Sarah Harvey-smart Music Video / Hvx + Redrock

Adam_Levins

Adam_Levins

Active member
Hi All,

This is my first music video on the HVX. I really like the camera and the Redrock is quite good too, but a bit difficult to use on set.

The DP I work with is Peter Batten.

The file is compressed with the H264 codec so you will need QuickTime to view it!

PLEASE RIGHT-CLICK AND SAVE!

http://www.levinspictures.com/Levins Pictures/downloads/Sarah_Smart.mov

If you would like to compare the HVX to super16 projects I have shot please visit my website:

www.levinspictures.com

I look forward to any comments,

Adam
 
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On some of the shots, there's something akin to vignetting at the top center of the frame. I first noticed it on some of the exterior shots at sunset. What caused that? Is it a problem with the M2, or did something get in front of the lens?
 
Hey that looked fantastic. Very high production quality. Great lighting. What made it hard to use the Red Rock on set? Could you share your settings and editing workflow.

Keep up the great work.
 
Yeah, I see it to. I believe it's the motor of the M2, as a result of not being zoomed in far enough with the HVX lens. Nice looking video, though. Assuming you shot HD, you could probably crop out that little bit of frame and no one would know.
 
The big problem was that I only got the M2 unit on Thursday and we needed to shoot on the Monday, I even considered shooting super16 in the last minute but We all decided to take a chance on the unit.

I took it out to Panavision UK and they found that the back-focus of the M2 unit was wrong, so they adjusted this for us using some kind of laser device. Finally after about two and a half hours they got it set right so the distance reading on the Zeise lenses where correct and we could get infinity. Out of the box the M2 could not do this.

The M2 takes quite some time to set up with the camera, you have to shim it and change the adapter on the front if you plan to use the PL mount as we did. The Nikon mount (which came attached to the M2) was a bastard to get off as they use a locking agent on the screws. I actually striped one on the heads trying to get it off.

THoff, what you are seeing is the motor which I have since learned I can move up and down but I am somewhat worried to do this as I don’t really want to go through the whole process of resetting the spinning disk inside the M2 to get the back-focus right. When displayed on a TV this is outside the viewing area and not seen, so it’s not really such a big deal. But I will fix this issue before the next project.

I am in London so it's PAL land and since I use FCP I had to use "P2 log" to convert the 720pn files which all worked good after some trial and error (there is some problems exporting files that have not been re-rendered in FCP so I just).

I shot on 2 x 8gb p2 cards

The thing that makes the Redrock hard to use on set is the fact that you are constantly working wide open on the lenses to get enough light and even though I like shallow DOF I would like to be able to stop down a bit to increase the DOF, but you would need a big lighting package for this.

The other main problem is that you get a type of lens flare on the spinning disk inside the redrock when shooting into light sources. It does not look like lens flare but more like dancing spots of light. It took us some time to re-light and get rip of these.

I am shooting a Hip hop video next and I am going to used the camera without the redrock as I feel the look should be punchy, colourful and sharp and the redrock tends to give it a overall soft pro-mist look which is right for some projects but not all.

As with all things it’s really a mater of trail and error. I am learning a lot about the camera (like the frame-rate hack which are cool) and I am sure the next vid will be much better.
 
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Yeah your right dougspice I should have croped the quicktime movie, but when shown on a regular TV the dark spot is out of the frame.
 
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