Today, I went to the screening of Down The Stairs a short film I DPed in Ohio. They had the premiere screening of horror short for cast, crew, supporters, friends and family. The premiere was at the Encore Theatre in Lima, Ohio. They had some munchies, we screened the movie and had a Q&A panel discussion afterwards. I really enjoyed going back and seeing what they had done with the shots and the edit. I had some nice compliments regarding the photography!
Update: I got news that Down the Stairs has been accepted in the Days of the Dead Film Festival. Congratulations and good luck to the producers!
First Project with the Red Weapon
This was the first project I did since upgrading to the Red Weapon. It was nice being able to shoot in Red Raw and Prores formats at the same time. It is going to save a lot of time not having to render the offline files for editing. The workflow is pretty solid now, which should put to rest some of the complaints.
Down The Stairs is a low/no budget short that I decided to do to help out the first time filmmaker and director Linda Gabriele. Most of the crew was new to film making, but I had a very good time and everyone couldn’t be nice. The biggest challenge was all my lighting was in North Carolina on another shoot, so we had to shoot it only with practicals and available lighting. This is always a challenge, especially when there was no time to scout any of the locations. We did the best with what they had and it was a good test for the Red Weapon.
Down the Stairs – Red Weapon First Impressions
RED recommends an ISO Range of 250-2000 on the Dragon sensor. Though the camera goes up to ISO 12800. While I personally wouldn’t push it that far, after shooting the short “Down The Stairs” I feel you can defiantly push it beyond the recommended ISO Range and get very usable results. Less noise at higher ISOs doesn’t seem to be the only benefits. After my first shoot with the camera I feel like it has richer, cleaner and smoother blacks as well as improved skin tones.
Down the Stairs – Synopsis
Down the Stairs is a short horror film about Clayton Carver. Clayton is having a great deal of trouble communicating with his young daughter Maddie. Rendered mute by a horrific trauma, Maddie has difficulty expressing herself. Frustrated, Clayton handles the situation the only way he knows how and reality begins to spiral out of control.
Enjoy the holidays!