WHITE RED PANIC short film

Yup, that's an awesome thing you've made there!

Well-filmed & well-acted rebel shorts are.... well, few and far between.

Impressive work. I really like the framing and use of wide shots. You've got a good eye for composition and choose some interesting angles which show that you don't necessarily need a fancy adapter.
The grading for me was a little too aggressive in some of the outdoor scenes but overall made for an interesting look. You did a convincing job on the makeup, too.

Thumbs up!

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The creative person with limitless imagination and no money can make a better film than the talentless mogul with the limitless checkbook every time - Robert Rodriguez

Question:

Can you explain that plugin you mentioned? How does it work to preserve skin tones? Is it a masking that automatically covers over certain color ranges?

Great job, very inspirational.

for the blood on the seat shot... was that your chair or did you put fake blood on that leather chair and clean it up really well?

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- Dave

	digitalcos wrote:
	Damn nice stuff. Something about it reminded me off THX-1138. Music enhanced the mood well. The acting was top drawer also. Just great stuff all around. I'm going to point out one thing that bugged me though. The screen direction of the guy that gave him the name of the store. It threw me off. I lost my sense of space.

Wow, THX-1138 is a great film. Not sure what comparison you saw, but i'll take it. Wink

The screen direction was definitely a miscalculation on my part.

	mail4joeg wrote:
	Question: Can you explain that plugin you mentioned? How does it work to preserve skin tones? Is it a masking that automatically covers over certain color ranges?

The aav6cc plugin is just a powerful color-corrector that allows you control 6 individual different color ranges very specifically.

	agentfx wrote:
	for the blood on the seat shot... was that your chair or did you put fake blood on that leather chair and clean it up really well?

Good catch. No White Sofa's were harmed in the making of this film. I managed to get a hold of a little piece of white scrap leather (being as we were in a leather sofa store), and asked to use it. It was a slightly different tone, but I knew no one would notice. Once we were done, we threw it out Wink

Before I figured that out, this was one of the biggest things I agonized over. I didn't know how I was gonna sell that Tully was really hurt without smearing blood everywhere (which wasn't an option). But lesson learned -- under pressure creativity usually kicks in.

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AYZ WARAICH
N E X U S 6 R E P L I CA N T

WHITE | RED | PANIC

I just wanted to add something here. After taking about all the technical details of getting this film done, it occurred to me I haven't talked or been asked about the acting.

The one single thing that I put the most pressure on myself about was the performances. Using two guys who were very passionate about acting, but also somewhat inexperienced and finding their way just like me, meant we had to do a lot of hard work. We rehearsed quite a bit, but always keeping it loose and just trying to figure out the intent. Every time we got too specific, I told them to hold it back and wait for the day. I didn't wanna see the final perfomances, but rather that they understood the intent of the scenes. They both busted their asses trying to make it feel honest and not "amateurish" or forced. Now whether or not we succeeded 100% with that or any aspect of the film is obviously up for debate, but I think the performances are understated and subtle in a nice way. The three of us all feel we wanted to do better and learned a lot, but were also satisfied with what we accomplished given our resources, experience, and time. On set, some of the biggest talks and discussions were about how to play a moment or not tip something too far a certain way -- constantly trying to beat the curse of low-budget film acting.

The techincal side of it I had figured out in advance and was pretty confident about, but the acting was something that falls short in a lot of DV REBEL type films (including stuff i've done), so I worked extra hard this time around. Again, not to pat myself on the back because i'm my own worst critic when it comes to this, but I wanted to talk about it a little and hopefully encourage others to really consider how to deal with their actors when making a low/no-budget film.

Also, I'd be happy to answer more questions about my experience with this if anyone is curious.

Ok, back to CC, sound, and craft services. Wink

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AYZ WARAICH
N E X U S 6 R E P L I CA N T

WHITE | RED | PANIC

	Ayz wrote:
	The aav6cc plugin is just a powerful color-corrector that allows you control 6 individual different color ranges very specifically.

I looks very similar to the Hue/Saturation plug-in that ships with After Effects, referenced here:

http://prolost.blogspot.com/2008/03/save-our-skins.html

...which means it would be a very useful thing.

-Stu

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The DV Rebel's Guide

	Ayz wrote:
	The screen direction was definitely a miscalculation on my part.

You probably could have gotten away with flopping the shot, and maybe darkening the background to disguise it a bit.

-Stu

_________________
The DV Rebel's Guide

Ayz wrote:

I just wanted to add something here. After taking about all the technical details of getting this film done, it occurred to me I haven't talked or been asked about the acting.

The one single thing that I put the most pressure on myself about was the performances. Using two guys who were very passionate about acting, but also somewhat inexperienced and finding their way just like me, meant we had to do a lot of hard work. We rehearsed quite a bit, but always keeping it loose and just trying to figure out the intent. Every time we got too specific, I told them to hold it back and wait for the day. I didn't wanna see the final perfomances, but rather that they understood the intent of the scenes. They both busted their asses trying to make it feel honest and not "amateurish" or forced. Now whether or not we succeeded 100% with that or any aspect of the film is obviously up for debate, but I think the performances are understated and subtle in a nice way. The three of us all feel we wanted to do better and learned a lot, but were also satisfied with what we accomplished given our resources, experience, and time. On set, some of the biggest talks and discussions were about how to play a moment or not tip something too far a certain way -- constantly trying to beat the curse of low-budget film acting.

The techincal side of it I had figured out in advance and was pretty confident about, but the acting was something that falls short in a lot of DV REBEL type films (including stuff i've done), so I worked extra hard this time around. Again, not to pat myself on the back because i'm my own worst critic when it comes to this, but I wanted to talk about it a little and hopefully encourage others to really consider how to deal with their actors when making a low/no-budget film.

Also, I'd be happy to answer more questions about my experience with this if anyone is curious.

Ok, back to CC, sound, and craft services. Wink

Excellent. I'm an actor and I have an idea of how those gentlemen feel about being passionate about acting. I'm on the same boat. In terms of their performances, it was brilliantly executed and worked perfectly for your film. I applause you as a director because you were able to provide them with a comfort level to do what they had to do, and I applause your actors for "busting their asses".

Also, could you go in depth about the sound? If you have that information available to you now, that is.

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Will act for food! | http://kreenpananas.blogspot.com | http://tasialabastro.nowcasting.com

	tasialabastro wrote:
	Also, could you go in depth about the sound? If you have that information available to you now, that is.

I don't yet, but i'm working on it.

Stu wrote:

	Ayz wrote:
	The screen direction was definitely a miscalculation on my part.

You probably could have gotten away with flopping the shot, and maybe darkening the background to disguise it a bit.

-Stu

I tried some stuff, but it felt too similar to the shot of him earlier -- and always looked flopped because the viewer has a reference point to it.

Most people don't notice though, so I figured it's not the worst mistake you can have.

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AYZ WARAICH
N E X U S 6 R E P L I CA N T

WHITE | RED | PANIC

Good job on the short, it really is high quality all round,

I would like to hear more about your work with the actors.

Also, I'm just wondering here if it would work to mirror the image of the guy that is looking the "wrong" way, would that not help the screen direction?

thanks,
Derrick

Just watched beautiful work! Congrats!

Great job, congratulations! One quick question, what made you decide on 1/60th shutter speed for 24 fps? Thank you.

	Derrick_SA wrote:
	Good job on the short, it really is high quality all round, I would like to hear more about your work with the actors. Also, I'm just wondering here if it would work to mirror the image of the guy that is looking the "wrong" way, would that not help the screen direction? thanks, Derrick

Sure, if you wanna know something specific just ask away.

About the shot -- I just answered that above in reply to Stu's post. Wink

	mlashcorp wrote:
	Great job, congratulations! One quick question, what made you decide on 1/60th shutter speed for 24 fps? Thank you.

It has nicer motion to it. More filmic. Also less Smear or motion-blur which makes it a little sharper. 1/48 has too much motion blur for me, even though technically it should be the right setting. It's very subtle but it's definitely there in a bad way.

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AYZ WARAICH
N E X U S 6 R E P L I CA N T

WHITE | RED | PANIC

what books did you read on directing? anything that you found pivital in your education? Did you read the Judith Weston books or anything?

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- Dave