Arrows - HVX and Redrock betas

always beautiful image.
do you have used zeiss zf lenses?
wich one?
do you have also tested the new microX from redrock?
 
Thanks shiny4. Yes to the zeiss. We used all of em. 25, 35, 50, 85, 100 makro, 50 makro. Also used a Nikon 135mm for the binoc POV shot. Let me get back to you on the redrock stuff. Finally found a compromise with Nate. I love shooting b&w, Nate-not so much. In "Arrows" we were both pleased as it is a color film but due to location and costuming, a long section of it is essentially monochromatic. Intended to make the red at the end have some punch. Thanks for taking a look.

Best,

Michael
 
Yup, we used the MicroX. I'll let Nate get into the nitty gritty of working with it. Certainly didn't appear to eat more light. Over in "video village" it was a pleasure to have the monitor right side up. In post, it saved time to throw clips on the timeline and start cutting away without flip/flopping and rendering from the get go.
 
Couple set pics of Nate in action with MicroX. I'm under some duvetyne looking at the monitor in one of them.
 

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Gorgeous shots. Some really lovely compositions. And a cool light quality out amongst the snow. The music choice made the short rather mellow dramatic IMHO. I watched it muted. The film has such a lovely sparse quality to it, perhaps do a version with just all natural spartan sound design; wind in the trees, footsteps in the snow... Could be powerful stuff....
 
Thank you Silofilms and Simon. Yeah, the film was inspired by a traumatic personal experience so I was looking for music to make it "big." Helps to watch it if you've just been spurned by the love of your life. Also, tried with this music to give each shot its own distinctive motif. I've done more with ambient sound in the past but found that (for my style and tastes) images can flow too easily from one to the next and kind of merge together. I want them to be emphasized individually.

Best,

Michael
 
As always great footage because of the great compositions and quality. Are you using a self made track and dolly? It always looks so smoothe.
 
Cason,

Thank you for the feedback. Dolly was designed by this pretty incredible key grip/gaffer (he can do it all) named Bob Rickner in Vermont. He engineered/built the wheels and the platform was built to his specs. You can see Nate doing that dolly shot through the woods with it in one of the pics on the prev. page if you log in to see them. Not much to look at but it's fast to set up and delivers what we need.
 
I've been meaning to post, but have been distracted with work.
We got to test out Redrocks Micro X and some other goodies for this.

I have to say that the micro x is wonderful. Its great to shoot with the image right side up. Plus any edge softness is pretty much erradicated.
 
Edge softness is minimal. I added some blur around the edges on the binoc POV. We augmented vignetting with grads and even pushed the filter frame up slightly and kept it really out of focus a couple times just because we thought it added some depth or dynamic quality to a flat shot. There were a few instances where through some mysterious combination of focal length and f stop, we got a bit more vignetting than intended. Solid bright white backgrounds certainly didn't help mask it...
 
The edge softness on the shot of the house was added in post by michael to emulate binoculars.

In some of the shots we actually placed branches or sometime the filter trays slightly in frame. It emulated vingetting but was in actuallity cutting the exposure of hot spots of the snow.

A couple of shots have side vignetting but not due to the micro x, rather other things we were playing with and working out.
 
I'm beginning to wonder if you guys have ever made anything mediocre; your work is excellent. Nathan, I don't want to sound like I'm sucking up, but as a young "up and coming" DP I find your work to be deeply inspiring, and I can honestly say you're the best DP I've seen with the HVX. My style with camera and lighting is very similar to yours, but I'm still at a student level and trying to hone my skills.

Great work! Please keep it coming, it puts a smile on my face. Also, if you have a spare second or hundred, could you give us a rundown on any lighting setups for this short? One of my favorite shots was the man leaning in the doorway of the barn. The snow on the ground acted as a great diffuse bounce source, and his modelling was great. Did you amplify that at all using lights, more bounce boards, etc?

Thanks for the inspiration!
 
Awesome! Amazingly sharp. What where you using for detail settings in the camera? Also, where you using CineV, D, or Bpress?
 
SeanEmer said:
I'm beginning to wonder if you guys have ever made anything mediocre; your work is excellent. Nathan, I don't want to sound like I'm sucking up, but as a young "up and coming" DP I find your work to be deeply inspiring, and I can honestly say you're the best DP I've seen with the HVX. My style with camera and lighting is very similar to yours, but I'm still at a student level and trying to hone my skills.

Great work! Please keep it coming, it puts a smile on my face. Also, if you have a spare second or hundred, could you give us a rundown on any lighting setups for this short? One of my favorite shots was the man leaning in the doorway of the barn. The snow on the ground acted as a great diffuse bounce source, and his modelling was great. Did you amplify that at all using lights, more bounce boards, etc?

Thanks for the inspiration!
Click to expand...

Thanks for the praise Sean. I really appreciate it!

Actually for that shot you mentioned, its all natural. It looked exactly how we wanted it so we lucked out. The snow worked as a giant Ultra Bounce. For the close ups there was a bit of hard silver bounce.

Our lighting package was fairly minimal. We had (2) 1.2k HMIs, (2) 4' x 4 Bank Kino Flos, (2) Diva Lites and an assortment of Tungsten Units 2k and under.

Everything was daylight balanced. When ever the girl was featured we would either mix a tungsten unit in as a soft fill on her or put 1/4 straw on a daylight balanced unit. The idea was to always make her appear a bit warmer in the cold environment and to also contrast the man's cruel cold and lonely hunt.
 
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