"Cell" - my last short film

Olliwood · Jan 15, 2008

I hope it's the right place to post here.
Anyway I'll just go ahead and tell you something about me and the project. I'm from Germany and still in Highschool ( I'm 18 ) and I was the cinematographer on this film. It was shot in Germany with a German crew and German actors in 2,5 days- still the film is in English for several reasons, so you'll hopefully understand.
Unfortunately we only had a budget of about 800$ so we could not afford shooting film - it's miniDV and a 35mm Adapter with Nikon (Zoom

) lenses. So if you`re interested and have time I'd be great if you could watch the movie and give me some feedback. Since I was the cinematographer I'm mainly interested in what u think of the camerawork...

--> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JObwTGpYwY

Thank you

knifewrench · Jan 22, 2008

It was great. The movements were great, the color was great and the tone was great. How did you do the shot where it went around him when he was sitting on a bed? Great film.

Olliwood · Jan 22, 2008

Thanks for the positive feedback! We did all the movements in the hotel room with a dolly on tracks - besides the 360 degree one. Since we couldn't just get the bed out of the room we had the actor sit like 7 feet in front of the bed on an applebox to which we also attached the microphone. Then we used the airwheels for the dolly and we were just able to move around him without hitting the walls. Of course, we also had to dim the backlight down while travelling behind him and then back up when we were through - wasn't quite easy, took us some time to figure out how to best do it. And now, since the shot is quite close, it's real hard to see that he's not really sitting on the bed but in front of it.

knifewrench · Jan 22, 2008

Well it looked great. Must of been a tight fit. Good Job again.

knifewrench · Jan 23, 2008

Hey, sorry, I got another question. What was the camera you used and lenses, filters, etc?

Olliwood · Jan 23, 2008

we had a Canon XL-2 ( I'm not sure if it has the same name in the US) with the regular Canon Zoom lens which is always included in the camera package. And in front of that we had an SG Pro 35mm Adapter with a Nikon mount and 2 Nikon Zooms and one Nikon Prime. Pretty complicated, huh

?

knifewrench · Jan 23, 2008

Ya, That 24 looked really good for a dv camera. Did you put any filters on in post or was it kept as is?

Olliwood · Jan 23, 2008

We didn't use any filters on the camera. Of course we graded it in the post(AfterEffects): we used the curves tool, to give it a little more contrast, then we desaturated it almost down to black and white - we especially got rid of the reds which look bad on video most of the times. The we gave the whole thing a sort of dark-yellow-brownish look. For exteriors we increased contrast and the blacklevel, too, and went for a greenish look (sometimes it's even a little bit too much I think). That's about it I guess...