[Michael Neel]

Great! Thanks for the quick response David.

BTW, Up In The Air looked great. Nice work.

[Michael Neel]

Great, thanks Paul. I’ll check these out and hopefully they will solve my issues!

[Michael Neel]

Howdy!

A few of you wanted to know how this footage would turn out…well, we filmed it over a month ago and I have a clip. We cheated a bit in this sequence, as there is a Day for Nite shot to make this particular sequence work better out of context. In the actual film, this DFN clip is not there. Also, the entire sequence is much longer and more drawn out, with less edits, and we used only flashlights/lanterns (except for a few closeups, where we used 650s bounced off of a moving reflector board to create the illusion of lanterns).

Anyway, here is the clip:

Clip from Drive-In Horrorshow

And if you want to check out the trailer for the film, here it is:

Drive-In Horrorshow Trailer

Thanks again to everyone who responded! This is a great forum.

Michael

[Michael Neel]

Thanks a lot, Rick and Bill, for your thoughtful comments. I’ll try to respond to all of them.

*We are definitely using 7219. You convinced me Rick

*We have thought about using smoke/fog (we have used it in other scenes, it is a horror film), but decided against it for power/time reasons (we will be in the woods and on a short schedule)

*The film will end up on DVD — I mean, I guess we *could* have it shown theatrically but I think the odds of that are very small. We are targeting the DVD horror market, and almost all of those films only have a life on DVD. We aren’t having a DI – we are editing in Final Cut Pro and I will be using their color correction filters. I’ve used them on a few feature documentaries so I’m pretty familiar with what we can do

*Thanks for the tip on the Coleman lantern, Bill. We have two in the script already, I might add another one. And thanks for your suggestion of adding frost, I hadn’t thought of that.

*I’m not sure if I was as clear about the look of the film as I could have been. This is a short film, one story in a horror anthology (in the vein of Creepshow), and won’t run more than 20 mins long. We have decided to embrace seeing almost nothing in our night-for-night, flashlight/lantern shoots — keeping the shots wide and most of the frame engulfed in complete darkness. In these scenes, the characters are being hunted by a stealthy, primal killer, who uses the shadows to hide and stalk his prey. If we do it right, the audience will be looking in the shadows, waiting for him to attack. And of course we will let these scenes play out with minimal or no cuts, to let the tension build until the killer attacks.

Anyway, I really appreciate your responses, and I love this forum. Lots of great information and ideas.

Thanks
Michael

[Michael Neel]

Thanks for the advice, guys. We will be shooting on Kodak ’18 or ’19, we haven’t picked one yet.

The scenes will be outdoors, in the woods. We thought about using some kind of backlight/moonlight but decided to embrace our limitations and have as much of the frame in blackness as possible. This is a horror movie, after all, and what could be hiding in the shadows can be the scariest thing in the film (plus good sound, of course).

I’m off to do some lighting tests! Thanks again for the help, this forum is great.

[Michael Neel]

Thanks a lot for the suggestions, guys! I really appreciate it.

And yes, Todd, I am thrilled to be shooting on film. I’ve been a freelance DP for years and most of the work is DV. Its great to have a project shot on film, it has such a great look.

Thanks again!