Solstice

[Chris Burke]

The movie went through three editors, partly because the story is more of a supernatural mystery, not a scare-fest horror film, but I think the producers wanted it to be more commercial, i.e. scarier. So they amped up the editing, sound fx, and we added a few new shots, and one new scene... but it is still more of a mystery with supernatural elements.

 

 

 

Is this common for a commercial movie to go through three editors? It seems to me that the producers were not too clear as to what they wanted, the ending seems a bit tacked on. At first, I didn't understand why the film went straight to video, I thought it was a more than adequate thriller. Then after watching it and reading your comments about how they (producers) have to feel confident that it will turn X amount of profit, I can see why it was a DVD only release.

 

 

On another note, how did you get those really clean screen grabs? Is it because you were the DP and had access to dpx frames or did you get them from the DVD? And how?

 

 

A beautifully photographed film as always, although I long for the photochemically finished days of Northfork.

 

bravo

[Jayson Crothers]

Just watched it last night David - really beautiful work as we've all come to expect from you.

 

I noticed in the credits that Nancy Shreiber, ASC was credited for shooting some LA stuff - what was shot here and how did it come about that she was shooting that material instead of you?

 

I had a good laugh at the abandoned factory in the swamp - I was prepping a film in South Carolina last year that had an almost identical abandoned factory in the middle of a swamp; I did a few double takes while watching the film.

 

I read that the Polish Brothers are up to a new film - will you be working with them again soon (we hope)?

[David Mullen ASC]

While I was on "Big Love", they scheduled three days of pick-ups at GMT Stages in Culver City. I was only available for half that time, so Nancy came in and filled-in for me for the other half. It was great to have someone as good as her shooting for me.

 

She shot a small scene in a convenience store bathroom set, and nice shot of a bathtub facet dripping mud during the Christmastime flashback, a shot of a face underwater, a greenscreen element, some inserts, etc.

 

I'm back at GMT this week shooting an Ambien commercial for the Polish Brothers. They have different projects that they are pushing forward.

[David Mullen ASC]

On another note, how did you get those really clean screen grabs?

 

Those are just off of the DVD.

 

I have done a number of movies where they hired a new editor, but rarely have three editors sequentially ended up taking a whack at a project of mine. The third editor came in after I did the D.I. on this movie in fact (maybe hired by the distributor) though it did not change radically, not enough to need retiming.

 

"The Quiet" ended up being edited three times, but the third version was done by the first editor...

 

Oddly enough ;) , the movies of mine that go through the most number of editors or take the longest to cut were the ones that had the most problematic scripts, which just shows you that if you don't solve the story problems in the writing, you're going to be struggling to solve them when shooting and then when editing, all at greater cost than if the script had been stronger in the first place. But what do I know about writing, I'm just the DP...

[Jonathan Bowerbank]

Just saw it last night, via Netflix. Really great work David. With so many exteriors, it seems like you got really lucky most of the time and were able to maintain a certain level of control throughout (with the exception of that first scene between Elisabeth Harnois and Lee Ermey, looks like the sun came out of hiding on you!).

 

Two specific shots I really liked, and they're just extremely quick and short ones. The tracking shot when Elisabeth is jogging and we're getting some nice shafts of sunlight through the mist. And there's a shot of Lee Ermey walking through his house where we see the light from the window grace his face, go away and then we see his retinas light up blue. I'm guessing that's from some light directly behind the camera? Or was it purely accidental?

 

It's a shame it went straight to DVD. To be honest, it is one of those semi-cliche teenage thriller flicks. But it's really well done, and I don't see how it would have failed, considering its demographic of moviegoers. It's certainly better than a lot of those movies that have come out in recent years, and the story actually has some profundity to it.

 

Amanda Seyfried reminded me so much of my little sister, I think I laughed during the majority of her scenes.

[David Mullen ASC]

Probably a happy accident -- with that long Steadicam move through the house, I was limited on where I could put lights, mostly lighting through the windows. Trouble was some of the windows had those old-fashioned wooden blind shuttered doors (unadjustable slats, and unremovable shutters) where light can only come UP through them in narrow slits, so they put an interesting pattern on sheers and whatnot... but didn't really allow the room to be lit. Had to hide some Kinos to augment rooms with those windows.