Black Friday Specials

[ahalpert]

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ..._vest_for.html

How about a chest harness?

I appreciate the suggestion, but it would foul me up on gimbal six ways from Sunday. Because I hold the rig right in front of me and often close up to my body. Plus that vest is huge! Compared to my little sling. Seems better for boom opping as your arms will be raised.

That vest seems great if you need to manipulate what you're carrying, but I won't need to access the gear while I'm operating, so I dont have that problem

[ahalpert]

Does anyone use filmconvert? Do they like it?

[Eric Coughlin]

Does anyone use filmconvert? Do they like it?

Better to just shoot on film.

[James0b57]

Does anyone use filmconvert? Do they like it?

I have Filmconvert Pro. And recently installed the newer Nitrate update (trial). They are essentially the same product, but the Nitrate version has more controls and better interface. Nitrate is also replacing the "Pro" version.

I'm thinking the way the grain works is a little different, and I can't decide which I like better in a quick A/B comparison earlier today. I like Nitrate a little better, but I had bought the Pro version a couple months before the Nitrate version landed, and I don't want to buy it again.

It's a good plugin/app. As those LUT grain things go. The second image has a very light amount of film convert grain on there. http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread...post1986850472

Filmconvert has a download trial.

[IronFilm]

Isn't it kind of funny that Aputure is considered a premium brand, now?

Will only be the first wave of many, as Chinese brands improve and get better and better.

I appreciate the suggestion, but it would foul me up on gimbal six ways from Sunday. Because I hold the rig right in front of me and often close up to my body. Plus that vest is huge! Compared to my little sling. Seems better for boom opping as your arms will be raised.

That vest seems great if you need to manipulate what you're carrying, but I won't need to access the gear while I'm operating, so I dont have that problem

How about just keep it in a normal backpack? With an iPad vest (running the app for the Zoom F6) to keep an eye on the audio:
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ...t_harness.html
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ...hest_pack.html
https://www.coaxsher.com/Radio-Chest...ss-p/rp202.htm

It is a system I'm strongly considering switching over to myself.
(well, on a mini cart, rather than in a backpack)

[IronFilm]

It's possible that I'm conflating how I feel about the lighting and how I feel about the acting. But the two play off each other and contribute to the zombie feeling.

I can read a series of decisions following a playbook that contributed to the awkwardness. Like - we'll turn off all the interior lights because the color wont match, and that's what we do. We'll leave a space directly behind his head free from extras so we dont have any overlap even though it creates a halo of void in the crowd around him. We'll light him the standard way we light interviews and light him much more strongly than the background that we weakly filled so we can keep our ISO and noise levels down on this camera.

There just isn't a sense of an aesthetic gestalt that was carefully thought out. And the result clashes with the message of the propaganda - which was, "I'm a normal guy, sitting in a normal diner, surrounded by normal people just like you."

Of course, I dont watch TV news, so I may be less used to the aesthetic. Either way, it's a failure.



Your shot looks very nice, Run&Gun.

But I think there's a misunderstanding about my critique of the Beshear shot. I don't think it should have looked like a Hollywood film. I think it should have looked like a diner to your eye, perhaps with brighter, more flattering light on Beshear.

Here's another widely mocked political speech that failed in the opposite direction, by trying to be too cool.

Here, I think the lighting is totally fine. The surrounding hallway is a little dimmer, but totally acceptable. The lighting is a little hard, but not unflattering.

The weird thing is - why do they do this big zoom move from a wide shot to a medium? Totally unnecessary, and draws our attention to the rest of the hallway that is not filled with flags.

And then why are they standing so close together? To share a podium? To fit in 4:3? There are more naturalistic ways of staging it to solve those problems.

Then, lastly, the acting is about as bad as the extras in the diner, and drew comparisons to American gothic.

But both speeches should have simply tried to look more normal and drawn less attention to how they were filmed.

Initially I saw the thumbnail and thought "nothing looks wrong with this..."

Then I clicked play

OMG!

wtf was wrong with them, they never should have done that zoom with that setup

Again...I wasn't the only one

Attachment 141448

Most of the mockery directed at the shot addressed their demeanor. But, again, the staging and framing contributes to that perception.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/schumer...on-on-twitter/

And yeah. It did fail me. Do you truly think it was effective propaganda?

They definitely should have used 3 cameras and cut between a wide and 2 close-ups. I have no idea why they wanted to do it all in one take on one camera, maybe to imbue a greater sense of realism and immediacy.

Oh wait - am I not allowed to analyze that obviously very deliberate thought process? It was all probably accidental and random, right?

If they wanted to just do it with one camera for whatever reasons (perhaps budgetary), they should have just kept it simple with a locked off shot and no zooms/pans/whatever!

[IronFilm]

I dont think I can exercise creative choices myself without having feelings, sometimes strong ones, about what I see. Without that interest and sensitivity, I probably wouldn't be in this field in the first place.

I'm not trying to say they're bad at their job. Maybe circumstances were changed on them at the last minute. Maybe they executed their orders perfectly and whoever was calling the shots had a bad idea.

I critique my performance after every shoot, going over the successes and failures in my mind. Sometimes, I screwed up a move or a focus pull in the execution. Sometimes I made a bad conceptual choice at the outset for how to stage or light an interview. I kick myself an awful lot (mentally)

In these speech examples - I am personally a target audience member. If it fails to communicate the message to me, it certifiably fails at least for one person. And in each case, I was clearly not alone in disapproving.

I think I give a lot of positive feedback to fellow dvxusers. And if I disapprove, I try to give constructive feedback or just say nothing. I'm not a total negative nancy. And if I were talking directly to the people responsible for those shots, I would definitely try to soften the blow.

Yes, just because it is a livestream that you do hundreds of, doesn't mean you should settle for sh*t!

Everything you do you should be open to criticism over, and you should always be happy to seek ways to improve your craft.

I love you Abe, but you got to chill on slipping politics into all of your posts. I don't want you to get banned, my man! I saw another guy go because of less.

There was no political angle in his posts whatsoever, this is not about "Left" vs "Right".

I never meant to imply that the cameraman did a bad job, per se. Just that I didnt think the end result worked.

Like if I said The Matrix was a great movie. There's an assumption that the directors get the most credit for its success. Ok, but which director is responsible for what? How much of the script was changed by the actors? How much of the goodness is creditable to the DP? Obviously, the formula is complex. At the end of the day, I can only dissect the result and how the visual presentation impacts me

Agreed. The cameraman might have zero blame here, it could be some clueless political operative who was calling the shots.

And I don't buy the excuses such as "but he may have had no time", one of these were a SOTU response for goodness sake! That is planned well in advance, and is a high profile and high stakes shoot. You don't take a casual slap happy approach to that.

[DLD]

I have Filmconvert Pro...

Off a cursory observation of the various YouTube clips, FC does help lose the "video look" but more importantly it provides more custom options to the editor at the time when a lot of cameras look good but also look a lot alike. And FC helps in setting them apart.

[NorBro]

All of these similar programs operate in mostly the same way and you can achieve exactly the same thing from scratch in advanced coloring software (even FCP X provides you primitive panels/options for you to get close, including a very limited film grain).

FC has been around forever.

The main difference between using one of these applications is you have an interface that is much more straightforward. Controls are all in one place, buttons, sliders, strengths...you can quickly adjust your picture instead of diving in deep in other ways.

IMO, the speed is what's worth the money (because you can do everything for free if you know how to). Best to download it and try it as was mentioned above.

[ahalpert]

Will only be the first wave of many, as Chinese brands improve and get better and better.



How about just keep it in a normal backpack? With an iPad vest (running the app for the Zoom F6) to keep an eye on the audio:
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ...t_harness.html
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ...hest_pack.html
https://www.coaxsher.com/Radio-Chest...ss-p/rp202.htm

It is a system I'm strongly considering switching over to myself.
(well, on a mini cart, rather than in a backpack)

I thought about getting a normal backpack. But I want something as small as possible (just large enough to fit what I need), and every backpack was larger than that. Which means extra weight in the backpack itself as well, then. Plus, I'd rather not have straps coming over my shoulders. But a snugly-fitting backpack could work.

And when I say I'm monitoring audio - I really just mean listening in to make sure there isn't a drop-out or static or some other unacceptable problem. I would not be able to monitor it visually or make adjustments while operating gimbal. But I set a level for the mix before starting, and the F6 records a lower level of the mics as well that will never clip.

So, I went with the Peak Design Sling 5L. Part of what sold me on it is they had some shots in the commercial of a guy riding a skateboard and the pack clung to the middle of his back with zero play. That's what I want - something I can forget I'm wearing. It's the size of a large fanny pack, but large enough for a couple lenses, lens cleaner, filters, batteries/cards. Or my zoom f6 and 2 sennheiser receivers with room to spare