Hi all..new here...directing my own film...

[markcheng]

Hey all,

just thought I'd intro myself...was looking for a community of filmmakers and this seems perfect! My name is Mark Cheng and I live in New Jersey...it's cool that this place has filmmakers from all over the world!!

So, I'm producing and directing my own film. Right now we're in pre-production. I've launched a site to document the whole thing for friends, the crew, and other film makers...thought I'd share it with you all..

http://www.markcheng.com

see y'all around...

mc

 

[Dodo]

I had a look at your website, nice.
Good luck with the film.

 

[markcheng]

cool film/site...

cool film/site...

thanks dodo!

hey have you guys heard of this movie/site?
http://www.whatisbroken.com/
I've only seen the trailer and their effects video clips on their site, and it looks amazing!! What do you guys think?

 

[markcheng]

thanks for feedback..

thanks for feedback..

hey fellow filmmakers! thanks for visiting my site and sending me feedback! I gave a shout out to this site in my Director's Blog...(http://www.markcheng.com/insite.php?thisSection=director)

I'm assuming most members are student as the name of this site goes...with the semester starting up soon, who's going to be making a film this fall?

talk to you soon, and thanks again to all who sent me feedback!

mc

 

[Agenda Productions]

Hi,

I think it's great that you asked this Mark, there must be heaps of young filmmakers going through the stressful time that some of us are at the moment.

I'm shooting my short in 8 Weeks (according to the calendar with the days counting down on it '54 days') at the moment I'm doing some serious amount of pre-production, casting, building, buying, writing and selling myself. It's all pretty hard considering there is a budget of about $1200AUS. Doesn’t go far these days after you hire some lights and buy food for the crew.

I'm shooting on a XL1S, with varies different lenses, i have a small lighting kit of about 6 lights with only a few gels and diffusion. There is a compact crew of 9 people with a cast of about 10.

Theme: What if someone you love is incarnated, can you expect a relationship to withstand the harsh differences of these two worlds.

During all this time of pre-production that I should have I have a very busy schedule. I've just finished shooting two short films, One the Gaffer and the other DP, In seven days another short that i'm DP, then a week off, then Gaffer for a week. These are all major projects with each writer/director putting their heart and sole into these projects. Then three weeks off and shooting back to back with my own film, but how excited am i? Finally get to put some images on that wonderful little thing called film, for me, wanting to do cinematography, i am just as pumped up on Dp'ing with film as i am on writing, producing, directing my own. It's a great story the one i'm DP on, i think if told well and shot well it has some real chance for some local festivals.

This is the time of the year i love, although i look at our course with some hatred about how little we get taught, you cannot beat going on 8 short film shoots in three months and having such creative control, it's great, what better lessons?, i learnt more in a 5 day shoot just finished then i did in all the how ever many classes.

This time of the year reinforces the fact that no matter what happens from now on, i will be a filmmaker in the future.

If anyone has some projects coming up i would love to hear about them.

Regards James

 

[markcheng]

cool!

cool!

james,

sounds like you're doing a lot! that's great...now let me see if I understand it correctly from what you said: You're a student and your classes will start soon, but you've been shooting back to back during your off time? It didn't seem like you're in school when you said you're shooting in 8 weeks from now, but then later you talked about classes...

well anyway, NOTHING subsitutes being on real sets for real productions...When I was in film school (USA: NY: Cornell University), the cirrculum was focused on each student doing one film per semester as a director and another film in a different role for your peers. So I was a writer/director for my own film and was a DP/grip for my buddy (who was my DP/grip)...I loved doing that except we were all poor and had no budgets! The film theory, while kinda useful, didn't come close to comparing to the film production classes!!

James, do you like the XL1S? I'm shooting my film with an XL1...there are some wicked cool things you can do with miniDV footage these days in post to make it look sweet like cool film stock!

mc

 

[Agenda Productions]

Hi,

Our first semester was classes, lectures and a lot of theory. Because it is a film and tv course they try and put as much knowledge of as many things as possible into your head. [They missed the focus on cinematography.....grrr....anyway]. This second semester is all productions and it's great. I'm in a group of 5 people, all international students, but i'm also shooting extra films for the production group i was in last year, so it's all very hectic but i think i will never get the chance to do as much as i am at the moment so i should just be on as many shoots as possible.

I dont mind shooting with the XL1....The recent short i shot last week we used the JVC DV500 with a fully manual canon lens on it. I liked the built in 5600 and 3200 filters in it and the lens is really good, everything else seemed very over used from previous productions and we had some trouble but the picture came out really good, now, i'm trying to work out whether or not to use the XL1, but we have a ELS adapter and an assortman of lenses (24mm to 300mm).....I really think the blacks are nice with the XL1, i love the ease of use and the comfort for handheld..the two main problems with it though is the viewfinder and the lens....

In post i have tried not to make DV look like film but just shoot it with the best colours i can and post grade a little bit in FCP, i think DV is fine, me saying this, i havent shot film and wont be for another 8 weeks...But at the moment i really like the production qualitys of the XL1.

James.

 

[markcheng]

Frustration!!!

Frustration!!!

hey guys,

Need to rant..ever get so frustrated that stuff isn't coming together that you either want to A) kill everyone around you or B) kill yourself??!!

Filmmaking can be so frustrating when you're trying to move everything and everyone forward!!! I can't believe the toxic, negative people you can come across in the film "industry." I use the the quotes because I really question whether some of these people really are part of the industry or are just bitter because they're not...

I'm trying real hard to stay in a positive place, but sometimes I feel like I'm going to explode!!!!

mc

 

[Ronin]

Have you gotten a chance to shoot on Panasonic´s DVX100A? It shoots 24P on High Def DV. And dirt cheap. If you or someone you know has already shot something on it let me know. I d like to know about it.

 

[Dodo]

Hey Mark.
I know I´m responding late, but hey, Better late then never, right?

I know what you mean. There will always be negative people around.
Truth be told, many times I´m one of them. Your job as a prod/dir is to make people motiveted to GET IT DONE!!!
But you also need to have some understanding for the fact that people you work with are working on someone else´s film, when some of them would rather be working on there own.

Eitherway, I hope get through it (without killing someone).
Dodo

 

[markcheng]

hey dodo, i read your reply a while ago..sorry to reply so late! in one sentence you have basically summed up the quintessential independent filmmaker's dilema:

"people you work with are working on someone else´s film, when some of them would rather be working on there own"

I won't bash anymore since I'm in a good place now and am appreciating the great team that I do have! Best of luck to everyone!

mark.

 

[Chris Haigh]

Hey My Friend

Glad to hear ur out of that scary place where u wanted to kill someone or even urself :shock:

everything ur doing looks amazing from where I'm standing

Take care

Chris

 

[mk]

Here is some information about XL1 and film look from a cool technical oriented website. Since I am new here (this is my first post) I am not sure if I'm allowed to put the link. The site has a dedicated section to DVX100A as well.

Several cameras, including the Panasonic AJ-EZ1 and AJ-D200/210/215 and the Canon XL1 and GL1, have a "frame movie mode" or "frame mode" switch that changes the way the CCD is read out into buffer memory from interlaced to progressive scanning. This gives a 30 fps "film look" frame-based image instead of the 60 fps field-based image we normally see on TV.
Each video frame shows up as an intact frame-based image in which both the even and odd fields have been captured at exactly the same time with no interlacing artifacts (of course, the data stream written to tape still interleaves the even and odd fields for proper interlaced TV display; it's just that both fields have been captured simultaneously instead of in even-odd alternation). When shown on TV, frame mode images have had their temporal resolution reduced by half to 30 fps, fairly close to film's 24 fps. For the 625/50 XL1s sold in PAL countries, the 25fps video frame rate will make for an even closer match.

This is useful for those looking for a more "film-like" motion rendering while staying in video. Independent documentry filmmaker Sam Burbank shoots most of his stuff for National Geographic in Frame Movie Mode on his Canon XL1, and reports that DigiBeta shooters see his stuff in editing and say, "there you go, making us look bad by shooting film"!

I can PM the link to those who are interested... Good luck with your projects.