HDV indies: - In search of a Midnight Kiss

Having sullied this blog in a recent post with a mention of a Jason [spit] Statham movie, I'll attempt to claw back some indie cred by flagging up a proper low budget HDV independent movie currently doing the rounds - In Search of a Midnight Kiss is currently released in cinemas and is still doing the rounds in the regions. According the the IMDB it was shot on the Sony HVR Z1.

If you can't handle the full ninety minutes of romantic slacker quirkiness (yup it's THAT kind of indie movie) than you can at least have a look at the trailer (up to 1080p!) on the Apple Movie trailers site.

Big Budget HDV filmmaking.

Another feature film is being shot with standard prosumer HDV cameras: The sequel to the 2006 action thriller Crank is being shot right now Canon XH A1 camcorders. The first Crank was shot on HDCAM Sony F950s, and the co-directors have recently completed a movie using the Red One camera system. Unlike previous HDV movies, like Searchers 2.0 or Once, which were low budget, independent productions that used HDV cameras for budgetary reasons, Crank: High Voltage is choosing the system for aesthetic reasons.

The point was not trying to emulate film: says co-director Brian Taylor, "[...] This is an A.D.D. movie, so we should have A.D.D. cameras. So, you know the idea of moving the camera in outrageous ways and being able to destroy cameras without blinking an eye is more important to us than, you know, sort of having this filmic image."

More info here: www.collider.com

Found via freshDV.com

Searchers 2.0

Alex Cox's HDV western, mentioned in an earlier post, will be broadcast in the UK on Monday 16th of June on BBC4 at 10pm. The movie was shot with Sony Z1s in 1080i mode and premiered at the 2007 Venice Film Festival.

Alex Cox has apparently recorded a special "Moviedrome" style intro for the film, as well as for some other classic westerns showing this weekend.

Feature film making in HDV

ALex cox's latest film Searchers 2.0 is a comedy road movie, with nods and references (as usual with Cox) to Hollywood's past, especially westerns. It was filmed in Monument valley, but most interestingly was made in 50i HDV on a sony Z1.

The budget for the film was a measly $175,000 (less than £100,000) but this was a fully professional production, with veteran DOP Steve Fierberg head of the camera department, in a production that was backed by the BBC and low budget legend Roger Corman, and produced Robocop/Starship Troopers producer Jon Davison.

An interview at DV.com with Fierberg and gets the lowdown on why the Z1 was chosen over other more glamorous cams like the JVCs and Canons, and how the Z1 performed (quite well, apparently to the DP's surprise). One useful tip, to judge exposure, Fierberg set the zebra stripes to 105% and then tried to get everything under that, skies were darkened with a polarising filter and the final show was colour corrected in Avid Nitris. Cox also spills some of the beans on the production in an interview on his own website. He also talks about the production on his blog, though there are no links to the relevant articles, so you have to scroll down articles around mid 2006 and ending about 2007 for the relevant entries. One encouraging quote on the film's 2007 Venice Film Festival showing, "The screen is huge, and our film - shot on my funky Z-1 video camera - is in perfect focus, and the film sounds ten times better in the larger space."

Fierberg has also written about the film in the April 2008 edition of American Cinematographer, though the article is not available online.

The BBC will broadcast the movie this June, as it's a BBC co-production, hopefully it will also be available online via the iPlayer.

Another feature shot on the Z1 in 50i was the Irish low budget (€100,000) hit Once.

Extreme Indie Small Crew Filmmaking.

Two stories here about some low budget feature films with one-person crews. The first is on new animated Sita Sings The Blues, a strange blend of 20's American Blues and Hindu mythology. The 80 minute long film was animated entirely by one artist, also the writer , producer and director Nina Paley. After six years of production, for a budget of $200,000, the film received its premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival. The film was made mostly in flash with some hand painted images scanned an animated in After Effects. The project started on a lowly Powerbook Laptop, but was finished (in HD) on a Intel Mac Pro (story via www.wired.com).

While obvious it is a tremendous achievement to design and animated a feature length film on your own. Sita is made with the necessary support of voice actors, a sound designer and a composer. The Lone Filmmaker on the other hand is trying to make a film entirely on his own: writing, acting, directing, costume design, makeup, cinematography, editing, composing. While one can't doubt the commitment and enthusiasm of the filmmaker, Robert Hindle, this seems a pretty cart-before-the-horse project.



Inspired by the video-blogging success of Four Eyed Monsters, the gimmick of a true one man feature is designed to garner attention on Youtube rather than produce a really great film. (also, one would think it advisable to make a normal film first before embarking on this extreme sports filmmaking style project). Four Eyed Monsters started as a film and became a blog about distributing the film. It seems the films that his girlfriend is making about him are the starting point for this project (Some have already hinted at a Lonelygirl15 style fakery). Unfortunately his audience in the regard is dropping off. After getting around 400,000 views for his inaugural video post, his subsequent video views have dropped to around 15,000-30,000 per video.

That said there is a lot of useful info buried in these blogs for those not on such a low budget, low manpower project (like what insurance cover you can get), though it often is swamped out by some rather cringey LG15 style goofing around with his girlfriend.

Previous Single Handed (or as-near-as) productions of note are the very professionally produced Lisa Gerrard documentary Sanctuary and the truly bizarre experimental animation We Are The Strange. by M.Dot.Strange.