watch CONTENTION (A Short Film by Third Bridge Productions)

CONTENTION

A Third Bridge Production

Genre: Drama / Sci-Fi / Short

Plot: During an ‘age of conflict and contention,’ enemies to our nation send us a message, in the form of an electromagnetic pulse, declaring that no one is completely out of their reach. Without electricity, society endures a transition to the primitive. In this short known as ‘A Bite to Eat,’ two men (Fox; Peterson) illustrate humanity’s strive for survival through a conflict of possession.

Running Time: 3 minutes 45 seconds

NOTE: All Third Bridge Productions films are not rated and may contain content unsuitable for all audiences. Contention contains elements of violence and language.

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Comments: This short film produced from a script called ‘A Bite to Eat,’, written by Matt Peterson, serves primarily as a pilot to the motif of narratives included in Third Bridge Production’s upcoming feature film, Contention. As a secondary motivator, this film also served as Matt’s final project for his Post-Production film class at the Colorado Film School. The script was conceived the morning of October 16th, was shot that afternoon, and edited entirely the day after for a mid-week October 18th release. Please forgive the obvious evidence of this limited production time – the focus of the final itself was on post-production value, and that therefore became the project focus. I hope you enjoy this short film!

Cast and Crew Information (Note: all credits below are temporarily uncredited by the film)

Directed By:
Craig Ormiston

Writing Credits:
Matt Peterson………………….screenplay
Craig Ormiston………………….background

Cast Overview:
David Fox
Matt Peterson

Produced By:
Craig Ormiston……………….…executive producer – Third Bridge Productions
Matt Peterson……………….…producer

Original Music By:
Rich Douglas

Cinematography By:
Craig Ormiston……………….…director of photography

Film Editing By:
Craig Ormiston……………….…editing supervisor
Matt Peterson………………….editing

Set Decoration By:
David Fox

Sound Department:
David Fox………………….dubbing
Craig Ormiston………………….sound & music editing (uncredited)
Matt Peterson………………….sound & music editing (uncredited)

Visual Effects By:
Craig Ormiston………………….visual effects technician

Other Crew:
Craig Ormiston……………….…camera
Nic Goulet………………….special thanks
Agustin Leone……………….… special thanks
Gerard Leone……………….…special thanks

Technical Information

Camera Equipment Used:
· Canon GL-2

Editing Equipment & Software Version Used:
· Adobe® Premiere® Pro v7.0 (Linear Editing)
· Adobe® After Effects® v6.0 (Effects)

So is this the opening of the feature?

If so, it needs some definite sound work.

The cinematography was good, and the yellow tones worked well for the short. I think the dialogue needs work, especially the lines of .

Overall a decent short.

Poke

No, this is not the opening to our film. This is serving as merely a pilot piece that will hopefully stimulate our writers to get cracking and to help raise some funds. As I mentioned, we planned, shot, and editing this whole thing in less than 36 hours. We will certainly put way more love into our feature.

As far as sound, do you have any reccomendations when you say "it needs some work?"

Yes. Sorry I wasn't more detailed.

It was very hard to hear what a character was saying if they were not close to the camera. I think you probably used the on camera mic and did no ADR in post. Sound is one of those things that can kill a movie if it's not up to snuff.

Poke

Poke said:

Yes. Sorry I wasn't more detailed.

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Haha, don't worry about it. I was a bit confused; in the amatuer community, our sound in this film has been praised. I'm sure they were refering to the sound effects however. I wasn't that proud of it.

Poke said:

It was very hard to hear what a character was saying if they were not close to the camera. I think you probably used the on camera mic and did no ADR in post. Sound is one of those things that can kill a movie if it's not up to snuff.

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All of it was camera mic, including our dubbing for a few shots in there, as we don't really have the ADR capacity. What does it take to get an ADR setup? Do you just need a good mic, sound studio, or what?

Stamper said:

What does it take to get an ADR setup? Do you just need a good mic, sound studio, or what?

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A good mic, a room with very little reverberation (hanging heavy blankets on the walls will be serviceable), a monitor that you can watch the film on, and the patience to sit there and record the same lines over and over again.

Poke

I just saw a "how-to ADR" post, Zensteve's I think.

[Radio edit] Found it, http://www.indietalk.com/showthread.php?t=7666

Pretty good advice. Thanks! We have yet to truely work with sound in any of our films thus far. Hopefully we'll make a point to do that soon.

Several people are telling me that I should submit this to a film festival somewhere. Now I have absolutely no confidence, simply because of our production value, that we can sneak in our short under a general "short films" category, although I do believe we can sneak it into something specific - cinematography perhaps, or music even? Does anyone have anything specific they appreciated about our film that might direct us towards a specialization for this films submission? Thanks!

Your firearms effects. What did you use? Are they real firearms?

I thought it was a compelling story, I would like to see more. I agree, the dialog and sound needed work, but is pretty good, knowing its ametuear. Cool! I liked the Opening sequence.

arcnaver said:

Your firearms effects. What did you use? Are they real firearms?

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No, haha. We used an unloaded airsoft gun and digitally manipulated the effect we desired.

arcnaver said:

I thought it was a compelling story, I would like to see more.

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Patience my friend, it's coming. We have 6 writers commited to 4 short stories relative to it as we speak, and more on the way...

As far as everything else, thanks again for your comments.

A third version of this film will be online soon, one with various sound and music fixes, plus some contrast clean up a bit, and also a modification of the credits (will be shortened signficantly, feature more roles, and also appear at the end of the film).

well done, you can probably tightenup some of the dialog through editing. Framing is excellent, very professional. Hand held work is well done. No mids in the image makes the darker scenes difficult to see. Stylistically very cool. Couldn't really see the lighting due to the stylized coloring. Seemed like you were almost using the coloring to hide the fact that it was video, there are other ways. Fight choreography was slightly slow between attacks, but very well done. Sound FX were good, car pulling up and car doors were a little out of whack. Car chase...bet you didn't tell the cops you were doing that one Good driving...could have had the SUV slightly farther back when the rockford was pulled, they wouldn't have had to stop as obviously.

Very cool over all.

The dialog on this one was far better in its timing. The shots were cool and told the story well. Well done...again! Personal taste is still for less coloring on the frames, but it didn't kill me to watch it colored. Probably too much bastard yellow from being on stage in High School.

Haha. You said that there were other ways to replicate the film look. Do you have any specific suggestions?

yes...I have a formula that works pretty well... It'll give you a stronger base to start from to play with color.

I. understand that white is evil:
- DV has such a limited contrast range compared to film that it instantly looks like DV when you exceed its' limitations. lower the contrast range by avoiding pure white in the frame.
A. Underexpose all of your footage just slightly, darks recover from DV more easily than lights
B. Never use the auto exposure, I'd rather have a camera searching for focus than exposure, it will always get the exposure wrong.
C. Shoot with a circular polarizer to stop off-axis light from washing out your image. It has the added advantage of making the skies bluer and giving you control over the reflections...I use them indoors as well.
D. If you have manual exposure, keep it open as much as possible.
E. Use a neutral density filter to let you open the iris farther. This will also help give you a shallower depth of field (blurry backgrounds).

II. Understand that red is evil:
-DV uses a compression that squashes red more than blue or green. Any pure red will be flattened in texture as it is decompressed when viewing.

III. Understand that Depth of Field is a function of Aperture size and Capture medium size...period.
A. the theory that DoF is a function of lens length is a misconception...all it does is compress the space to show the fuzzy background closer to the focussed forground:
- I do use this though, it kind of works.
B. the other way to make the background blur with a small CCD is to get painfully close to the actors and focus closer.
- a combination of the two will garner better results.

IV. If your camera lets you turn down the picture enhancement/sharpness, do so.

V. Always white balance once for each camera position indoors, once an hour outdoors.

VI. Light like film (you can use less light than film though). Bounce light outdoors.

VII. slightly over saturate if possible in your camera.

VIII. Frame slightly tighter than you would with film...since there is so many less particles (pixels) to capture detail, we need to give it as much as possible. <edit>I hadn't put this in originally because you seem to do this already...but others may want the info.</edit>

Hope this helps! Keep improving...for the lighting, start with the basic 3-point, then think bigger...if you're moving the actors, light the start point and the end point...over lap the pools of light. Experiment, tape is cheap!

Spot on knightly!