If anyone wants to see some more footage (including a 2 camera rig we custom built for the shoot) from Art History - a low budget indie short that's finally finished...

Check out http://www.stealart.com - information on the teaser is on the home page.

Or direct link as http://www.stealart.com/web_teaser_arthistory.wmv

Nick

p.s. I tried to post this in the "film look" section of this website thinking it might go well there but it got moved by the admins - this one is DVX100 specific so I'm assuming it's good where it is.

Nick - first off congrats on the film. It sounds like it was received fairly well at your premiere too! With that, I just had a few quick comments. I thought the basketball playing scene felt just a little akward, though I could see how this would be a tough thing to cover and shoot well. I think the problem was that your trailer is REALLY REALLY good, so for this scene to be the first one I saw from your film, it caught me a little off guard but then the dialogue section knocked me back on your high quality cinema feel track. Not to compare you too much, but I think that sometimes a trailer that presents itself at a superior level than the film can be damaging. I think this might be the prob with the Got Milk thing, as we've been unable to see any of the real movie, the trailer is too good for the movie to stand up. NOT to say this is the case with your film, just that again, having such an amazing trailer means that your teaser scene has to really hit hard as well, so I'm not sure if the basketball scrimage part was the best to display. Your footage looks impressive and I'm sure it's a wonderful film. The color rendition with your Matte Box filters really turned out well and I wish you the best of luck! Cheers.

I understand your point re: the trailer's energy - and since I cut that myself I'm also grateful for the praise.

the primary aim of the teaser was to introduce the three characters and the setup - aswell as to show off the opening titles - the shotgun rig dual camera stuff many people had been asking about for a while...

yes I agree we could have cut a 2nd trailer or a different scene as a teaser but we didn't.

I'm confident you won't be disappointed in the final product - all that cool stuff from the trailer looks even cool (especially the scenes in the garage and during the heist...)

nick

Hey Nick... good work (of course)... at this point I'm sure compliments are not rare on your work.

You should also pass on compliments to your actors. It looks like they did a good job. The more crap I do the more respect I have for good actors. It's hard to find peple who don't give subtle cues that they're aware of the camera and crew. Kudos to them.

2 questions if I may. On the opening credits did you do that stop, pan, start effect with the two cameras? Or did you do that by digitally zooming in a bit so that you had spare image? Or is it an interpolation that gets us from the stop, through the pan, then to the new start...? Do you mind telling how you did that?

Second question. What mic and recorder did you use on the basketball action scene and the dialog of the "three"? Was that a 4073a plugged directly into the cam or was it something more like a 416 going into something else?

The character of the sound made me think "4073a" and I'm just wondering how far off I am... everything sounds great by the way, or else I wouldn't be asking.

Congrats on the magazine coverage you guys enjoyed too...

thanks for the compliments...

the answers in reverse are

2. The mics used - sadly I don't know - mics were something I wasn't paying a huge amount of attention to - I will most definitely email the two erics (boom op and sound mixer respectively) to ask them - we used a boom mic for the majority of the film - but I will get the model number for you

1. We used two cameras...rolling simultaneously - held together on a rigid frame we custom built - if you look at www.stealart.com - in the play section there is some tech behind the scenes with a few photos of the rig in action

So we're on camera A then we freeze frame - stitch A to B in post.
slide along the stitched frame - then pick up camera B.

I did the stitch work in photoshop and the actual composite (With titles) in afterfx...

You couldn't have zoomed in because you'd have to zoom in so much the quality would have deteriorated massively...this stuff had to hold up for projection...

any other questions let me know...

nick

I love the look of this and cant wait! I ordered my copy.

Question:

What mic was the sound recorded in and in what NLE was POST sound done?

The guys who did sound on location were www.acmesound.net

(eric and eric) - anyway their website says

"Scheops CCM41 supercardioid
Scheops CCM omni/cardioid mic"

haven't got a response from them as to what they used exactly...but i have a strong feeling it will be one of those two

as to the post sound Logic Audio stuff (on some giany Mac setup)

post video was most Final Cut 4 for the edit (Except for the closing titles done in vegas by me and opening titles stitching done in afx and photoshop as I'd mentioned)
Color correct was done on an Avid Symphony...data interchange between avid and final cut and vegas was all uncompressed quicktime (it had to me since no other format would work for 23.976 repeated compression/recompression)

nick

Thanks Nick... that answers my question about the audio... I was wondering if you guys got that great sound with "pretty good" or if you used "the best" gear... Schoeps equals the best.

Pure Hollywood big budget all the way... that explains the quality easy.

Beas will want a copy of your movie now that we know the audio is Schoeps.

what is beas btw ?

nick

Bryan Beasleigh (beas) is the audio dude of all dudes here.

the more the merrier

nick