Footage from South Italy
 

Hi,
recently I have been to Puglia and Basilicata to shoot a video for Doctors without Borders about their activity in support of the immigrants, who live and work in very bad conditions in South Italy. I shot 8 hours of footage but have to wait before the editing... so I put 2 minutes "raw", just a minor editing, on my website...

Don't know why, but the colors were richer in Final Cut Pro canvas window. Maybe some trouble with gamma correction? Don't know...

The link is http://www.alexnucci.it/Anteprima%20MSF.html Beautiful landscapes, it seemed a piece of Africa in South Italy, it was a surprise even for me.

Alex

Very interesting, and important, topic. Can't wait to see the finished product.

This is really gorgeous footage, great work. Can you post some details about camera settings - presets, filters, etc., any noise reduction?

Thanks. About the settings: gamma and matrix were cine2, black stretched but master pedestal at -9, sharpness -9, some minor color tweak to remove the usual red shift.

I used a polarizer ;-) It was veeeeeeeeeeery useful.

No noise reduction.

Alex

This looks great. Did you use different settings than above for the dusk/night shots? How did you set white balance at night? I think you caught that really good, the deep blue sky is perfect.

Second, did you compensate for the redshift by adding gain for green and blue, or negative gain for red or other?

Thanks, Erik

Che bello metraggio, Alex. Sono affascinato che hai messo il XH-A1 a Sharpness= -9. Devo provarlo me stesso.

Anche sono andato al tuo website e ho visto Anime in Viaggio. Molto interresante, anche se non potevo capire tutto che le varie persone dicevono. E' strano che potevo capire meglio gli stranieri che gl'Italiani nativi. Sono passati piu di 25 anni da quando io abitai in Italia, e soltanto per due anni. Ma mia moglie ed io ci andremo di nuovo l'anno prossimo, quindi devo cominciare leggere i giornali italiani online onde migliorare il mio italiano prima che ci troviamo la' senza sappere chiedere dov'e' il bagno.

One thing I have decided is an absolute “must” is the custom preset editor that I found somewhere on this site and which I use exclusively to edit my custom presets. The advantage is that you can make ten or so variations of something in a matter of minutes, then quickly copy them to the card and proceed to experiment. It is much more efficient than using the camera preset editing menus.

I used the same custom preset in every shot. I usually kept the white balance at 5600 K during the sunset, then I switched to 3200 K to achieve that blue sky. Pretty easy :-)

These are my color gain settings, I think I took them somewhere here:

Color Gain: 10
Color Phase: 0
Red Gain: -8
Green Gain: -5
Blue Gain: -1

and then Blue/Green Matrix (BGM) at -13

Alex Nucci
www.alexnucci.it

Il tuo Italiano mi sembra molto buono... di sicuro in bagno riuscirai ad arrivarci ;-) L'unica cosa: "metraggio" vuol dire un'altra cosa, "cortometraggio" o "lungometraggio" esistono, ma per dire un video in generale dì "video" o "filmato", o "film" se si tratta appunto di un "movie".

Strano parlare qui in Italiano. Chissà gli altri cosa capiscono... penso quasi nulla!

Ciao,
Alex

No si usa "metraggio"? Va bene. Ho trovato un dizionario inglese/italiano che ha detto "metraggio" per "footage." In futuro, usero' semplicemente "movie." No ho avuto caso ad imparare il vocabulario di film quando ci stavo molti anni fa. Forse, posso leggere il tuo website onde imparare quelle parole.

At any rate, I'll probably do better to use my native language to express myself in terms of filmmaking. I have very much enjoyed viewing your work, including "Don" and "Anime in Viaggio." The XH-A1 is truly a great tool for doing low-budget filmmaking. I've also just purchased a Steadicam Merlin, which I will use primarily with my GL2 and an HV20 which I plan to purchase soon. The A1 will work on the Merlin, but it will be quite demanding on my arm strength to use it extensively. Steven Dempsey has also convinced me that the purchase of a Letus Extreme will also be an essential component of good filmmaking. Thanks again for your contributions here. When my wife and I come to Rome next year, I'll be sure to look you up.

Ciao ...

No "movie", meglio dire "filmato" :-)

"Anime in Viaggio" was filmed using an old Panasonic EZ1, a 10 euro chinese microphone and edited on an old laptop in the available rooms at my University and sometimes even in the stairs...

I have a Glidecam 2000 Pro (I used it with my little Panasonic DS15), I tried to mount the XH-A1 on it but the system becomes too heavy and really a wrist killer... I believe the XH-A1 can be used for more then 30 seconds only on a complete steadicam system, with arm and vest.

I also appreciate Steven's footage, and his use of the Letus... I was thinking of purchasing an SGPro (and many inexpensive SLR lenses on Ebay...) but now I can't afford it :(

Alla prossima ;-)

Alex