My P.S Technik work
 

Visit my site to see some P.S Technik work (John Melon trailer). Please feel free to coment.

www.nothingmanproductions.com

the trailer
http://www.nothingmanproductions.com...lonpreview.wmv

Great work. Looking forward to seeing the completed piece.

mizell

Hi Alain--The trailer looked good. The lighting in the office looked great--you definitely captured the fluorescent glow. Any color correction yet or was that all in camera? I watched the quicktime and thought the screen size was a little small. If you can afford the bandwith I'd suggest 320x240. The lead seemed to overact a little, but I understand the movie is probably not incredibly concerned with realism, given the apparent subject matter. I look forward to seeing the finished product, be sure to let us know on dvinfo when it's done. Good work!

Peter

Nice boost
 

Thank you for that confidence boost (you guys are among the first technical people to see this, and you know that your opinion really counts!..:)...Peter, You’re actually right the film is an absurd take on office work and a demented mind. The running time is about 17 minutes. I'll try to create a Windows Media and QuickTime version. If it's to big for viewing this way, I'll be more than happy in sending you a DVD (upon request).

The lighting setup became a topic for discussion on this forum. Thanks to the advice I was able to get closer to the effect I was looking for. The trailer version does not have any color correction other than the white balance to daylight and daylight fluorescent fixtures and Kinos. I'm still experimenting with this and I'll definitely post the results.

Thanks

so simple yet so sweet....I like your style ;)

Thank you so much for your compliment. It really helps a lot to hear thing like that .

As a note,

I used a Canon XL1, the PS Technik adaptor and 5 Prime Zeiss lenses. For lighting I used three banks of Kino Flos. One 4x4, one 4x2, and one 2x2. I used the automatic daylight white balance setting from the XL1. All ceiling fixtures were daylight bulbs with a CRI of 85 or more. No additional filters ore color correction has been used. Right now I'm working with Magic Bullet to do some adjustments.

The guys from DuAll camera in NYC rented me the adapter (and camera/lenses) for $600. I took them during Thanksgiven so I was able to use them for about 3 days. I shot the whole thing in two days, starting at 8 AM until aproximatelly 8 PM.

I worked with Alain on this project and helped setup the light placement as well as the color work. To correct Alain; we balanced the camera to incandence and shot useing daylight balanced Kino Flos which were balanced to 5,000k. Alain wanted to go for a "cool" almost soft glow effect for this project and I think he pulled it off.

I'm currently working with them on another project and I have to say this man is talented and a pleasure to work with.

To think this message went all the way around the world and we only live a few miles distance from each other. Anthony, thanks for that correction. With only two days of shooting time things became a little overwhelming. however, we managed to stay right on track. As of our new project we are figuring very complex setups with our basic and sometimes improvised equipment.

Some of them include:

Ikea laundry bag used as a softbag/chinese lamp
Home Depot Halogen lights
Some professional Tota lights
Home made Dollie and tracks
Some pro artifacts provided by Anthony and his group (gels, diffusion, lights, Etc.)
Lots of walls to bounce light
A good field monitor to see all this come together.

No P.S Technik adapter for this one (the sad part)

I finally finished a quicktime copy of "John Melon". Please check it out at:

www.macropictures.com/melonwebquicksbig3.mov

The final look of this short became and experimental and sort of lab process for my own learning. Please feel free to comment or ask questions.

I loved the concept! Very good! Just two things that kept bothering me throughout the film -- the sound and the lighting.

Aside from the distortion of the screaming, the sound was slightly hollow and reverberative. Did you guys use the on-camera mic for sound?

The overall lighting gave me the impression that the setting was in the office after hours. I kept thinking, "Why is he in there at night?" For example, the hallway outside his office was dark. In my opinion, the lighting, in general, was uneven. I've filmed several films in an office setting and to achieve that flourescent glow, we flooded the scene with light from all angles. Just think Geico commercial.

I understand that you probably had limited resources. Something I would have done to show that he's in there during business hours is add background sounds. Phones ringing, computers typing and so forth.

Please don't take this criticism harshly ... just my two cents. This is the kind of criticism I received PLENTY of when I was first starting and it really did help. In fact, when I finish a film now, I receive twice this criticism.

Very good job!

Thanks Daniel
I agree with you, the sound levels are uneven, its not too ovious in the original version (non-encoded) but Sorenson brought all this sound issues to the top. I'm in the process of fixing this. The reason some of the shots looked like they were shot at night is because I only had two days to do this whole thing. We decided to cover all the windows with a dark cloath hoping people would not think of this too much. As opposed of showing scenes with sunlight and some with not. Some of the other light issues included: #1-NO CREW; #2 a bit of inexperience with the PS Technik adapter and the prime lenses; #3 Running out of time. For the thing I'll make one more cut, leaving out some of the boring takes and keeping the cool ones. I'll fix sound and get this all over with. With all I learned I can't wait to start working on my next project.

P.S Originally I did want to immitate the Geico commercial look!

By the way, click on the the first post I did (On top) and click on the trailer link to see how this looked with no Color Correcting and no Magic Bullet