Sundance Film Festival

An interesting film project was the subject of a session on Creating a Low-Budget Film with High Production Value at the New Frontier center today. To create a horror/psychological thriller for under $250,000, Michael Phillips of Avid teamed up with Norm Hollyn, associate professor at the USC Film School and head of the editing track there.

The 89-minute feature, titled Jack in the Box, involved an 11-day shoot with a small crew. A single location, a creepy basement room where all the action happens, kept the budget manageable. As did a heavy dose of pre-planning. During the session, Phillips projected a chart that listed off all the video and audio formats that might ensue, such as a 1080p/23.976fps HDCAM-SR program master, and RGB 2K files on LTO tape in case a film version is needed. The chart listed postproduction processes that would affect the shooting, such as pan-and-scan for a 3:2 version. (The producers aren’t ready to say what cameras they used.) All this pre-planning on deliverables, Phillips said, would make it easier for a distributor to decide to pick up the project.

For editing, Phillips worked in Media Composer (big surprise there), in SD for the offline and in HD for the online, both on the HP 8400 workstation. He did basic necessary color correction within Media Composer (using a MacBeth chart that he shot on set, which let him match ideal black, gray, and white values back in the NLE). For creative color correction, Phillips sent DNxHD files to Cineworks in Miami for a final DI master.

For the creative edit of Jack in the Box, Phillips and Hollym worked back and forth over FTP, using the new Skype-based collaboration program SyncVue for realtime visual communication on part of the project.

They didn’t have much in the way of visual effects, so instead Hollym, Phillips, and the film’s director, Frank Kerr, used sound design, “subtle performance enhancing zooms,” changes in packing to effect what Hollym describes as “lean-forward moments” for the audience.