By Joy Zaccaria, April 23, 2008
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Undead is the feature film debut of writer/director Jordan Galland. In order to handle the antique subject matter of this horror/comedy—vampires, Hamlet and the Holy Grail—Galland turned to cutting-edge camera technology from RED Digital Cinema and state-of-the-art digital processing solutions from Assimilate at Offhollywood Digital.
The story centers around Julian Marsh (Jake Hoffman, son of Dustin Hoffman), an out-of-work lothario who scores a break as the director of an off-Broadway play. The play is a bizarre adaptation of Hamlet written by a pale Romanian (John Ventimiglia) who is actually a master vampire. The script was inspired by Galland's favorite book growing up, Dracula, vampire movies such as The Hunger and Nadja, and Tom Stoppard's play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. The cast also includes Ralph Macchio, Jeremy Sisto and Devon Aoki. Sean Lennon scored the film.
If the production team had any doubts about turning to some of the newest HD production technology to shoot this story of a 2,000-year-old vampire and a comic reinterpretation of Shakespeare, the doubts were dispelled on viewing the quality of footage from the RED ONE 4K camera. "When we looked at the RED camera, I was overjoyed to see the quality of the image," explains the director. "The RED camera captures light in an amazing way. Scenes shot by candlelight were unbelievable. We're making a vampire movie—that's a wonderful thing to be able to film in low light and see that it captures the essence in a way that is like film." Cinematographer Chris Lavasseur operated the RED ONE camera, which is capable of recording resolutions up to 4520x2540 using a Super 35-sized CMOS sensor.
The film's lighting and production kit was on the minimal side. The perk of traveling light was partly due to budget constraints and partly a convenience afforded by the RED camera. "We knew it could handle low light," said Galland. "We managed to control the light more than I expected."
Collaboration
While this is his first feature film, Galland has produced and edited a number of shorts and music videos, including a short horror film called "Smile for the Camera." On this feature, Galland particularly enjoyed the collaboration. "I had a really great cinematographer to talk to and great producers to go over scenes with. I had more help than I expected."
In assembling his crew, Galland made special arrangements to be able to work with Cinematographer Chris Lavasseur. "He blew me away with his encyclopedic knowledge of old monster movies," says Galland, who likened his experience with the crew on the 21-day shoot to watching superheroes work.
"Gaffer Richard Ulivella is a genius," adds Galland. While he would not reveal details about the software that allowed Ulivella to run the show's lights from his Palm Pilot, Galland did say that the young gaffer invented it himself.
Shaping the Film
Having grown up in New York, Galland was excited to be able to film entirely in the city with many exteriors such as Central Park and Soho this past December. Location snafus during production turned into providential lucky breaks, much the way unforeseen changes in the script resulted in a scene that played better than it was originally written.
With producers at C Plus Pictures keeping Galland to the schedule and budget, there were occasions when he would have to rewrite the script the night before shooting a scene in order to slim it down and streamline it to fit the shooting schedule. "The scenes were always better for it the next day," says Galland. "Under that kind of pressure, you learn to work with only what is the best for the project."
Now in the editing room, Galland really sees the positive results of the rewrites. "All the rewrites that happened on set made the film better, even though they weren't instinctual for a writer," said Galland. "You wouldn't necessarily write the script that way."
Music and Editing
A musician as well as a writer and director, Galland sees the parallels of music and film editing. He is working with Editor Connor Kalista at Offhollywood in Manhattan for 8 to 10 hours a day cutting in Final Cut HD Pro 7. "There's a rhythm and musicality to film and dialogue in itself," said Galland. "That is something I get really excited about."
"Digital technology is the future of the film industry, and we're fearless in putting it to work for us in production and post. We've seen it, used it, and know digital is the way to go for high-quality results, especially on a tight budget," says Offhollywood co-founder Mark Peterson. An example of cutting-edge technology, Offhollywood is the owner of the first two publicly available RED ONE 4K cameras. The company has introduced a range of RED rental, workflow and post services.
Assimilate Scratch Digital Intermediate Process Solution is at the heart of Offhollywood's digital workflow. Offhollywood used Scratch on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Undead to pre-grade some of the footage and will use it again for the final color correction.
Scratch was chosen for its real-time color grading and finishing for HD, 2K and 4K. "Scratch is new-school post; it's what's happening now," says John (Pliny) Eremic, Offhollywood's director of post and operations. "It's the only DI software that supports REDCODE native files, and it's built by people who understand both the technology and the business of filmmaking." Offhollywood puts Scratch to work on Boxx workstations.
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