Hardknocks

My first Super 16mm film. Shot with one roll of Kodak 50d on the ol' Aaton XTR-Prod that I took out from the Temple University Equipment office at my college. Sort of an homage to Blowup. Wanted to go for something suspenseful. Completely unscripted. Very much run and gun style shooting. Didn't have a lot of time and it was very dark in there and no way to get lighting power in. Wasn't going to bring a loud generator to an abandoned school in the middle of the North Philadelphia ghetto. My dad told me that this place burnt down about a week ago.. Arson I guess. I shot this around the end of April, beginning of May maybe.. It was a huge beautiful elementary school. Julia De Burgos, school for a lot of Spanish kids in the area. Also called, 'The School of Hardknocks'. I did this as a last minute project for Cinematography class. It wasn't graded/ part of the class, but I was allowed one roll of film through class fees. Including the processing and transferring, NFL films. 400ft - 11 minutes to work with.. not bad. The darkness caused me to open up all the way for the most part, leaving some stuff out of focus. Those viewfinders are tough to see through either way and my diopter was broke on the camera little did I know. I think after using Final Cut and compressed it, the framing/aspect ratio has the images a little squeezed making everything slightly shorter and fat but eh, what can you do. Minimal color work done to it, all in Final Cut Pro. Much of the film was improv. and even used some unexpected actors. Thanks to Justin, Paul, and Joey for helping. It was nice exploring the building and using those super fast Zeiss lenses to capture some of the cool stuff that building had. Huge creepy place. Too bad its gone. It was at 7th and Lehigh. That auditorium was amazing. It's also known as the 'old Edison Building." Watch the neighborhood. Bad, high drug and crime filled area. After the fire, the place is heavily boarded up now.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Aaton XTR Prod
• Kodak 50d
• Temple University
• Tony Sarandrea
• Julia de Burgos school
• Blowup
• School of Hardknocks
• 7th and Lehigh
• Zeiss Primes
• Zeiss 1.3T
• Philadelphia
• Abandoned school
• Abandon building
• North Philly

[TonySarandrea215]

@goatfishsandwich it wasn't burned down. Just the roof

[TonySarandrea215]

@goatfishsandwich I don't know... If I take a certain route to get to work I can drive by it. I'm gonna do that today and check it out, see how it looks. I'll keep ya posted

[goatfishsandwich]

i wonder how it burned down, it was all brick