hey there,

I just finished my most recent shortfilm: REIGN OF BLOOD.

Its some vampire-martialarts-horror shortfilm.

It was shot with the standard Canon XL1s without any extras except some widelense adapter. I didnt use any lights, but I tried to use the natural light in a way that it looks like I did use lights ;).
All the shots are handheld, no steadicam was used.

For post-production I used Adobe Premiere and After Effects. Some extra 3d fx were done with 3ds max.

The team was the guys you see infronta of the camera and me behind the camera.

Here the link to the page:
http://www.german-kungfu.com/index.php?act=MovDet&mid=25

alternative download:
http://www.berlin-pk.com/flatcoin/fC.2007.ReignOfBlood.avi

Have Fun and let me know what you think - Thanks :)
Take Care
Ulrik

Ulrik,

When I read you didn't set up any lights; using what was already there. And that all the shots were hand held I thought I was going to see something very crude and amateurish. But I was pleasantly surprised. Nice work. Your camera work was great.

The stunts and fight sequences were terrific. The special effects were also well done. I liked the Blade / Buffy flaming were they were staked.

The only thing that I was a little bothered by was don’t vampires have a small problem with daylight? :)

Amazing camerawork. How long did it take you shoot all of that footage with one camera? The editing is so smooth for the amount of stunts pulled off.

Nice job!

nicely done...good use of the ambient light! good fx too. Awesome fight choreography.

That was fantastic! Like Walter said, I was pleasantly surprised. Man, a couple of those vampires wasting away off the crates had better effects a couple times I thought movement-wise than in the Blade flicks. Slick camerawork and nice job on the edit - good use of wide and CUs.

Thanks guys !

"How long did it take you shoot all of that footage with one camera? "

For the whole short we needed three days and about 7-8hours per day, that included preparing and testing the stunts, making the setdesign (putting blood at the walls, building the coffin etc.) .. we are all good friends, worked several times together and all the guys are professional stuntmen, thats why I said what I wanted stuntwise, they tested it and I was shooting other stuff in the same time to not waste time.

Shooting fightscenes with one camera is actually faster than doing it with two .. at least from my experience .. because the hits look for real only from one (sometimes two) angles and if you use two or more cameras you have to be really carefull to not have the other camera in frame, with that you need more time etc. .. with one camera you have more freedom of movement. (I am only talking about fightscenes .. stuff like explosions, carcrashes etc, should be done with more cameras ;) )


"When I read you didn't set up any lights; using what was already there. And that all the shots were hand held I thought I was going to see something very crude and amateurish."

I actually thought that people will think that, because that is something I heard my whole life (as filmmaker), that it is impossible to make good (big) looking films without spending a lot of money for lights, dollys, steadicam etc. .. Don't get me wrong, I love all that stuff and I know that with lights the short could have look better, but if I only have 3 days for shooting and no money I search for other ways to let the short not look cheap :). Glad you checked it out anyway !


And about vampires and daytime .. well some are different ;) .. hahaha .. but its funny, because I thought that people would complain about that first, but I already showed it to a lot people and you are the first that mentioned it. Of coz you are right !

Thanks again for the nice words !

Take Care
Ulrik

Wow, all I can say is amazing! As it was said, a lot of the death scenes in the warehouse area were really, really well done (especially the vampire who dies while rolling off the flats). I also thought the girl Vampire dragging the dead guy she decapitated into the room was a nice touch.

Can't think of anything I'd change... for the credits, were they influenced a bit by Dawn of the Dead? Kinda reminded me of their credits :D

Good job!

This was REALLY good! The camera work was exceptional, very "movie" like.

The stunt choreography was excellent!

How did you pull off the fiery disintegration effect?

Did you use AE for that?

If so you have to tell me your secret! :)


Nice work!

Mike

@Kyle Ross .. actually both scenes you mentioned were inspired by work of Zack Snyder .. usually I use outtakes for the credits, but I thought that this would destroy the atmosphere, thats why I did this like "DotD" homage and the slow motion scene with the female vampire came into my mind after I watched "300" ( I loved the extense use of slow-motion in the movie and had to do some slow-mo shots too ).


@Mike Horrigan I used 3ds max in combination with After Effects

vampire-dusting .. what I did:

- first of all the cameramatching is the most important thing, means creating in 3ds max a camera which moves like my cameramovement in reality.

- next I used a skeleton I downloaded from the net and animated it just like the stuntman who did some fall

- as soon as the movement matched the movement of the stuntman I used the skeleton as particle generator

- I only used white particles of various sizes, those clips of the skeleton generating particles were imported into After Effects

- in AFX I blured them, put various colorlayers over the particle clips

- only thing missing now is a simple fade from the clip with the fall to a clean plate clip, means the same cameramovement without the stuntman .. and over the "fadeclip" you put all the particle layers and the dusting fx is done.

quite simple in theory, big pain in reality .. ;)

Hope that helps .. and thanks for the nice words !

take care everybody
Ulrik

Hi Ulrik, this is Maarek from the stuntpeople forums.

Great job, as always!

I liked the rhythm of the whole piece. Only thing didn't necessarily work for me was how the first vampire fight began. The fight was good, but it began kind of abruptly.

Everything else was top notch. Looking forward for more. I've showed your piece around and people have been generally impressed. I'm going to take some pointers on how you guys execute your fight sequences.

I really like the fact how people with more skills can make better stuff than professional people with more money and equipment. It just cheers me up :) I can't wait to see what you guys come up with when you get some funding.

Great video. It looks like the extended trailer for a movie I might like to see. It did not look amateurish in any way and that is not so easy without a lighting crew and camera rigs. I would never have guessed handheld with no lighting crew for this one. I also liked the martial arts. I've grown tired of the over-stylized martial arts that would never work in a real fight. I don't mind a bit of creative license, but I like when some of the hits look real and have physical consequences to the participants. I hate when two guys hit each other 657 times and don't even get tired or bruised. Straight fights with a few extra falls is a refreshing change.

I think the big question should be: How did you match camera moves for the FX when you did everything handheld? You needed camera matching for the clean plate and for the skeleton model yet you didn't use a tracking camera rig or any static tripod shots.

Somewhen soon I will make some "making of" clip, because a lot of people ask the same question like you.

But to give you a short answere:

the cameramovement is animated frame by frame in 3ds max .. the particle-fx are never shown for more than 50 frames .. most of the time 20-30frames .. so what I basiclly did was to match the camera for eachframe.

The Cleanplates were done like that: I did shot the stunt, afterwards everybody had to move out of frame and I simply tried to copy the movement.
Don't worry I never ever made it to make the same move twice, but its was always good enough to fade between the two camerashots .. sometimes I didn't even fade the whole scene, but only masked out the area where the stuntman was and replaced it with the cleanplate.
If you would watch those transistion without the "dusting-fx" you would call me stupid, because you can see the transistion clearly, but with all the particles in frame nobody sees it :).

Hope that helps
Ulrik

Holy crap. this is insanely good.

you really need to create a making of dvd and talk about how you did everything and your special effects.

are you familiar with the 'broken short'. you can probably make atleast 25,000 USD in dvds if you do that. i would definitely buy 1!

Wow. Really well done. I've just got into this whole movie making thing (documentaries tho) and the level of professionalism in this piece was amazing. You clearly work in the biz in some capacity and have considerable talent/experience.

Only criticism I'd bring up, which nobody else seemed to mention, would be costuming. It's minor but I love solid costumes especially in a 'style' piece such as yours. I just thought the costumes looked a little too plain for how stylized the characters and post production seemed to be.

yeah, the customes couldve been better. i even noticed the Hero's backpack looked unrealistic, and I think I saw a label.

hey there,

about costumes .. absolutly right .. the backpack was actually my backpack, with which I usually take the camera around ;) .. .. the only reason I used the backpack, because I had a scene in mind in which the mainguy blows up about 50 coffins with some molotov cocktails .. andhe needed something to transport the cocktails ..but I failed doing digital explosions,thats why the scene is cut out.

for me the only thing important was, that the guys dont look like usual vampires .. more like regular guys from the street .. I am a big fan of "near dark" and "blade" (part 1 only) thats why I wanted to keep that look somehow natural. (and I know that BLADE has very good costumes .. from BLADE is the fighting style - somehow, costumes are like in NEAR DARK ;) )


the funny thing is that I don't really work in the biz .. I make my money programming internetpages .. every now and then (like once a year ;) I get a job as cameraman, sometimes as editor, but because all I know is selftought and I often do the whole production by myself, the people I met are often very sceptical.
they say "someone who does everything cant put all his power in one dept., means the result will be bad" adn stuff like that .. .. tried it several times, worked for more than a year for free for some DVD .. but always failed .. .. thats when I decided to stop doing little work for big movies, but do my shortfilms as big as possible (but one other truth is that I love making movies, but I totally suck at the business part .. thinking about making money out of my stuff gives me headachs).. .. .. BUT most of the stuntmen are professionals !

I have no idea what "broken short" is .. would be nice if you could explain it !

thanks guys :)
still surprised how good the comments are .. excepted something like "too violent martial arts nonsense" .. hahahha
Ulrik

http://dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=45234&highlight=broken+short

That's the broken short

Your film looks great, only the slomo shots could be smoother, (which will be kinda hard with an xl1s offcourse)

Thanks a lot for the link !

But I actually think that selling a 5min movie by myself, even with tons of extras is somehow not right.

Everything I learned is based on free knowledge available in the internet, so why shouldnt I give something back ?
Next problem is, that I wouldnt make it to stretch making ofs etc. that much,'coz I am quite facinated by giving as much information in as little time as possible :).

cheers
Ulrik

;686041']Everything I learned is based on free knowledge available in the internet, so why shouldnt I give something back ?

This is exactly the way I feel! That's why I post so much.

;676360']

.. Don't get me wrong, I love all that stuff and I know that with lights the short could have look better,


I'm not so sure. You used what directional light that was ambient so well that I think if you had lights and tried to recreate the natural look you got with them it would have changed the dynamics of what you ultimately had going.

I would not have changed a thing in your place.

Amazing stuff - I agree it feels like a trailer, part of a bigger story. As an example of what you can achieve with that equipment it's astounding

Very cool, Ulrik! Your editing of action sequences (among other things) is what really stood out to me. Fantastic job on all aspects. You knocked the ball clean out of the ballpark with this one. Great work!

www.themourner.com

Ulrik,

Excellent movie! I really enjoyed it.
Good action, good atmosphere and the visual effects were very well done.

Looking forward to your next production ;)


Andre.

Thanks guys ! I am really happy that you all enjoyed it !! As soon as I find time I will edit some "making of" clip .. but as I am quite busy right now it will need some time, but it will come for sure.

Till then you get a little "teaser picture" as attachment :).

Have fun
Ulrik

Outstanding work Ulrik! I really enjoyed it too. I would definitely rent the 'full' length film based on what you did. Loved the special effects and the look and editing was very professional (nice building of tension).

Congrats!

Todd

Ulrik, probably the best sound and best VFX Ive seen for awhile, all genres/budgets included. You have some amazing talent. The fight scenes were extremely well choreographed.

Shot choices and storyline are your downside. Lets face it this is a blade rip off, no issues there as I like the oriiginal. But it has a backstory. If you could get more shots and tighten the edit with those amazing vfx, and have the story ..... WOW.

I was really impressed with your work. I love the editing and am particularly amazed at how good just natural lighting came out.

Very impressive. Was it innovation or were those camera angles planned in advance? The combat scenes were amazing, anywhere those stunties teach a class or give tips on taking falls like that?

OMFG that looks amazing!!!! Two thumbs way up, screw the realism of the vampires out during the day and all that jazz that was great! Excellent job Ulrich!!

edit: I must also add that seeing something like this and knowing that you're self taught has just made my day and I now have more confidence in myself. I've not had the money to go to film school so every thing is self taught and coming up on my first big project I have renewed faith in myself.

@Joshua Fernandez .. nothing was done in advance. I decided for the cameraangles on spot.
About the stunts: Guess it would be possible, if enough people were interested, but as a matter of fact not a lot of people want to jump down somewhere and land in a way that it looks painfull ;).

@Noel Evans .. story is a downside for sure, but as it was never meant to be a storydriven clip I can live with it. Next time I will try to put in more story for sure, because till now that is what I always fail to do ;).

@Travis Johnson .. what a great compliment. Whenever I am not sure whether I am doing the right thing I watch old making of stuff from Peter Jackson as he was doing "Bad Taste" or watch Buster Keaton or Jackie Chan movies. Always helps to get back the faith !

To everyone else: thanks again !

Have a nice day everyone and wish you all the best :).
Ulrik

Only one word.........AMAZING!!! This is better than some of the movies you see on the big screen. Total Respect.

Hi,

Impressive work, mate.

Is this shot in 24 FPS? Or how many FPS? And for the first clip of the hero, how many FPS was that? It looks smooth.

One of the best amateur films I've seen,
Thanks for sharing!

Greate job!!!
I cant wait your next clip

Special effects, fight choreography, editing... etc all wonderful...

You did an amazing job, and I wish this was alot longer... I want more! :D

Thanks for showing that to us!

Simon

I wanted to congratulate you, it's people like you that take the initiative to get out there and make your film... but you're also really showing what can be done with the right talent.

I loved the whole thing to be honest. The lighting as everyone is agreeing really is great. It reminded me immediately of "Children of Men." The feeling in this movie is (agreeing with others) as good or better than "Blade" stuff.

I can easily see if you worked on your story and character quirks to be a bit more natural and believable you are going to rise quickly out of the Indie crowd. All the Best!

I am dumbfounded as to how you were able to pick up those colors with the XL1s. I have an XL1 and I suppose the XL1s is a big improvement, but really I think you did a fantastic job. I'm wondering a few things, such as what you used to edit, what you used for digital effects, and although you mentioned that you didn't use lighting, did you use light reflectors? Did you adjust a lot of the colors in post?

Really, again, I'm very amazed with what you were able to do with that equipment!

Sorry for the long delay with checking this page !

to your questions:

@Jasper:
Its shot with 25fps in framemode. Some of the shots like the walking in the begining or the first fall in the MTV style head chop scene were enhanced with slow motion shots done with Motion Perfect. As the shots most of the time arent really perfect some masking and animating of stillframes was done in After Effects to hide parts of the image which were not calculated good.

@Daniel:
A lot of color correction was done in the postpro - there is not one single frame which is not somehow changed ! For the XL1(s) I think its best to shot at cloudy days or areas in which not a lot of contrast is .. this way I get the best out of it, coz afterwards you can add contrast, but still got a good colorrange. Doing something on a sunny day with shadows is hell for the XL1 and the footage looks a lot cheaper.
I did not use any reflectors or anything else .. just the sun or lights which were available and I didnt change any of the settings of the XL1s.

@Everyone else:
Thanks a lot for the nice words. Its really cool that you have some fun with the short !!

Take care and have a nice weekend :)
Ulrik