Noted commercial director Bob Giraldi of bicoastal Giraldi Suarez Productions has completed his latest short film, Honey Trap, through 149 Wooster–a company he formed in 2003 to develop and produce feature projects.
The film is Giraldi’s first project using the Grass Valley Viper Filmstream digital cinematography camera. HD postproduction was handled by sister companies R!OT Manhattan, which oversaw the mastering of the film, and Company 3, which handled the color grading.
Honey Trap is what director/writer Giraldi described as “a cold, dark story of sex, betrayal and murder”; the film stars Debbie Harry and newcomers Abbey Fox and Ewan Ross.
“The plot of the film was inspired by the real life duality of Abbey and Ewan,” explained Giraldi. “They approached us about making a film to showcase their talents.” In the end, the project became much more. The film has been entered in several film festivals; as well, Giraldi has decided to use the short as a treatment for what he intends to develop into a feature screenplay.
The film was shot over four cold days last November in the Hamptons, N.Y.; Jonathan Sela was the cinematographer.
A key factor is selecting the Viper camera was that it lent itself to the story, which had a lot of night scenes, the director related. “It has the ability to see at night, and I knew I was doing night work,” he said of the Vipers, which he reported were donated to the project by Grass Valley. “And I was on a budget so I didn’t have a lot of lights.” It should be noted that the camera was also used on many of the night scenes in last year’s Collateral, directed by Michael Mann.
“It was like any new relationship, it started out rocky,” Giraldi said of the experience with the Viper. “But you have to get to know it and work with it and then like it.
“I like a dark look, somewhat edgy, beautiful and sexy with being overlit,” he added. “In the end, it came out pretty close to what was in my imagination– and that rarely happens.
“I would gladly use it again, but I don’t know if as two cameras handheld. This technology is better in controlled situations,” he said. For the shoot, the camera was tethered to a Sony HDCAM SR recording deck, which recorded unprocessed 4:4:4 RGB imagery.
The Viper’s ability to record unprocessed means that it does not do any white balance, gamma correction, or other traditional setups. Company 3 colorist Billy Gabor explained that that allows a cinematographer to record as much information as possible and to be able to extract what one wants in post–more like a film negative.
The camera footage was transferred to DVCAM for dailies viewing and editorial, helmed by editor Bryan Litman using Apple’s Final Cut Pro. The unprocessed look took some getting used to. Giraldi admitted that dailies were “awful to watch– but it made me concentrate on the performance. You couldn’t pick the pretty picture, because there weren’t any.”
A pre-conform master was prepared at Company 3 by editor Pat Kelleher on a Sony Xpri digital editing system. The final 4:4:4 master was assembled at R!OT Manhattan on a Discreet Inferno by artist Randie Swanberg. “The hard work was done by our engineering staff who ensured that the signals were accurate,’ Swanberg said. “From there, it was very similar to an ordinary HD conform.”
Gabor did the final color grading using a da Vinci 2K, and reported that he was impressed with the Viper material. “Typically, upon very close inspection of a video image, you’ll see jagged edges around certain colors, but in this case the transitions were extremely smooth,” he explained. “I was very impressed with the quality and structure of the image. It was shocking how good it looked.
“They shot in a lot of low light situations,” he continued. “It was very moody and the camera did a nice job of seeing into the shadows. It also had a grain, a texture that was pleasing, very filmic. If they had shot the same scenes with a video camera, it wouldn’t have looked as good. This was smooth with tons of detail.”
When asked if he saw applications for the Viper in commercial production, Giraldi responded, “Sure, but agencies don’t jump into new technology as easily as you might think. What’s going to happen is features are going to embrace it much more, because it saves them money in post.”
POP Sound, a Santa Monica-based sister company of Company 3 and R!OT, provided audio post services to the project. For Giraldi, Adam Cohen and Carol Case served as executive producers; Patti Greaney, Bryan Litman and Emily Plunkett were producers.
