Hi everybody,

we’ve just finished our first short movie using a homemade MINI35 kit (based around a Nikon F-2 and a Canon XM-2/GL-2). It’s freely inspired by the movie Fight Club (but it’s not the point of the movie at all). Our budget was about 400$, mostly spent on food and tapes. A lot was done in post, color-correction, stabilizing, degraining,… We hope you’ll like it. If you have any question, please just ask, we’ve a lot of “making-of” pictures if you’re interested. A last thing, it’s in french, excuse the quite crappy subtitles, if you have any correction, please tell us, thank you very much.

Stills: http://www.originalversion.net/temp/marla.jpg

Movie (Quicktime 6): http://www.originalversion.net/temp/marla.mov (51.9 MB!)
(right click + save as to download)



Olivier & Sebastien

Another State of Mind,
www.anotherstateofmind.be

No problem. FYI, this page explains the linking method:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/misc.php?s=&action=bbcode

The stills look great, but the I keep getting the message "file does not exist" when trying to download the movie.

I haven't had a chance to watch the whole thing yet, but jumping jehosephat, you've got a great look to all the footage!

Your server is very slow though, it seems. The download took forever.

Do you want to post a how-to on how you built your Mini35, did the post and what lenses you used for the shoot?

regarding how to build an homemade mini35, look at this (long) thread:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=18950

Yes, that is a great thread - just wasn't sure if he did anything different from the standard way of doing things.

thanks for the link

THe files are gone!

:(

No, the server is very unstable. I just downloaded it with a special
download manager and it had to reconnect something like 1000
times before the file was completely in. The problem with right-
clicking and saving is that it stops if the connection is broken and
you can start all over again. Intelligent download managers just
wait till the file is available again and resume from were they left
off (much better).

Besides being unstable it is also a very slow link.

would love to see it, can this me fixed????

great flick. it held my attention the whole way through........... it would be great if you could show us the homemade mini35.
still waiting for parts on my aldu35

New links:

Stills: http://www.anotherstateofmind.be/temp/marla.jpg

Movie: http://www.anotherstateofmind.be/temp/marla.mov

Great job. I liked the tone. Definately saw the nods to shots and scenes found in Fight Club and sensed a little bit of a Amelie influence as well. Two of my favorite films. Technically speaking the hot spot, in my opinion, actually usually added to the feel in this particular film. I noticed that you were able to get rid of the "problem" when you showed the commercial montage. Also a very good choice. Technically what did you change with your adapter setup to remove the hot spot problem? Please share with us the breakdown order of the componets in your adapter. Thanks again for posting. Wouldnt mind seeing some more frame grabs but this time at 720X480 high res. jpg's.

-B

sorry again, both servers should work but it seems there are too many connections at the same time, so please be patient

Olivier

you might care to run your footage through vignette plugin

http://www.theimagingfactory.com/data/pages/products/products1.htm#vgt

it works inside after effects and may remove the mild vignetting from your footage

Just finished watching it. How engaging! I definitely enjoyed your unique style of story progression that was both original while at the same time staying true to the feel of Fight Club.

Very well done. My only complaint was that I wanted more!

Fantastic. I'm in love with this girl.

The minor problem I had was with her audio in the room with the bald fellow. It was a bit hollow.

Otherwise, superb. Simply superb visuals.

On the vingetting, I don't think that is actually a problem. I think it has a nice quality to it.

I had no problem with the subtitles as I was concentrating more on the girl, to tell you the truth.

For those interested, I just put up a revised summary of building one of these adapers for the GL1 (http://ideaspora.net/aldu35/).

- jim

Hey Jim!

I have stopped to read the homemade mini35 thread some times ago because I thought that it would be too difficult to build one for my XL1. At this time, you guys built motorized "Angus35".

What is the trick with this "non-moving" ground glass?

I finally got the movie downloaded and must say it was worth the wait. Not only was it produced well, but you did a great job with the 35mm adaptor... I'm suprised at how presentable the adaptor looks. I've been participating in the static adaptor posts for months now, but have given up lately due to the complications. Your movie certainly re-grabbed my attention.

I didn't really get much of the storyline because I was so caught up in the video that I didn't read the subtitles. Great editing, very nice color and composition. I especially liked the commercials. So much, in fact, that if it weren't for the vignetting, I would be convinced that the commercials were taped off television. I agree that normally vignetting looks bad, but with Marla it added a unique style, almost character, to the film.

If you don't mind, I have questions about your adaptor.
Did you go all the way down to 3 micron for your ground glass? The Quicktime movie has a little grainy look to it, but that just adds to the overall feel of the movie. How does it look on a full sized television monitor?
Obviously, you had to deal with an inverted/reverted image. Did you use the camera's lcd or get an extra one and just rotate it 180?

Like Brett, I'd love to see some full sized still shots from the movie.

Very impressive.

How did you deal with the reversed and inverted image on set?

Hi everybody,

first thank you all for the nice comments and critics, we've really appreciated that, even more because of the lack of answers on french forums (I won't give names but... :-).

So, here's how we done it. Some time ago, we did find a post on the Hackermovies.com forums (great site and forum, unfortunately only in german) about homemade MINI35. Basicaly, they did simply shoot the ground glass of some 6x7 camera. We thought we could do the same by using an old Nikon F-2. So we did; we did remove the viewfinder to shoot directly the focusing screen. By doing so, the image is only inverted horizontaly, it's a lot easier but we had a hard time finding a plain focusing screen (Nikon D f.s.). The one we did find was quite dirty, small black stains at the border,... this is why our picture is not that clean. Later on, we read on DVInfo about the aldu35/angus35 homemade MINI35 but, we have to admit, we're not technician enough to try it :-) We gave up right after reading the long post. On the Canon XM-2, we used a +4 macro adapter and that's all, as you'll see on the picture, the black paper is only there to avoid dust and light to go on to the focusing screen.

We had to optics (had because they died during the shoot, too much focus pulling probably :-) A Nikon AI 35mm-2.0 and a Nikon AI 105mm-2.5. To fill the gaps between these two lenses and to get some nice wide-angle, we did use a Canon 0.7x wideangle adapter on both optics, using adapter rings.

We had some hotspot problems, for sure, probably because of the cheap macro adapter and the wideangle adapter, but we do like it, we did even push it sometimes to get a bit of retro/lomo look.

We did shoot with some el'cheapo lights, two 500watts and one 150watts, plus some 50w and 60w mixing colors,... We did mess up the white balance too to give the interiors a colder look and the exteriors a warmer feel.

We used a cheap AV radio emitter to be able to frame using a 14" TV and a ironing table as a tripod because we had nothing else to place this camera on. Mic was a cheap Sony mic, originally used for Mini-Disc recordings, and our boompole was the stick of a brush :-)

And then, much was done in post (but NO Cinelook Plugins used)

Here are some pictures:
http://www.originalversion.net/temp/makingof01.jpg


Olivier & Sebastien
www.anotherstateofmind.be

Nice job Oliver....The movie has a great look !!!!!

Congratulations...

FP

what a great effort . I hope that our work on the aldu35 will
reduce the size . but your camera should go to a film museum
it is a work of art

Awesome approach to the camera design!!!!
Keep up the good work, vid was spectacular....

There's only one word to describe this movie: GREAT! Plus, it is in french!!!

I'm in love with this girl too! keith, we will have hard time! :)

BUT...

She smokes too much. You surely threw your 400 euros in the cigarettes!

Great work!

"Great" is not enough! This is AWESOME! SUPERB! BRILLIANT! FANTASTIC!

Excellent story, actors, editing and music choice. Superb picture quality! The only thing I believe you could improve is the accoustics from the cop's office.

This is the best short I've seen in a very long time. As a Belgian from Brussels too, I'd be glad to meet you guys one day, for we seem to share the same passion: I am currently producing and working on several short-movie scripts (kind of a new-original concept, remotly based on "SOS Bonheur" if you know that "BD") and our crew should be starting to shoot within 3-4 months. We already have 3 scripts and did already compose some of the music we're gonna use... And furthermore, we also are willing to make one of these homemade Mini35...

BTW, did you graduate from INSAS or IAD? For you really seem to be skilled like professionals...

May I send you a couple of questions by email (in French :)?

Congratulations again!


Cheers,


Emmanuel

Again, thank you so much for the nice comments, man this makes us wanting to work even more now !! :-)

We are a small small production company in Brussels, in fact, we're just two guys surrounded by a lot of amazing friends. We are both autodidact, we started this company about a year ago and have quite different background. We have really really small budgets, actually, we only have a XM-2 as camera and we struggle hard to find work, so we're like semi-professionals with hobbyist budgets :-)

Emmanuel, if you want to contact us by e-mail, don't hesistate, we'll tried our best to answer and we'll meet in the near future, no problem.

Thanks to everybody again, we are working hard on the website, where we will put all the infos and making of pictures,... We are also working on a DVD.


PS: The whole team stopped smoking after this shoot, I highly recommand this kind of shooting to quit smoking, it works very well :-)


Olivier & Sebastien
www.anotherstateofmind.be

Sorry for my ignorance, but what is mini35?

mini35 is an optical adaptor to use cine prime lenes with some DV cameras.

http://www.pstechnik.de/datasheets/d_mini35.htm#products

Many users created their own home made version to use still 35 mm lens with their dv cam.

With these devices, you keep the depth of field and angle of view property of the lens used.

<<<-- Originally posted by Dustin Waits : Sorry for my ignorance, but what is mini35? -->>>

No need to apologize. But do use the "search" button located on the top right hand corner of your DV Info screen.

Holy Crap! what a good movie!

Did you use an Agus35 or an Alain35? It looks static

Thank you very much !!

It's a static one, but really simple, look at one of the previous messages for infos, here is the picture:

http://www.originalversion.net/temp/makingof01.jpg

Olivier,

What I can not see in you picture is the connection between the Canon and the 35mm. Are you viewing straight through the 35mm or off of Ground Glass? Do you have any pictures without the cover on the cameras?

We are looking directly in to the F-2 ground glass. I don't have a picture without it I think.

whoa... you are shooting down into a 35mm SLR.

I agree, really simple and ingenius.

What about moving the camera? were you able to get around without a ton of trouble?

Did you build a tripod mount or a set of legs for your wooden support stand?

We had a lot lot trouble moving the camera. Every exterior shot was done handheld, then stabilized in post. For the interior shots we had an ironing table as support. If you look at the making of picture, you can see it. It had nice flowers on it :-)

We're so excited after building the kit, we didn't want to spend more time building a support stand :-) We did suffer a lot during the shoot but it was fun, you have so much liberty when you don't have a tripod at all.

Olivier, did YOU do that water/car/soda advertisement? I mean, wasn´t it taken from TV? Man, that is pro stuff... How about that effect of the bottle coloured while everything else was almost BW? How did you do that? Did you use any kind of filter for the fog/diffusion effect on that same sequence?

Hello Gustavo

yes we did those fake bad commercials :-) We're really pleased you'll like it.

For the water ad, we did use the hue/saturation and push everything to -100 excepted blue and cyan, then used some color balance too. We did use a plugin called Grain Surgery to remove the grain, if you push the parameters, it makes the picture softer, a bit like a nice mist filter. We did that and we also put some gaussian blur on another layer.

I've uploaded new files to both servers, a bit smaller (42mb) and better quality (way sharper, less noise)

The website is on his way, still a lot of work to do, be patient :-)

Thanks again everybody,

Olivier & Sebastien
www.anotherstateofmind.be

After several failed attempts at downloading this one, I did. After waiting for my boss to go into a meeting for the past week to watch this it finally happened and I'm happy to say I really thought this was a great short. Visually it was really amazing. The acting was very solid. Marla was a very compelling character. What are you guys planning on doing with this short? Are you sending it out to festivals?

this is real brillant stuff.

your work will surely inspire the rest of us i'm sure. how did you do the slo-mo on that ad? wow wow wow

2 Thumbs Up!

Thank you so very much !!!! :-)

We're now working on the movie's website, where we will upload as much information as possible. Everything will not be ready at the site's launching but we planned to post fullres pics, teaser, trailer, making-of pictures and infos, trailer in DV so you can check it on TV,... still a lot of work to do but we want to share it as much as possible.

We'll send it to festivals, and also to production companies, agents,... we spent three months working hard on this, we now need to find work, unless we'll have problems paying the bills :-)

We did the slo-mo in After Effects using RetimerRT plugin.

Thanks again,

Olivier & Sebastien
www.anotherstateofmind.be

<<<-- Originally posted by Olivier Vanaschen : Thank you so very much !!!! :-)


We'll send it to festivals, and also to production companies, agents,... we spent three months working hard on this, we now need to find work, unless we'll have problems paying the bills :-)



Olivier & Sebastien
www.anotherstateofmind.be -->>>


Would there not be some legal issue with the fact you used some one elses character? I have no idea I was just wondering if that is the case or not.

Maybe yes, but as long there's no commercial use of it, I think it'll be OK. We just want people to see it and share everything we can.

Hello all,

the website for the movie is online. You'll find the teaser, trailer, full-res stills, making-of pictures, deleted scenes,... we're still working on the technical guide (mini35 how-to, post,...), it'll be online monday.

Here the url: http://www.marlathemovie.com

Hope you'll like it,

Olivier & Sebastien
www.anotherstateofmind.be
www.marlathemovie.com

Hey Olivier, That's a very well designed site. It's easy to navigate. I'm looking forward to watching some of the behind the scenes materials including your "how to" on making the 35mm adaptor. BTW, thanks for linking our website. I noticed my comments up on there as well. Good stuff. :)

Olivier, what are those musics in your nike commercials?

We used the actual music from the nike freestyle commercials (the ones with the stickmen), I think it was produced by the Neptunes.

It's available as a PDF file on the movie's website www.marlathemovie.com (in the bonus section).

Thanks again to everybody for the nice feedback, you are the reason why we made this guide. We hope you'll find it useful, please send us your comments.

Olivier & Sebastien
www.anotherstateofmind.be
www.marlathemovie.com

Olivier, I love the site you made, How do you make it all look like one picture like that- with the buttons fitting like perfect puzzle pieces?