The initial trailer for "One Last Kill" is complete. My cast & crew have had the opportunity to see it, so now I wanted to share it with you folks.

It's not linked on a page of the site yet, but the direct links are:

BIG VERSION (7Megs): http://www.onelastkill.com/olkbig.wmv

SMALL VERSION (2 Megs): http://www.onelastkill.com/olksmall.wmv

Hope you guys like it.

Looks pretty cool, when will it be released for us to see all of it?

Also, would you mind sharing how you did the audio? What type of mics, (and brands) audio recorder or straight into the camera, etc? I'm gearing up to do my first project and I'm looking at my options regarding audio.

I'm working on the final edit right now... Hope to have it done within a week or two.

As far as the sound, our own Marco Leavitt handled the sound for us, and did a FANTASTIC job! Let me give this post a day or two to see if Marco picks up on this and he can give you all the details. If he doesn't happen to stop in here, I'll come back and give you the info I know as to how he worked the audio. Marco could give you much more detailed information, though.

Glad you liked the audio Rusty. I have to say I've been kind of nervous about it. Given the insane time restraints, quite a lot of compromises had to be made.

First, we hung sound blankets behind the actors, and flanking out from either side. This was shot in a warehouse and the initial audio test sounded like the inside of a submarine. We also hung as many blankets as we could from a beam spanning the length of the warehouse using C-clamps. There were also a couple of blankets on the floor underneath a carpet remnant that Rusty put down.

The first half of the film was recorded direct to camera, which was an XL1s, through a SoundDevices 302 mixer. Since we had three stationary subjects, we put Shure SM11 lavs on each of them. They're nice little dynamic lavs that sound surprisingly good. Since it was supposed to look and sound like a cable access show, we allowed the lavs to be visible and left in the occasional cable rumble. When more action started to take place, we boomed the back of the set with a Sennheiser ME64 and from the front with an ME66. Towards the end of the shoot it was entirely boomed with the ME64, with me standing on a creaky ladder. That's the part that has me really worried. Because it was a three camera shoot I had to boom from way too high, and was still constantly getting in the shot (Sorry Rusty, hope that can be keyed out!). To really pull this off, we would have needed two ladders, two 12 foot booms and maybe a couple of Sanken CS3es.

There were a couple of handheld scenes using a GL2 where we camera mounted the ME66, and boomed above with the ME64 simultaneously.

That's about it. One last detail, we also had a SoundDevices MM1 on the shoot and I ended up turning the limiter on during many of Rusty's scenes -- boy, can he yell! -- because the limiter on the 302 is like hitting a wall and we didn't have much headroom since we were recording direct to camera. The MM1's limiter seems to act more like a compressor, so we doubled 'em up.

sadly you only posted it in wmv, it buffers then plays 10 secs... then it buffers and plays, and buffers and plays....

Can you post a quicktime, or some other reliable format?

I´d love to see it!

Erik

Erik
Just "Right click>>Save As..." rather than streaming. You'll get smooth playback from your hard drive and will reduce the bandwidth usage for the web site owner if you are going to view more than once.

Rusty,
Interesting and nicely done. One thing I'd have done differently for a trailer is to cut back and forth quicker between your killer's dialog and shots of the shrinks and/or of the killer "in action." That initial killer monologue was too long, I thought. Made me interested in watching more, though!

Eirik, I was going to make both ".wmv" and ".mov" files, but my current compression agent makes miserable ".mov" files. They are large in size and poor in quality. Pete's suggestion should work, however, as once the file is downloaded, you should be able to view it fine.

Pete, I like the idea of the quick cuts a lot. - I'm going to experiment with that as soon as I can, and if it comes out as well as I think it will, I'm going to use that method instead.

Thanks for the suggestion!

Just wanted to pass the word around that I am available for help in the central Ohio area, and maybe slightly beyond. If anyone has a project coming up and could use a hand, paid or not, drop me a line.

Catch my web site at http://www.DeepBlueedit.com

Currently shooting with the following:

Sony DSR-PDX10
Century Optics zoom through WA adapter
Cinetactics Matt Box
Bogen sticks with 501 head and 3127 Dolly
Glidecam 2000
Glidecam 200 Crane
Azden 100LT wireless UHF system
8 hour plus of battery time with car adapter

In the studio:

Avid Xpress Pro
Sony DSR-11 deck
160 and 120 GB external drives, 120 GB internal on editor
Dual 19" Viewsonic monitors
Behringer Mixer
Behringer 2031A monitors
Behringer B1 Mic with articulated AKG stand
Shure pop-stopper, etc
HP Scanner

and so on.

16 years with NBC, 3 years as the engineer at a local post house.

If you need a hand, let me know.

Okay, based in part on Pete's observations, I've made a new trailer. I'm very pleased with the way it came out and I prefer it to the other one. You can download it from the website, if you'd like. It's at http://www.onelastkill.com/media.htm -- Let me know what you folks think.

-Rusty-