Jon Fairhurst
August 21st, 2009, 03:47 PM
Here's our 2009 entry in the Portland 48 Hour Film Project
Dream Job on Vimeo (http://vimeo.com/6179655)
Genre: Mocumentary
Character: Brian Merryweather, Lab Technician
Prop: Picture Frame
Line of Dialog: "For crying out loud."
Shot with the Canon 5D Mark II and EF 28/1.8, 50/1.4, 85/1.8, and 200/2.8 L II lenses.
Being Mockumentary, we played it safe, typically keeping the aperture around f/5.6 to simplify focusing. Almost everything was on a tripod (what rolling shutter?), except a subtle dolly shot in front of the lab, and a crane shot in front of the theater. (We had some bounce that we planned to remove in post, but we ran out of time.) The final shot of the picture frame (and a few others) used Magic Lantern's electronic rack focus.
Speaking of Magic Lantern, we recorded the dialog (except for a touch of ADR) into the 5D Mark II using an AT815b mic on a boom and a juicedLink CX231. In post, we corrected for gain changes due to falling lines and head movement, but applied no EQ or noise reduction. By using a Boostaroo and having the AC (me at the juicedLink) and boom op (my youngest son, who also mixed the dialog) wear Sennheiser HD280 Pro headphones, we didn't clip a single syllable, nor did we record when planes and trucks were audible. Analog gain in the camera was 17dB. Digital gain was zero.
We set the camera to Faithful with Contrast and Sharpness at minimum and Saturation one step down. By using Magic Lantern's zebras on skin tones (0xb000) and highlights (0xf000), we only needed to correct the exposure on five clips in the whole project. Aside from those and a few special effects, the shots are shown as captured by the camera.
Special thanks go to Trammell Hudson and Magic Lantern. As my son Nathan (director) put it, "Magic Lantern turned the camera into a completely different beast." Back in the auto exposure days, we had to fix the exposure on every single shot. Now we can get virtually every shot spot on.
My first shoot with ML was super stressful - the fonts were tiny, I had to set the gain for every shot, and it kept timing out before I could shoot. I was under multiple deadlines, and nearly OD'd on adrenalin! Now, with the big fonts, config files, and the ability to store configurations, the camera was great - even on a 48-hour, near-zero sleep weekend.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy the film. Don't worry about critiquing it - I have a list of about 50 things that we would have changed, given more time. As it was, we turned it in with only eight minutes to spare.
Dream Job on Vimeo (http://vimeo.com/6179655)
Genre: Mocumentary
Character: Brian Merryweather, Lab Technician
Prop: Picture Frame
Line of Dialog: "For crying out loud."
Shot with the Canon 5D Mark II and EF 28/1.8, 50/1.4, 85/1.8, and 200/2.8 L II lenses.
Being Mockumentary, we played it safe, typically keeping the aperture around f/5.6 to simplify focusing. Almost everything was on a tripod (what rolling shutter?), except a subtle dolly shot in front of the lab, and a crane shot in front of the theater. (We had some bounce that we planned to remove in post, but we ran out of time.) The final shot of the picture frame (and a few others) used Magic Lantern's electronic rack focus.
Speaking of Magic Lantern, we recorded the dialog (except for a touch of ADR) into the 5D Mark II using an AT815b mic on a boom and a juicedLink CX231. In post, we corrected for gain changes due to falling lines and head movement, but applied no EQ or noise reduction. By using a Boostaroo and having the AC (me at the juicedLink) and boom op (my youngest son, who also mixed the dialog) wear Sennheiser HD280 Pro headphones, we didn't clip a single syllable, nor did we record when planes and trucks were audible. Analog gain in the camera was 17dB. Digital gain was zero.
We set the camera to Faithful with Contrast and Sharpness at minimum and Saturation one step down. By using Magic Lantern's zebras on skin tones (0xb000) and highlights (0xf000), we only needed to correct the exposure on five clips in the whole project. Aside from those and a few special effects, the shots are shown as captured by the camera.
Special thanks go to Trammell Hudson and Magic Lantern. As my son Nathan (director) put it, "Magic Lantern turned the camera into a completely different beast." Back in the auto exposure days, we had to fix the exposure on every single shot. Now we can get virtually every shot spot on.
My first shoot with ML was super stressful - the fonts were tiny, I had to set the gain for every shot, and it kept timing out before I could shoot. I was under multiple deadlines, and nearly OD'd on adrenalin! Now, with the big fonts, config files, and the ability to store configurations, the camera was great - even on a 48-hour, near-zero sleep weekend.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy the film. Don't worry about critiquing it - I have a list of about 50 things that we would have changed, given more time. As it was, we turned it in with only eight minutes to spare.