Two Legged Rat Bastards - CacheFly

Two Legged Rat Bastards is a short film based on the short story by Daniel Wallace (Big Fish) detailing the strange estrangement of anelderly father and his son. Set on a park bench in the present day, Eddie, a cantankerous old alcoholic, attempts to connect with his sonWinstead, who’s spent the majority of his adult life trying to get away from him. In the course of their conversation Eddie reveals howhe lost his leg - in a high stakes poker game 30 years ago - at which point the story flashes back to the game itself, where a young Eddiegambles fiercely against a table full of miscreants in a game where money changes hands and hands change hands, along with eyes,ears, feet and more. In the present day Winstead has a hard time understanding why his father would bet his leg in a poker game, but atthe same time he feels like his father is being honest with him for the first time in their lives, and it resonates with him. As we continueflashing back to the big game it’s revealed that after Eddie lost his leg, he battled back to win something much more valuable: His son.

Two-Legged Rat BastardsScott Weintrob’s short film, written by Daniel Wallace, delivers a darkly comic tale and serves as a showcase for a new 4K workflow featuring technology from Avid, RED and FilmLight.The film’s path to the screen was unusual. It was produced by Tova Dann and Weintrob at Limey, Weintrob’s production company, in association with Avid and digital camera-maker RED.A number of other prominent companies, including FilmLight, provided equipment and services. Vincent Maza, Avid’s Worldwide Marketing Manager|Post Production, explains that Avid’sinvolvement was part of its commitment to nurturing young filmmakers. He says he also found the project intriguing.“Avid wants to support the creative community,” Maza observes. “And, personally, I was hooked when I read the script. It was very good. It had an edge that you don’t see very often.”Maza adds that the film provided an opportunity to test drive an innovative 4K workflow. The film was shot with RED’s RED One digital cinema camera, equipped with a Mysterium-X sensor,and edited on Media Composer 5.5, the latest version of Avid’s industry-leading editing system. Final grading was accomplished via FilmLight’s Baselight FOUR color grading system,which has the ability to grade native 4K RED files in real-time while working directly from a Media Composer AAF file, containing editorial information.This workflow has important implications for film production, Maza notes, especially for budget-conscious independent projects like Two-Legged Rat Bastards. “The great thing aboutthis RED workflow is that it is very simple,” Maza says. “When production wraps, the raw RED files go through a one-step transcoding process to DNxHD and they are ready for editingin Media Composer. Once editorial is completed, the raw RED files are imported into Baselight along with Media Composer’s AAF file. The project is then ready for grading at 4K. There isnothing difficult about it.”For Two-Legged Rat Bastards, Weintrob and Susser used the RED One camera to establish diametrically opposed looks for the film’s two principal locations. “The poker game is meantto be unplaceable—you don’t know where it is—and that can be a hard thing to pull off,” recalls Weintrob. “We shot it in a storage room at Rock & Republic. It was gritty and dark and allthe walls were worn. It was the most random place we could think of. It was moody and noire-ish—all the things that go with a poker game. The poker scenes were cut in with this verynormal park scene. So you have two very distinct looks, one that is moody and stylized, and another that is present day and shot exterior in daylight.”Final grading was performed at FilmLight’s U.S. headquarters in Los Angeles. DI colorist Laura Jans notes that Baselight’s direct support for raw RED files and Media Composer’s AAF fileformat made the process of grading at 4K appear effortless. “It was as simple as load the EDL, point to the media, and go,” she recalls. “In three keystrokes, I was up and grading. It wasfun to show Morgan and Scott how quickly we could work off the raw RED files and utilize the cut from Media Composer seamlessly. We could go back and forth between the cut, the grade,and back to the ‘off the truck’, along with audio, all in the same timeline.”“For me, the film is a showcase not only for a great workflow, but also for the people behind it,” adds Maza. “It is clearly the work or a great team.”

director Scott Weintrob Derek Waters as WinstedMichael Rosenbaum as Young Eddie Tony Curran as Desoto MoriartiOrson Bean as Eddie

SCOTT WEINTROBDirectorScott is currently shooting commercials and the director/creator for the new hit MTV2 series The Dub MagazineProject. The show based on the popular DUB MAGAZINE is all about cars and car culture and features artists likeGame, Far East Movement, Snoop, Shaq, Ludacris, Rick Ross, Manny Pacquiao, Nelly and Amber Rose.Scott directed the new Global Campaign for the Volvo S60 including assets for Web, Television and Cinema throughlead agency Arnold Worldwide as well as recent campaigns for Acura (Canada) and Lenovo through his U.S. basedcompany LIMEY.Scott has written and directed a few short films. ONE LAST TIME features Hakeem Kae Kazim (24/X-Men:Wolverine) and was shot by DP Morgan Susser (Hesher/Rize); the Sound Design was by Emmy Award winner JasonKing (Changling/Gran Torino).His latest short film TWO LEGGED RAT BASTARDS released this summer will be premiering at the London filmFestival.Weintrob directed the action films for the International Emmy, BAFTA and RTS, winning television show Top Gear(BBC). Top Gear has a worldwide audience of 350 million and plays in over 100 countries.Weintrob directed the American Network pilot for Top Gear America for NBC and an extreme vehicle comedy seriesfor MTV called Mega Drive.Scott’s formative years saw him work as a photographer’s assistant at the famous East London Click Studios wherehe assisted fashion photographers, such as Jean-Baptiste Mondino, Albert Watson, Rankin and David Simms formagazines including Vogue, Dazed and Confused, ID and The Face.Weintrob spent two years shadowing the director Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas, One Night Stand, Timecode).