Teaser trailer for Australian horror feature film being shot on Canon HV20

[McBain]

Hi everybody,

I've been a proud HV20 owner/user since 2007 and a couple of years ago I decided it was time to try to make a feature film on the little sucker. I wrote a script entitled "Throwback" -- a horror/adventure tale inspired by '70s bigfoot movies and jungle adventure flicks like "The Most Dangerous Game" -- and started shooting it last year. Right now, we're about 70% of the way through filming and I'm proud to share with you all the movie's first teaser trailer:



There's also a brief info page about the movie here which will gradually be expanded and updated over time: http://www.travisbain.com.au/throwback.htm

Now for the technical details. The movie is being filmed on a Canon HV20 (duh) with a Rode shotgun mic mounted straight on the camera. I'm recording 1440x1080 25psf to Sony professional HDV tapes and editing everything in Adobe Premiere Pro on a custom-built PC with a Nvidia GTX570 GPU and an Intel Core i7-2600K CPU with 8GB of RAM. I'm colour grading with Magic Bullet and plan to use Adobe Soundbooth to do the eventual sound mix. Half the time I shoot off a Manfrotto tripod and the other half I shoot handheld using a monopod for stability. You can get great tracking shots with a monopod once you get the hang of it. It's like a poor man's Steadicam. Filter-wise, I'm really just using a neutral density and occasionally a Tiffen Ultra Contrast filter to flatten out the contrast in bright daylight scenes. Most of the time, I'm shooting wide open and zooming in slightly from a distance to get a shallower depth of field. I'm matting the movie to CinemaScope 2.35:1 in post to give it a more sweeping, epic feel. For some shots, I'm shooting 1080i and converting the footage to slow-motion in post, and it looks really nice (see the guy-falling-in-the-water shot towards the end of the teaser trailer). Whenever I shoot low-light footage and there's noise, I just zap it out with the Virtualdub Neat Video plugin (www.neativdeo.com), which is awesome. I'm also using a Kodak ZX3 waterproof camera to get some underwater shots for the movie and shots close to the water that are too risky for the HV20.

Anyway, I hope you all like my teaser trailer. A full trailer will follow later in 2012 and the movie itself (which will run about 90 minutes) is due for completion sometime in 2013.

Enjoy!
McBain

[charlie_tango]

The movie is being filmed on a Canon HV20 (duh) with a Rode shotgun mic mounted straight on the camera.

Do you plan to record audio in another way in post or just to leave it straight out of the Rode mic like that?

So far, the preview looks great. This might be as good as Azmyth's Exit 101!

[McBain]

I might do some ADR in post, but so far I've edited together 20 minutes of the movie and haven't needed to. The audio we've been getting so far is pretty clean. I use a "dead cat" windsock so wind noise isn't usually a problem. Sometime if the audio is dodgy on a take I want to use, I just use the audio from a take with cleaner audio and dub that in instead. Creative cutting usually fixed any lip-synch issues that arise from doing it this way.

The Rode mics (a proudly Aussie product - oi! oi! oi!) give really great, crystal clear audio. There are some quiet shots where I might need to remove the sound of the actual camcorder tape drive mechanism, but so far that's proving very easy to do using Audacity.

Truth be told, I deliberately wrote the script for this movie to have as little dialogue as possible so I could minimize my time doing dialogue editing in post. As you'll note from the teaser trailer, the film will be primarily action- and suspense-driven, much like the classic horror movies of yore like Ridley Scott's original Alien. That film is a masterpiece, yet when you really study it, you note that dialogue is really kept to a minimum. I took that same economical approach for this film. It's like a western written by Burt Kennedy. He was a master of tight, terse dialogue. His characters didn't say much but every word counted. Tell the story with action and facial expression etc rather than pages of expository dialogue. It's the right approach for this type of film because I'm hoping to sell it in countries where they don't even speak English.

[Daniel Rutter]

That trailer looks pretty damn good.

Be proud of it man, you're doing good things

[Almohada]

Wow!!! NOW THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT!!!! IT LOOKS AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Jim E]

Hi everybody,

I've been a proud HV20 owner/user since 2007 and a couple of years ago I decided it was time to try to make a feature film on the little sucker. I wrote a script entitled "Throwback" -- a horror/adventure tale inspired by '70s bigfoot movies and jungle adventure flicks like "The Most Dangerous Game" -- and started shooting it last year.McBain

Nuh. Not going to work in Australia. Your audience will laugh at you. "Yowies" are, and always were, bs copies of a bs American hoax. They are widely known here only because they are plastic toys you used to be able to get at McDonalds.

Should have called it "Kadaitcha Man", or something like that. They, at least, existed. Look it up.

[mark84j]

Hi everybody,

I've been a proud HV20 owner/user since 2007 and a couple of years ago I decided it was time to try to make a feature film on the little sucker. I wrote a script entitled "Throwback" -- a horror/adventure tale inspired by '70s bigfoot movies and jungle adventure flicks like "The Most Dangerous Game" -- and started shooting it last year. Right now, we're about 70% of the way through filming and I'm proud to share with you all the movie's first teaser trailer:



There's also a brief info page about the movie here which will gradually be expanded and updated over time: http://www.travisbain.com.au/throwback.htm

Now for the technical details. The movie is being filmed on a Canon HV20 (duh) with a Rode shotgun mic mounted straight on the camera. I'm recording 1440x1080 25psf to Sony professional HDV tapes and editing everything in Adobe Premiere Pro on a custom-built PC with a Nvidia GTX570 GPU and an Intel Core i7-2600K CPU with 8GB of RAM. I'm colour grading with Magic Bullet and plan to use Adobe Soundbooth to do the eventual sound mix. Half the time I shoot off a Manfrotto tripod and the other half I shoot handheld using a monopod for stability. You can get great tracking shots with a monopod once you get the hang of it. It's like a poor man's Steadicam. Filter-wise, I'm really just using a neutral density and occasionally a Tiffen Ultra Contrast filter to flatten out the contrast in bright daylight scenes. Most of the time, I'm shooting wide open and zooming in slightly from a distance to get a shallower depth of field. I'm matting the movie to CinemaScope 2.35:1 in post to give it a more sweeping, epic feel. For some shots, I'm shooting 1080i and converting the footage to slow-motion in post, and it looks really nice (see the guy-falling-in-the-water shot towards the end of the teaser trailer). Whenever I shoot low-light footage and there's noise, I just zap it out with the Virtualdub Neat Video plugin (www.neativdeo.com), which is awesome. I'm also using a Kodak ZX3 waterproof camera to get some underwater shots for the movie and shots close to the water that are too risky for the HV20.

Anyway, I hope you all like my teaser trailer. A full trailer will follow later in 2012 and the movie itself (which will run about 90 minutes) is due for completion sometime in 2013.

Enjoy!
McBain

Looks phenomenal, McBain. Easily one of the top best showcases I've seen on this site. AND!!! I've always been fascinated by the Pilliga, so they really caught my eye.

[McBain]

Thanks for your positive feedback charlie_tango, Almohada, Daniel and mark84j. It's been a long road to get to this point but your comments and others I've received have really validated what we're doing. People from all over the world have been emailing me saying how much they like the teaser trailer and that they can't wait to see the movie.

mark84j, I've never been to the Pilliga but I come from Port Macquarie originally so I've heard of the area. We have such fantastic filming locations here in Australia, many of which have never been seen in movies before. I hope to change all that!

Right now we're about 65-70% of the way through filming, and now that the northern wet season has finally come to an end, we can get back to work. We had a very productive shoot last Sunday. Got some great footage but got eaten alive by mosquitoes, so I'm going to investigate mosquito-proof clothing that I've seen in local camping shops. I am literally covered in welts, even though I liberally sprayed myself with Aerogard beforehand. The little buggers even got me through my t-shirt.

If you guys liked the teaser trailer, wait till you see the full trailer that's coming later in the year, closer to Christmas. It's going to be even more epic. This teaser trailer shows almost nothing of the surprises that are in store. I personally hate movie trailers that give away the whole movie, so I'm deliberately making sure the trailers for Throwback keep most of the movie's deeper secrets tightly under wraps. I've written some scenes in this movie which will hopefully leave audiences picking their jaws up off the floor afterwards. The first twist happens about 20 minutes in and they just keep coming after that.

As the year goes on, I plan to release stills and eventually some poster art as well. Also, a dedicated Facebook page is in the works and the official movie website will also receive a significant upgrade. It will feature cast biographies, an official synopsis, and all the other usual stuff you see on movie sites.

If any of you guys want to hit me with any technical questions about the production, by all means, feel free. I've lurked on this site for years and I've been long looking forward to sharing my experiences making a feature film on the good old HV20. This is a great little camera, as you all know, and if you use the right settings, you can get some really cinematic results out of it.

[EvilBastardProductions]

Hehe Yowies!! I remember those chocolates!!!

But in all seriousness, looking good bro! wanna see more!

[Jim E]

Thanks for your positive feedback charlie_tango, Almohada, Daniel and mark84j.

You should be grateful for negative feedback, too. Anyone who takes the trouble to give you feedback, whatever it is, is helping you.

[drapeama]

You should be grateful for negative feedback, too. Anyone who takes the trouble to give you feedback, whatever it is, is helping you.

Well said. I've learned much more from negative feedback (thanks to Huey about bad audio [read normalizing]) than anything else.
Negative criticism "forces" you to work harder on highlighted parts, so it's even better than positive criticism. Trust me!

[GeorgeMaier]

This looks delightful, I cannot wait to see the finished thing. Nothing beats a good indie film... as in a real indie film, not like those "we only have $5,000,000 budget, look how poor we are, we can only get 1 A lister and a few B listers" wannabe indie films. This is the real stuff, raw and full of the good stuff.

[McBain]

Hi all,

"Throwback" now has a Facebook page. There's not a whole lot on there right now but more and more content will be added as time goes by, including stills, production notes and of course the movie's full trailer, due later this year. Feel free to join in here: www.facebook.com/throwbackmovie

Thanks for your support.

McBain

[azmyth]

This looks awesome! Glad to see someone else diving into the feature film realm! I was feeling a tad lonely.. welcome to the club!

[drapeama]

This looks awesome! Glad to see someone else diving into the feature film realm! I was feeling a tad lonely.. welcome to the club!

There's also Conradstudios that has done a full feature film too. I plan to work on one, but as it require a lot of ressources, it's a bit stalled for now...

[Dr. Benway]

Adobe Premiere Pro on a custom-built PC with a Nvidia GTX570 GPU and an Intel Core i7-2600K CPU with 8GB of RAM

How's your system running? And what mobo do you have?

[liverpool 1]

Excellent work, looks great... Just a couple of points if i may,, When i see trailers of horror films there is some footage of really scary stuff that really grips ya, you know blood and such and a real sense of horror, but i got the feeling it was a kind of joke at the end of it, especially with the orange writing and wording and little horror action.. Thats just some points from me not that it matters much but hey still great job and the story on 99% right lines... well done and wishing i could film something like that instead of weddings all the time....

[mark84j]

Looked up more info on the Pilliga. Always seems to find my way back to THIS story. Truly horrifying.

http://bitey.com/2010/07/pilliga/

Be sure to press the blue PLAY button on the right hand side. It will freak you out.

[McBain]

How's your system running? And what mobo do you have?

My system's running great. I started editing the movie last year on an old 2006-vintage Dell Pentium D PC, but it kept crashing all the time, so I built my new computer from scratch. It's got an Intel DH67GD mobo, an Intel Core i7-2600K CPU, 8GB of RAM and a GTX570 GPU. Runs beautifully now. Never crashes. I can easily play back HDV clips on the timeline at full motion, even with Magic Bullet FX and a 2.35:1 .psd mask layered in. I'm rendering certain visual FX shots with the Lagarith lossless codec and even it plays back smoothly in Premiere Pro. Post-production has become a breeze with this new beastie.

[McBain]

Excellent work, looks great... Just a couple of points if i may,, When i see trailers of horror films there is some footage of really scary stuff that really grips ya, you know blood and such and a real sense of horror, but i got the feeling it was a kind of joke at the end of it, especially with the orange writing and wording and little horror action.. Thats just some points from me not that it matters much but hey still great job and the story on 99% right lines... well done and wishing i could film something like that instead of weddings all the time....

Hey liverpool 1, thanks for your feedback. While I must admit that the "Throwback" teaser trailer isn't scary in the same way that, say, a "Paranormal Activity" trailer is scary, rest assured that the movie itself will have its fair share of shocks and gore. Recently I previewed the first 20 minutes of the movie in rough cut form for my cast, and one of my actors brought his sister along, who doesn't know the storyline, and about 15 minutes in, there was a scare moment where she practically leapt off the couch! It was very gratifying .

We have some carnage in the movie (we actually just finished filming a fairly gross scene last Sunday with lots of crimson) but I'm keeping most of the gore shots out of the public eye for the time being because they might give away key plot points. I don't want punters to look at preview footage and go, "Oh, that happens to that character? Ewww." But I'll try to sneak some claret into the full trailer due later this year. The full trailer will emphasize that the movie isn't really meant to be tongue-in-cheek, it's meant to be like a gritty modern-day homage to '70s creature features like William Girdler's cool "Grizzly."

Don't feel too bummed about doing wedding videos, mate. I shot them for years. They're practically how I financed my first feature "Scratched" www.travisbain.com.au/scratched.htm. They're an honest day's work and excellent practice for becoming a guerrilla filmmaker!

Cheers,
McBain

[liverpool 1]

Hey McBain good luck pal all the best.. See ya on the oscars be lookin out for ya... chow

[STUDIO32MID]

Was Scratched also with hv20? Its exciting to see what the old horse can still do in the hands of a great rider.

Good job. What preset did you use or settings did you use on the hv20 both for the ext and int shots in the horror movie? Did you have any low light challenges and how did you light and mic the shots? What gear came in? Were they all boomed or some lavs came in? Any BTS shots?
Great job well done! Lets know when its out who knows perhaps the hv20 store can sell some of these movies done with the hv20.

[Daniel Rutter]

Was Scratched also with hv20? Its exciting to see what the old horse can still do in the hands of a great rider.

I took a look at that film trailer, and to me it looks like it was definitely NOT shot with the HV... even DV looks pretty good from the HV, and that quality looks far less than DV. My guess? Super8 or maybe VHS.

Either way, its good to see film makers using whatever tools they have to shoot feature films. I'm kicking myself because I want to shoot my feature on the GH2, while stroking my GH1 lovingly for all the videography work I've done with it.

[McBain]

I took a look at that film trailer, and to me it looks like it was definitely NOT shot with the HV... even DV looks pretty good from the HV, and that quality looks far less than DV. My guess? Super8 or maybe VHS.

Either way, its good to see film makers using whatever tools they have to shoot feature films. I'm kicking myself because I want to shoot my feature on the GH2, while stroking my GH1 lovingly for all the videography work I've done with it.

You're half right. "Scratched" wasn't shot on the HV20, but it wasn't shot on VHS or any other low-band format either. It was actually shot on the Panasonic MX300 Mini DV camera, way back in 2002/2003, a few years before consumer HD became a reality. Perhaps it looks worse than Mini DV on Youtube because of the Flash video compression.

"Scratched" was originally supposed to be filmed on a Canon XL1, but the camera suddenly became unavailable to us just a couple of weeks before the start of principal photography, so we had to shoot on the Panny instead, a camera which we had intended to use solely for behind-the-scenes video. As it happened, the Panny performed pretty well (especially in low light) and we ended up shooting our EPK material for that movie on my old JVC S-VHS-C camera. But some XL1 footage did eventually find its way into "Scratched", namely the big denouement sequence where the tropical cyclone hits. If any of you are interested in checking out "Scratched", you can order the all-region PAL DVD from either my website or Amazon.com for the very reasonable price of US$12.95. It's packed to the eyeballs with special features, like a director's commentary, bloopers and various featurettes, including one on how to make video look less like video and a little bit more like film. (A big ask with Mini DV, I know, but hey.)

OK ... shameless plug over now

McBain

[McBain]

Good job. What preset did you use or settings did you use on the hv20 both for the ext and int shots in the horror movie? Did you have any low light challenges and how did you light and mic the shots? What gear came in? Were they all boomed or some lavs came in? Any BTS shots?

There are actually no interior shots in "Throwback", unless you count the cave footage. The HV20 coped in the caves just fine. There were always enough shafts of light coming through to illuminate the scenes. We did have some visual noise in some scenes that were lit only by firelight, so we're going to reshoot those with a Canon EOS 5D MkII in the next couple of months.

Camera settings-wise, I normally shoot in aperture priority mode, wide open to get the DOF as shallow as possible. White balance is usually set to "cloudy." It gives a nice warm, '70s look to the proceedings which I can always tweak in Magic Bullet later if it's too much. In bright sunlight I use an ND filter and when it's super contrasty I use a Tiffen Ultra Contrast filter to flatten things out a bit. It doesn't exactly give you the same exposure latitude as an Arri Alexa, but it definitely helps.

As for sound recording, I'm just using a Rode video mic mounted straight on the camera with a "dead cat" wind sock. So far so good vis a vis dialogue recording. It's all sounding pretty clear. No boom swinger or sound recordist. I just get the actors to count to 20 or so before each scene so I can set the mic level, and we're off to the races.

As for BTS shots, some of those will be uploaded to the movie's Facebook page soon(ish).