Ladylike - Music Video

Excellent.

I don't like the music much (Better than the typical metal stuff though), but the teenager in me likes the video. ;)
 
The video was cool. Very professional looking, like its ready to be shown on mtv. Good job Keenan cant wait for your next project shown.
 
The club parts looked great but the street walking scene sort of looked like the HVX gain was turned up or something. Maybe it was a look you were going for, but it does not flow with the rest of the footage, the web compression makes it worse too. Someone suggested B&W, that might contrast very nicely with the great colors in other parts of the video. The other stuff looks awesome. Beautiful saturated colors and solid blacks. Great work and thanks for sharing!
 
Best seen here so far by a long shot.
Ken,
First of all, the music is refreshing. I'm glad to hear someone with some soul singing rock music. Love the song. Please tell the artist for me. She's just flat a few times on the first verse. Music producer to music producer;)

Second. The catch about all the comments made so far, are that they are from extreme technical points of views. At first glance. You hit it right on. It's ready to go from a consumer point of view. That's where you wanna be. You did a nearly flawless job.
Non technical people don't care if the exterior shots look a little different. Only filmakers do. Artistically speaking. Get rid of the grain. Make it all clean and colorful.
OK, go on. You'll do great darling,
and keep up the great work.:thumbup:
 
It looks good but I don't think a girl with big implants taking her shirt off and showing her cleavage and bra is ladylike. And the guy taking his shirt off...lol. Pretty lame.
 
Ken

Can you give us a list of the settings on the camera for the video. Like did you shoot it 720? What was the frame rates, the color settings?

I would appreciate it. Great admirer of your video
 
rad

rad

i was very impressed by your video, kenn. inspires me to practice more. a lot more. also cool that you produced and co-wrote the song. the under-saturated night shots didn't bother me. i'd say that the point of them is to contrast with the bright colors of the rest of the video, which they do. and c'mon, anyone see collateral and miami vice? that stuff was even darker. going black and white isn't a bad idea though.

i'm curious, what's the technique for syncing the playback with slow motion footage as you do in the hallway? i think i saw a making the band once where they shoot at 36fps and the music is played at faster speed or something, but can you be specific what you did in your video? thanks a lot.
-michael
 
RogerandOut said:
It looks good but I don't think a girl with big implants taking her shirt off and showing her cleavage and bra is ladylike. And the guy taking his shirt off...lol. Pretty lame.

Those aren't implants... :)

Yea, the guy taking his shirt off is kinda silly, but he as well as the artist and 2 of her friends are stars on the show 'South Of Nowhere' on The N network, and they're huge teen stars right now. He takes his shirt off in almost every episodes. The kids love it.

Being 'ladylike' in her case (and her friends) is to go against what people think is ladylike (the rules placed on women about how they should and shouldn't act) and to be rocked out and bold... Just good ole' fashion girl power! :)

Anyway, thanks everyone for the great comments and suggestions. I will be showing this piece and discussing my workflows, etc at LAFCPUG tomorrow night. For those who live in the L.A. area, I would love to meet you guys.

As far as my settings:

720PN at 24fps, 60fps and 48fps. On this project, I shot with Cinelike V with a very low pedestal and high chroma level.

The hallway stuff was shot at 48fps, so I used Ableton Live to render the music tracks at 200% (it stretches/compresses the audio without changing the pitch). For the 60fps stuff, I used 250% and for 32fps, I used 133.4%
 
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kenn michael said:
Those aren't implants... :)

Yea, the guy taking his shirt off is kinda silly, but he as well as the artist and 2 of her friends are stars on the show 'South Of Nowhere' on The N network, and they're huge teen stars right now. He takes his shirt off in almost every episodes. The kids love it.

Being 'ladylike' in her case (and her friends) is to go against what people think is ladylike (the rules placed on women about how they should and shouldn't act) and to be rocked out and bold... Just good ole' fashion girl power! :)

Anyway, thanks everyone for the great comments and suggestions. I will be showing this piece and discussing my workflows, etc at LAFCPUG tomorrow night. For those who live in the L.A. area, I would love to meet you guys.

As far as my settings:

720PN at 24fps, 60fps and 48fps. On this project, I shot with Cinelike V with a very low pedestal and high chroma level.

The hallway stuff was shot at 48fps, so I used Ableton Live to render the music tracks at 200% (it stretches/compresses the audio without changing the pitch). For the 60fps stuff, I used 250% and for 32fps, I used 133.4%

KENN

What time is it going to be shown. Do you have to pay admission? Love to see the video on something better then a computer screen
 
kenn michael said:
Those aren't implants... :)

I guess I assume any small girl with huge numbers has fake ones :), er, at least the girls in LA.

"Yea, the guy taking his shirt off is kinda silly, but he as well as the artist and 2 of her friends are stars on the show 'South Of Nowhere' on The N network, and they're huge teen stars right now. He takes his shirt off in almost every episodes. The kids love it."

LOL. Ok.

I'm not a kid so it seemed so corny that I laughed.

"Just good ole' fashion girl power! :) "

Yah, that was kind of what I was trying to say. Young girls taking off their clothes on camera turns them into objects. It isn't empowering. It gets sexual attention from males, but that is about it.

Women are not only good for looking at, or 'being pretty'.

But LA is all about being shallow, and vain....(generalizing here).

So it affects the local culture tremendously.
 
RogerandOut said:
Yah, that was kind of what I was trying to say. Young girls taking off their clothes on camera turns them into objects. It isn't empowering. It gets sexual attention from males, but that is about it.

Women are not only good for looking at, or 'being pretty'.

But LA is all about being shallow, and vain....(generalizing here).

So it affects the local culture tremendously.

Gotcha, point taken. :)
 
Yo Kenn I saw the video at the lafcpug meeting. NICE! I was the tall black guy with the ponytail. Do you edit HD on a laptop? The HD version is Great. The stage shot is amazing!
 
Great understanding of FCP and HVX

Great understanding of FCP and HVX

Kenn:
Watched your show on the big screen last night. Great Stuff. Loved the mix of color, grain, and camera speeds. Who cares if you did not have a fill card here or a light there. It all works. I was the one in the audience who asked you if you used an on set monitor, and you said you used just the camera's monitor with lots of camera tests to dial things in. Wow, that is tough to pull off given the lcds on that camera. This is an example of someone who knows his craft and has tremendous range of talents.


Could you please answer a few technical questions that might help me understand the HVX and FCP better:
Were the white walls in the photo studio at 100? In the studio shots were you underexposing to protect your highlights and then bring the shadows up in post? If so, I wonder if this technique induces more grain in the underexposed areas. Barry advises when shooting Cine D to expose 1/2 stop under, but Cine V might protect highlights better?
At the screening you mentioned some of the street stuff almost looked black through the monitor but the incredible latitude let you pull the material up. I know this resulted in lots of grain, and the grain looked great, but I am talking more about shadow grain in areas with lots of contrast, like a daylight exterior.
Will you have to desaturate this material for SD DVD mastering? How do you deal with grain when mastering to DVD? Are you running into FCP scope issues? My output looks hot when run through Compressor and outputted to DVD. Any tips would be appreciated.
 
Hey James, thanks for the nice words!

The white walls in the studio were probably around 105-110. Because of the fixed lighting in that photo studio (I had no extra lights except for the sun and a photo lamp) I exposed for the faces and didn't care about slightly overexposing the whites as they would be clamped down in post. I shot Cine V with an extremely low pedestal for solely for the look, not the latitude. I was mainly trying to achieve my desired look primarily in camera instead of trying to make it in post, so I wasn't worried about maintaining highlights, underexposing and crushing the blacks later, etc...

I put my Zebras at 105, and selectively choose what's okay to be blown out and what I need to keep under wraps. Purely creative choice that requires me to know what kind of look I need to finalize in post.

For narrative, I like to shoot Cine D with a more conservative exposure regimen, so yes I would make sure nothing is over exposed. I have seen noise in the blacks (even some compression) when doing extreme correction in those instances, which is why I tend to shoot with a lower pedestal. It probably limits my latitude, but I get the look I'm after. But for the music video stuff, it's super crushed Cine V all the way.

For SD/DVD mastering, I've had no problems having to clamp down anything but luma levels. The grain holds up ok on DVD, but looks just as good as the HD when downconverting to DVCPRO50 and outputing to Digi Beta - looks GREAT!
 
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