Excellent article: How Film School Dropout shot a Feature on a SCARLET, BMPCC & 5D

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IndiePaul

Excellent article: How Film School Dropout shot a Feature on a SCARLET, BMPCC & 5D

A great read:

How Film School Dropout Ryan Lightbourn Shot a Feature on a RED SCARLET, BMPCC, & 5D Mark III
http://nofilmschool.com/2013/12/ryan-lightbourn-shot-feature-on-red-scarlet-bmpcc-5d-mark-iii/

He explains the gear used, pre-production, casting, filming, camera details and pros/cons of those used, post-production, budget etc.

All shot for a micro-budget. He did good.

Here's his trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aYMlHmod3s
 
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Gotta call foul here!

This film isn't even finished yet. The article is heavy on tech and gear yet we've no clue if the filmmakers were able to turn it into a watchable feature film. If this can't be done, what's the point with hyping the gear? Storytelling is far, far more difficult than operating gear, yet nary a word was mentioned about the story.

Indeed, there's this from the article: "At the time of this article, numerous production companies have reached out to me expressing interest in Sleepwalkers. They haven’t seen the film yet . . ."

How many times have we've heard this? They admit they've yet to begin editing the film.

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If this inspires you, great, but this story is way premature.
 
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The article states "The Bescor (LED) lights claim to project at 6500K. I’m not sure what the real color temperature was, but they definitely have a slight green cast which needs to be taken care of."

Wouldn't that be a function of the CRI rather than CCT?
According to wikipedia " it does not make sense to speak of the color temperature of e.g. a green or a purple light"

so does this guy not know what he is talking about or am i lost here
 
Not sure about the color temp, but in general the lighting / color looks pretty all over the place in the trailer. Some scenes look cheesy and others look pretty cinematic.

Doesn't seem like my type of film, but good for him for doing it on such a low budget.

I really related to his closing statement after completing my first feature:

"If you’re working on a shoestring budget like we were, the film you create will most likely be an altered beast of your original intended vision. Sleepwalkers is an example of this, however, I’ll never make another film the same way after shooting it. There are things I’ll reuse, things I’ll do differently, and things I’ll never do again with my future productions."
 
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It's all personal opinion but for $30k, I thought he did a damn good job given the budget. That's based on the trailer. I have obviously not seen the finished film yet.

He did own the camera gear though. He decided to pay his actors and crew:

To Pay or Not to Pay
We chose to pay everybody. This used up around 70% of our budget, but talent and crew deserve to be paid and fed for their hard work. If we were working with a budget of 15k or less, we’d probably be forced to consider a few favors and freebies, but we felt the production would be a faster and smoother operation if everyone involved knew they were getting a paycheck at the end of the day. Sorry awesome-explosion-to-be used-as-the-last-shot-in-the-trailer — we’ll include you on the next film.
Click to expand...

Due to the tight budget, he only had 12 (!) days to shoot the entire feature. He managed to pull it off.

I found his breakdown of the pros and cons of the Red, BMPCC, Canon 5dmk3, GoPro Hero 3 Black Edition interesting and useful.

I also really liked the breakdown of the core gear used on set. For me that was very helpful too.
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Tough crowd you IT'ers some times.

Personally I think he did damn good for a budget of $30k and the decision to pay his cast and crew. Due to that budget, he had to cram all the filming into a 12-day window. And I did really like the camera breakdown, post-production breakdown etc.

But we're all entitled to an opinion. Just thought the article would have been more useful to others, not just myself.

But indeed the trailer does not make the feature look original in any way.

Rock and roll. :)
 
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