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A Day in 1951 - GH2 Korean Short Film
  • Hi guys,

    Check out my latest short film 'A Day in 1951'

    Password ds5pll

    Please feel free to leave any comments.

    This was shot with

    GH2 running Canis Majoris Night Lenses; SLR Magic 12mm / Voigtlander 25mm / Zeiss ZF 1.4 50mm

  • 11 Replies sorted by
  • Brilliant!

    Comment: Colour work is great. My own personal preference, for a few of the day time shots, I would roll off the highlights/specular (pots)/white shirt (slightly blowing out) with curves, but that is just me. I see you have already done that for outdoor day shots, avoiding the white over exposed sky through the trees, etc. I generally prefer to use something like RGB Curve effect in Premiere while observing the RGB Parade scope, keeping highlight well under 100% and adjust up the mids to 40-50% in the curve. Everyone has their own method, nothing is necessarily correct. I am only referring to a few shots, my own personal comment, not advice. Subtitles, I would make them a little smaller, and perhaps consider another font, although that one is fine. I don't know the name of another fonts I have seen and liked, just an idea that I would investigate. Lastly, being set in 1950's, while you have already displayed your skills as a colourist, I would only say that if you had access to, say, FilmConvert, which may have a film stock emulation that may represent a certain film stock of that era, you may consider applying a subtle film stock look when you master.

    Visually, story and emotional content, I thoroughly enjoyed this short.

  • Here is where I have to laugh at the canonboys when they claim that GH's are videoish?

    Good job with a great story, well acted and photographed. How long did it take to shoot it?

  • @thougts2uk Firstly, I would like to congratulate you on what seems to be an EXCELLENT piece of work!

    Acting: Acting by the Korean boy definitely merits an award or a recognition of some sort. It's serious acting. I'd love to work with an actor like this. Is he a real professional actor? The Brit soldier, however, seemed a little bit mis-cast (acting not so great, when compared to his supporting actor).

    You should seriously consider taking this to festivals. Maybe you'll even find enough finance to make this into a full feature film.

    Just a small artistic suggestion: when James is speaking, why not add Korean subtitles? After all, this film is, in a way, a dialogue (or maybe miscommunication) between the Occident and the Orient.

    Locations, props, budget: where was this filmed? What did you use for gun props? Also, the special effect of the mussle flash at 17:38 was unlrealistic and overdone (this is not an AK-47 or M16). (Hint: Read what kind of barrel design causes mussel flashes.) And what was the budget for the entire production (excluding the equipment of course) ?

    Sound: I'm most interested to know which microphones, recorders and other audio gear did you use???

  • Didn't see anything wrong at all. enjoyed it to the end of the credits. Great work!

  • Hi guys,

    Thanks you so much for the comments.

    @White Rabbit - Thanks for you comments. I will revisit the grade looking at the scopes again. Also interesting note about Film Convert. I haven't played around with this yet so will look into it. I also plan to bring down the subtitles a little too. Thanks for pointing that out.

    @Manu4Vendetta - Thanks mate, glad you liked it. It took 3 1/2 days to shoot in total.

    @kronstadt - Glad you enjoyed my movie. Yes the Korean guy was a very strong Actor. I got to spend a lot of time with him prior to shooting so we did a lot of rehearsals. Yes I'm preparing to start the festival run soon. I will also think about adding some Korean subtitles together with the English. I shot this in South Korea, because I wanted it to be authentic so that both characters could experience a real location. The guns actually came from Hong Kong because they have legal issues in Korea with guns, so they licence them for 1 year, or something like that. I will look into the mussel flash effect. One of the difficulties when you do so much yourself is that it's easy to overlook things. The sound gear was Sennheisser MKH416 for boom, we also had these wireless lav mics that stick onto the body, looked like flesh colored bandaids. They were running a Tascam recorder and also a Sound Device Mixer (I think) they brought there own two man team and were a professional sound team working on features in Korea.

    Hope I answered everything.

    Thanks again guys.

  • I absolutely loved this. The way you handled the language barrier along with the whole psychology of the moment was gripping. Bravo!

  • @thougts2uk If I was in a country where guns could be so easily had, I'd just stick a GH1 to a tree with a directional microphone underneath it, walk away to a safe distance and have the actor fire a real bullet in the direction of the camera. Why? Because

    A) much to most audience's surprise they might not see a mussle flash that they have grown so accustomed to from movie makers whose only experience of such matters comes from watching other movies etc. and

    B) much to audience surprise they will not hear the gunshot itself. The sound of being shot at is very different than the sound of the gunshot. (because bullet travels faster than sound and also because the bullet pushes the air to the sides, rather than forward) ... read this http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/YouAlwaysHearTheBullet

    I'm still interested to find out as much as you can share about the sound setup in this great movie. Which Tascam recorder did they record to? Did they use any cardoid mics for dialogues or was it just the lavs? And is this the lav mic that they used http://www.trammicrophones.com/images/equipment/tram/com/equipment/tram/tr50t_head.jpg (Tram TR-50) And what kind of post-production processes did the sound mix go through?

    By the way, how much did this whole production cost (apart from equipment that you already own)?

  • Amazing!!! congratulations, i always enjoy korean films and this is not the exeption. iso and settings that you recorded?

  • @krondstadt. I may try out exactly what you just said at home this weekend. set up my mic and camera and aim near it with my rifle from a distance and shoot to see how it sounds. Never really thought about this until you mentioned it.

  • @johnnymossville yeah, few movies will have the real sound of being shot at (maybe because it's not in audience's "audio vocabulary" as the sound of ultimate danger). Ones that I can remember from the top of my head that use this sound are Terrence Malick's "The Thin Red Line" (in the scene where they try to storm the hill) and another action/war movie called "Tears of the Sun" (in one of the final battle scenes). Mostly it's like "wizzz-wizzz"- like mosquitoes flying by and only later you hear the gun shot, but somewhat differently.

    If you do that experiment please let me know how it goes.

  • May I ask you on the color grading process of the film? it is definitely the best looking footage I have seen come from a Gh2! Great job!

    But also, just a clarifying question. Why does the Korean boy get so mad all of a sudden? Did it have to do with the uniform that the British man picked up? Or is the Korean boy just very unstable and thinks that the British man is the one that killed his family.