Brand new trailer for Searching For Sonny
This is a tale of how awesome the internet can be.
Two years ago, a kid named Andrew Disney saw a big potential for DSLR filmmaking. Still cameras with video capabilities were starting to get noticed. Lead by the success of Canon’s 5D Mark ii, people were taking this idea seriously. Disney, having just graduated from film school, decided that he wanted to make a full feature on DSLR and he started by making a teaser trailer.
Within the week, Engadget had found his trailer and touted it as the world’s first feature film to be shot on DSLR. Soon Wired, Laughing Squid, Gizmodo, and a billion photography blogs reported on it as well. The original Searching For Sonny trailer has been scrubbed mostly from the internet, though. Why? Because due to all of the newfound attention, Searching For Sonny went from being a teaser of a non-yet-existing film starring Disney’s friends to something that many people were interested in. They found a production company that wanted to help produce, they hired a casting director, and soon Disney was on the phone with a lot of his favorite TV stars.
Searching For Sonny stars Jason Dohring (Veronica Mars), Minka Kelly (Friday Night Lights), Michael Hogan (Battlestar Gallatica), Masi Oka (Heroes) and is narrated by Clarke Peters (Lester in The Wire). Disney really wanted to combine some good internet talent though, so he brilliantly picked Brian McElhaney and Nick Kocher of BriTaNick to star in it as well. Anyone unfamiliar with their work should head straight to this, which is one of my favorites.
It’s rather ironic that this film did not end up being shot on DSLR, but we’re glad that it got proper treatment. Disney told us that he set out to blend mystery and comedy along the lines of The Big Lebowski and Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, which sounds awesome considering those are two of BRTE’s favorite movies. We think this looks like a ton of fun.
Proud of you, internet.
Thanks for the amazing post! I heart Best Roof Talk Ever!
It’s finally here. The Searching for Sonny trailer!
Starring Jason Dohring (Veronica Mars), Minka Kelly (Friday Night Lights), Masi Oka (Heroes), Michael Hogan (Battlestar Galatica), Clarke Peters (The Wire), and Nick Kocher & Brian McElhaney (BriTANick).
The film tells the story of reunited friends who find themselves the chief suspects of a murder mystery that seems eerily similar to a play they performed in high school.
But we’re still waiting for that HDSLR hit. The most successful high-profile use of these cameras has for the most part been with large productions that have full camera crews and a solid post department just standing by for data to be delivered. Andrew Disney, who just wrapped his full-length feature, Searching for Sonny, has this to say: “The DSLR is the reason I was able to make [my] movie. With the Canon 5D, I was able to create a spec trailer, a proof of concept, that looked superprofessional and filmic while costing very little. After I made the spec trailer, I found producers who saw potential, investors who wanted to back it, casting directors who wanted to cast it, and eventually actors who loved the script. The DSLR-shot trailer became my pitch, and it opened many doors. Almost too many. The project that I originally thought would be shot sort of guerrilla-style with friends became bigger than I ever imagined. We started getting names attached. Many of them joined not just because they loved the script, but also because they saw the [DSLR] spec-trailer. But then a funny thing happened. We started seeing some of the pitfalls of shooting [a feature-length narrative film] with a DSLR.”
Although the Canon DSLR was still very useful on second-unit and as a second camera, Disney’s feature was ultimately shot on a RED ONE. “As awesome as the footage looks [with a DSLR], what you see is what you get. There’s not much changing in post. Once we started asking the questions about DSLR, we instinctively looked at the RED. The freedom with white balance and color temperature became alluring. The ability to shoot RAW sounded pretty intoxicating. [And then] there’s the jelly effect — still a problem, especially when you want to shoot with longer lenses.” Monitoring at 480i doesn’t help either since the cameras can’t output at 1080 or even 720 when recording.
Yo lindcherry, it’s actually Searching for Sonny. Thanks for the post!
Minka Kelly, Jason Dohring & director Andrew Disney on the set of Searching for Sammy, May 14th
