735 – Filmmaking, music, and other paths to an early grave

We decided to put up 2 scenes from the movie Crashing Down just as teasers (and to help in the financing hunt of course). I tell ya man, even though it’s only 2 scenes, it was a LOT of work. These aren’t what they’ll look like in the final movie, but they’re close enough for show-n-tell. Being that this film is based on Dante’s Inferno, there’s always some correlation to something from the poem. In these 2, the first one is the main character passing through the gates of hell, the second is some scenes later when he’s made it into the first circle.

Enjoy, and please, let us know what you think!

We’re shooting Crashing Down in 4k, but finishing in 2k. Some of you already know why this is badass, but let me elaborate for the ones that don’t. The obvious reason is that you’re getting more resolution. It does make a different. Once the footage has been downrezzed to 2k from 4k, you can see the apparent sharpness go up, and the noise go down. But, that’s only one small reason why I’m doing it.

Picture this; You’ve shot the scene, crammed all the coverage the schedule would allow, and get back to edit only to discover a spot that won’t cut together. Hey! You’ve got 4k! Just recompose shots by enlarging or shrinking the 4k in the 2k bounds until it works.

Here’s my current workflow. By the way, if someone with more experience knows why I shouldn’t be doing it this way (image degradation perhaps?), or has a better way, let’s hear it.

• I bring in the 4k footage and edit on a 4k timeline (can you believe this? I can edit in 4k and it plays back!). There are parts I can tell I want to recompose, so I make a note of it but don’t do it yet. Once I have all the good stuff lined out, I copy and past this into a 2k sequence.
• Now I re-edit, make it tighter, and recompose shots so that they look better. In some cases, I can get what appears to be more coverage by just leaving some of the setups as 4k in the crop, say a master for example, while using the 53.3% reduced version elsewhere.
• Once this is locked down, I copy the sequence for backup, then right click and hit “replace with After Effect composition.” After Effects opens with all the cuts in a composition spread out on separate layers. You could also just open AFX and copy/paste the footage into a comp, but my way makes the comp settings ready (length etc) so I don’t have to do it manually.
• I’m done with Premiere at this point. You’re apparently suppose to be able to play this comp in Premiere, but my machine chokes on this. Leaving the program to hog resources seems like a waste, so I close it and move my attention over to AFX for coloring.

— Quick note about coloring and AFX. I use adjustment layers and don’t apply the coloring tools directly to the footage. Why? Well, what if I want to tweak some edits? The way I have it, I can just copy/paste from Premiere again (after deleting the footage from the AFX comp) and realign any missed adjustment layers.

There’s a step in this process that I didn’t mention. The audio. We’re shooting with external audio that has a tether going to the Red One. When we first started, the Red needed an upgrade on the board so we had a hum in the audio. I had to go in and replace all the red audio with the external audio (that’s what it was for after all). Larry has since sent off and fixed his rig, so now I don’t have to do that unless the external audio is better for some reason. I haven’t tested the quality difference yet, but when I do, the workflow for audio might change. We’ll see how it goes.

STILLS PULLED FROM THE POST COLORED 2K FOOTAGE: