THE 8TH SAMURAI

[the8thsamurai]

"It cannot be Eight...it has to be Seven Samurai!"

It’s 1953 and beyond the Tokyo Metropolis, deep in the mountains of Gotemba, Japan's most ambitious and talented Director is about to begin production on a jidei-geki (period drama) samurai movie. By a little persistence and a stroke of good luck a small time actor, Nanshu, gets the chance of a lifetime: a lead role as one of the eight samurai that will save a village from bandits.

After months of training, Nanshu is betting it all that this role will make him the greatest actor in the History of Japan. But little does he know that last night, the Director had a dream. And there is only one thing Nanshu didn’t prepare for: being fired.

Come and see how Nanshu, against all odds, will help to make cinematic history.

SCREENING: THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 26 @ 7:00 PM

THE 8TH SAMURAI is a tragic comedy about fate from writer/director Justin Ambrosino that pays homage to the samurai films, Italian Neorealism and the American comedies of the 1950s.

http://www.the8thsamuraimovie.com
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1339527/
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id= ... 712?ref=ts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVauV_a3nUQ

Here's an updated list of festival screenings and awards for 2009:

1. * Winner - Excellence in Filmmaking Award * Honolulu International Film Festival (USA)
2. * Winner - Best Student Film, Best Director, Best Actor Awards * Show Off Your Shorts Festival (USA)
3. * Selected * New Beijing International Film Festival (China)
4. * Selected * Video Festival Imperia (Italy)
5. * Selected * George Lindsey UNA Film Festival (USA)
6. * Selected * Carolina International Film & Video Festival (USA)
7. * Selected * First Glance Hollywood Film Festival (USA)
8. * Selected * Sacramento International Film Festival (USA)
9. * Selected * Big Muddy Film Festival (USA)
10. * Selected * AFI Showcase (USA)
11. * Selected * World of Comedy Film Festival (Canada)
12. * Selected * Charleston International Film Festival (USA)
13. * Selected * Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival (USA)

[the8thsamurai]

Here is an article written about our film by Vili Maunula of www.akirakurosawa.info

February 5th, 2009

The 8th Samurai

From first-time writer/director Justin Ambrosino comes The 8th Samurai, a 28 minute comedy about Nanshu, a struggling actor who finally seems to have made a break in the film industry after he has landed a leading role in a famous director's epic film about eight brave samurai warriors.

Unfortunately, the whimsical director has a terrible dream just before the day the shoot is to begin, and he is convinced that there is one samurai too many in his story. And so, Nanshu gets the axe. But while he is initially ready to accept his fate, this changes soon, and the next morning Nanshu is back to confront the director.

While at least the promotional materials give no name for the fictional production or its director, it is fairly clear who the film makers are trying to go after:

The short film has been doing the festival circuit, having won the Excellence in Filmmaking award at the Honolulu International Film Festival and being nominated for Best Student Film, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Cinematographer and Best Editor at the Show Off Your Shorts Festival in the US. It was also shown at the New Beijing International Film Festival (China), Video Festival Imperia (Italy), George Lindsey UNA Film Festival (USA) and Carolina International Film & Video Festival (USA).

The cast is almost fully Japanese, and it actually seems like the film makers have raided the Letters from Iwo Jima set, as about half a dozen 8th Samurai actors appeared in Eastwood's movie.

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[twigton447]

Hello- I looked at your trailer on facebook, it looks solid.

Not that it matters one way or the other, IMOP, but as a DP myself I was curious what you guys shot the film on. Your DP mentions using Digiprimes so I suppose that helps narrow it down: Here is my best guess...

If you shot with the Digiprimes, then it's a three 2/3rd's inch CCD block HD camara. Not sure your date of principal photography, depending on when this was you may have used the Sony F23 - but - something tells me that there were not enough F23's at the time of production which would have been available for more then a day. The few F23's that enter the US, for the most part, all pass through Band Pro direct from Japan and usually get sent out onto a studio film in the US or abroad the following day.

My thought is Clairmont Camera supplied an Sony F900R camera package. I do NOT imagine you guys used a GV Viper or F950 shooting 4:4:4 to S-Two or some other unwieldy data capture system.

F900, 1080P (23.98) to HDCAM (onboard 3:1:1 compression) recorded full color using a log style gamma curve for wide dynamic range. Build a black&white LUT for the onboard HD camera monitor and same for the on set HD monitors for director/producers/etc.

No anamorphic adapters with the digiprimes and the 7mm was desired given the heavy top and bottom crop in post. Perhaps the 5mm was too wide looking (I'm guessing you shot wide open to maximize digiprime performance and get a more 35mm DOF look).

A 35mm filmout seems possible, we tossed the idea around given some of the more international festivals have yet to embrace High Def.

I look forward to hearing your reply and I would love to see the film!

Taylor Wigton
DP, LA

[big_mud]

Hey Taylor,

Thanks for your interest in the photography of "The 8th Samurai". I hope that I can field some of your questions. So let first start by saying the Samurai was the first film of any significance that I had shot on HD, and only the second time I had used a non-prosumer HD camera.

The film was shot on the Sony F-900R which was provided by AFI. The lens package came from Band Pro, and the rest of the camera support came from Clairmont. We had some sort of onboard monitor that had a built in scope. Our primary monitor was and older CRT 1080p monitor.

As far as LUTs go we did not have any, I just simply turned the chroma knob all the way down on set. I am not super comfortable in the HD world and the film did not have the budget for a DIT so I just did a lot of testing in preproduction. During testing we were prepping 3 formats for the film because we were not real sure where the budget was going to end up. But the format that we seemed to like the best was two perf 35mm. Shooting Kodak plus-x. So when the budget began to crunch and we knew we were going to end up being an HD show, my ultimate goal was to end up with an image that resembled our first choice format.

So then we began a whole slew of other testing on the F-900. I tried using just the blue vector, so, like negative film, the HD would only be sensitive to blue light. We tried using traditional B&W contrast filter with little to no luck. In the end, all the bright ideas I had to manipulate the signal just kept coming back muddy. So I decided to stop messing with the camera and focus on the lighting.

The first thing we did was begin to research what type of units were available in Japan around that time, mostly various pars, and big eye frennels, there were of course arc light but that was pretty out of the question for us. The Gaffer and I then began shooting standard (emulsion like) film tests using the period units. Within a day we had the look we were going for. If i remember right the key was N-1 and the Fill was N-3. Of course that is relative to the scene but that was kinda our standard.

So in the end we shot the camera using its native settings. Lit it using light meters. The only filters we used were NDs, Classic Softs, and a Pola. The color was removed in Color Correction which was done at Entertainment Post using their Luster suite, and the film was mastered to HD cam. I hope this answers some of you questions. Hit me back on this forum if I didn’t completely answer something.

Thanks again,

Lucas

[rgk2]

The story of this film really struck a chord with me. Thank you for submitting it.

[the8thsamurai]

Thanks RK. I am happy to hear the film is finding its audience.

Are you part of the festival, or a filmmaker, or an audience member?

Best,

Justin Ambrosino

[twigton447]

Hey Lucas. Thanks for the reply, sounds like I was in the right ballpark. I think it's because I would have done it much the same way. I like to treat HD like reversal, I too use a light meter (waveform is helpful too) and am not a huge advocate of using a DIT. Case by Case basis I suppose...

Did you deal with Band Pro personally? Michael Bravin (CTO) and Randy Wedick (Digital Cinema Products) are close buddies of mine and if you didn't deal with them yourself, I would highly recommend introducing yourself. They are a couple of the smartest guys in town and I'm sure they would love to see what you did with the Digiprimes. (Michael Bravin was one of the primary players in the design and implementation with Band Pro and Zeiss of the Digiprimes into the marketplace). Maybe you knew this already but BP has made a deal with Silicon Imaging so the SI 2K should be over there soon (I have not seen Slumdog but that was the primary camera used).

I will keep my eye out for any LA screenings, put me on a mailing list if you have one. All the Best-

Taylor Wigton
DP / Producer
Los Angeles, CA
310-736-8232
twigton447@yahoo.com

_______________________________________________________________________________________________
In the Land of Opportunity 2009, Dramatic Short

Official Selections:
2009 San Diego Black Film Festival
2009 Big Muddy Film Festival
2009 Pan-African Film Festival (FESPACO)

[rgk2]

Thanks RK. I am happy to hear the film is finding its audience.

Are you part of the festival, or a filmmaker, or an audience member?

Best,

Justin Ambrosino

Justin,

I am part of the festival and an audience member - I am a student majoring in journalism and minoring in art & design. I am also the Big Muddy Film Fest webmaster this year and rent the webspace dtoasm.org

The hosting provider for bigmuddyfilm.com did not allow an updated php client so I decided to maneuver around it and simply host the bulletin board on my own webspace.

I hope it serves you well.

All the best,

Rafal Grzegorz Kos

[twigton447]

Rafal- Excellent work in getting this forum up and running. There is absolutely nothing you can do more then you have done in getting people to create a conversation, so no worries. You will do great in the "real world" with your drive and good intention. Hats off to you.

Sincerely,
Taylor

[rgk2]

Thanks for the kind words.