Lighting and composition is certainly a big part of it, though most of the shots in the loft are key lit by natural light coming in from the windows, and filled in with a Kino-Flo. The Nikon primes are great lenses, and I shot at f2.8, which is a stop faster than the kit lens, or faster still when the kit lens is zoomed in and becomes approx. f5.6.
So that's two more stops worth of shallow depth-of-field, which I think really mimics the look of 35mm movies shot at f4 or so.
Attractive actresses wearing make-up applied by a professional make-up artist helps.
Not much color grading was done in post. I shot on Smooth setting with contrast and sharpness both at minus 2, then added a bit of contrast in post. Having a great location with lots of texture and an art director (my wife) control the color palette on the set helps, too. Plus, I'm a HUGE movie buff who has been devouring movies for longer than I can remember, and most of the time I'm (consciously or subconsciously) ripping off shots from my favorite movies. :-)

Thank you for that very detailed response!

Some of the timelapse shots were done with the camera shooting stills. I have a remote intervalometer that controls it for time lapse. Other shots (the traffic, the POV though the car windshield) I shot video at a slow shutter speed then sped it up in post.
We did have a dolly for the tracking shots.

Thank you. I tried extra hard on this film to get naturalistic performances. My previous movies have been comedies and/or horror so the demand for ultra-realistic acting wasn't high priority. On this movie, not much was scripted. I did what I guess you'd call "controlled improvisation", where I'd give the actors the beats they have to hit, and an overall goal to achieve by the end of the scene. I think it worked. We'll see!

It did work considering the trailer! I thought it's some kind of a documentary after the first dialogues as they both appeared too natural to be acting. Great!!
"Controlled improvisation", could you briefly explain how exactely you did that? How much did you actually provide them to orient to, words, short lines, ... ?

Thx!

I gave them a detailed outline of the whole story. Like a three page script. We talked a lot about their characters beforehand. One of the two women is not really an actress at all. I wrote a character for her that has some similarities to who she is in real life. So a lot of her reactions and responses are very real. The other woman, who has much more acting experience, hadn't done a lot of improv work. She was a little nervous but she did a great job. My feeling is this: if an actor knows what their character wants/needs, and they know a bit about their character's behavior, then when another character or situation gets in the way of their goal (an obstacle), they know what to do to overcome it and try to get their goal. It's hard to explain, and it all sounds very technical as I write this, but basically if an actor really understands their character, and the immediate situation is real to them, and you give them something concrete to achieve in the scene (i.e. "try to make the other character fall in love with you", or ""prove you're smarter than the other character"), they know what to say and do.

Thank you Todd for the insight! I just love watching characters instead of actors that play characters, it takes everything to another level. You definately found a way to achieve that. I'll keep following your project on dvxuser :)

I think I shot most everything around 250 ISO and 320 ISO. When the acton was very close to the window, I was at 100 ISO. I had ND filters, but they didn't fit the Nikon lenses so I couldn't use them (couldn't find the right step-up rings at the camera shop), and I didn't have a matte box. So in the scenes where the actors are near the windows in the loft, I'm at 100 ISO and I had to increase the shutter speed to 1/125th. I wish I hadn't had to do that. Next time, I'll have the right ring to use ND filters.

We ran a boom mic, a Sennheiser ME66 I think, into a JVC HD250 camera. That's the camera I use at my job. It has XLR inputs and level controls. We tried to use a small Zoom H4n, but we had problems with it.

That lens looks decent. The 50mm is the lens that came standard with 35mm SLR bodies, and they are the easiest and cheapest to make. The f1.8 is supposed to be a really good lens. You may find an f1.4 that's even a bit cheaper and would give you an extra half-stop of exposure.

Maybe. But I feel guilty enough just making a trailer for a short film. The film itself will only be about fifteen minutes long. So if I made a trailer that explained anything more, it would just give everything away. There's only 15 minutes of plot! :-)

LOL!
True.
Regardless, a truly impressive piece or work you've created, Todd.
You've really shown what the GH1 is capable of.
Makes me sure of my next cam purchase. :D

thanks sammy

Panasonic GH1. Nikon prime lenses.

Maybe. I'm going to try the festival route first. But...I have to finish shooting and editing before I can do anything! :-)

Thanks!

Used Smooth setting. Contrast and Sharpness at minus 2, color at minus 1, NR at minus 1. I haven't really tested the effects of Noise Reduction. I really should test and see what it does to images.
I shot some later stuff with detail at 0, but now I regret it. It gave it too much edge detail. Best to stick to minus 2 unless doing a wide shot of a landscape or something.
Thanks for the compliment!

Thanks. Yes, I've experienced it all with the GH1...banding, artifacts in the shadows, blue color shift (which REALLY sucks), fixed pattern noise in underexposed shots. It's not a perfect camera. I love it, but sometimes it kills me. To me, the biggest offender is that it doesn't like certain shades of blue. Blue just decides to randomly turn a different shade right in the middle of your shot. And there's nothing to be done about it. The fixed pattern noise in underexposed shots can be solved by adding more fill light, but if you're trying for a moody look, you're out of luck. There are a few shots in the trailer where it exists, but in reducing the image down to Vimeo, it goes away. To me, the HD image quality of a 4/3 sensor outweighs these negatives though. But if they release a new, improved version with a better codec, I'll be first in line.

I own the GH1 and have been working with it for a few months and I love it, but I am always looking for workarounds to its major flaws. When I see shots like yours (especially the lower light looking stuff) it either gives me hope for my own work, or it makes me think that my camera has flaws that other people just aren't seeing. Thanks for the reply, I'm not glad we have these issues to deal with, but I am glad I'm not the only one and that you can still create a really beautiful end product with this amazing camera.

I think the trick to my "lower light looking stuff" is that it really isn't low light. If you're talking about the opening sequence of the trailer, there's quite a bit of movie lighting going on in the shots of both girls. The other thing is I used a fast lens. I'm shooting at f2 or f2.8 at 250 or 320 ISO. So there's not much noise in the image at all, and in the case of the shot of the woman holding the Canon camera with all the soft focus lights behind her, that's after I'd learned my lesson about adding more fill. The GH1 does OK in low light but it does fantastic when it's lit.

How do you make it look "low light?" Are you shooting in low light, but somehow just lighting the subject brightly? Color Grading?

Regarding "low light", I just borrowed your phrase and I can only speak to the scenes that look like night time in my movie. I'm lighting it...just like they do in movies. To be specific, the shot you see in the thumbnail image of my trailer, i can explain how that was lit. We used a Kino-Flo light to light her face from off right a little bit. I also had a little 200 watt light shooting through a piece of black foil with a slit cut in it (my gaffer's idea) to create an eyelight. We didn't really need this but it looked cool and made her eyes even more beautiful. You can see that her hair and shoulders are backlit by a blue light. That's a 650 watt light with a blue gel on it behind her. There were also some blinking stage lights off camera left that I aimed toward her. The colored lights out of focus behind her are a combination of lights that were already at the location plus a few others we hung up. The result of all this (mainly the Kino-Flo) is a light level that is significantly brighter than typical "available light". To be technical, in an available light scenario, the actress may only have 5 or 10 footcandles of light hitting her face. With movie lighting, she probably has about 40 footcandles on her face. So instead of having to shoot at say 800 ISO or 1600 ISO to get proper exposure, I shot at 250 ISO. The lower your ISO the less noisy your image is and the creamier it looks.

Todd thanks for your replies, I really appreciate it!

I followed this workflow:

hotrodcameras.com/2009/10/08/gh1compressor-workflow/

It worked.

Thanks!

Yes, I have seen your latest short from the 7D and I love it.
I have no shame in turning this into a full-throttle Mutual Admiration Society. Your films are my favorite thing on Vimeo. Your cutting style and choice of camera placement are fascinating. And your close-ups of objects are an art form in and of themselves. I must figure out a way to incorporate some of that into my own work one of these days (steal from the best).

Thanks for the compliments regarding the trailer. Now comes the hard part: editing the actual film into something that is dramatically coherent and emotionally resonates. No small task.

Thanks. Likewise on your work.