hyperballad

The Twilight Singers

Played 59 times

Happy Birthday, Julia!

The saying goes that a good friend is someone who knows all about you, and still likes you anyway. It’s one of those thoughts that initially brings a smile to your face and then you really understand the veracity of it. Perhaps in my espousing of my friendship with Julia Voth I’ve painted a picture that is storybook, a tale of two collaborators and friends, a beauty and a beast. It’s no stretch of the imagination of who is the beauty in this analogy.

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There’s truth in all of the above, but I’ve always said this about Julia, that she’s as beautiful a person inside as she is out, a mark of her character and persona that bonds me to her as a true friend. In this past month she and my other friends have witnessed my painful unraveling, the careful wall of poise and confidence that people have known me for has all but crumbled at my feet. In such a difficult time I reached out for support, and Julia wrote me one of the most heartfelt and beautiful letters I’ve ever received, and as we did when we overcame an obstacle on set, we shared a big hug, even if it was just through words, thousands of miles apart.

That’s just Julia being Julia, as kindness comes natural to her, and it’s been amazing watching her grow as a professional and yet retain those core elements that will always make her such a great friend. Last I saw her was when we recorded our commentary tracks for Lilith last year; we recorded it at the Chateau Marmont and took a break for dinner in the gorgeous open-air atrium of the building, a place that is often a sanctuary for the well-heeled and famous. Julia and I managed to get a table without a reservation (likely the advantage of being in the company of one of the most beautiful women in the world) and we had such a memorable meal. Not so much because of the food - which was amazing and we totally wolfed it down like uncouth savages - but just more because of who we are. We were just two happy kids in a sea of adult malaise - a boy from the mountains of Colorado and a girl from the plains of Saskatchewan - and we couldn’t believe we were having dinner at the Chateau, that icon of old Hollywood, surrounded by people who were supposed to be powerful, but who for some reason all looked really unhappy and bored. But it didn’t matter - we were living a dream we’ve both had since childhood, which was to make art with amazing friends, and to make it a part of our daily lives.

After many years of back-breaking hard work, Julia’s on the precipice of reaching that rarefied next-level of her dream journey. She’s the lead in a major prime-time network show, Package Deal, airing on CityTV (that’s like CBS/ABC in Canada, for us American folk), and in June we’ll all get to see the talent, humor and beauty that I’ve had the privilege to have in my daily life for the past three years. Steve Jobs famously said that ‘most overnight successes took a long time’ and there is truth in that - Julia’s big break was years in the making, including her walking down a dank sewer in Cleveland at 3AM three years ago, with an Indian-American director who could barely see in the dark, giving her obscure directions with the mutual goal of trying to make something beautiful.

We did make something beautiful - an everlasting friendship. Happy birthday to my dear Julia, may your year and the years ahead be filled with happiness and joy. And in those moments when it may seem there can be no joy or happiness, know that we’re there for you just as you have been there for us, and together we’ll find that light again until our dying breath. Today is yours, and it shall always be.

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Everything Counts (Pasadena Rose Bowl Version)

Depeche Mode

101

Played 90 times

3rd Anniversary of the ‘Lilith’ Blog!

Music for a Black Celebration: Everything Counts (Live) by Depeche Mode.

Three years, 550 posts and 51k followers later and we’re still going strong. Frankly when I started this blog I had my own doubts whether or not I’d be able to sustain 2-3 original posts per week, knowing my penchant for writing a lot and that I insist on not repeating myself. I’ve tried to make every post meaningful, entertaining and informative, and I’ve hope you’ve enjoyed them.

One of the truly satisfying parts of this blog is the interaction I’ve had with young filmmakers over the years. I’ve had both student and beginning filmmakers who are readers of this blog send me scripts, ask for business advice on fundraising and crowdsourcing, and even a few who just needed a sounding board for the natural frustrations that this business fosters. There are eleven young filmmakers from this blog who I regularly keep in touch with, all of whom started their relationship with me by simply sending me a message.

Of course what made me want to help these specific eleven is that they demonstrated the sheer passion, drive, dedication and work ethic that it takes to make it in this business. When they share their thoughts with me, they let me know of the work they’re doing and the efforts they’re making to be better. Their efforts, energy and desire to succeed motivates me as much as this blog motivates them. It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement. Maybe we can devise a name for this group someday.

This blog continues to grow and I continue to grow along with it. If you’ve been with me from the start you’ve seen me through a feature and two short films, and I’ve got my next feature on the way, which I do hope to be writing about shortly. I’ve wondered whether I should re-brand this blog to suit my next feature, but I’ve decided to keep it as ‘Lilithfilm,’ because the spirit of ‘Lilith’ is the spirit of how I want to make films, and I don’t ever want to change that. I cherish the freedom I had on ‘Lilith’ - the freedom to express myself without censor, the freedom to make films on my terms, the freedom to make mistakes by my own hand. That is the spirit of ‘Lilith’ - the spirit of independence.

As we start year four of this blog I want to continue to discuss our craft and the evolution of it. As I review my old posts I can see that I’ve already modified my thinking and approach to writing, directing and producing. There are missteps I made on ‘Lilith,’ on ‘7x6x2’ and my other films, moments that have opened my eyes to new techniques and ideas, and I will continue to share my findings. In that sense I want this blog to slowly evolve from a document of filmmaking into a filmmaking lab, where we experiment with ideas and bounce them off one another. I hope to bring more young filmmakers into the fold and expand beyond eleven dedicated artists, people who know that filmmaking is so much more than buying a DSLR and expensive gear.

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Filmmaking is a fine art, a craft and a way of life. Our goal is to become professionals, where we have something unique to say and we get paid to say it. If film is in your blood, then you live for it and know what you must do to make it happen. I’m just happy to be by your side on your journey.

Lastly, I’ve had the great joy of not only chronicling my own growth and experiences as a filmmaker on this blog, but I’ve also had the tremendous privilege of watching my fellow ‘Lilith’ collaborators grow and spread their wings as well, and they have in spades. They are as much a part of this blog as I am, and on behalf of myself, Julia Voth, Bianca Christians, Lili Reinhart, Nancy Telzerow, Jeremy Kendall, Spencer Kim, Lauren Ondecker, Damon Taylor, Faroukh Mistry, Kristen Adams, Eric Morrell, Will Brooks and Alap Momin (aka dälek), Chris Stangroom and the rest of the insanely talented artists that I get to call dear friends in the ‘Lilith’ family, we thank you so much for three years of continual, loving support.

Your humble director,
Sridhar.

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Peace.

Beautiful Spanish Review of 'Lilith' - highly recommended!

Just received a lovely review of Lilith from the amazing Spanish horror film website Almas Oscuras. If your Spanish is rusty, copy the site url into Google Translate and it’ll do a decent job. Special props in the review for the performances of Julia Voth and Nancy Telzerow, Faroukh Mistry’s cinematography, and the score by Dälek.

I won’t lie - it’s always a wonderful feeling when people appreciate your work. Makes for a great start to the day.

Final Episode of Julia Voth’s ‘Project S.E.R.A.’

It all comes to a head (or does it?) in this final installment of Julia Voth’s Resident Evil-universe webseries Project S.E.R.A.. In this final episode, we learn that intrepid agent Gillian Ames has a big heart, and that the world she lives in is a hell of a lot more complicated than what she bargained for.

The series leaves a lot of questions that need answering in Season 2, so let’s make sure there is a season two by sending some serious traffic to the site. Click on the video and watch the video, and help spread the word. Julia, Derek Theler and Ben Howdeshell have worked super hard on this, let’s make their efforts all worth the while! It takes a village!

Project S.E.R.A. - Episode 5

I’m really diggin’ Julia’s new web series. The production values are still top notch (helicopter shots!) and the story’s motoring along, leaving us each time with a cliffhanger. Julia and her co-star (Derek Theler) are really settling into their roles and we’re learning more about their characters with every passing episode as backstory is revealed.

I really hope this picks up and develops into something bigger, perhaps on television or even better on the big screen. But for that to happen, the web series needs our support. We need to get some SERIOUS hits on the page to let the suits know we think Julia Voth and PROJECT S.E.R.A. are legit. Click on the film below, link it to your friends, feature it on your page, tag it with ‘Resident Evil’ and ‘jill valentine’ for good measure and and just plain spread the word. It takes a village!

And here’s a pretty cool behind-the-scenes look at how they made those incredible ‘motion stills’ in the previous episode!

noah-andrew ASKED:

So amazing reel. I'm a film student and my first major short film will be taking place in a night club. I love the images you have in your real of the women in the night club and I was wondering what camera, lenses what not you used to create the image. THANKS!

Thank you for the kind words about the reel - it’s amazing and weird to see eight years of work condensed into under three minutes!

The night club images you’re talking about were achieved through a very meticulous lighting scheme that’s worthy of a greater discussion when it comes to low-light photography, which I seem to have a natural attraction to.

First things first, for those reading this anew, revisit the sequences in the reel - they can be found at 00:15-00:18, 00:46-00:49, and 01:08-01:10.

These sequences, which were lit by my DoP Faroukh Mistry, were meant to replicate some level of blacklight lighting, but I really didn’t want to push the neon aspects, rather I wanted to really bring out that intense blue. There were two cinematic references for these sequences, the first being the nightclub sequence in Spike Lee’s 25th Hour, specifically the scenes where Naturelle (played by a vibrantly sexy Rosario Dawson) is dancing. The scene, lit by Rodrigo Prieto, is quite harsh in its lighting, but I loved its polarity.

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The second reference was from one of my all-time favorite movies, John Boorman’s Point Blank with Lee Marvin. The nightclub sequence in that film is one of the reasons why I even wrote a nightclub scene in the first place.


Lee Marvin kicks so much ass in this film it’s unreal.

I loved the kinetics and use of black in Point Blank, but it didn’t read enough color, so the goal I set out to Faroukh was to achieve a happy median between both references, where we had the color vibrancy of the former and the menacing darkness of the latter. I think we pulled it off quite well.

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From a technical standpoint, we shot true anamorphic on RED, using Elite Anamorphic lenses, and for lighting we relied primarily on space lights, a few select Kino-Flos and a well-placed disco ball along with some existing par cans in the club space (we shot in an actual nightclub). Production Design supplied practical lighting within the frame. All lights were equipped with a specific cocktail of gels that were sandwiched in. I’d have to ask my cinematographer for what specific gels but we played in the realms of blue and magenta. The camera was placed on a Fisher dolly. Here’s a pic of the rig from the shoot:

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DoP Faroukh Mistry on the set of ‘Lilith.’ Photo by my brilliant 3rd AC Woo Tang. Yes, that’s his name.

The key to these low-light club sequences is to give yourself enough data so that you can bring yourself to the desired image later in color correction. A lot of times filmmakers rely upon the sensitivity of the digital sensor to give them the exact image they want, and this, truthfully, is playing with fire when it comes to this kind of photography. Shooting digital in the dark means you risk your highlights becoming ‘electronicky,’ where you’ll start to see noise and pixelation in your edges and blacks. To avoid this, we generally light the scene at a higher exposure, and then crush the blacks in post-production. This is not very complicated, it’s a matter of moving one slider over on a program like Color (we used DaVinci Resolve, manned by super talented colorist Patrick Inhofer). Crush the blacks and then play around with your saturation and gamma to give you your desired effect.

But to do this, as aforementioned it’s important to give yourself enough data to play around with. With post-production overall, it’s always important to remember this VERY KEY rule, which is that it is easier to take away information from an image than add to it. Repeat that mantra in your head a couple of hundred times to really register it.

In post it’s far easier to make something dark - removing information - than make it brighter or try to pull up highlights from an already shadowy and underexposed image. When we shot the club sequence, the room was pretty brightly lit (which we also had to do because we were shooting anamorphic, which requires more light just to get us to an exposure somewhere between 2.0 and 2.8), but we had all of the data encoded in the lighting - our color highlights, textures and shadows. All we had to do was crush the blacks and pull up the blue in post, which was about one minute of work. It brings up a general philosophy of filmmaking which I subscribe to, which is that you should make every conceivable effort to capture your film in its entirety in camera, and leave the absolute minimum to post-production. This both for aesthetic and cost purposes, as the more manipulation of the image in post means the more risk of your film looking like a CGI image - it loses its human quality. And of course making all of these changes in post-production is insanely expensive, as skilled colorists are always in demand and booked solid, and their time doesn’t come cheap. You may have the temptation to color your film yourself, and I would temper that desire unless you are well versed in color theory and use of the software. Coloring is a highly developed skillset - you may have a general idea of how you want your color schemes but achieving them is an entirely different ballgame. Leave that to your DP first and foremost, and then use the skill and art of the colorist to really bring that native scheme to vibrant life.

Of course on a student film or a low-budget indie you will be forced to wear many hats and you will very likely be coloring your own film, and if this is the case then follow my advice and capture as much as you possibly can on set, and leave your post manipulations to an absolute minimum. Your film will benefit from the time spent lighting a scene properly, as will your actors and their performance. Everyone wins when you exercise craft.

My reel.

So after three different versions and grappling with the philosophy of what and what not to show, this is my final 2013 reel.

Besides Lilith there are some real deep cuts in here, including footage from my first feature, 19 Revolutions and a ton of sneak-peek footage from 7x6x2, my collaboration with graphic novelist Paul Pope. Enjoy!

Sridhar Reddy Directing Reel from Sridhar Reddy on Vimeo.

2013 Resolution: Movies Watched This Week (2.3.13)

Continuing with my resolution to watch more movies, here’s what I took in this week:

Besides watching the first three episodes of Julia Voth’s excellent Resident Evil-offshoot web series Project SERA, I stayed up pretty well on my resolution to watch 2-3 movies a week. Not included in this list is my choice to revisit the original Judge Dredd starring Sylvester Stallone, which was on cable and popped up just after I’d watched the Blu-Ray of last year’s DREDD, which was in my top five movies of 2012. The original Dredd remained as awful as I remember it, but now watching it as a filmmaker I can appreciate its ambitions. I still think the reboot is one of the best action films I’ve seen in a very long time, and you owe it to yourself to check it out.

The Night Porter, dir. by Liliana Cavani, Italy, 1974.

I’ve had this movie in my DVD cabinet for ages, and I never got around to watching it. I found it in a used bin, not know what it was about but moreso completely captivated by the image of a topless Charlotte Rampling barely dressed in a hybrid leather SS/ S&M getup. Minutes into the film it became readily apparent that this was so much more than an exercise in erotica, as layers of psychological damage and the myth of Salome, which in itself was one of the driving factors behind Lilith.

The film was heavy on overt symbolism and the juxtaposition between the authoritarian power of the military complex and the dynamics of a physically punishing sexual relationship became quite apparent. Despite its obviousness it remained a powerful statement, one told quite beautifully and provocatively. It reminded me that cinema in the 70s was shockingly bold and uncompromising; despite our claims of being a far more open society today, a film like The Night Porter simply wouldn’t get greenlit in today’s film environment. The lead performances by Rampling and Dick Bogarde are excellent and their chemistry is smoldering. Well worth a watch.

Gantz, dir. by Shinsuke Sato, Japan, 2011.

Some years ago I read the original Gantz manga and it was just about one of the weirdest, most fucked-up and violent stories I’d ever read. I also thought it was quite brilliant and and a completely original take on the dystopian “reality gameshow played to the death” genre. I hadn’t seen the anime but I was extremely curious as to how such a batshit crazy concept would be translated to the big screen.

Shinsuke Sato’s live-action feature (Part 1) didn’t disappoint, it was as crazy as the source material and has a superb technical polish. I was a little frustrated by the editing, which built tension in the combat sequences by pushing the characters’ moral decision to the point of melodrama and artifice. But it was entirely entertaining, ridiculously violent, and had something very much to say. And I can appreciate that.

Bitten, dir. by Harv Glazer, USA, 2008.

I was writing and it was 1 in the morning, and this was on Cinemax. It got three stars on its guide rating, starred the always enjoyable Jason Mewes, and looked to be really well shot. So I gave it a try.

It was pretty average, but it was quite earnest in its attempt to be a solid vampire movie. Mewes and costar Erica Cox are not bad and the story has some genuine shocks, gross out moments and artfully shot T&A that, despite being well done, just got kind of tiring. Decent fun while watching it, but ultimately forgettable.

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January 26, 2013

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