv:
http://download.yousendit.com/DEF216F03B929CC4

Please visit
www.firstdayproduction.se

looks really good. I like the two shots of the girl hiding from the guy. One around the corner and the other behind the tree. Looks suspenseful.

Looks really nice! I don't care for horror, but your film has nice production value, acting, great score, who it the composer?
Can't belive it was done with DVX100!

Thanks for the nice comments guys. The composers name is Samir El Alaoui. He does the music for all our projects and he is a really talented guy.

To Oleg: I have put a lot of effort into making the picture so rich and clean. (An example:To make the material 16:9 I upprez it to 1280x720 and there I sharpen it before I do the finishing in SD) The original material looks worse( in regards to noise and colors)

...That was shot with the DVX-100...Are you freaking kidding me?!

That definitely looked like film. I mean with most footage I see with a 35mm adapter, I can usually still tell it was done with a DV or HD camera. But this...wow, you fooled me.

Please master, oh wise one, teach me your ways.

:) Thank you
We didn't use a 35mm-adapter. I do all my grading i After effects

The pipeline goes like this(all composition are set to 16bit)

Comp1.Colorcorrection in colorfinesse(synthetic aperture) and noisereduction with neatimage) In the same process I also use multiple layers to save highlight information with the help of a higly set luma key. I also do noisereduction in layers(As with the first shot after the text where the clouds and blue sky have a more severe reduction than the detailed grass.(I also added post polarizer) then I render uncompressed.

Comp2. I use instant HD from redgiant software. Render in highest quality to a 1280x720comp. There I add a Mild unsharp mask. Then I render

comp3.I import my hd material into a PAL sized composition (to save space with the final uncompressed version (Will probably save all in Cineform HD instead in the end (some of the uprezzed stuff look truly beautiful. Here I blend multiple layers with different blendingmodes until I hit the right look I'm after) . I also add highdefinition noise (I make the noise in hd and downrezz it to get the feeling of supersampled grain (as is the case when film gets downsized) If you edit in hd you need to go even higher in resolution).

I don't nest comps because nested comps dont scale linearly in time(when it comes to rendering) and there is a bigger chance they will hang due to memoryproblems. It is also cheaper and faster to handle uncompressed files (now I'm not talking realtime playback only in rendering than buying more expensive memory and faster processorn. So the technique I've outlined will suit inpendets with a small budget and computer perfectly.

The blendingmode technique also renders a lot faster than any filmlook software on the market (I've not tested magic bulets interaction with the graphicscard so I can't say if it gets faster I have never gotten it to work even though I tested on a ati radeon 1950pro)


Exactly how I do all these things is my trade secret but here are some hints is use the techique contrastmasking(you can find it on several photoshop sites) in conjunction with overlay/hard light blendingmode which adds contrast and saturation. Then there are some more goodies like emulating blackdiffusion and white diffusion with the help of screen blending mode.
Last but not least are some contrastlayers that I've made specially with the use of colorama.
Then there is also some hard work with cheats to preserve highlights. An easy one is where I use two layers to re-add gihlights after I've added contrast to a scene. I put an unchanged clip(before contrast) under the clip where I add contrast. Then I remove the blownout bits with a lumakey which reveals the intact highlight from the original(of course this only works on highlights that havent been blown out.
If you have blown highlight I recommend the following technique.
1. Lower the whites in levels filter.
2. Tint the highlight
3.add noise to the highlights(which gives the illusion that the camera has registered "something" which is better than a pure white signal.
Another teqnique is to add a fake background or even some diffuse very lite pattern that gives hint of something. If you've move the camera you need to track it so the background doesen't drift.


All of my grading is based on analysing film. How it is saturated, its contrast the grain etc. If you want to emulate film you need to study it. (I'm not saying that it is perfect in any way even though I'm glad I managed to fool or impress Jerrod:)

I hope this helps you a bit on the way to getting the right look to you material.

im still in shock. dvx100? what other aparatus did you have at your disposal. i.e crane, dolly etc

We used dolly, crane and steadycam :)

Hi!

I also want to see this movie! :-)
Sadly the file has expired - maybe you could upload it to to a high-quality video website like vimeo.com?

Regards, Oliver