Cool video... now let's make a film!
One of our first steps in planning for this film was to make an estimate of how much we could spend for the Thai portion of the film. This in turn would and did dictate many of the story concepts and ideas, and the realities of what we could film.
My own philosophy for the action was that martial arts, and strong martial arts choreography would have to be our special effects. Though many action movies for past several years have embraced the Chinese style of fight choreography, relying as much on fantastic wire work and staged acrobatics, not only did I know that we would not have the resources to pull that off, but that though I respected the athleticism, I rarely enjoyed the resulting scenes.
Realism and grit, evidenced in movies such as Reservoir Dogs, Narc, Training Day, Requiem for a Dream, and of course Raging Bull, and even Blair Witch would all color the perceptions of what I thought we could pull off.
I knew (or thought at the time) that guns, explosions, and other mainstays of the Hollywood action movie would not be realistic within our limited resources. Without breaking sets or props, without really interesting camera moves, even interesting fights would be tough to pull off.
What I did know that we could do was to make realistic fights, full of pain and hurt, that were composed entirely of legitimate martial arts technique, and film them in a way that put the viewer in the action, making the fights interesting to the eye and mind.
The look...
Rob and Kely, like many millions of people, have watched hundreds of films. We knew what we liked.
From the most basic of concepts, that Rob would get his ass kicked and Kely would kick ass, Kely began writing a complex script dealing with government double dealing and past treacheries, wrapped within the emotional framework of two brothers, Jim and Jack Davis, willing to put everything on the line for each other, and the still unsolved murder of Jack's wife.
Though several ideas were originally written into the script dealing with a secret, covert arm acting under the blanket of the Homeland Security Act, the producers felt that if they could pack in enough movie action, it would make up for any discrepancies of story and production values.
Having once worked under Menahem Golan, Kely remembered Menahem's advice of striving for action scenes every six minutes. Determined to outdo these radical numbers, and yet still make a credible film, Kely polished his ideas and then had the task of convincing his friend and partner that the easiest way to make the film was to head overseas. More coming soon...
We build the computer - or how I watch Dan build one... Dan Slemons, the American version of the 'One Man Crew' and more, built both the computers used for post. Originally hoping to take advantage of AMD's processing pipeline, we purchased mother board and processor to build an Athlon system. For some reason, even having a major systems builder troubleshoot it for almost a month, we could not get After Effects to work. Contact to Adobe, the motherboard manufacturer, and all Athlon and Adobe forums could not resolve this particular set up. And so... Dan built a Pentium system around a 3.4 processor, 4 gigs ram, now 10 internal SATA drives, Focusrite Saffire, 5 Event Monitors, 22 external firewire and USB drives (10 active - 12 back up), wireless keyboard and mouse, 20" Wacom tablet, and the Matrox triple head video card driving displays on 3 19" View Sonic CRT monitors, a huge double tower case and a 500 watt power supply; this is the computer that has edited and posted this entire film. |
An Adobe production... The editing and subsequent post production workflow was designed around the PC and Adobe's software; Premiere Pro, After Effects, Audition, Photoshop and Illustrator, and Adobe's DVD program Encore. This has been supplemented with a huge number of plug ins in After Effects, and certain programs involved in noise reduction (digital video noise), as well as Nuendo and Sound Forge for additional sound processing and clean up. Though any project this big would have issues, the integration of programs is becoming tighter and tighter, and I am comfortable with Adobe's workflow. Originally, I was determined to use the most basic 'shareware' program I could find to edit, just to rub in the fact that it's truly the driver not the car that makes for the finished product. I have to say I am glad I didn't, not only the integration, but the massive amount of data management would have made it tough. I long for the day when I have an assistant and\or interns to help keep track of files. |
Speedy Gonzalez editing... somewhere over 3000 cuts At one time I was trying got keep track of the cuts - well over 2000 at the half way point and I said 'forget it'. I know the final fight with 'Markus' has nearly 200, and that dialog scenes like the first dialog of the movie when the ISF Lt. says 'If you get the chance - take him out", is only 29 seconds long and has 25 cuts. The complete 'DC War Room', split into 4 parts, is nearly 4 minutes long total, is mostly dialog, and has 237 cuts. Not trying to set a record, just trying to convey the maximum amount of information. Of course even my camerwork sometimes made as many as five camera moves on a single line of dialog! |
Digital Film Design saves many of our shots and polishes... ... the rest. The tropical sun and the speed in which we were filming left many of our shots totally blown out. DFD's film emulation process rolled off our highlights, brought out shadow detail, gave a sense of depth, and enhanced the colors. Many touch ups were done on close ups; lens flares, shadows, gels, pools of light, sky replacement, rain, lightning, focus enhancements and lens blurs were all done in post. There are dozens of shots, some entire locations and set ups that we originally thought were unusable - and are now some of the prettiest shots of the film, (of course that's because Nawanun Anoma is in some of them! |
From Cool Video to really Cool Film - okay okay - Movie! The above shot was done with the natural source light - the lamps, and Rob holding our paper lantern with our one 200 watt lightbulb. He was also juggling the microphone while Troy shot the scene. Nawanun (Nid Noy) was extremely nervous, and had 3 girlfriends eating dinner in the next room, keeping an eye on us. I remember one of the contentions was in what she should wear. I wanted the shirt and tie, her girlfriends wanted lingerie, and Nid Noy wanted to be fully dressed. They couldn't understand why I thought the shirt and tie would be endearing, but she gave in. Too bad the girlfriends' idea didn't work out! |
Winner - Best Visual Effects - special effects to the max... There are no real guns used in the movie. No squibs, no blanks, no sparkers, no paintballs, no smoke, no rain, no lighting. The final gunfight is 77 seconds long, and was created with over 12 hundred layers of visual effects, each having multiple filters and each controlled with animated masks. The sound is created with over 600 individual sound effects on 114 tracks mixed into 5.1 sound. It was also filmed using only 5 plastic guns - 2 9mm's, a shot gun, and two automatic rifles. Also of note is that Rob Pralgo filmed the bulk of the scene and that we staged and shot the entire scene within a six hour time block.
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