Cutting Edge
Video Transcript
“KILIANʼS GAME” Behind the Scenes
Apr 22, 2020
Tense music plays.
A sound of a car driving.
Crew member Hey, Cut!!
Matt Litwiller
So “KILIANʼS GAME” is a neo-noir film, kind of inspired by seventies films like Chinatown or The Long Goodbye.
Collin Davis
So the film is meant to be kind of a real world test of Sony technologies in the context that they would actually be used out in the film.
Yoshikazu Takashima
This is one of my dreams, actually. I've been in the studio for nine years, but it's very rare for engineers who [are] testing advanced technology to be on set.
Daniel de la Rosa
The purpose of this project is to bring several key Sony technologies into play in a production setting.
Matt Litwiller
So we used the new VENICE 2 and then the Airpeak drone that they're coming out with. But then we also were testing remote production with the new, exciting wall they've built in Japan for future, remote production shoots. And then we used a lot of remote tools also being in the pandemic we worked in the cloud for editing. And then we streamed everything on set for Japan to watch and vice versa.
(Voice of Meeting) Good? Awesome
Matt Litwiller
And then we also used Sony's Production Logik for planning the shoot. Collin Davis
The beginning of “KILIANʼS GAME”, we wanted to feel sort of like the opening of a feature film. You know, there's some time to build some mystery before you really dip into the story and the drone served as kind of this floating perspective that would help us build tension into the first scene.
A sound of the Airpeak drone flying.
Mahdad Emadipour
We started our day by chasing the picture car up the hill. The speed of the drone is really helpful.
Hoda Shahbazi
The fact that you can change the aperture and you have control on the camera settings while the drone is in the air is a very nice feature.
Collin Davis
So one of the great things about the Airpeak drone is you can use the Sony Alpha cameras, which allow you to match to a VENICE 2 with a super cinematic look on a small form factor.
A sound of a gate opening. Light music plays.
Crew member And action!
Sonia
“Glad you made it.”
Doug Potts
This is my first time using the Sony VENICE 2. We didnʼt get much chance to test beforehand, but it performed extremely well. Worked perfectly. Worked like a dream. The internal raw recording was amazing. The camera performed super well in low light. The
skin tones look beautiful. The new color profile. The s709 looked great.
Matt Litwiller
It was great having Sony on set with us so that if we had questions come up, Sam was like super, super knowledgeable and really excited to help us however he could.
Crew(man)
There we are, cool.
Crew(woman) Thank you so much
Crew(man)
My pleasure my pleasure
Collin Davis
I think from a filmmaker perspective, it's super valuable to know that the engineers understand what you do and why you do it because it helps the technology work in tandem with what you need it to do.
Daniel de la Rosa
We're also testing the Xperia PRO 5G phone we really want to harness the power of 5G to be able to remote stream to somebody in another location.
Michael Mansouri
What it does is allows us to extend video village beyond just a couple hundred feet. We can do the couple hundred feet and we can go thousands and thousands of miles. In this use case, Tokyo is already watching us realtime and not half a minute later.
Matt Litwiller
So Japan was able to watch what we were doing in L.A. and then we got to watch Japan work, um, during and their set and the video quality was incredible. You could see what they were seeing through the camera. And then also we could see behind the scenes of like how the set was lit and how the shot was being executed and everything.
Collin Davis
So one of the biggest things we wanted to test on this shoot was the brand new LED wall they built in Japan to recreate a set that we had actually shot on in real life here in the states.
Collin Davis
So you get to the desk, youʼre pulling out the letter and youʼre reacting, thatʼs kind of the moment there.
Matt Litwiller
Today we're filming on set and then they're gonna scan the set that we've just worked on. That's gonna go to FuseFX.
Wes Palmer
We start by receiving a Lidar scan of the location. We take that into our VFX pipeline at FuseFX and we convert that into a virtual environment which we can provide to the team in Japan and theyʼre able to shoot with that virtual environment on their LED volume.
Eisuke Ohga
The communication was very important and weʼve always talked with FuseFX and Saylor team to make sure the color is correct.
Wes Palmer
(Voice of Meeting) So for today, just talking creative how it looks, see if weʼre in the ballpark for lighting and the fire sequence and see if thereʼs anything else we want to change before we start sending files your way later this week.
Collin Davis
One of the things that was interesting, um, about writing for the LED wall is we sort of wrote carefully. We didn't wanna push the boundaries too much cause we weren't sure exactly how it was gonna respond [...] And we found that when they did the actual shoot, some of the things that we were careful about, they could actually achieve at a much higher level than what we were expecting. And so next time we approach a project like this. We'll kind of know, you know, you really can get away with a lot more than you think.
Tense music plays.
Justin Herman
For “KILIANʼS GAME” weʼre taking it through all the aspects that we do for every feature film here at Sony. From Scoring, ADR, foley, the dub stage.
A sound of water hitting the ground.
Steven Ticknor
The artists of sound are behind the scenes creating tracks and creating soundscapes that bring films to life.
A sound of a vase breaking.
Cast(Man)
燃やしちまえ (Light it.)
A sound of fire spreading. Light music plays.
Yoshikazu Takashima
So there are things we have to learn, but that's the beauty of [a] testing project like this.
Matt Litwiller
It's amazing as filmmakers to have this opportunity and basically, um, tell a story that we're excited about, but get to use new tools and, and play in a lot of ways, right? And to have the support of Sony to let us take some risks and go out there and make something that we really are proud of.
