“An impressive use of special effects really brings this film to unexpected visual heights.”
-Slug Magazine

UPDATE: “X96″ WINS BEST DIRECTOR AND BEST FILM AWARD IN THE X96 FILM FESTIVAL 2011!

View The Film

Radio Interview With Director James Cawley

X96 Director James Cawley Radio Interview

“X96″ Makes The Front Page of the Oquirrh Times Newspaper

http://www.oquirrhtimes.com/?p=2108

“X96″ A Short Film Playing In The 2011 X96 Radio From Hell Film Festival

Directed By: James Cawley
Starring: Marshall Lowry
Intro/Credits Music By: Randin Graves
Main Theme By: Greg Downs
Narration By: Troy Kearley
Script Supervision/PA: Mark Pittman

I had been hearing allot about filmmakers from across Utah entering the X96 Festival and was disappointed that I did not have time to put a film together.  Then, during the last week of the festival I heard it was extended until Feb 14th.  So at 1 p.m. on Feb12th I set out with Marshall Lowry and Mark Pittman to put something together.  I had a rough idea sketched out and before heading out towards the vast nothingness of the desert I stopped and bought several items to create a costume for Marshall to wear.  We found the first suitable location and began to get everything in order for the shoot.  As we glued and duct taped the costume together it started to work, we had a end of the world biological suit

Soon after the suit was attached to Marshall we noticed one big issue we had overlooked….we had turned the gas mask-esk costume into the exact opposite of a gas mask.  All the super glu and fumes from being pieced together were traveling through the tubes and right back into the facemask, making Marshall a act a little funny.  After some adjustments we were ready to start the shoot, I grabbed my 7D setup and we were off.

And of course we couldn’t forget about some much needed props…..thanks Mark!

SHOOTING FOR EFFECTS ON A 24 HOUR TIME FRAME

Going into this project I knew I would have a rough night ahead editing, motion tracking and doing effects work.  The most important thing for me was two things:  Shoot some good plate shots and keep the movement to a minimum while shooting.  With this in mind I shot everything on a tripod making sure each scene shot had good track points (On his arm piece and body movements), as all the actual camera movement could be added in post using some pre-tracked camera movement and parenting it to Null objects.  I decided to shoot on the 7D with my Zeiss 50mm 2.8 for some good DOF and shot all the wide shots with a basic Canon zoom lens.

In any of the scenes where there would be atmosphere or matte paintings I had to ensure his headline was below the horizon, keeping in mind I was shooting in 1080 scaling down to 720 (which gave me allot more room for mistakes).  We had the storyline worked out and filmed almost all the shots in 1-2 takes using only natural lighting.  This project was not even thought of until Friday Feb 11 and by Saturday Feb 12 at 4pm we were done shooting.

EDITING AND EFFECTS WORK

With the short turnaround time in mind I first encoded all the files from the 7D into Prores LT and started doing the matte paintings, finding assets for the graphics while it was converting.  My concept was to have a “heads up display” holographic navigation project from his arm piece.  After the matte paintings were done and linked up I did some motion tracking and attached the pre-composed after effects display scenes (they are not perfect, wish I would have had more time for details and interactions) but they worked for the job at hand.  I then used a grunge filter created in photoshop to give it a gritty feel.

In the end the entire production took about 30 hours from concept to final edit.  We had a great time and hope to see it do well in the upcoming festival, but either way it was an amazing learning experience.  Make sure to check it out Feb 23rd at the X96 Radio From Hell Film Festival at the Tower in Salt Lake City.

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