Free - A Mosaic Film Performance

This is a project I shot a few years back that I thought I had lost the final video. I was going through some old hard drives the other day, however, and came across it, so I thought I'd share.

I love shooting in black and white. I also love shooting in odd aspect ratios, so this is one of those times the two coincided. We shot the project on a RED Epic MX, which is a color sensor. To get a better idea of how it would play in black and white, I merely turned the saturation all the way down to give us a black and white image while the color information was retained in the R3D file. We shot in widescreen, but created custom frame lines to give us a 3:1 guide for our final aspect ratio. The whole thing was shot gorilla style, with only a bounce board to help shape light. Shooting black and white also helps with that, as you can shoot a bit harsher light than you would in color and it will look good as long as you get the image properly exposed.

Story-wise, this was to be exhibited as part of a live performance, with the protagonists leaping off the screen at the end of the film and onto the stage to perform a dance routine (with the faceless people as background dancers). It was pretty cool to see this exhibited as a hybrid film/live performance piece.

Free - A Mosaic Film Performance from Kyle Wright on Vimeo.

Mystic Cosmic Patrol

Mystic Cosmic Patrol has arrived! It actually debuted last week, but I wanted to wait for the second part to drop today. Because of short attention spans, the episodes are being released in two parts, whereas I think they work better as a complete, whole episode. So now you can get the whole episode experience by watching part 1 and part 2 back to back.

Edit: Funny or Die has revamped their site and MCP is no longer available there. But it can be seen on YouTube and the episodes aren't cut in half!

And the good press and interviews keep coming in:
TrunkSpace (Tim Jo)
TrunkSpace (Chris Candy)
TrunkSpace (Minae Noji)
TrunkSpace (Chris Masterson)
TrunkSpace (Cig Neutron)
TrunkSpace (Laura Monaco)
TrunkSpace (Tim Russ)
Japanator
ComicBook.com

And an interview with KTLA 5:

Mystic Cosmic Patrol is coming!

After a long wait, Mystic Cosmic Patrol is finally going to see the light of day! It will be airing soon on Funny or Die, with four episodes coming out weekly over the course of a month. It's been a long road, but I'm eager for people to finally watch it.

For now, we have a trailer that gives a preview of the low-fi comedy that we were going for.

Mystic Cosmic Patrol Trailer from Kyle Wright on Vimeo.

Not only is the trailer out, but we've been getting some good press from:

Forces of Geek
Fanbase Press
TrunkSpace (Gavin Hignight)
Daily Dead
and BigShinyRobot

And the show isn't even out yet!

I'm super excited for people to see this. I had a great time shooting it and we had a incredible scripts, a great producing and creative team, and the cast and crew were fantastic. Hopefully there is much more to come!

MCP on Facebook

edit: The first two episodes are now on YouTube.

Rogue Warrior premiere, some music videos, and more!

A lot's happened since my last update, as I've been busy with numerous projects. First off, I shot a music video for Karmin for her track Love Is Louder off of her upcoming album. We shot that at the YouTube Spaces on a RED Epic Dragon with Canon CN-E prime lenses. The camera lived on a Steadicam for the shoot. The final edit just got locked and I'm quite pleased with how this turned out. I'll share the video once it comes out.

Next up was a lyric video for Emii's track Wait. It was kind of a rush job, as they decided late into the schedule to change from a standard lyric video into a lyric/music video hybrid. Since the song had a hard release date, we rushed in to get this shot and it was an ambitious concept with lots of set changes and wardrobe/makeup changes. We shot RED Epic MX with Sony CineAlta lenses. The camera spent a good chunk of time on a Ronin. I'm not totally thrilled with the color grade, as the turnaround was so fast that I was unable to sit in on any of it.

Moving on, the science fiction feature film Rogue Warrior: Robot Fighter had its premier this last weekend at the Action on Film Festival. It was pretty well attended and I enjoyed seeing some of the cast and crew for the first time in almost a year and a half. The movie went through some extensive rewrites and subsequent reshoots in the time since we wrapped principal photography, so it was interesting and surprising to see the final product, as I was not involved in the shooting of those additional scenes. Here are a couple pictures from the night.

Rogue Warrior premiered on the opening night of the Action on Film Festival.

A big chunk of the cast, and then me on the left repping the crew.

Screen 12. Same screen where the festival debuted the last two features I shot for Neil Johnson.

Lastly, Action on Film also screened the DC Comics fan film, Fair Fight, which I shot 2nd Unit DP. Due to other obligations, I was unable to attend that screening. Fair Fight has also been invited to screen at another film festival, so it sounds like it's being well received.

Guitar session shoot

My actor friend Ralph Guzzo was looking to add a guitar session to his acting demo reel, as his agent had requested it. So I got together with Ralph for a little jam session; him on guitar, me on camera, and Jim Zicree recording sound. We knocked out a simple lighting setup and went though a few different music styles with various coverage: close ups on the guitar to show his finger work; mediums to show that it was indeed him playing the guitar; and a couple wides to vary up the edit.

Shot on RED Epic with some vintage Olympus glass using an EF adapter ring on the lenses.

Syncing up the audio and rendering out 2k files from the 5K R3D masters.

Rogue Warrior: Robot Fighter pickup day

Today we went out to the desert to shoot a couple pickup scenes with actresses Tracy Birdsall and Marilyn Ghigliotti. It was a pretty light day, with only a couple pages of dialog to get through, but the location was pretty fantastic.

360° panorama

Setting up a 100mm two-shot.

Checking out the mine next to our shoot location.

Heirloom short film: a few more screengrabs

And here are a few more screengrabs from Heirloom. These are ungraded, so may not totally represent the final look of the film. This is with the DragonColor2 and RED Gamma4 profiles. I feel like the RG4 profile is much too aggressive in the darker parts of the image, crushing the blacks too quickly and mushing up the darker mid-tones, but for the sake of quick screengrabs, I suppose it's okay. I would have exported using RED Gamma 3, but for some reason couldn't get the new build of REDCine I was using to let me select RG3.

Heirloom short film wrapped

As I mentioned recently, I'm shooting the short film Heirloom. We finished out the last two days this past weekend. It was directed by Scottish director Marianna Palka and we had a very similar sense of taste in shots, often coming to the same conclusions independently. While it was a lot of coverage and a small crew, the shots were well planned out and we managed to finish early almost every day, so that made life easier.

There was a lot of use of mirrors, which always makes things a bit more complicated, but it was a lot of fun coming up with interesting compositions that utilized them. The film also featured some period elements at night, so all our lighting had to be motivated by pre-electricity sources, which I enjoyed. We shot on RED Epic MX with Sony CineAlta lenses. I'm quite pleased with the lenses, as they offer fine detail while smoothing out the digital edge to the sensor.

Heirloom short film day 1

Yesterday we shot day 1 of 3 for a short film entitled Heirloom. I teamed up once again with actress and producer Laura Monaco (Mystic Cosmic Patrol) to shoot this. Our first day consisted mainly of a single location at a cool little vintage store, with some additional photography in a car and an establishing exterior shot at another location. This next weekend we'll shoot the two remaining days of principle photography.

We shot on the RED Epic MX with Sony CineAlta primes. I brought on my trusty AC, Nick Forte, who always does a great job nailing the focus and is an all around good guy. Here are a few BTS pictures from the crew.

 

More Rogue Warrior: Robot Fighter!

And here are a few more screengrabs from Rogue Warrior: Robot Fighter.

Rogue Warrior: Robot Fighter screengrabs

I've finally been told I can post some screengrabs from the feature I shot in March, called Rogue Warrior: Robot Fighter. We shot some days on stage, some in the desert, and some in Malibu. The movie is currently being edited, with pickups to come in the future (pickups were pre-planned).

At the Edge of Time: screengrabs pt. 4

Okay, here's the last batch of screengrabs that I managed to snag for At the Edge of Time. Hope you like them!

At the Edge of Time: screengrabs pt. 3

I got to review more of the footage from the feature I shot last November-December, At the Edge of Time. Here are a few more screengrabs that I wanted to share.