Nothing Gold (Music Video) HVX+M2
 

Hey all,

Long time no post. Here's a music video we just finished for Texas band FauxFox.

http://www.cjroy.net/nothinggold.html

let me know what you think. Thanks.

-CJ Roy

Really beautiful images! I'm really impressed. It's still loading, but I really like it so far. That's three really's now! I can see how I would have done a few things differently but thats just personal taste things. I'm desperate for an M2 now. Checking you other work out now.

WOW!!

Great video. The group obviously had a budget in the tens of thousands.....

Best video I've seen on DVI in a long time.....

Good video, too bad the song is painfully long. There is probably a great 2:30 song in there! Video looks great, I love the low-key lighting in some of the scenes. As far as budget, you could pull this off pretty cheap I think...



ash =o)

I was thinking the same thing until I saw all of the extras, vehicles, and location....

location is really nice, its like a died out town or something. Did you have to close down the street for shooting or something?

Did you shoot it in HD on p2 cards and then downconverted in post, or you shot it in SD?

nice job, one of the best videost i've seen in this forum.

Andzei-

The location was a set in South Dallas previously dressed to make a section of a middle eastern city. The owner of the property, which was about 3 or 4 city blocks, liked it so much that he didn't want them to tear it down afterwards. He just now rents out the location to other productions. It gave us something to play with, visually. Of course looking down the street to the north, you can see Dallas' skyline... but almost every direction was a good shot. And yes, the streets were shut down for us. Although they don't have much traffic to begin with.

We shot in 720pn, on the P2 cards, which my assistant was constantly offloading and running back to me. We never had to wait on cards, because of him.

Thanks for watching, glad you liked it.

-CJ Roy

which m2 package do you have?
 

Which m2 package do you have (nikon, canon, PL mount, etc) Which lens Size did you use?

thanks
Ian

That's the best HVX+M2 footage i've ever seen.

More than great. Big Bravo!

theodoros

We used the Nikon set. Our lens sizes were 20mm (Sigma), 35mm (Nikon), 50mm(Nikon), 85mm(Nikon), 105mm(Nikon), 135mm(Nikon) & 70-200mm(Nikon).

thanks for watching.

-CJ Roy

I didn't know Devo was still around.

Tell the lead singer to eat a sammich!

Looks nice.

Awesome
 

Yeah,....hehehe,....they had a combined weight of around 200lbs. Not bad musically. CJ,...have you heard of another Texas band called Fair to Midland?,........well it's a big state so maybe not? Great band,..........anyways,....thanks for the lens info,....and the video looks AMAZING!!

Hi CJ,

Haven't seen your work in months, maybe years.
Happy to see something coming our way. Excellent work as usual.
Hope to see another short or a longer film someday

CJ, did you converted to SD before or after editing?
And what kind of device did you use to dump P2 cards?

thanks!

Ian - Haven't heard of them. To be honest, I'm a bit out of the loop as far as bands go. I've found it much more rewarding to just work on music videos as a hired gun rather than to hunting/finding bands and labels, convincing them of a concept then dealing with their drama. This way I can just focus on my job and avoid the client. =) Thanks for the compliments, I'm glad you liked the video.

Hugues - Thanks so much. I noticed "Hook" was at Tiburon & Shriekfest. I love both of those fests. Denise Gossett, who runs Shriekfest, is one of the nicest festival directors I've ever come across.
I'm currently working on larger projects... just takes time. Hopefully there will be something out this coming year. Thanks again.

Andzei - I actually haven't converted to SD yet. The file is just a web encoding straight from the HD master. For me, I always try to keep it at its source resolution then downconvert at the very last step if going out to digibeta or other SD formats.
As for dumping the p2 cards, my assistant used my apple powerbook connected to 2 Lacie 'Rugged' firewire bus powered drives. We have a duplicate of every file on set, then afterwards at the hotel we'd transfer to 2 larger drives and erase the portables. On this shoot, we had no errors and we never had to wait for cards. Having someone who's quick with the offload is very important. I could never justify the purchase for a P2 store or any other Panasonic hardware.

Thanks again for the feedback everybody.

Hi CJ,

I missed you at the projection of your short Roadside Attraction in Tiburon a few years back. It was on a week day and I think you couldn't come.
Denise told me you often visit them but I missed you there too.
Now it seems you moved down to L.A.
Hopefully I'll meet you someday. I'd love to see you at work, I could also give you a hand

CJ, sorry for not giving you so much feedback and asking you all the time:

but, how powerful computer did you use for editind and did you use any kind of Cineform codec?

thank you

Hugues - I was sorry to miss Shriekfest this year. Usually I love to go just to hang out and watch the films and chat with Denise, but I was actually filming this video at the time in Dallas. I'll be there next year, definitely... if I'm not shooting anything that weekend. =)

Andzei - We're Mac based here and we had to do a lot of editing on set. My assistant had to rough together the day 1 footage so that it could be played back on a tv. We only used an older apple powerbook laptop... so not a very powerful computer at all. We were able to do color correction and flop the image all in realtime with it. When we were in post, I used a Quad G5 and it cut the video like butter. No cineform codec was used, just Panasonic's own DVCPRO-HD codec that comes with Final Cut. Is cineform even available for the Mac? In my experience, when I shoot with a Panasonic camera, it doesn't make much sense to work outside of a Panasonic codec.

Thanks and feel free to ask anything. I'll do my best to answer.

-CJ Roy
editor/DP

Did you use a Micro Follow Focus for focusing? It looks good, but expensive.
Is it hard to focus smoothly and not shaking the camera at the same time. Its probably impossible to shoot from hand, but from tri pod.

Have you ever tried using hvx200 + m2 to shoot from a shoulder? I saw a link while ago, where it was done...


thanks again!

Anzei - I did not use a follow focus for this video, or any others. I am looking forward to getting one, I just have yet to do so.
Every shot in the video had to have focus pulled at some point. Sometimes it was complicated, other times it wasn't. The follow focus would probably have made it easier but I didn't have much of a problem just pulling from the lens. I noticed no camera shakewhen I did so, on sticks or handheld.

And yes, I did shoulder mount the camera several times... not the most comfortable solution, but it worked and had no problems pulling focus.

-CJ

Sorry, double post.

yeah, follow focus is probably very confortable, but its so expensive, im also considering buying it...

and hopefully the last question from me:

Can you name a brand of shoulder mount you used? Do you think you could do pretty much same just with a tripod?

thank you for your replies and i really appreciate it!
Keep up good work!

No shoulder pads were used. I just threw the sucker up there. I couldn't shoot for long periods, but it worked okay. I'd love to get something more comfortable soon, with some pistol grips.

-CJ

Very nice CJ...I especially like the sequence leading up to the shot at 4:18, and that shot was gold.

Did you do anything to tease latitude out of this setup? You've got a lot shots which include the sky.

Great work CJ, very impressive, loved the contrast on the outdoor stuff, almost looks surreal. What were the HVX camera settings, and did you do much colour correction?

PS: Great website also.

Thanks for posting.
Pete.

Great video CJ loved it... very nice M2 footage.