Digital Video - October 2008 - (Page 20)

Q& A THE DEAD CAN DANCE SHOOTING ZOMBIES! ZOMBIES! ZOMBIES! IN HDV WAS A BLESSING AND A CURSE. INTERVIEW BY DOUGLAS BANKSTON O ver the past few years, the horror genre has seen a glut of zombie films, but that didn’t stop director Jason Murphy from entering the fray with the micro-budget Zombies! Zombies! Zombies!, a spirited us-against-them film with sly humor and a restrained sensibility, even when the “us” is strippers and the “them” are zombie prostitutes. DV: What format did you choose to shoot on and was that a conscious choice or by (budgetary) default? We shot in HDV on the Canon XL H1. I would say that it was a little of both — we knew we didn’t want to shoot in DV and we couldn’t afford full HD, so HDV was a perfect solution. We were able to get a pretty decent HD image, yet still utilize all of our other gear and do the post on the editing system we already had. The only real downfall that we saw with the HDV format was some of the compression issues that showed up when we went into color correction. What equipment were you working with? My friend Tony Giordano was my partner on the movie, and he had already purchased the Canon XL H1 earlier in the year. We even used the stock lens. I originally had planned on using a lens adapter to control depth of field. However, we decided that, due to our limited lighting, tons of night exteriors and the need to shoot very fast, it was smarter for us to stick with the stock lens and not have to worry about the tight focal length, light loss and other possible problems we could have run into with an adapter. I think we made the right decision by going without it. Because Tony already owned the camera, we only allocated a few thousand to the camera gear from our budget, which helped us keep the costs down. Was there a certain type of look you were going for in shooting or did you play it “safe” to work on later in post? Kenny and I talked it over and set some basic “look” ideas for different parts of the movie, but for the most part, we played it pretty safe. We knew we had to shoot a lot of stuff each day, so we couldn’t spend a ton of time tweaking the lighting. Also, we wanted to avoid doing heavy color correction in post because the HDV format doesn’t always hold up well to heavy tweaking. What was your post workflow like? We cut the entire movie in Adobe Premiere using the CineForm Aspect HD codec. That is what we had and were comfortable with, so we just stuck with it. Once the picture was locked, I did the color correction in Adobe After Effects, and Tony worked on the audio on his Mac in Soundtrack Pro. It was a little tricky getting everything back and forth between the Mac and the PC, but we have a pretty good workflow figured out now. The hardest part was actually getting the finished video files laid off to DigiBeta for delivery. The price 20 dv october 2008 quotes from the different labs varied immensely on this part, and we had to try a few different labs before we finally found someone who could do it correctly at a reasonable price. The digital effects were preplanned. How were they done? Most of it was not preplanned, actually. Most of the visual effects resulted from ideas I would have that could not be done on set, either because of time, money or safety. I knew that I was going to be doing the visual effects myself, so I knew what I could afford to put off and “fix in post.” Some of the practical effects for the final scene did not work on set, so I had to quickly figure out how I could accomplish the same effects in post. I did all of the visuals myself, in Adobe After Effects. I don’t think we would have been able to pull off most of these effects if we’d had to pay someone else to do it. It was a little tricky sometimes because many of the effects required tracking and would have normally been done in some type of 3D animation software. I had to figure out how to mimic some of the 3Dlooking effects within the 2D realm of After Effects. I probably spent about a month just testing different effects before I finally figured out how to pull it all off. What’s it been like trying to find distribution? This has been by far the most challenging part of the process. It seems like everyone thinks that you just make a movie, and then some distributor calls you up and offers you millions of dollars for it. That was definitely not our experience. The distributor, Passion River, set September 9 as the DVD release date. They have been really cool, and we were able to negotiate a few key things that we wanted, like the ability to sell the movie ourselves at conventions and off our Web site [www.itdentertainment.com], which is great. This movie has been an amazing learning experience for all of us, and we are so much more prepared for our future projects. DV www.dv.com http://www.itdentertainment.com http://www.dv.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Digital Video - October 2008

Digital Video - October 2008 Contents First Look: Creative Suite 4 D800 Raid Edirol F-1 Video Field Recorder Universal Dolly BT-LH1760 Monitor Bench Test: XDCAM EX PMW-EX1 Camcorder The Dead Can Dance Cutting Crew Unrest In Peace DV101 Production Diary

Digital Video - October 2008

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