1February2010
Posted by under: Editing; Final Cut Pro.
A few years back, I had a major F#(k up with my server and lost my old blog posts. DVguru had/has a link to a post I put up on Final Cut Pro shortcuts.
So if you want the document, just click here.
All I ask in return is to either follow me on twitter or join my film’s facebook page. Thanks NL
11January2010
Posted by admin under: Black Site; Indiependent Film; post production.
This post will focus on the development of the design and the evolution of our poster for “Black Site.”
I knew from the get go, I didn’t want to do the typical head shots of the key actors. I wanted to go in another direction by focusing on a key element of the film.
When we started cutting the film, one of the images that grab me the most was a shot in the beginning of “Black Site,” where we see a close up of a detainees hands come into focus.
This shot, then cuts to a long shot, where we see the detainee, in an orange jumpsuit, sitting on a metal chair with a black hood on. This image, I felt reinforced the concept and key element of the film.
I then set out to go get a photograph made of this shot for the main poster.
After we finished the color correction with the team from Final Frame NYC, they gave the movie a gray / metallic look through-out, where the only real color that “pops” is the orange color of detainees’ jump suits. This got me thinking, maybe a photograph will not be ideal for this, instead it should be an illustration.
I’ve always loved the minimalist movie posters of sixties films like Hickcock’s “Vertigo” and Preminger’s “Anatomy of a murder” Where, the poster uses a few colors and some basic shapes to create the film’s key elements. This and several concepts from Russian propaganda posters clinched it for me.
I then set out to find somebody who could do that for me and placed an ad on craigslist.org for an illustrator. In the ad, I was very specific and gave several examples to the potential hire for the poster. I found two great recent examples of what I wanted, one was Lee Daniel’s poster for “Precious.” This poster is great, it shows a silhouette of Precious in negative space. The other was an image I found in Facebook in one of the causes I’m a part of. See above:
The artist, Edward, came back with a draft of the image, which is very close to my idea. The image uses four colors to create the detainee; black, orange, white and gray for the arms and head. It took me a few days to figure out a way to remove the gray color, so that the key colors where orange and black. 
Like all my good ideas lately, it came to me in the middle of the night. What if, I make the whole background black on the poster and have one strip of light coming down to illuminate the detainee. This light will be the main color of the film, orange. This lead to the final poster (see below), we used a generic metallic background between the orange color element to make the orange more “dirty.”
I hope this post was helpful any and all comments are welcomed.
On a side note, the film recently played it’s first Human Rights Film festival in KIEV, UKRAINE.
19December2009
Posted by admin under: Filmmakers; Filmmaking; Indiependent Film; Movie; News; Video; web.
Check out this short film posted on Youtube the other day. It was done for 300, not million but dollars.
Now the director got a 30milion dollar deal to do a feature with Sam Raimi’s Ghost House Pictures.
Check out the story here.
7December2009
Posted by admin under: Editing; Final Cut Pro; Time Waster; Video.
I created this promo reel, hoping maybe i can get a gig or two. It’s kind of dry right now so trying something different. Let me know what you think.
Everything was done inside of FCP. Please leave a message and pass it on.
Thankx
nl
