the editing room

While editing my 16mm workprint a couple weeks ago to project for a preview screening, I at first found it slow and challenging.  It had been a while since I edited actual film with a razor blade and tape.  Because of the time it takes to separate and string together shots, hang them on the wall, hand crank the reels, it can make for a different style of editing.  Often times less cuts.

After I was all finished, I thought it might be an OK edit.  I quickly edited together 18 minutes of my band's jam recordings mixed with some field recordings to play along with the footage, not in complete sync with the edit, as I had no way to sync them up.  This audio-visual edit is basically a really rough edit of the beginning of my movie.

I had already done an edit of this section of the movie digitally, a more compicated edit.  I thought it was going to be the better of the two.  But after comparing them, I like the simple edit I did with my workprint way more, and the way the audio goes with it too.  I was really surprised by this.  It just feels fresher I think.  It was less thought out, and I was under pressure to get it done quickly.  So I'm now going back to my digital edit and conforming it to what I did with my workprint.

this project on fb: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Hangs-Upon-Nothing-a-16mm-surf-film/246361802068338

tonjo & bleronk

Twin brothers Darmaputra Tonjo and Darmayasa Bleronk, from Padma, Bali.  Scott Goldsbury shot this.  The brothers just make a few brief appearances in the long trailer, but they will be a really big part of the entire film.  I feel really fortunate to have met these guys and been able to film with them the last few years.  They rip, and they're always fun to hang out with, surf with, and film with.  Their whole family is awesome., too.

More of Scott's photography can be seen at: http://www.goldsbury-photo.com/portfolio.html

I'm pretty sure he shot this photo with this huge old stills camera that you can only shoot one shot per film load with.  I'll try to get a photo of his camera to post sometime soon.  It's classic!

brush & ink

My good friends Deduk and Sarah over in Bali asked me to draw some girls with surfboards.  Here's some that I just kicked out with brush and ink.  Hope they dig em.

You might notice the unique holes punched at the bottom of these pieces of paper, also the drawings numbers, and strange line drawings...this is animation paper I got from a small animation studio I freelance for.  They trace the shadow animations onto separate sheets of paper...shadows that animate over a character's body.  Since the paper is barely handled, and only a small portion is usually drawn on, it makes for awesome sketching paper.  This paper is seriously the best sketching paper in the world, from Cartoon Colour in California, I've never found anything else like it.  I have stacks of this stuff, all pre-used for shadow animation that I've collected over the years(with permission from the studio).  

check check

Demian Amar and Darmaputra Tonjo, late afternoon surf check, Super 16mm film frame.  This shot is not going to be in the final film.  I have a feeling I'm going to be finding lots of frames I like that will never make it into the movie.  As I've mentioned before on here, this frame is from a shot I didn't even think twice about, but for a few frames, I dig the shot.

Just got all the 16mm and Super 16mm film footage I shot over the last six years or so back as digital files, transferred to full 2K(slightly higher res than 1080P HD).

Right now I'm editing the entire film with low res SD files, also transferred from the original film negatives.  I'm editing first in SD since those files are much faster to work with.  Once I have that finished, I'll go back and conform the high res 2K footage to this edit.  Then I'm going to meet up with Ryan Emerson, who has done almost all the color correction on this project so far, and we'll work together on a color correction session of the final edit of the movie.  Well, he's gonna be doing the work, I'm just going to be offering suggestions on what looks good, and how I remember the colors looking in person.

Ryan has a new transfer facility/post-house out in Connecticut.  It's called Process Blue.  They did the recent 2K transfer.  They have a film scanner called the Golden Eye III.  My initial impression of the footage, without color correction, is that their scanner does a wonderful job of capturing film.  It seems to look the closest to actual film of any transfers I've seen so far.  Other film to digital transfers I did up to this point, such as for the trailers, were on Spirits.  Excited to see how all the footage looks after color correction.  Motion picture film, as it comes in raw with no correction, the colors are quite dull.  But after a bit of adjustment, it can look beautiful.

This frame above I grabbed from the new transfer, downsized it, and adjusted colors a bit in Photoshop.

If you dig this project, stop by the page on fb and say yo: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Hangs-Upon-Nothing-a-16mm-surf-film/246361802068338

chuck on the edge of the world

roller coaster

zoooooooooom

That's Chuck Corbett on the Moviola screen.  That was after we'd sailed 9 days straight, heading south from Hawaii, over 1,000 miles.  We were taking the battered hobie cat to shore on the atoll.  Living on that boat for a few months made me really appreciate living on land.

saturn's rings

This is what rolls of 16mm print film look like from the side. I love how light shines through them creating trippy patterns. Reminds me of Saturn's rings. There are thousands of individual full color images on this roll, from the side it just looks like this though.

moviola

Yes, I'm actually about to edit with this setup...yeeeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwww!

long shot

Daniel Jones heading out, late afternoon, 16mm Bolex Rx-5 film frame, Fujifilm.