Luminous Inferno

I, and very soon I can say "we", have much to look forward to now!
The project I'm sitting with right now, a nice little thug-flick drama/thriller called Jag Är Min Egen (I Am My Own) by Swedish director Johan Bergqvist, about a hoodlum finding himself knee-deep in shit in a very different way than they usually do, is nearing the end of post with just a few days left!
After that I'll have one day off with my friends Star Wars and Star Trek, with occasional S.T.A.L.K.E.R., and return to editing the day after.
Next week will see quite a few meetings, and if all goes well I have some cast and crew to announce! As I said, this is a mostly improvised movie, so more will be added upon over time, but it will be a good beginning!

I've began editing a fully 5.1 promotion short for supporters and sponsor using the footage from the new locations, and feel very satisfied with the photo! When I realized where this was beginning to lead I began looking for something new to keep both within budget and keep it hard and gritty as the iPhone camera and app just plainly couldn't deliver what I now wanted - a feature film for commercial distribution. On the silverscreen if possible, if so "only" on festivals.
After looking through everything from DSLR to GoPro I actually settled with my old iPhone 4, though with a new third-party app that gave me the settings I needed and 25mbps compression. Holy crap that made a difference! The original Camera-app have about 6mbps I think. Might be up to 10, but that's still very far from cigar.



One thing really bugging me even pretty early on was the stationary light.And the disgusting temperature of it. The Apple-cell might deliver well good enough photo after the upgrade, but the flash still looked downright ranc...
The solution was actually right in front of me! A friend gave me two battery-powered halogen lights about a year ago after cleaning out his office. At first I thought they were toasted, no matter what I did and what batteries I tried they just simply refused to light up. Also the entire inside felt loose and damaged.
Well, fuck this I thought and after failing to find and screws at all and just plain ripped out the entire inside. Which came out without any resistance at all...
Had I bought them new and gotten the box I'd probably known that the inside was retractable and there was more batteryslots on the inside... I blame someone else for no good reason.
The flooding of light was ridiculous! I had tried out lots af flashlights and lanterns before, and they all felt dim and pointless, here the light was absolutely blinding!
Not quite searchlight, the light was, though nicely temperatured and rich (and bright), very uneven and wide. It took the better part of the evening to find a solution for narrowing the light and removing artefact from the internal reflections, but after trying out a few ways I finally got fully satisfied using lots of black gaffers-tape and theatrical light-filters.
I did like the light, but this is a sombre horror-flick, so I tinted the light blue, ND'd it, and removed any and all irregularities in it.

Though I would upgrade to an iPhone 5 for the higher bitrate if I get a chance, I'm finally home!

/CvanC