Short
It has being more than a year, since I visited Bihar for researching a feature script. The trip was productive indeed. It helped me in completing the first draft. Somebody has said that the first draft is always thrash. To an extent the saying turned out to be true. But it did give me a foundation to work on and its still evolving, while I try to gather funds for this script.
I took a voice recorder, a Sony digital still camera and a three CCD (mini dv) Panasonic GS230 camera along with me to record conversations/interviews etc. A friend, helping me in the research work, narrated an interesting incident. All of sudden, the excitement got me into a mood of capturing the incident on camera! But we need a location and an important prop, where do we get it? We were on our way to a temple, which might be used to shoot the feature if and when it happens. My friend made a phone call…the location and props were arranged, within short span of time. Instead of taking a left for the temple our car took a right proceeding towards the location.
We reached the spot at around 2:30-3:00 pm…Took developing shots, from the car windows to capture the organic imagery, without letting anyone know that the camera is on.
But, who would act in it? As my friend knew, how the incident took place he would be acting in it, even tough he is a very shy guy and has never acted before. We picked up few actors from the location, who would be playing themselves…But one of the main characters, who would be playing himself was too positive for the role. A person, who was accompanying us, was selected because of his correct attitude for that particular character.
The incident was interesting, but did not form a story. So minor additions were done to have a vague outline. Off course there was no time to write down dialogues, so it would all be total improvisation.
The camera started to roll. The actors kept looking into the lens. Continuity was not a possibility. A small crowd had gathered as the news spread that shooting is going on. People kept talking while the shoot was on. The main source of recording sound being the built in microphone of the camera. The electricity comes only for four hours a day and we are not lucky enough to get it then. So natural light is the only source. The light kept on fading as the days are short during the winters. We left the place by 4:30-5:00 pm before it became dark.
After procrastinating for a year finally came up with a rough cut… Showed it to few friends. They seemed to like it enough to go for a good post production.
Initially did the edit on Premiere Pro using DV Avi format. But it is a compressed format. Better image quality is possible. After talking to few friends came to know that the capture card has to be good. Need to grab the footage on high resolution in avi format. If anybody can help on this it would be awesome.
Few kind friends offered helped in doing the sound part. Thanks to them!
Have subtitles in *.prtl files (premiere pro title files), how do I transfer them into other softwares, which I would be using for color correction? Was thinking of creating a new sequence on the time line, with the same edit, deleting everything else but the subtitles…then exporting it as an avi/ targa / tiff etc file…then importing the same and superimposing the timeline of color correction software…any suggestions please?
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Just switch to FCP bro. Ur life will be much simpler.
How long is the short? If it’s less than 30 mins then subtitles won’t be a problem in any case. You can re-do them in a span of 4-5 hours, if you have them even in a simple text form…say notepad or word.
Of course you need to spend some time on FCP to ’set’ them right with the action…but i did it for my docu and it worked well. Plus it gives you a chance to manipulate their duration at various instances…so that they don’t linger on irritatingly after the dialog is done…or (horror) don’t appear even before the words are spoken on screen…something which happens with automated subtitles programming. (I guess u have something like that only.)
Hope you will have more suggestions to get a clearer picture.
I meant to say “appear even before the words are spoken” and not “don’t appear even… .”
my mishtake!
Good luck, paaji. It was nice reading about the experience. Spontaneity and natural shots can do wonder sometimes.
Initially did the edit on Premiere Pro using DV Avi format.
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DV avi is the best available format for a Panasonic GS320. The camera itself compresses Video to Resolution 720*576, sub-sampling rate 4:2:0 and 25mbps data rate and you can re sample it to higher resolution and data rate. But then it is still research area. So just forget about it and concentrate on Creative aspect. It wastes of time. Anyway you can try out once you finish the edit. Check for Magic bullet HD. And Let me know once you get it. i will trade:))
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“After talking to few friends came to know that the capture card has to be good. Need to grab the footage on high resolution in avi format.”
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You cannot capture other than above said specification but of course later you can re-sample it, if you still think that is necessary. Rs 500 capture card is more than enough , which will give you 0.01 percent loss in terms of quality. Better captures cards are used for things like direct capture, or for capturing raw footage at sampling rate 4:4:4, or 10bit video. But then the camera should able to record at such specification first. So use ordinary capture card and do good color correction. You won’t need costly capture card. Believe me they are really costly vis-' -vis quality differential
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“Few kind friends offered helped in doing the sound part.”
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Great! Noise removal is must
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“Have subtitles in *.prtl files (premiere pro title files)How do I transfer them into other software’s, which I would be using for color correction?”
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Usually I do subtitling at the very end. But subtitling in pro is very tough. You wasted lots of time. Anyway put all your titles above video track in the time line and just render, of course switch off video below it . In premiere pro “there is eye in the left corner of the time line”. Switch it off. You will get only “subtitled” avi
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Was thinking of creating a new sequence on the time line, with the same edit, deleting everything else but the subtitles…then exporting it as an avi/ targa / tiff etc file…then importing the same and superimposing the timeline of color correction software…any suggestions please?”
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Hee … heee …:))… just put off the video below it ïŠ) it looks like you are using pro for the first time. Anyway if it is original copy then it is a good program. Pirated version keep crashing but then it is affordable. I grew up on pro, so never tried Vegas-which is more stable but less friendly-it is personal opinion.
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And welcome Guerrilla digital film making
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Thanks everybody for the suggestions and help! Hopefully, will be able to finish the short this week.