New Short Film 'the Riddle'

[Nicholas Bartleet]

Hi there, please take the time to look at my new short film. It was shot using my own engineered 35mm film lens adapter, and my xl1s.

www.pixelloft.com/riddle.htm

your feedback is welcome.

nicholasbartleet@hotmail.com

[Matt Champagne]

Something keeps happening with it...right when he says "How nice of you to pay us a visit"....my quicktime totally crashes.

I was impressed by the title work alone though...I shall see if its just my computer messing up, but you may need to re-render it if other people are having the same problems.

[Kin Kwan]

The same thing is happening to me, I downloaded the large version and it crashes around a third way into the movie.

But, wow, great looking short!

[Nicholas Bartleet]

the large version has been re uploaded. Sorry guys, I ran out of room on the server, and they kep deleting part of the files. All sorted now, and the small version should be uploaded in 5 mins. Thanks For your patience.

Thanks, Nick

[Steve Franco]

That was a really good short! I was hooked from the get go. Would you care to share some of the technical details of how you pulled it off?

[Nicholas Bartleet]

Thanks for your kind words.
I'm not really sure where to start, or what aspect you are interested in, but I will do my best.
I spent several months prior to making the film, building and buying equiptement as cheaply as possible, while trying to earn the money to pay for it. The cost of equiptment is rediculous, so deciding where to spend the little moned you have was paramount. Also, finding an excellent, goo value local engineering shop to make me anything i couldn't make and source materials was invaluable. There are so many different aspects to discuss, but briefly, i think the key points I would make would be good lighting, this is so crucial, a good understanding of the camera settings i.e balancing the camera, seting exposure and all that gubbins. Color correction plays a key role I think because to make video come to life, you have to try to separate those muddy colors into something resembling 4:4:4 film. Alot of color change filters in after effects or color finesse or even color suprssion in combustion works well to try and distinguish you different colors. Other than that, i'm not sure what advice I can offer.

Hope this helps in some way.

Many thanks, Nick

[Matt Champagne]

Still having some trouble with the large version...managed to watch the small version though. Excellent work. The make-up is very convincing, as well as all the sound work (extranious gun noises, coke being poured, etc.) I'm a little confused as to exactly what happened right at the end though.

As for technical details, I noticed your using what looks like standard construction halogen flood lamps (same thing I'm using) in addition to some of standard video lights...but I think I see one of them has some sort of diffusion on it. Would you mind posting a pic and explaining what material you used for this diffusion? I'm a little stumped as to what to put in front of those incredibly hot lights.

[Nicholas Bartleet]

We didn't use any diffusion on this film really, but if you have barndoors, just get some diffusion paper from a video store, you can buy it to put on windows, on the lens etc, its like tracing paper, and take a bit of that to the barndoors. Oh yeah, or you can do what I did, with the halogen flod lamps, and get some perspex, and use an electric sander either side to matte it down. Works a treat. We didn't use it in the film itself, but drope them when we were setting up to reduce the glare a bit.

Hope that helps

[Matt Champagne]

with the halogen flod lamps, and get some perspex, and use an electric sander either side to matte it down.

Ah ok excellent...that's what I was wondering. Those halogen floods are so hot I definately don't want to put paper in front of them. I already put some diffusion paper on my smaller lamps, but I've always wanted to know how to diffuse the larger ones if I ever had to.