Music Video w/ Letus35 FE, Nikon Fisheye, and SlowMo
 

Another late night playing with the adapter... I tested my Fisheye for my Nikon D50 and it fit! WhooHoo, lets make a video. Also I was playing around with Smooth Slow Motion by filming at 60i and splitting and deinterlacing the frames.

You can't hate on the lipsyncing skillz too much, remember i was singing to this...
http://www.csulb.edu/~clange/2xQueen.mp3

So here she is...
http://ftp.contra-bando.com/thefox/queen.mov

You are a complete genius, I think this was better than the original queen vid. You are the man! Great footage, great editing. Love ya man!

A few questions
 

Cory,

nice! I really do enjoy your Letus experiments -keep 'em coming!

I have some questions:

1. I noticed some slight vignetting -is this a result of the fisheye or the Letus? (I am getting some vignetting on my HC1 so have to zoom in slightly -what camera do u use btw?)
2. What's the 35mm focal length of this fisheye? -you are getting reasonably good DOF with it as expected.
3. You mention splitting and de-interlacing -can you elaborate a bit? (I capture in Cineform HD from 50i source and it automagically de-interlaces and adjusts to 25p. I import this .avi to Sony Vegas)
4. I see you using 'contra-bando' as an ftp site -is this a good ftp hoster for general films? How do you crunch it down to 80Meg?

I will be going to Paris on the 14th for the Bastille day weekend and plan to get some footage for a mini Da-Vinci code themed video of the gang -well I thought it would be better to add some sort of theme than just have a boring holiday video and it's best to pre-plan so you can get a few relevant shots -Louvre Pyramid, that sort of thing... Anyway, will post -SOMEHOW- once I have something. I also have some cool 'infra-red' video and macro work I would like to show off at some point...


Nick.

Yasser - Thanks man. I really appreciate it...

Nick - The vignetting is from the adapter, the easy fix is to simply zoom in a bit more, but I was going for a really wide shot, and also I like the look of slight vignetting. The camera I shoot on is the Panasonic DVX100.
- The fisheye is a F2.8 that focuses from a 1/4 inch to infinity.
- What I do is shoot 60i, capture in FCP as normal 29.97 DV-NTSC, then I bring the captured files into a program called "JES deinterlacer." In that program you can turn each field into individual frames. You then import this back into FCP on a 30fps progressive timeline and walla, "pretty-looking" slo-mo.
- Contra-bando is just server space that my friend owns and lets me use. It's not the best because of the limited bandwidth. When hosting large video files, bandwidth is very important.
- I encode my videos with compressor and the H.264 codec on my mac mini. I set the bit rate to max around 1800 and choose variable. Good looking results and not HUGE.

Good luck with Paris and looking forward to seeing the results.
- Cory

oh my
 

That was awful! and yet oddly compelling. Like watching a train wreck... but in a good way... i think.

I tried to remain jaded and disinterested but your hypnotic slomo and wide angleness had me laugh out loud several times. "leave it all behind." hah.

so anyways. as a 35mm adapter goes, i thought it was a nice look. pretty sharp. vignetting to be expected but felt stylistic, so that was cool too. Slowmo was interesting too. Except for the really fast sections where your lips couldnt keep up, it didnt feel particularly slowed down. it just felt surreal. That might be because i'm used to slowmo being all distorted and you had resolution to spare.

So as a homophobic redneck, i felt you gave a very authentic performance to the enigma that is/was queen. I had the urge to go punch somebody to maintain my status quo of masculinity but at the same time i couldnt turn away from the screen. I laughed at you, i laughed with you and at the end when you kissed the screen, i laughed, but it was a very uncomfortable laugh - tenative, in case you actually pushed through the screen and i was forced to flee.

Freddy would be proud, man. He might be a little disturbed too, but hey. You put it on the line. Kudos for that. If i ever start a top 40 band, you are so getting hired to leap around in overalls for our video.