Short Film Shot on BMPC 4K RAW

Hey all, just wanted to post this short I shot last month. Feedback, good or bad is always appreciated.

It was 90% shot on Raw and the rest on 4K Pro Res. Aside from the huge amount of data gathered there were no issues shooting and editing with Raw.

Shot most of it on the 18-35 sigma lens pretty wide open at 400 ISO. I only had a 1 man crew and an arri kit and I was pleasantly surprised at how well the camera handled in relatively low light.

Hope you enjoy!

Kevin
http://www.kevinpstewart.com

Looks great! Who did the color? Really nice DP and color work. Did you light up the house and then bring luminance down in post? Gotta love the Sigma. I have that lens, as well as a handful of Zeiss primes and cine lenses and the sigma really holds up well. Cool camera angles.

Thanks for all the great comments Scott!

I did the color on it as well, I was trying not to lose detail in the blacks once I got to the color so I did exactly as you said - I shot it probably 1-1.5 stops brighter than I wanted for the grade and then brought it down.

The opening shot is a good example as we shot that at dusk with a little help of lights to edge the boot and what not. But once the shadows and mids were brought 2-3 stops down the edgelight on the boot really popped and sold the moonlight/night look.

Love the sigma, it's a workhorse!

Really nice work Kevin, just shows how in the proper hands (yes sounds cliche) how these cameras can shine.
Was not a big fan of the Bounty Hunters head effect being like that throughout the short,
really easy to do in AE , would have been perfect if
it turned off and with some decent makeup we could see an alien face of some sort, but this really has no bearing on your camera work, just some thoughts in my head about the VFX, The music, sound lighting all well done, very impressed with the color pallet also, the Ending??? Without giving it away I would have not ended it like that, I think you know what I mean..."Bounty Hunter 2 - The Hatchlings"

Well done! This was worth watching 3 times in a row.

This was awesome. Excellent work.

The opening shot is a good example as we shot that at dusk with a little help of lights to edge the boot and what not. But once the shadows and mids were brought 2-3 stops down the edgelight on the boot really popped and sold the moonlight/night look.

A lot of great shots. The opening boot shot is a really nice introduction to your character. Costuming and props are impressive. Looks like you had a budget or some dude with wicked goth apparel :p

Thanks for all the comments guys, they are very much appreciated!

A little more about how we made the short:

We shot this over 2 and a half days for about ten hours each day. We had a cineslider for camera movement and a small 4 light arri kit for lighting. It was just me, the director and the producer on set. The producer also helped light the film with me. The director played the bounty hunter and made the costume himself by buying some cheap costumes on ebay and then fashioning them into a more adequate look for the bounty hunter.

The critter was comissioned to be made by a friend of ours who we've worked with before and is an excellent makeup/creature FX artist.

The VFX were done my me because I was the only one with a limited knowledge of AE. Unfortunately we did not have much choice with the effect to turn off or do much of anything else because of the way we shot it on set. If we were to redo it we would've had a sculpt made of a faceless alien head so that we could tone the VFX down. But on set we shot it with a hood that showed a lot of wrinkles and seams so we had to hide all that later.

We had a budget of under 2K but we had a blast making it. Thanks again for checking it out and any comments and questions are totally welcome.

Hey Kevin,

Did you do all the foley and ambience effects yourself or use stock? I'm looking for some good stock for a short I am starting to build.

Scott

Great work ! I agree with the comments above about the VFX but other than that pretty damn impressive for just a 4 light kit (especially arri's)

Do you plan on making a bts/blog post on this film ?

It's very cinematic, well directed, lit and great production overall. Grats!

Amazing job Kevin.

Do you plan on making a bts/blog post on this film ?

Please do so. Even if it's just a write up. We would love to learn from your experiences.

This is awesome! I also love anything Critters.

Great work Kevin!

I Love this... You are one of the masters of colour correction .. Good job..

I would have loved to see the alien creature more slimy and greasy though... it makes it look less like a toy and more like a dangerous Unidentified Creature.

Keep up the good work.

Yea, a BTS/start-2-finish/in-depth blog post might attract some more attention to the series

Thanks for all the great comments guys! Really appreciated!

As for as a bts/blog post I wasn't planning on doing one but now that some people are asking for it I may do one.

If it happens, I'll be sure to post it here in this thread along with a new thread as well.

Scott, as far as sound effects we just pulled from our library that we have been building over the past ten years. Sound designers giving us their libraries and what not.

Thanks again,

Kevin

Great work!

That was fantastic! I'm an enormous Critters fan. I even own a 35mm print of the original!

First off I'd like to say I really enjoyed this and I think you've done an excellent job, very inspirational, and I wish I could have pulled off something this good myself. You should be very proud of what you've created. I also liked the Dresden Files nod, love the books and I even liked the show.

In the spirit of constructive criticism (as requested) I would like to offer some thoughts I had during the viewing.

In the opening sequence, the foley sounds seemed a little too loud, they made my brain think "ooh, foley" instead of just accepting them. A bit quieter and I wouldn't have even registered it.

I think you could do better on the alien mask. I actually really like the concept you have for it, it's a very cool look, it just needs a little better execution. If you can find the time, I would look into reworking that effect, getting help if you have to, I'm sure someone would be interested to help.

The mask also shows "ripples" around the outline making it clear it's a piece of cloth in some scenes, I think it would be worth the effort to just roto or clean those up somehow, it's only a few seconds here and there.

Once again, excellent work, I very much enjoyed it, and now I really really want to watch that ridiculous 80's movie again....

Outstanding work! +1 to the foley comments. I'm sure you are also painfully aware of the continuity error with the knife as well.

Definitely agree on the mask and the foley comments. We'll probably go back and tweak those to perfection now that we have more time.

Thanks again to everyone who watched and commented on this, it's very helpful and appreciated!

This was my first narrative shot on the BMPC ( I had previously shot on it for a doc series ). I was curious to see how it held up with something a little more cinematic and lit. I was very pleased to see it perform well even under low light conditions.

Next up I would like to try it out on something less genre-y like a high end commercial look or a natural looking drama.