Nelson Madison Films switches from Avid to Adobe Creative Suite Production Premium software to create Hollywood-caliber indie feature film

Epic movie, micro budget

What do Japanese gangsters, an Italian proctologist, an Armenian art dealer, and a hero with a very cool car have in common? They all come together in the modern crime thriller Delivered, directed, produced, and edited by Michael Madison and Linda Nelson of Nelson Madison Films. The movie is the company’s third feature-length film project. Slated for completion in September 2010, Delivered relies on the latest filmmaking technologies, including the RED Digital Cinema camera and Adobe Creative Suite 5 Production Premium software.

“We knew that the only way to feasibly produce a long-form project of this caliber on our budget was to go completely tapeless, something that was not supported by the proprietary Avid system we used to rely on,” says Nelson. “To achieve the cinematic quality we wanted, we shot using the RED camera and used Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Photoshop Extended to edit the film and create the effects.”

Benefits

• Created Delivered, a small-budget movie with big-screen quality
• Edited 4K files in real time
• Used Dynamic Link to easily integrate and update VFX shots
• Accelerated performance with Adobe Mercury Playback Engine and NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800 playback card
• Fast, efficient recoding to multiple formats for distribution

Project Details

Shoestring budget
The ensemble cast of Delivered features career actors such as Toshi Toda, Robert Rusler, Alana Stewart, and Brian McGuire. It also stars Madison, a theater actor, who graduated from Texas Tech with a concentration in film. Set in the Mojave Desert, the new crime thriller was inspired by films like Bullitt, True Romance, and Vanishing Point.

“Top acting talent, a good story, plus the latest technologies are enabling us to make an impressive film produced on a shoestring budget. People see early cuts of the film and think it is a Hollywood production costing millions of dollars,” says Madison. “We can’t divulge the exact budget, but we can say we were able to self-finance the project.” read more...