The World After - Reduser 4k Portrait Finalist

[Patrick Grossien]

Phil, you never stop to amaze. Your creative output seems to know no limits. These scribbles, are damn cool! Your hard work and dedication for doing what you love, really shines through! I am still thrilled by your gorgeous portraits and close ups! And on top of it all, offering your knowledge, experience and workflow to everyone else here is so invaluable and unbelievably generous. Amazing how you find the time.
Thank you and gratulations on your short and the finalist title!

I'm actually shocked how quickly the legs have become my go to for all types of work. ... I have two other tripods with typical two-stage legs, one with a floor spreader, one with a mid spreader. I didn't think I'd be able to live without that mid spreader, but this tripod/head combo has quickly become my go to on most jobs. The 509HD is a pretty damn good value.

hehehe, I'm really glad you like it and use them so much now. It sounds that you came to like the set exactly for the same reasons, as I do. ;)

keep up the great work! I'm really looking forward to meeting you one day! Hope this will come true soon enough!

take care,
p/

[Sascha Rossier]

Dude, This is Big! Huge! Really Love it. Keep asking myself, how do you manage to get these tack sharp and crisp images out of the Scarlet (something im still working on) and what app did you use for the alien ... the model looks kinda procedural ... very awesome ... how did you render it ... did you 3d-track or did you get away with 2D tracking? and yeah ... maybe i'm stupid ... how is the color quilt of use? are these realtime thumbnails getting changed everytime you change the grade in a scene? or is it a control thing to check if the overall look and color consistency throughout the scenes works in the end?
But hey ... as we say here in Switzerland: Chapeau, huere Siech!! Pulling this Thing off all by yourself in this limited time and on this quality level - Massive Respect! Not to mention your detailed posts about the work you do even including all these Pix an Stills - Crazy! BTW: Love FL Studio. Longtime User since FruityLoops 1.0 ;-) BTW2: Thanx 4 your advice on the MSI Laptop ... got a a very similar machine now (in fact it is a MSI on stereoids w/ pimped RAM, SSDs and FatAss-Nvidia GFX) all working like a charm ... even caught myself editing and doin vfx on it ... right next to my Xeon-Octocore-Monster, that remained switched off ;-)

[Phil Holland]

Cheers Patrick!

@Sascha - Thank you for the very kind words sir. Sorry about the delayed reply. To answer a few questions...

On Tracking:
I planned the shots out to be able to get away with simple 2D tracks. However, that one pan I ended up doing a bit of manual keyframing. Also, on that intro jib shot I did some major keyframing as the track did it's best, but that's a very odd move to track too at 14mm with the geometry in frame.

On Color Quiltin':
The thumbnails are updated with the setting you create/update in Adobe Camera Raw. You can actually save snapshots/versions within each thumbnail as you progress with the work. You can open up several to adjust and fine tune them all at once or balance them on your own. Once I decided on the final look I then exported them as DPX sequences. Similar to what you would do in Resolve or Speedgrade in reality. Just a different approach and lack of animated masks.

On 3D'n:
That's gonna be hush hush for the moment as I'm creating 32 pieces for a show/album release using this technology. I can say that it's a combination of handmade and fractal based geometry. Weird stuff. The rendering was achieved using spherical HDRIs that I captured on location. I'll share the details after July is over. Might release some software down the line involving some of this tech. We'll see.

On Fl Studio'n and Laptop'n:
I use Fl Studio a ton. Most of music has been composed in Fl Studio and mastered in Audition (even back when it was Cool Edit). I create a lot of samples and make arrangements to transpose within Fl Studio. The album I've been working on will follow the same logic. My first album was created this way as well, minus the live tracks.

I agree, this MSI laptop's been serving me good. It's part of my mini DIT station and performs well. I shot one commercial this year where we even had it up on set right next to camera looking at some pre-production artwork to see if our plate we were shooting lined up. Just popped in the SSD and checked things out right there on the spot.

[Jamil Yosufi]

COOL Man ! I love your Color Grading Phil.

[Thomas Pierrepont]

Loved the film and MASSIVE thank-you for such a detailed post, beyond helpful.

[Phil Holland]

Thank you gentlemen. This project in particular will always be something I look back on with great memories. Even the sleepless nights :)

[Justin Marx]

Phil, fucking awesome! Both your short and your detailed concept. You put "you" into this and it shows.. Love the concept, the way you shot it was really well done as well.. The gritty feel worked. The alien is creepy as hell. Would have loved to see it closer!!!!!
Pkeep up the friggin amazing work.

[Phil Holland]

Thank you Justin. Really appreciate that. Might blow this sucker up to a larger scale project at some point. We'll see.