Commercial for Jeep's Free Your Thoughts contest: DVX & 35mm Adapter

Boa

Boa

Member
Hey guys, a couple weekends ago I DPed a commercial, "The Pretenders," for the new Jeep Compass that is now up on the Free Your Thoughts website. Note that I AM NOT SOLICITING VOTES. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO VOTE, PLEASE REVIEW THE OTHER VIDEOS AND VOTE FOR WHICHEVER VIDEO YOU THINK SHOULD WIN THE CONTEST. I am posting here for cinematographic & other film technique critique.

That said, the link again is:

"THE PRETENDERS by Zachary Miller" at http://www.freeyourthoughts.com

Zac wrote and directed the project, I DPed and co-edited with Zac.

The DVX was set for 24p Advanced, and the 35mm was a homebrew of my creation with a static Mamiya 4x5 (UNcut) focus screen; I intentionally did not zoom in all the way on the ground glass or vibrate the ground glass in order to produce heavy vignetting and grain on the image. Our lenses were a Nikkor 70-300mm f/4-5.6 and a Nikkor 50mm f/1.8; I stayed telephoto on every shot, true to car commercial form, and used a polarizer to deal with everything our location gave us for light. We did no lighting except for one shot with a gold flex-fill, and I am well aware of the terrible things the final compression did to the latitude of the footage: that second shot of the dust kicking up makes me cry inside every time I see it. Believe you me, it didn't look like that in the Avid.

So what do you think?
 
@Casey

Thanks! We pulled the entire production together in about a week and a half, a pre-pro period I'd usually balk at but found to be just fine the way everything fell together. The car was cut and painted by a friend of the director's girlfriend, and she did an absolutely fantastic job: two identical foamcore cars that looked like they'd been printed by a Jeep design team.

@badlaa

Thanks! The song was written and recorded by Zac's roommate for the project, and as far as I know it's called "The Pretenders" after the project.
 
well good luck to you
it was definitely my favorite out of the ones i watched.
I hope you at least get some awesome prize for that.
 
I thought the video stuff was great... lol great concept, one of the better ones on the site.

The only thing that I didn't like was the back end where it showed the text and graphics, it just didn't seem to fit that well.

Overall it was pretty good tho.
 
Thanks guys; we worked our tails off on the thing, and are hoping to see some fruits for our labor...

@azboy

yeah, if I'd had my way for the back end we would have had a little footage of the actual Jeep Compass driving on an open road w/ the "New Jeep Compass" title then gone to the still for the pricing information, but Jeep was stingy about the Compass resource materials provided; that still was the best we got. All the same, I could have added some grain to make it look like static footage rather than a still photograph...? But point being, I agree with you about the weakness of the Jeep Compass details bit.

@yuujinlee

Yes, this was the classic DVX100.

Oh, and I just found out we probably could have shot this on actual 35mm: I get film, a telecine session, and a single high-priority reservation for the 35 because of the Cinematography class I'm in. God damn it why don't they announce this **** till the end of the semester...
 
Someone mentioned that with a classic dvx100 with a letus35a will look the same as the dvx100a. Is this true?!
 
@yuujinlee

I'm sure the Letus35a does look great on the DVX100, but I wouldn't use my footage as a benchmark: this was shot with an adapter I made with a static, low-grit ground glass and no condenser lens. It's hardly an adapter to be proud of in the form it was in for the shoot, but I omitted the elements I omitted in order to enhance the grain & vignette look. Also, this adapter is ugly as sin: it's in a classic "project box" from Radio Shack, and was mounted on the Cavision rods with an ultimately ghetto system of a mattebox support (with the mattebox taken off of it, naturally) and a buttload of Gaffe tape.

I think with the winnings to this here contest I'll get some thorlabs tubes and finally get out of the ghetto... That'd be nice.
 
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