A Walk in the Light Green Trailer

[Gyro]

It's about freakin' time! It's about freakin' effin' con flabbin' time! Somone! Finally someone aside from SgtPadrino, Kentertainment and I that puts out a good film! And you're a newbie! Oh my gosh! I thought I'd never see the day... and it's a war film!! Delta Echo... I think I am in love with you... Haha, just kidding welcome aboard MH.

Onto the critique, as said before it's looks and feels fantastic, beautiful shot, color correction is fantastic and the props are beyond excellent.

As far as the trailer itself... could've been constructed better I think. Very commonly used music and a little redudent near the end. But this all just goes under editing.

Anywho, props, welcome to the forum again and can't wait to see the final project.

If you've got msn or something, let me know, I wouldn't mind discussing filmmaking with you!

[buck_suck]

Me too haha

[delta_echo]

I just dug this up: http://media.putfile.com/A-Walk-in-the- ... ---low-rez . Almost forgot this existed as I had no part in editing it. This trailer was put together early in the project, with only a few film shoots done. You will also notice that it has the release date as May 2004! Let's just say that we were overly optimistic. Anyway, not nearly as exciting as the second trailer, but I thought a few of you might like to see it. Once again, the music in this one is not ours.

[delta_echo]

Forgot to mention that the original title for this film was "Tay Ninh". Also, this trailer lacks any of the final filters put on the actual film.

[buck_suck]

Its pretty good though, as you said, the second trailer is much better. Whatsup with the helicopter though? Seems kinda...Super imposed?

[delta_echo]

Ummm. Well, it was bluescreened. I guess that's what you mean. Not exactly alot of working hueys out there these days, much less hueys that fit in an amateur film budget to rent!

[buck_suck]

Haha yeah! I agree totally. There was one time we were one in ten finalists of this national competition where the prize was a $10,000 contract to produce a pilot with a renown local director and work with a big TV studio. We were the youngest team (Everyone was like 30-40) and we didnt win. But its been our lifelong ambition to use a real helicopter in one of our films. We were telling each other if we had won....

[ct_bullet]

that looks wicked, what are you using for editing and special effects etc. keep it up, also how many people are in your team, cast and crew

[delta_echo]

that looks wicked, what are you using for editing and special effects etc. keep it up, also how many people are in your team, cast and crew

Sorry it took so long to reply. Been gone on Thanksgiving leave. For editing we used Adobe Premiere Pro. For special effects and filters we used either Premiere or Photoshop. As far as cast and crew . . . we had 8 main characters, roughly 20 extras, and usually 2 camera guys. Our crew really varied with the day - kinda' whoever could make it.

[delta_echo]

Haha yeah! I agree totally. There was one time we were one in ten finalists of this national competition where the prize was a $10,000 contract to produce a pilot with a renown local director and work with a big TV studio. We were the youngest team (Everyone was like 30-40) and we didnt win. But its been our lifelong ambition to use a real helicopter in one of our films. We were telling each other if we had won....

Too bad you all didn't win. What film was it and do you have a link? As for the helicopter, keep it up and it'll happen some day. Heck, I wish I had a camera about a week ago. We were getting free rides in the blackhawks and I could have gotten some awesome stock footage!

[buck_suck]

Wow. Free rides? Nice I love Black Hawks. Beautiful machines. I presume you like them too since one of the songs in your trailer was from Black Hawk Down haha. What kind of cameras do you use, by the way? The quality looks very 'film-ish' if I might say so.

Yes it is a pity we didnt win Haha though I admit we're quite far from getting a helicopter anytime soon. We had four DV cameras for our latest film. You can see the stills of our movie (Taken from one of our three still photographers) at www.nikkinikki3.deviantart.com

The films not out yet. We made two versions - A 15 min one and a 30 min one. The 15 min one is done but I shot my laptop with a p99 and now its in repair. I'll post it once we're done with both versions. Coincidentally, we also had a main 8 man team haha - Except ours was SWAT though.

[lp3media]

that looks wicked, what are you using for editing and special effects etc. keep it up, also how many people are in your team, cast and crew

I used Adobe After Effects 6.5 for all the "complex" stuff such as chroma keying, smoke animation and other similar effects. As for the color correction, everything was done in Premiere Pro 1.5. The color correcting tools it has are some of the best in my opinion. As delta echo stated, we had numerous cameras ranging from Sony handycams to the Panasonic DVX 100 and everything in between. First I had to match all the cameras to create consistent color between cuts (which was a nightmare). Then, when the whole film was finished, I put numerous filters on it to give the video a more "filmic look." I tinkered with different "looks" for about 1/2 a year on and off during the project. I am very pleased with how the color turned out. For those of you who want to know the specific details on filters, etc, here the formula I have created: First I used the shadow/highlight filter to lessen the harsh contrast ratio inherent to video. This is a huge and critical step in making it look like film. Next I used levels to darken the midtones--this adds gamma to the video and brings it much closer to the "look" of film. Next i used the "color corrector" filter in Premiere to change the hue to a warm yellow. I also desaturated the video slightly. Lastly, the most magical filter is magic bullets "Movie Looks" filter that comes free with premiere. The specific one i used was "black diffusion" sadly, this specific "look" is sold separately.
OK I think I rambled on long enough. If anyone has any technical questions about the project, I would be happy to answer them.

[buck_suck]

chroma keying, smoke animation and other similar effects

Yeah I have a question. Are all the explosions I saw in the trailer and all the smoke effects, muzzle smoke, etc (Apart from that shot of real blanks being shot) CGI? I'm familiar with super imposing pictures or other movie files on Adobe Premiere with green screen/luma keys and adjusting the opacity/cutoff to look decent - But they dont look as good as yours. Ours still look 'somewhat' fake and largely digital. Yours, however, look real. Whats your secret?

But more importantly, whens the release date and how might we be able to get a copy of the full film? ^_^

[delta_echo]

chroma keying, smoke animation and other similar effects

Yeah I have a question. Are all the explosions I saw in the trailer and all the smoke effects, muzzle smoke, etc (Apart from that shot of real blanks being shot) CGI? I'm familiar with super imposing pictures or other movie files on Adobe Premiere with green screen/luma keys and adjusting the opacity/cutoff to look decent - But they dont look as good as yours. Ours still look 'somewhat' fake and largely digital. Yours, however, look real. Whats your secret?

But more importantly, whens the release date and how might we be able to get a copy of the full film? ^_^

Ha ha, my editor is on now (lp3media)! I'll answer what I can. For the explosions, they were all real, no CGI there. Obviously, we added sound as true detonations resulting in that much noise so close to the actors would be, in effect, equivalent to the true military device. People would lose limbs which makes it very hard to continue production . As for the muzzle flashes and barrel smoke, I'll leave that to LP. Like I said before, all I did was sit there while he played with various settings. My experience with military smallarms is fairly substantial, plus we took clips of the actual weapons firing and compared them with what we created.

As for the DVD release . . . should be done by the first week of January.

[lp3media]

The key to the "weapon" effects" is the expanding gas (from now on reffered to as "smoke"), not the actual muzzle flash. For the smoke, I saved a video of a real gun shooting in individual frames and then imported them into Photoshop. I then used the paint brush (on a new layer) to paint something that looked exactly like the real thing. The smoke lasts for 3 frames, so I made three layers: layer one matching the first frame of real smoke, the second one matching the second frame, and so on. Then I saved each layer as separate PSD files (with the transparency included—not on a white or black background). It was then possible to drop these three pictures in where ever we needed. I took it a step further and rendered then three frames into an animation (with After Effects) that included an alpha channel (transparency). This way we could resize and relocate the animation very easily. But it is possible to leave them as three frames in Premiere if that's all you have access to. It just gets frustrating when you have to do everything three times. The reason for using Photoshop files with transparency is that you don't have to chroma/luma anything out. This avoids the hard edge that can form with keying.

As for the muzzle flashes, they are just still pictures that are one frame long. We found that a lower opacity works well because it makes it more subtle and therefore more believable. Again, I studied a real muzzle flash and tried to replicated it in Photoshop using the brush tool.

I took care of the technical/artistic stuff for these weapon effects, but the thing that made them real was delta echo's critical eye for authenticity. We spent days figuring out how to do the effects and making them look right.

[UnkindSky]

Lemme see... wow, WOW, and WOW!! I loved it! Very nice, very nice. I loved the tint and loved the quality. I will DEFENATLY by the DVD. Email me at woodbob090@yahoo.com so we can talk bout it. Can't wait to see the finished project. Muy bien!

Chris Kidd

[joe]

It's about freakin' time! It's about freakin' effin' con flabbin' time! Somone! Finally someone aside from SgtPadrino, Kentertainment and I that puts out a good film!

Wow, how elitist of yourself. Could you be any humbler?

Anyways, to the trailer. It was really well done from what I could see. It's been a bit since I watched it, but from what I can remember, it was definitely one of the most professional looking pieces I've seen from anyone on this site. I like the fact that you actually know about your topic and that Vietnam isn't completely jungle, etc. It gives you more credibility for the film to stand on. Bravo.

Joe

[buck_suck]

It's about freakin' time! It's about freakin' effin' con flabbin' time! Somone! Finally someone aside from SgtPadrino, Kentertainment and I that puts out a good film!

I think its only natural.

I dare say everyone thinks their films (And related pieces of others resembling theirs) are the best. Its normal.