:60 spot shot with DVX/Mini35

CharlesPapert

CharlesPapert

Director of Photography
Thought you guys might enjoy this, we sure had fun making it. Ahmed Best (the actor behind Jar Jar Binks) asked me to shoot a spot for the Body Factory, a store that services a gym in Hollywood (smoothies, supplements etc). He had also had an idea about making a mockumentary with an over-the-top acting coach. The two ideas combined and this is the result...

The interview portions were shot with the DVX100a and Mini35 outfitted with Zeiss Superspeeds. The classroom material was two standard DVX's.

http://homepage.mac.com/chupap/Film/iMovieTheater32.html
 
Re: :60 spot shot with DVX/Mini35

The interviews segs are gorgeous - love the dolly moves. Super fine lighting. And it's hilarious too! Did you do much color correction? What settings/shutter? The DOF is exceptional - how much of that do you attribute to the Mini35 and primes?
 
Re: :60 spot shot with DVX/Mini35

LOL

That was great Charles.  Too funny.  I agree, the 'interviews' were wonderful looking.  

Hey, I had a question for you:

On last nights ER there was the 'Shaky Cam' (Ray Liotta episode.).  I swear for a second Jason Bourne was gonna jump out and shoot everyone.  

Did you by any chance work this one?  The shakiness went away after about 10 minutes but I swear they were working it in.

Also, RAY LIOTTA is a F***ing STUD!
 
Re: :60 spot shot with DVX/Mini35

VERY funny indeed. Loved the look with the mini-35. Had a great film quality to it. Over and over again I prefer the look of the DVX footage to just about everything I've seen with the XL2.

Now here's a REALLY important question:
What web compression settings did you use to post that short? It loaded really fast and was very clean.
 
Re: :60 spot shot with DVX/Mini35

Hi everyone,

Thanks, glad you guys liked it. if I told you that we had 2 hours of footage, it was all improvised and what ended up in the spot was barely scratching the surface of the pure comedy created that day...all I can say is, I'm looking forward to the short film to be made out of that stuff (although I don't plan on cutting that, it took us a LONG time to whittle down to the :60!)

Settings-wise, I apologize that I can't recall offhand--thanks to this site, I learned what others were doing and made a souffle of settings that were to my liking as a general film-look. I use the cine-look, medium setting (vs thick/thin) and -3 on the pedestal--other than that, I can't recall the specifics (my camera is off on a rental at present). Shutter was at the preset.

I did do color correction on it; isolated the skin tones in the interview section and cooled off everything else, including the shadows on the actor. I also desaturated the classroom stuff and dropped the midtones a bit. I had anticipated going more aggressive with this to create a 16mm look vs the 35mm clean interview look, but ultimately decided that the material itself was more important than a stylized treatment, and that the interview material stood out satisfactorily.

The DOF was entirely due to the Mini35. I would estimate that without it, the background would have been nearly sharp on the interview shots. Certainly one can see that in the classroom material; there are a few closeups that are a similar focal length to the interview but the background is much more present.

The dolly was the Losmandy Spider dolly and Flextrak. It drew much admiration from the rest of the crew who were accustomed to traditional track, they thought it was nifty.

As far as the webmovie, it was a preset in FCP4, the "DSL/Cable--High" setting. It seems to work pretty well. Someday I'll graduate from the goofy .mac prefab pages and put my own website together to show these things on.

"ER"--I worked on the episode a couple of weeks back (with the hallucinating mother who pushed her girls out the window) but not the Ray Liotta one. I didn't see this episode but I got pretty tired of the promos-- "Ray Liotta. In the. Performance. Of. His. Career." Let's not even bring up "Bourne Supremacy"--I saw it at the Cinerama dome on the huge screen, and my girlfriend and I left feeling ill from motion sickness. (speaking of girlfriend, I'd be amiss if I didn't proudly point out her appearance in this here spot; she's the gal in red who face-plants off the stairs and is also seen in kitty-grooming mode).
 
Re: :60 spot shot with DVX/Mini35

[quote author=CharlesPapert link=board=Clips;num=1100271577;start=0#0 date=11/12/04 at 06:59:37]Ahmed Best (the actor behind Jar Jar Binks) [/quote]

thats what he said
 
Re: :60 spot shot with DVX/Mini35

What's great about the Jar Jar role is since the final stuff that saw screen was CGI, in the end, it's just a voice over role. It would be a horrible thing for someone as talented as Ahmed to be visually thought of only as Jar Jar binx. Type casting can ruin a career. Can you say Christopher Reeve? (may he R.I.P.)
 
Re: :60 spot shot with DVX/Mini35

Great short! Like those nice little short 'n' sharp crank zooms.
 
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