Searching For Sonny: first feature film shot on a DSLR
By Darren Murph 
posted Mar 30th 2009 10:23AM
posted Mar 30th 2009 10:23AM
Searching for Sonny - Teaser Trailer/Canon 5d Mark II Feature Film from Andrew Disney on Vimeo.
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nice this means i can makw my own movie. out side of the bedroom lol
make*
Outside*
:p
padded room*
:p
cupcakes*
:p
Canon, please give us 24p now.
Why? The faster we get away from 24fps the better. It's why we have judder issues. (That processing crap on the new TVs opens it's own can of worms) Can't movies change with the times as well?
Canon give me some manual adjustment for moviemode (especially manual aperture) !!!
Nothing can beat the 24p feeling and look, we got used to it; it's like a movie can't be called a movie unless it is shot with 24p, and I would love to keep it that way, forever. Technologies will advance but something about 24 frames hitting your eyes every second satisfies your senses. It is like two hot ladies, one has implants and the other is all natural; both are doable, but one is just more satisfying.
Am I making this more confusing?
@ Saad Rabia
You brought tears to my eyes. That was a beautiful piece of work. Have you been published?
probably. I read something like that in "Letters to Playboy"...
24p being flashed onto a screen by a projector with relatively soft fading is what we're used to, not the 24 frames instantly and abruptly cutting into each other on an LCD.
Sorry, but The Corpse Bride was shot entirely on a DSLR so this is a few years late. The first live-action, feature-length film shot on a DSLR, maybe?
It's the first feature film shot with the movie function of a DSLR.
Corpse Bride was done from single pictures, moving the puppets shot by shot: stop motion.
Are you seriously comparing stop-motion animation to actual video. I guess if we could get the actors to move an inch and pose for every frame it might be possible.
@Temple
Dude, he's not comparing stop motion to regular video, just saying that the Corpse Bride was also a feature length film, and it was shot with a DSLR, so this movie is not the first. Do you disagree? Is the corpse bride not a feature length film?
His point was that the statement "First feature film shot on a DSLR" is not true of this movie.
Now sure, using the movie mode is much more significant as it means that normal movies can now be shot this way, so yes, this movie is in many ways more *significant* than the Corpse Bride, but that doesn't change the fact that the headline is wrong.
You need to understand the difference between someone pointing out a mistake, and someone making some other statement.
-Taylor
@Taylor. Yes, Taylor.
There is a huge difference in comparing a stop-motion animation to real video. Hell, even before Corpse Bride tons of stop-motion movies have been using tens-of-thousands of pictures strung together using a SLR cameras. I think we should be intelligent enough to tell the distinction of technical achievement between a live action feature film shot on an SLR versus stop-motion- which obviously uses freakin' still cameras.
The real point of this is that consumer level dSLR cameras like the 5DMkII can capture videos that look as amazing as what's posted above. Bringing Corpse Bride and stop-motion into this is irrelevant and asinine.
@Temple
Look, i never said this wasn't more significant. In fact, i said the opposite - that doing a live action (movie mode on the DSLR) movie is much more significant than stop motion, but the OP never said this wasn't significant. He was just pointing out that the headline is false. That doesn't make it ANY less significant and no one was saying it did. If the headline was "First live action feature film shot using a DSLR" then it would be correct, and the Corpse Bride would not be relevant, but that isn't the title.
Mentioning the corpse bride is neither irrelevant nor asinine, as it falls into the same category of "Feature film shot with a DSLR", which this post talks about. Do you disagree? If so, on which account? Are you claiming the Corpse Bride is not a feature film, or that it was not shot on a DSLR?
NO ONE was arguing about the significance of anything, just that the statement made in the title is incorrect. Why are you getting all wrapped up in the significance of the event when no one was disputing it?
What you need to realize is that even if something is totally awesome, there is still value in clarifying the details. Since this headline was not technically correct, the OP mentioned a correction. You should not confuse that with some jab at the significance of the event.
-Taylor
I think you mean: 'What's the world coming TO'...
Sorry.
Damn, I've become so numb to the fall of written language on the Net, I didn't even catch that. I wonder if other languages are as devastated by netsp34k as English, or if it's a special case of devolution.
i got excited for a second thinking it said sony
i clicked hoping it to be a preview of a film made by sony dSLR
oh the heavens, why must you tease me?
why?
why 'oh why?
aye, isnt it time sony also made a dslr with hd video recording?
I don't understand, is this suggesting that Nikon lenses were used on the 5DMk2 ?
yes. We put men on the moon. Getting Nikon lenses to work on a Canon body isn't too hard.
I've already shot two James Bond movies with a Nikon D90:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jz3eDK0eN4&feature=PlayList&p=89505D8BC2D693AF&index=0
They should rename it "Bangs: The Movie."
I guess film is expensive.
pardon the ignorance but how do you mount a nikon lens on a canon DSLR??? aren't the apple and oranges? is their a mount converter?
You can get converts to fit just about anything on anything else. But of course you lose things like aperture control and auto focus.
To work, a lens basically just has to sit a certain distance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flange_focal_distance) from the sensor without letting any extraneous light in. You can buy adapters (or make your own) to mount a Nikon lens on a Canon camera, although you lose auto-focus and aperture control unless you can convert the proprietary signals somehow.
Note that because the flange distance of the Canon EF mount is so much shorter than Nikon F mount, you can't mount a Canon lens on a Nikon without using an additional piece of glass between the lens and the sensor (reducing quality), or ending up with the effect of using an extension tube, which slows the lens down and often eliminates your ability to focus on distant objects (but gives you macro).
http://www.camerahacker.com/Novoflex/EOSNIK.shtml
You lose the ability to auto-focus but you for film you usually manual focus anyway (also the 5DII doesn't have autofocus in video mode).
You can pretty much mount whatever you want to as long as you put some oomph into it. Or buy it dinner first.
@Temple:
Not to nitpick, but the 5DII does have autofocus in video mode. It's a contrast-based AF, but it's there and it works. Just press the AF button while in video mode.
Not so fast- try reading your own links next time Tonto. "We shot a teaser and full trailer with the Canon 5d Mark II. We are *planning* to shoot the entire film on a DSLR." There's about a million folks in the L.A. area alone planning to shoot a feature. That and a film school degree will get you a nice job as a Barista on Sunset...
Stan you're right. The film hasn't been shot and they're still working on the trailer. But it seems that the first to 'claim' they have the 'first' gets all the glory (and they're in the right place and get the right coverage). The filmmaker himself has put the "first" moniker on it. Also note that the teaser was put up on vimeo 5 days, ago, but I think I was the 'first' to break the story on my blog this morning :)
whoa that's definitly shot at the starbucks in my home town next to joes pasta and pizza... weird
I don't really understand the point of this beyond being able to say they shot a movie with an SLR. SLRs are still cameras, hence the whole mirror and pentaprism non-sense.
Just get an adapter for $30 on ebay, and you are good to go.
The reason why you need Nikon lenses in shooting video on 5D 2 is because Canon cannot give us aperture control on Canon lenses, Canon is pushing its customers away by introducing 5D2...he he
or just pushing to buy that adaptor eh ?
"The filmmaker himself has put the "first" moniker on it." Um that's stupid. I can claim to be a millionaire but if you bothered to check my bank account you'd see I'm just hyping. If you'd bothered to research you'd find there are dozens of features already being shot or shot on DSLRs. But who cares about real journalism any more right?
If Searching For Sonny was the first movie shot with DSLRs, what was I carrying around the sets of Coraline? Oh, right- Redlake scientific imaging DSLR modules plus Canon lenses.
I agree the title should read "first non-stop-motion film shot on a DSLR".
You worked on Coraline? Nice!
(Liked Corpse Bride a lot, too...)
So what's up with that?
Anyone else curious about the audio? The trailer didn't give us anything.
How the hell did they manage to grade it so nicely with an 8bit H.264 format?! o_O
Two possibilities - (1) they found some way to get a cleaner / less compressed signal out of the HDMI output or (2) they're converting all of their footage to a less compressed intermediate codec like Final Cut's ProRes 422. Still incredible work.
Man, if it's somehow (firmware?) possible to get a raw signal out of the CMOS off of 5D MKII, I'm totally sold!