Marc Fratto Interview
By MicroCinema Scene • Feb 26th, 2007 • Category: Interviews
Director Marc Fratto and the Insane-o-Rama crew garnered quite a bit of attention for their vampire-gangster debut Strange Things Happen After Sundown. Now they are poised to release a brand new feature that will put a twisted spin on the zombie genre: Last Rites of the Dead. For their second production, Fratto decided to up the quality by shooting on HDV. The format was brand new at the time and many “experts” were not convinced it was an ideal format for shooting a feature. We decided to ask Marc a few questions about the new movie and the new acquisition format.
MicroCinema Scene: Okay, tell us a little bit about your second feature?
Marc Fratto: Well, much like Strange Things was made because I was sick of lame vampire movies with no balls, I made Last Rites of the Dead as an answer to how boring and formulaic zombie movies have become in the last 10 years. In fact, zombie movies became so formulaic, that people actually made a huge deal over 28 Days Later’s decision to make the zombies run.
Last Rites of the Dead plays with the scenario that the recently deceased are walking the earth as walking, talking, functioning zombies. They go about their jobs and lives as if nothing ever happened. Zombie hunting hate groups form to hunt them down, and some of the zombie’s themselves form terrorist groups to fight the living. The hero of the movie is a girl named Angela, who is shot to death in the opening scene, and, as a zombie, becomes a pawn in the brewing war between the living and the dead. We have a lot of fun with the concept. I won’t give too much away, but I will say, one of our investors instantly signed on after reading the scene in the script where Angela joins a zombie support group.
MCS: What went into your decision to shoot with HDV? At the time you made the decision, this was a BRAND new format. This would make a lot of filmmakers nervous.
Marc Fratto: I wasn’t all that happy with the way Strange Things Happen At Sundown looked. Shooting wide shots became frustrating because of how we would lose detail. I never entertained the 24p route because it was the increased resolution I was looking for. I had my eye on Hi-def for a while, and it was the seeing Collateral and Once Upon A Time in Mexico really convinced me that I had to make the High-def jump. For a couple of years, I watched the price come down further and further on those cameras, and finally, HDV came out, and I made the leap.
I did a little looking around on the internet for reviews of the camera. Because the image was compressed onto DV tape, I was suspicious. But I found a site that had a sample of an HDV image and it was unbelievable. That’s when I plopped down my hard earned money and bought the camera and editing suite.
MCS: What specific camera did you use for this project? And why did you choose this particular camera?
Marc Fratto: I used the Sony HDR-FX1. At the time, that was the only camera offering HDV and it was cheap. It cost me a little over 3 grand.
MCS: Can you tell us a little bit about what you decided to do as far as camera-setup (the internal settings). Also did you use any kind of 24p mode during production.
Marc Fratto: I shot the movie on 30 frames a second, interlaced (or 1080i). The Sony cam has a de-interlacing feature in-camera but I read that its not true de-interlacing. Instead of combining the two feilds into one frame, it just drops one, and doubles up the other one, filling in the gaps but also cutting your resolution in half. Instead, I decided to De-interlace in post.
I’m going to make a 30p and 24p master. We’ll have to use the 24p if we need to do a film transfer. But if the movie is going straight to video, we’ll probably leave it at 30p. either way, I’ll have to look at both masters and see which I like better.
MCS: You mention that you bought an editing suite to go with the camera. Can you tell us a little more about this. What kind of suite and software are you running?
Marc Fratto: I had to do some serious updates, so I just bought a new computer. I got Adobe Premiere Pro, with 2 gigs of Ram, and 700 gigs of hard drive spice. I also picked up adobe after effects and magic bullet as well. And then I picked up Cineform’s Aspect HD, which delivers real time editing workflow for Premiere pro. Frank Garfi, who handles all of the sound on our movies also picked up ProTools for his computer as well. He’s cutting the sound as we speak.
MCS: In post production have you run into any problems with the way HDV uses groups of frames (gop)? When I edited Exile on Final Cut Pro I didn’t even realize it was handling the frames like this, until it came time to use some color correction filters - then it totally killed me with render times.
Marc Fratto: No. Actually, its all been extremely easy. The only snag I found was that my footage only loads when I capture to the C Drive and then transfer it into the Hard drive. If I load it directly into the hard drive, it pixelates.
MCS: So now you’ve got the movie pretty much in the can - are you happy with the image quality? What kind of response have you received to how the movie looks?
Marc Fratto: It looks incredible. And now I’ve filmlooked it with magic bullet and de-interlaced it, I couldn’t be happier. People who’ve seen it have been blown away by the clarity and look of it.
MCS: Have you picked up any tips or tricks from shooting in HDV (or even specifically with the FX1) that you could pass on to other guerilla filmmakers?
Marc Fratto: I think shooting on HDV is a bit easier than shooting on DV, because the camera handles light better. Shooting on DV, you had to be real careful with your lighting, because if something was lit too bright, or to harsh, it would get blown out. Especially on the wide shots. But HDV seems to handle harsh lighting a lot better. Because of the increased resolution, you also have a lot more freedom to get the kind of shots you want. Like big wide landscape shots. I used to shy away from those with DV, but not now.
For more information about Last Rights of the Dead, visit Insane-o-Rama.com!
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