My Canon HV20 Short is making the festival rounds – some notes about the workflow

I shot a short film titled A Killer App as the final project for a directing class at UCLA Extension. We used my Canon HV20 exclusively, with the aperture locked to as wide an aperture as possible – a 2.8 f stop in order to get as much light hitting the sensor and to get a shallower depth of field. Footage was brought in via Firewire into Sony Vegas and then converted to Lagarith Lossless using the methods described by Eugenia to export into After Effects for color grading, cinematic cross fades, power windows, visual effects and titling and then exported back into Vegas using Lagarith again.

The final cut was exported as an uncompressed AVI (a huge file even for a ten minute short) which was then used as the new master video file so that various export formats could be created. Among these were the ProRes 4:2:2 using the Avid HDxDN codec 10-bit at 1080p / 23.976 which we dumped onto a drive and handed off to a friend at a post facility so that he could transfer this as an archival master to an HDCAM SR tape. Yes, you will likely tell me that this is overkill as the HV20 records in a 4:2:0 colorspace and is a highly compressed format to begin with, but some festivals (Sundance for example) still require HDCAM tape for exhibition, and so we wanted to have our bases covered.

While working in Vegas we assumed that we would export at 32-bit video levels but worked in 8-bit for smoother playback and due to the fact that we had at least 4 video tracks and multiple audio.

But I have learned a lot since then.

First of all – these cameras only have about 4 stops dynamic range. This means that the actual mise-en-scene is very important. Don’t shoot people wearing black against white walls. Instead work with a narrower palette – try to keep contrasts narrower – and that applies to wardrobe, set design, lighting styles. Also, learn to use a light meter, and use it, and shoot as flat and neutral as possible; although colored gels may seem fun at the time, remember that this isn’t high school theater – that red gel will squish your actors face into the same color space as the wall behind them unless you are very careful, and you will find getting a proper skin tone out of them in post next to impossible. (Not to mention the fact that the camera’s respective color channels respond differently to different colors – you may not seem to be clipping your highlights, but you could be clipping a color channel).

In post I would begin by capturing or immediately converting captured footage into Cineform using NeoScene (which converts to a 4:2:2 colorspace) and cut that directly on the Vegas timeline in 8-bit while piecing things together and again exporting at 32-bit video levels. This is not going to be a comprehensive post about all the settings or best practices, but just some notes about how we did it and what we got. The bottom line is, we tried to stick to first generation material as far as possible, but we ended up going into Lagarith twice, both times exporting at 32-bit, and then once more for the final output. Needless to say the tech guys at the post facility called to tell us that the HDCAM SR version they watched looked super sharp and high end. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen it off the tape. They also said the sound was really good:

While working with the audio tracks (which were recorded using the Rode VideoMic with a 10db pad on plugged straight into the HV20) in Vegas, each character’s dialogue was checkerboarded – cut onto its own track and heads and tails were trimmed right to the edge. We made sure to have recorded and included real room tone from the day, and spent another two days looping any dialogue that was bad due to extraneous noise or for being too far off mic.

On the set of A Killer App, shot with the Canon HV20. Photo by Jessica Marshall-Gardiner

A lot of fun was also had building the environments, background ambience, sound effects -these little details can help a production enormously. The well known golden rule is that sound is paramount. Your video can be just OK, but if the sound is no good, then you are sunk.

We found some excellent soundtrack music by simply asking some appropriate sounding bands on MySpace, and then sending them a music release form which they signed, scanned and emailed back.

Region 0 NTSC DVDs were made and shipped out to a couple dozen festivals and we won an Award of Merit at Accolade, and were accepted in the Glastonbury Horror Festival in the UK. We have yet to hear from about half our submissions who don’t report until later in the year, but so far so good.

Incidentally, if you are not yet aware of  Withoutabox.com and you are an indie filmmaker – then go learn it now. It is a one-stop shop for thousands of film festivals and you can submit directly through the site. Note that while use of the site is free, festivals are not – each submission will set you back an average of 25 to 50 dollars US.

A side benefit of using Withoutabox.com, however, is the eventual IMDB page you are given. This is a great way to get your film indexed and noticed by millions of daily visitors to the portal. Also, Amazon owns it so there are opportunities to put your short up for sale through that company.

Regardless of where you are in your development as an independent filmmaker, I hope some of the experience I have shared above will be of use to you.

Please feel free to add any notes in the comment section below about working with your Canon HV20 and Sony Vegas, Lagarith, Cineform, After Effects, post production workflow and deliverables or how you have been marketing and distributing your final product.