Peters Completes Post on "Blindsided" Doc
(released
5/2/2006)
By greenroomwire
"Blindsided" chronicles the story of Jared Hara, a Maitland, Florida teenager who was stricken with the devastating genetic eye disorder, Leber's Hereditary Optic Neuropathy (LHON). This documentary delves into the impact on Jared and the Hara family, but also the unforeseen blame and guilt that took this family
through a two-year-long downward emotional spiral as Jared plunged into permanent blindness. In the end, it's an uplifting tale about the strength of the human spirit told through the words of family and friends without script or narration.
The production was completed in three short weeks during the fall of 2004 in the midst of Florida's bouts with hurricanes. Production was handled by first time director Talia Osteen ("Florida City"), producer David Coleman and director of photography Mark Moormann ("Tom Dowd and the Language of Music"). In
spite of the short schedule, the crew managed to videotape a series of evocative interviews along with additional coverage on location in Canada, Ft. Lauderdale and The Bahamas. Nearly all taping was done with Sony high-definition 24p digital cinematography cameras, but the story is also told through family photos and home movies.
The producers turned to Oliver Peters in mid-2005 to edit the film and coordinate all post production services. Owing to the nature of this film as a low-budget indie feature, Peters spent most of the time at various ad hoc cutting locations using Apple's Final Cut Pro running on his PowerBook and a couple of FireWire media hard drives as the primary editing tools. According to Peters, "We had a total of about 65 hours of material on these drives at DV resolution. It's pretty amazing that you can actually cut a feature film this way." After several months of tweaking the final version, Peters and Coleman regrouped to complete the final master at full resolution. To put the finishing touches on the film, Peters relied on Adrenaline Film Productions' (Orlando) high-definition edit suite. There the original HD camera masters were recaptured, color-corrected and output to a Sony HD master tape. Peters, who also
served as the finishing HD editor and colorist continued, "I picked Adrenaline Films because they were really interested in seeing this turn out well and because they had all the pieces I needed, including a Final Cut Pro-based HD suite and the correct Sony videotape machines. Richard Achor (Creative Sync) handled the audio sweetening and mix. Audio was really critical, because the movie culminates in a concert featuring the band Shinedown. Various live concert elements were recorded and it was up to Richard to recreate that big 'in your face" rock concert sound."
"Blindsided" premiered at the Palm Beach International Film Festival in April and the production company, Starbird Films, is currently pursuing distribution opportunities.
Related sites:
www.oliverpeters.com
www.blindsidedthemovie.com
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