HVX Shorts - Music Video/Experimental

nvsurly

nvsurly

Member
Hey there. These are my first completed works since I upgraded to the HVX, the first of eight short films in this series. I'm lovin the results.

A good friend of mine did the music for the one called "Symphony." It still needs a little cleanup and some cc, and "Operator" needs new music, but they're pretty much done. Please let me know what you think!

http://www.nvaleri.com/dilated/

-nv
 
nvsurly said:
Hey there. These are my first completed works since I upgraded to the HVX, the first of eight short films in this series. I'm lovin the results.

A good friend of mine did the music for the one called "Symphony." It still needs a little cleanup and some cc, and "Operator" needs new music, but they're pretty much done. Please let me know what you think!

http://www.nvaleri.com/dilated/

-nv
Click to expand...

Pretty cool stuff man. Not very grainy for such dark footage. Music isn't bad either. I'm into industrial like Skinny Puppy and Front 242. The video with the phones is pretty cool from a conceptual standpoint. Seems like an industrial video could look a little more murky, with scratchy or blurred filtering in post. Just an idea.
 
What settings did you use to avoid grain? Loved how it was shot with all the use of black. Please let us know. thanks
 
PIMP said:
What settings did you use to avoid grain? Loved how it was shot with all the use of black. Please let us know. thanks
Click to expand...
Actually, it's straight out of the HVX, 720Pn. My only filtering was the built in ND but... what can I say? I wish I had some secret... :-). I edited in Vegas with the Cineform intermediate and used the H.264 Quicktime 7 Pro codec.

I shot with very little light, at 24, 22, 48, and 60fps. No more than 2 lights at any given time and some bounce cards. This is the result. Is the HVX notorious for grainy blacks? I haven't been reading many of the threads recently.
 
duuuuuuuuude...

I love them. In fact, watching them I was being very critical. all kinds of things came to me that I felt you did wrong. BUt really that was purely becase I wish I had DP'ed these. Who knows if they would have been better, I would have lit it a little differently, but really I just wish I had helped on this. It's just right up my ally, I'm working on something KINDA similar that I'm writing, so seeing this just makes me want to do it more.

amazing job!
 
Pretty cool stuff, somesomebody else said, I might have DP'ed differently, but that might be because you haven't done any CC either. I would crush some blacks, mayb give it a cooler feel. I do like the ideas though
 
I like the concepts... a kind of other world communication system. I really like the black surroundings with only the light on the main subject and props very nice (also helps set design and worrying about long DOFs). I think the blood in Symphony doesn't look very real, it looked a little purple (this could be my monitor I suppose) but this could be fixed with some careful color correcting. I also think the closeups of the eyes at the end may be a bit repetitive but does work somehow. kbainter said he might make it cooler with some color correcting but I feel a warm look fits the lo-fi world the character is in... you could do the cool route to contrast the lo-fi look, maybe hint at a retro-futuristic world... just a thought. Also in the Operator the shots of the camera moving around the subject are a little shaky/wobbly. Maybe slow them down?? Not sure.

Well, can't wait to see more to find what it all means and where i will go from here... good luck
 
Thanks for all the replies! - Yes indeed, this needs some love as far as color correction is concerned. That blood actually looks really awesome when the color is adjusted right. In life it looks completely real. I was really going more for consistency, and hoping I could pull out the right red in a cc session. It's Glycerin based, which I highly recommend, because it comes out of skin/fabric/hair rather easily. It's called Film Blood Dark by a company called Kryolan, (famous for stage makeup).

The end was originally supposed to have some vfx on the eyes, but I wasn't happy with the initial results, so I left them out. I might revisit them at some point, or recut the end so it doesn't linger so long.

Some of Operator shots are definitely a little wobbly. I wished that 1) I shot almost the whole thing in 48fps- I love the look and I could mask some of the camera bump 2) I rented a friggin dolly - the setup was my wife being pushed around on an office chair, or a steadicam in low mode (neither one of them had ever used a steadicam).

Oh well, you live and learn. Maybe I should, uh get some professionals, you think? hehe. I will definitely try more and more to improve my production value. It also didn't help that I was completely covered in blood, so I couldn't touch any of the equipment to help out.

And thanks for the creative suggestions, but I'm not all that interested in the whole retro-future thing with this series... plus the super broken look I feel is a little cliche these days. Thanks nonetheless. I am very excited about the progression of the series.

My friend Dave in NYC who composed the music for Symphony is actually a Jazz musician. He had to conjure up some demons to get that industrial score going (or maybe just some black trenchcoat days from when we were in high school). :-)

Thanks again for the input everyone!
 
all looks great.. good stuff! any chance you could post your compression settings for the SD version of Symphony?

good luck!
 
Quicktime Compression Settings for both Symphony and Operator:

Exported uncompressed .mov from Vegas after editing with Cineform Interm. codec, opened in Qucktime 7 Pro, and exported with H.264 codec, Best Quality settings across the board, Automatic Data Rate, Optimized for Download. Audio settings were AAC 48khz, 160kbps. Internet streaming set to Fast Start.

Thanks!
 
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