Commercial shot with XLH1 and Mini35
 

The commercial: http://www.hotshot.nu/

Behind the scenes and gear list: http://hotshotpictures.blogspot.com/

Enjoy! / Jonas

Very nice indeed. Can ask a few questions that may be noobish but what the hell its how we all learn i guess.

1. Whats a Wireless Remote Follow Focus GENIO & a Cavision Follow Focus?

2. would those results not be achievable if you didnt use the 35mm mini? what does it affect when you use it?

3. did you use any filters on the matte box?

4. what did you do in post?

5. what format and output did you use?

6. what, why and what shots did you use these and why imparticular? Arri Zeiss High Speed; 18, 25, 35, 50, 65, 85mm

Sorry if they are daft questions.

very nice work.

ps. can we see more quicktime samples?

Jonas,
Very Nice Work!

Thank you Andy!

Here's answer to your questions:

1. Follow focus is a gear for more accurate focusing. You have to have when you are shooting with the Mini35, because of the narrow depth of field. A remote follow focus is a wireless control of the thing, a must have if you are shooting on cranes, steadis or in some handheld situations.

2. The Mini35 is used to achive the film look - or a short depth of field.

3. At the last shot I had a graded ND 1.2 and I had a light black frost at some of the shots. Mattebox mostly used to avoid flares.

4. In post we had some slow-mos done in Shake. These were shot in 50i, the rest in 25f. Grading was also done at the post house. I shoot the whole in the 5248 film stock preset (thank you, Alister Chapman!)

5. From 1080p25 we converted into uncompressed 10-bit HD for grading and Slow-mos.

6. I think I used all the primes - but I must say love the 85!

Thanks John!

Thanks Jonas, thats a little beyond my budget or scope i guess. Do you mean you shot the footage then another company (finishing house) did the edit under your instruction and finished it for tv?

Am trying to get my head around how bigger projects are constructed and outputted. Thanks for the response.

I shot the footage, we did the editing, and after that we went to the post house to do the final touch up. I suppose you can do it yourself if you have the time and knowledge - which I don't.

Wow Jonas, this is some of the cleanest footage I have seen with a 35mm adapter. Hell, even without the adapter I would have said it was clean!

Excellent job and really nice shots and composition.

Thank you Steven. Actually we had to do some cleaning ;-). Mini35 and Slow motion in back light (the last shot) is not a good combination.

That's very, very impressive Jonas. Excellent work!

So, I bet the post house much preferred grading with uncompressed files. Btw, did you try the Nattress filter for slowmo before opting for Shake? Any other thoughts about getting better slowmo?

By the way, the hand gag near the end with the two chefs is hilarious :)

When you say clean the footage and grade it, what does that mean? is this a million dollar process or something little final cut pro can do? man i have a lot to learn! ")

Thank you Barlow!

I did one or two of the slow motions in the overcrank work flow - I think it came out really nice. But the post house would like to do it the same way, as they are used to.

One problem though - and maybe I'm doing it wrong - but you only have one optimal speed on the clip when you (or I anyway) doing the overcrank. When I speed up my overcranked clip (for exemple if I want 75% speed instead, of 50% of the original 50i speed) I sometime get some artifacts and "double frames".

And it also is a problem with fast shutter speed and the Mini35. When I have done tests (with 6x and 20x lens), I've shot @ 1/125. The you get the sharp and crisp slow motion look!

Shake slow motion is really good - for some slowmotions. The post house had trouble with the last shot - Shake recognized the grain from the Mini35 - so that clip had to be rotoscoped. And the first clip with chefs - have a look at warping around the guy in front, when he pass through!

Andy - I paid about 1 100 GBP for grading and post. I think it is 28 clips, maybe 10 slow-mos and 2-3 rotoscopes.

Jonas,

Nice work, that is a killer H1 set-up by the way.

Thank's Ken!

Xl H1 and Mini35 is really nice, but it has downsides as well. We had our share of troubles with the Mini35. I rented the kit, and had to send back two kits for cleaning. I'm lucky to have a focus puller champion!

I planned to buy a Mini35 kit, but I'm now considering Red One instead. Mini35 and a primes series is not so far from a Red One kit.

the visuals are to die for. Someday I hope to understand all the technical stuff mentioned, and have the chance to work with others. While the visuals were great I felt the actual message wasn`t conveyed very well. I had to watch it several times to try and figure out where the shoes were etc that everyone was looking at...the first run through I had no clue what was happening. Just my view.

Thank you Nathan, for your input.

It's always a thin line to balance; you don't want to be to obvious (and kill the idea), but of course we want all to get it at then end. After about 40 cuts you have to go for one...

Anyway this cut is a web film which will be shown at www.vagabond.com, so the visitor will have a clue what to look for. But I'm happy for all input as we eventually we will go for theatres as well.

well not sure if it`d cross the line or not, but simply in the beginning if there were a close up of the woman wearing the shoes it may have helped, like a logo 'shout out' or something similar...though I think it was different people through out the commercial....but it may have still gotten it across more clearly. And your welcome, thanks for taking honesty well :)

Jonas, that was Gorgeous, absolutely beautiful! The story setup was very intriguing, entertaining, the whole piece was very well done.

Thank you Benjamin! Happy that you like the piece. And really happy that you like the story, as I have written the script as well.

Slow Mo Workflow in Shake?
 

Hey Jonas!

Great work! We are very impressed!

We are going to shoot 2 commercials next week with XL-H1 and one of these commercial will be entirely in slow motion. I am trying the Nattress plugin, but I am having some difficulties - a long work around to get the right result.

I am an experienced Shake user and I am dying to learn how you do it in Shake.
Can you share with us the steps to get a nice slow mo in Shake? Please? :-D

Thanks a lot!

Thanks Andrea!

This time I didn't do the slow-mos myself - I left the job to a post house, and they did most of slomos in Shake. I'm not a really good "shaker" so I don't think I can help you there. Only one thing - for the slowmo commersial - shoot in 60i (but assume you already know)! Good luck with your production next week.

Thank you, Jonas!

I will do some tests here. I think I know how to achieve it in Shake.

Thanks again!

And the story too! Jonas the story was brilliant, the whole time, continuously alluding to the shoes yet never intentionally showing them had me asking myself, what are they looking at? and my curiosity kept me watching ( that and the gorgeous cinematography) and even then when i knew they were shoes, i did not know exactly what they looked like, so as to have the viewer wanting to see what they actually looked like, brilliantly done.

Thanks Benjamin! I'm flattered... /J

Just to check, the slo-mo shots were shot at 50i while the rest of it were in 25f?

What was the workflow of the shoot and edit of the whole commercial? Were the 25f and 50i shot on the same tape or you switched tapes whenever you do a slo-mo? As for editing, 25f and 50i shots on the same timeline or the 50i shots had to be treated in Shake first before importing to the 25f timeline?

Thanks!

Jonas, really well done, one shot i had a concern, a girl going down the elevator, part of her face seem to be a little overexposed.
Jus curious what problems you had with mini 35, where did you send it for cleaning? Regards, Oleg.

I usally mix 25p and 50i on the same tape. Shake make up the frame(s) between the original. Sometimes it works great, sometimes you can see some warping, as in the first clip with the chefs (see in background grid). For converting of 50i clips I use Nattress filter standard conversion filters.

Thanks Oleg.

It just don't seems, she is partly overexposed ;-)

The mini35s had some dirt; some particles (probably flakes of the inhouse black colour) found it's way to the ground glass. I don't think the Mini35s were very well served, and the renthouse gave me the half off in reduction. I think if you are planning to work a lot with Mini35 your better to own one yourself.

Can any one post a direct link to the clip... still running an older quicktime on my G5... so anything new I have to pull into VLC... untill my order for FCP Suite 2 arrives in a month or two...

nice work
 

It's really nice
good story ,good visual quality

a few question....
We also want to shoot a short film with XL-H1 & M2 adapter.When shooting on steadicam we have problem to follow focus.What is your solution?Wireless Remote Follow Focus GENIO? Can you give any information, how does it work? a website or e-mail link for more information. BTW I live in Taiwan ,so how to buy it?
thanx a lot~~

Hiya. Could you tell me where I could find a good tutorial on doing smooth slo-mo in shake? Thanks!

Did you personally find any difficulties arising out of recording both 50i and 25f (or 60i and 24f) shots on the same tape?

What software did you used to capture the footages? Were they able to differentiate between and cut between both formats


I think I did this once a long time ago (but it was SD footage on DVX) and we encountered alot of problems. So we separate our tapes from then on.