New Music Video shot on Sony HDR-FX1E and 35mm adapter
 

Hi everyone, I have just completed a low budget music video, which I shot on my HDR-FX1e, please take a look, your feedback is welcome. As many of you who have seen my short film 'The Riddle' would know, the vignetting on the video was a desired effect and isn't a trait of the adapter.

I was incredibly impressed with how much better the HDV format is for color grading and correction, and how much more the images could take compared to DV, before they began to break up. This is a fantastic format to work with, and a real pleasure to grade.

I also didn't have the problem, many have mentioned with fast moving objects causing the image to fall apart, all of my frames looked very good with no compression artifacts, and only one dropout on the entire shoot.

I did have fairly low expectations from the camera, however I was incredibly impressed with the results, which are infinitely clearer and sharper than DV when down converted to SD. I definatly won't shoot DV again.

Anyway, here is the link to the video, I just wish everyone could see the quality of the original.

http://www.pixelloft.com/3lflex.htm

Nick

Oooo! Nice.

First-off - you've got a real snazzy web-space there. Beautifully photographed stuff, well arranged and composited.

As for the video...
I'm guessing those headlight flares were composited (they're too sharp!). In general the output from the configuration looks a little dreamy and soft - the vignetting continues that - I'm sure most of that has to do with the lens adaptor system and the glass... but MAN... your editing, the colours, the motion, the photography - it's all really well done... and the detail is there especially on what's focused... which is, of course, the whole point.

This is the kind of thing you have to look at when you think about "DV vs. HDV" - just look at all the extra detail on the high rez version. Lovely.

As for the music itself - not bad... I'm a bit of a jazz buff, so I'd be as happy, if not happier watching some ancient man delicately tickling the ivory... but semi-clad women work too.

-Steve

Thanks Steve, I'm glad you liked the video, I know what you mean about the lens flares, but on an SD sony finishing monitor, this isn't noticable.

Your absolutely right about the detail, the HDV camera really holds all of the exta detail so well, and i was really impressed with the noise, which was almost non-existant compared with DV.

Whenever in the past I have pushed the saturation on a particular color with DV, that color then becomes noisy and messy, with the HDV codec, this is not the case, the footage took a lot color correction and grading before any noise was noticable. This was the first time i totally enjoyed the post process, and wasn't disheartened with the fruits of my labour. I am of course looking foward to an SDI DTE solution for that lovely new Canon xl h1, or even getting my hands on a 100mbps DVCPRO HD Panny, but as cheap consumer camera go, I was amazed at what this baby could do + I bought this camera for the same price I sold my xl1s for so I'm very pleased with the upgrade.

Very nice job. How much is the look that you got due to the 35mm adapter? I've been thinking of the FX1, but I do more event video type projects.

Cheers,

David

Thankyou very much for you complements.

This seems to be a regular question that i get asked via email quite often. It is almost like asking.

"how much is the nice taste that you got with that chocolate cake due to the baking powder".

Please don't take offence, I can understand why you have asked it, but it is just a difficult one to quantify.

By this i mean, there are many ingredients that go towards any production, and they all hold a value. I wouldn't say that the adapter was any more important than lighting or set design or colour correction or composition etc etc

I believe the adapter is an important tool, however I am pleased with the productions that i have done in the past without an adapter. The adapter is a great piece of kit, however as a director i am still far more concearned with lighting and composition. Could I have made the video look good without the adapter...yes. Could I have made the video good without a good understanding of cinematography....definatly not.

I would encourage anyone to either build or buy a 35mm adapter if they are interested in high production values, however as i'm sure you allready know it is no replacement for a well rounded understanding of production and post production techniques.

I hope this answers your question

+ I would definatly reccomend the FX1 to anyone... I thought I would hate it, but i really think its great.

Regards, Nick

Really nice. What did you use to edit?

Ron Evans

Thanks, I used Premiere Pro.

Nice!
 

Very interesting 35mm adapter you put together. Is this from the redrock book that you figured that out? Is the image upside down in the eyepiece and you have to flip it in post?

What lenses do you use? 35 still or cinema glass?

How'd you make that dolly?

All very cool! Now, you just need something to do some curved shots around your subject, like the one they have here http://www.ready2roll.de/Skatertest/...d%20Moves.html

Hi there, the adapter is my own design, I would imagine it is a bit more robust than the redrock device, however it is also a bit more evpensive to build, so you would expect it to be. The image is flipped during the logging and capturing process. I use an LCD display, with a flip function for shooting.

I use all nikon f1.4 / f2 glass. I have a 24mm 35mm 50mm and 80mm

For the dolly, i used skateboard wheels and some long lengths of heavy duty aluminium angle. It is very heavy duty, and incredibly smooth. It has 16 wheels alltogether. The track is heavy duty aluminium and connects with custom machines nylon plugs. I will try to post some pics of the dolly if anyone is interested in knowing more about the design.

I have a seven valley jib arm, but the camera rig is a bit heavy to get smooth shots now, so I may have to sell it and buy something more substantial. I will need to get some curved track for the dolly, your right, but i don't think the P&S device would be much use for me, because it runs on the ground and the floors where i shoot are rarely smooth. It also seems a bit low, but a great idea for quick positioning of a low camera.

Hope this helps, thanks again!
Nick

Thanks, I understand what you're talking about.

Very nice work!

Thanks Steve

Hmm
 

Oh gosh, I hate to do a "Simon Cowell" BUT the image did not look right to me at all, I've seen other FX1+35mm adaptor clips and they did "blow me away" in terms of the cleaness,super detail and total lack of vignetting.

Granted if that was the image you where aiming for due to artistic reasons thats fine (and in the long run, so long as your happy with it, thats the most important thing)

So I hate to be the one giving you negative comments, I hope you don't take offence (thats not my intention), I just wanted to express my view they way I saw it.

Anhar

Anhar, the vignetting was intentional, as I have said in my original post. I did turn the sharpness on the camera down, because i am not keen on in camera sharpness filters which tend to make the image look cleaner but at the expense of having everthing shrouded by fine black lines to do so.

I appreciate your opinion, however this production was for SD broadcast, so this was really not a concearn.

Anhar, could you please provide me with some links to the work which you are making the comparrison so that i may take a look myself, as this would be very useful for me and the other members, i'm sure.

Thanks for your post, and of course i'm not offended by what you say, criticism just pushes us to do better hey!

Sure, take a look at "Slippery When Wet" done by McGregor at DVXuser. I think that was shot with a beta version of G35. I'm ot going to post the link as that may be breaking the rules.

Cool, glad to hear that your not offended, now if only more people could be like yourself :) . Thats the best thing about Dvinfo, we all learn from each other !

Anhar

Hi again Anhar,
I have lookad at the video you mentioned, and as I had assumed, there is quite a lot of artificial in camera sharpening going on there. No offence, this is nice work, but this isn't really a look I could get away with. Please take a look at this JPG for further explanation.

http://www.pixelloft.com/sharpening.jpg

True, I guess its all a matter of taste... kind of like Marmite!! ("you either love it or hate it", that was a stroke of advertising genius)

Anhar

Nicholas,

Enjoyed your video except for the lack of lip-sync. Perhaps I am getting too old, but too distracting for me with so much singing taking place. I know you would have to shoot lots and lots of takes to cover your cutting, but perhaps could have had less 'singing' to avoid this.

You are really showing how good the FX1/Z1 can be. Well done. Appreciate your comments on the artifact free movements. Many of us seem to be obsessed with this 'problem' that many do not suffer. :)

And your comments on turning off the sharpness is useful. What do you mean by 'off'? Zero? Or something lower than default? Adam Wilt made same comment in his online DV seminar, but he was still using a setting mid-range or thereabouts.

Looks great

Looks great. I can't stand Rap and still watched it all the way through. Good work.

Richard - i guess Nicholas means 0. However i think its best to just try different settings and see whats best in different circumstances. I agree with your comment about getting obsessed with the possibility of artifacts. All cameras have their downpoints which we have to get around - this goes back to Nicholas's central point earlier that a good understanding of cinematography, production and post production techniques are key.

Nicholas - loved the video ! To me the look you create in this plus 'The Riddle' is spot on. As to your dolly offer - yes please post some pics !

Hi guys, thanks for your comments, i'm glad that most of you seem to like the video. I did turn the sharpness down to 0 and have found with some careful post sharpness using a plugin such as sapphire for after effectsyou can regain the sharpness lost with dialing the in camera sharpness down, but without the addition of those horrible lines. The addition of some slight noise removal should see to any grain created by the slight sharpening.

I have due to comments on the lens flares, re graded the beginning sequence and sharpened up the video slightly, which has worked well on a subtle level i think, anyway, the new one is uploaded, but it is much the same.

I totally appreciate your point on cutting and finding other, narrative based shots to make the piece more interesting, and this is something which was restricted due to time and budget really, but i will ensure that my next piece has a stronger narrative, and perhaps not quite so much singing. Hopefully this will make it a bit more interesting, not just visually but on a more intelectual level.

I will try to take some pics of the dolly and get them posted next week if i have a moment.

Thanks again guys for your comments.

Man this looks wonderful.

I love seeing what the FX1 can do, but then I feel bad that I'm not doing anything near as nice with mine. ;)

And I'd love to hear more specifics about your adapter.

all of my thumbs and fingers up
 

Very well done. That's all I can say. I watched the Riddle too. Nice work

How did you build your follow focus system? I use Nikons with mini35 and am looking to do the same thing.

Are your lights fresnel or open face? I didn't recognize them from the behind the scenes pics.

Many thanks.

Dennis

I may have missed this on your site, but did you do "The Riddle" with the same gear?

--looking forward to seeing those dolly pics

The behind the scenes pictures show a Canon.

Hello

How many cameras did you use to shoot this with? How did you get all the different angle shots? Did you pause the video then move the camera into a different position?

Thanks

Thankyou everybody for all of your comments, its much appreciated. I did dhoot the riddle on an XL1s.
My follow focus system was built using a bevelled gearbox, with a handel attached to one end and a gear attached to the other. This is attached to the support rods.
HERE IS THE SECRET EVEYBODY WANTS TO KNOW
http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?...3541&doy=11m10
THIS IS YOUR MAIN COMPONENT
As for pics of the dolly, really sorry i havn't uploaded any yet, ive been really busy, desparatly trying to get more work Arrrgh! Sorry, i will try and get some this week.

Thanks again Guys

Very nice work
 

The video looks great, the "sharpness", the focus depth is just perfect.
I enjoyed watching it. Thanks for your work.


Can you share some information on where I could find some info about 35mm adapters. in terms of what they are and how it's built ?

Viktor, try the alternative imaging section of DVInfo.. everyting you want to know is there. You can also read through the PS Techknic area, I recently wrote a message describing the inner workings of the mini35 from a technical standpoint.

The principle is very simple - once you understand it ;)

Nicholas great job! i really enjoyed your short film alot "riddle" nice twist on there
and award deserving piece of story telling. now as for the video do you mind sharing your workflow with the fx1 as everybody knows the fx1/z1 are know for lack of real progresive imaging, did you shoot on 60i and deiterlaced on post ? to what 30p? keep it up youll be one of the big ones! good luck

Hi Rafael, thankyou so much for your kind comments, i really appreciate it. It makes me want to go and work even harder. Anyway, i always tend to shoot in cineframe or the equivalent. I actually live in the uk and therefore have the pal version which i am told is considerably better in cineframe than the ntsc version. I did use to shoot my xl1s in frame mode too. I have to say, i think a lot of fuss is made over true progressive and frame modes and loss of resolustion and deinterlacing in post, however from the tests i have done i havn't found the difference to be noticable enough to warrant the extra hours. My advice would be to keep this part simple, and spend sime on production and grading (color correction) etc, but thats just the way i work, everyone has their own methods i gues. I also really find it necessary to edit with progressive video becuase i hate looking at interlaced cr*.*p. I hope this makes sense.

Thanks again Man

Nicholas, nice work - and The Riddle is also great.

You might want to submit your music video to the HDV Festival we're organizing: www.HDVawards.org

Regarding the Cineframe - I also tend to use Cineframe 30, and earlier consensus was that there's a built-in smart deinterlacer in Sony HDV cams that only loses resolution in the moving areas of the image.

However later article by Adam Wilt suggests that the cam simply trashes one field.

I'm not sure what is really going on, but it seems like the are 2 approaches:

1. Just like you said - keep it simple, shoot in Cineframe 30 (here in US anyway) and then edit as progressive video.

2. Alternatively, shoot without any Cineframe modes to keep resolution as high as possible; then deinterlace in AE + Twixtor Field Set (that's what I do), then output back to Cineform AHD for editing. This approach totally kills mobility, but supposedly allows you to keep all the image quality you want to keep. Plus, you can even dial in how much motion blur you want with your progressive image (using other AE plug-ins) etc.

If I knew for a fact that Cineframe 30 does not just discard a field, i would stick with #1 as you do...

Another great thing would be for Cineform AHD to actually smart-deinterlace the 1080i footage on conversion from m2t to AHD avi. That'd be the day.

Hi Jeff, how did you find this great video? Quality is superb and lighting is also great.

Looks Great
 

Hey Nicholas, great job. I've seen Macgregor's work, which is also fantastic and inspirational, but regardless, i loved your piece, definately solid. Please post some pics of your track and dolly, i'm about to either build or buy one and i'd love to learn from your experience if you're willing to share with us. Also, i'm interested in buying a jib, please let me know where to look if you have an opinion on one that is well enough made to be usable for pro level work. Have you played with Flourescent lights at all? I saw the redhead in your pics, which i also have, but just ordered some Flouro's and i'm curious who's worked with them.

Video questions
 

Nicholas,

You're my new hero, these images look great ! ;p

please excuse my stupid questions, but i am a little new to this and trying to figure out how to achieve a look like this is my new goal. I own an XL1S but all of my stuff has come out looking very flat/digital.

If you don't mind, can you give me a little more information on what you did? specifically, I am curious about..

- your lenses. it sounds like you custom fit them with gear rings, and built your own follow focus...?
- your lighting setups. it was hard to tell from the behind the scenes pictures, could you give me a brief overview of the lighting set up you did?
- your video assist... what kind of monitor do you use?
- and, lastly, how much grading / color correction did you end up doing in post? was this done in premiere? aftereffects?

again, sorry for the newbie questions and thanks !

JT
Austin, Tx

It was so good. Congrats!

Hands down
 

Keep up the good work.I like the color in the video nice editing.
Look Like pro work.

I think something is wrong with the URL. I am taken to a site with photos only, no video.


Carlos