"A Verse Before Dying" - AF-100 Western Short
- Thread starter Stephen Mick
- Start date
Stephen Mick
Totally Usable
I only had a few minutes to play around. We had two AF-100s, 12 people and about fifty lenses, so I couldn't check everything. But "PUSH AUTO" auto-focus and auto exposure seemed to work fine, though I personally wouldn't use either one very much. Lens focal length and aperture readout worked perfectly as well. Remember, they're still-photo lenses, so they auto-focus like still lenses, but the lens and camera seemed to work fine together, and the IRIS wheel on the AF had full control of the lenses.
mikkowilson
Steadi-Guru
Glad to hear you made it safe and sound. My plane is currently boarding; maybe I'll get a chance to post some stuff once we are airborn.
Looking forward to some of your write-ups Timur. I was a please to work with you (and the rest of the team) this weekend.
- Mikko
EidolonFilms
Well-known member
Ok cool! Next question, is the distance readout accurate? I'm used to getting focus on an HVX200 and Canon XHA1 in run and gun situations by looking at the distance readout on the LCD, so if I can do this on the AF100 with the lumix lenses, that would be a huge plus.
Christopher Payne
New member
It was very cool working with all of you. Can't wait to see the finished film!
Stephen Mick
Totally Usable
Welcome, Chris Payne!
Chris was our make-up artist extraordinaire on this shoot. He's a madman! Part scientist, part artist, with a touch of serial killer thrown in. You can see more of his work at his website…
http://chrispaynemakeup.com/
Chris was our make-up artist extraordinaire on this shoot. He's a madman! Part scientist, part artist, with a touch of serial killer thrown in. You can see more of his work at his website…
http://chrispaynemakeup.com/
Barry_Green
Moderator
Drew Ott was script supervisor, and I believe that he was making notes at some point, and perhaps for every shot? I don't know.
We used one camera as the A-camera on the tripod/slider/crane, and the other camera lived mainly on the Steadicam. The A-camera usually used the Compact Primes or The Howitzer. The Steadicam usually used the Zeiss ZF lenses (cine-modded by Duclos) but also used the 7-14 for one shot, and the pancake 20mm for some shots, and ... well, we had a lot of lenses that we used, I'm not sure of what all got used where.
The scene file we used was pretty much the same all throughout, except for the use of DRS. We sometimes used DRS 1 in exteriors, and always turned it off during interiors. Timur went with a "special sauce" recipe, one that made me a little nervous about some aspects until I started seeing the footage roll in. He used detail -7, which to me is really low, but ... dang. He also turned the color as low as possible; I normally love and crave lots of color but for this film, a dusty old spaghetti western, minimal color was totally the right choice.
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Barry_Green
Moderator
My mantra on cinematography is that it's not "all about the lighting" -- it's all about what you point the camera at. Lighting can accentuate and enhance what you've got, but -- a white-wall set is gonna look awful no matter how much lighting you throw at it. You gotta have the raw materials in front of the camera to start with.
The set was trashed. Seriously. They don't need to bulldoze it, they just have to wait a week and let the dry rot finish the job. One good shove and the whole thing might come tumbling down. So in a case like that, camera placement and field of view become really important. It's as much about framing the bad stuff out, as it is about framing the good stuff in. We really liked much of the degradation, as it added incredible character to the setting. But there was so much of the set that we just couldn't show, or could only show from very limited angles (hey, it's a set, that's always a consideration).
But it was huge! I don't know how big, but ... a hundred acres? Two hundred? I don't know. It was spread out all over the place. And it was rich in visual imagery. A little bit of set dressing here and there, and it ended up looking absolutely fantastic.
Here's another thing about why a camera like the AF100 can actually make shooting easier, vs. a 1/3" camera -- because of the shallow DOF, your sets don't have to be pristine and perfect. A little shallow DOF can hide a multitude of sins. If you saw the set we shot "O2" on, you'd be nodding your head right now.
mikkowilson
Steadi-Guru
According to Google Earth, the main set is 1/3rd of a mile long. I honestly thought it was bigger.
Though we did make good use of the fields to either end too - especially for the Helicopter and some of the Steadicam shots.
We had one shot that used the entire length of the set.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=30%C2%B021%276.32%22N++98%C2%B07%2744.44%22W&sll=21.132674,-86.860381&sspn=0.009867,0.01929&ie=UTF8&ll=30.352805,-98.127286&spn=0.009129,0.01929&t=h&z=16
- Mikko
Though we did make good use of the fields to either end too - especially for the Helicopter and some of the Steadicam shots.
We had one shot that used the entire length of the set.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=30%C2%B021%276.32%22N++98%C2%B07%2744.44%22W&sll=21.132674,-86.860381&sspn=0.009867,0.01929&ie=UTF8&ll=30.352805,-98.127286&spn=0.009129,0.01929&t=h&z=16
- Mikko
Barry_Green
Moderator
Wrapped. Packed up, drove home, still have to face the unpack, but I think I'll stall on that for a little while.
What can I say that hasn't been said? Awesome crew, great location, spent way too much money, got sunburned, saw Timur's crack and Mikko in a thong (not recommended, folks)... part of our shoot took place in a massive field of... what was it, straw? Or just wild grass? Anyway it was two and a half feet tall. And our crewmembers managed to lose a cell phone in that field. Oh, and also a wallet. And, oh yeah, some car keys. And, wait -- also a whole case of Lectrosonics wireless gear. And miraculously (and I do mean that), we managed to find all of it except for the keys. It was seriously a case of finding a needle in a haystack; we're talking about a cell phone lost in 3 feet of grass over the space of someting like two to five acres or so...
We were at the Alamo. And we did indeed find a basement. There was no bike.
Stephen tortured one of our actors, by making him run. And run. And run. And run. Poor guy must have run a total of about seventy-three miles in the course of four days. Torture, I tell you -- but what a trooper. They all were. Ask the actor if he minds laying down face-first in the dirt and in the rocks, while we do a massive wide shot? "Sure, no problem." Ask the actor to walk around in their sock feet in a massive four-inch-deep pile of goat crap? "sure, I'll do that." Cast and crew did everything asked of them. Awesome.
As for gear -- it sounds a lot bigger than it was. I know some folks are probably thinking that this level of production is way over anything they might be able to do. Not really. We had a 1-ton grip truck -- yes, that's a lot of pro gear, but it was also $350/day. Not exactly impossible to get, y'know? Sure we had a full set of Compact Prime lenses, which cost $25,000... but you can rent those for $300/day or so. If that's too much, cut the price by getting fewer lenses (we didn't use all 7 of them, I don't think). And we also used the Zeiss ZF's, which cost maybe $5,000 for the set we had. And you could easily use Nikons or Canons too. Our jib arm was a kessler crane, not some six-figure Techno Crane, but it did what we needed and is affordable. Our dolly was a Kessler slider. Not a Chapman Leonard or anything like that, no seat and dedicated dolly grip; it was the same slider that you all have and use. The tripod head we used most, was probably the Bogen 501. Not because we wanted to, because hey -- that's an awful head -- but it fit nicely on the slider, and we used the slider a lot. Our follow focus was a Shoot35, which costs 399 GBP. Not a $5,000 Arri follow focus. Our matteboxes were a Redrock Micro and a Chrosziel. Decent units, perfectly appropriate for the camera level, and not $4,000. And our camera was an AF100. Not an Arri Alexa, and it didn't need to be. All this stuff did the job we needed done, was easily affordable, and was backed up by a great crew. This wasn't a "high end" production, but the results are definitely high end. What we were able to get looks like a real feature film, and that's what we set out to do.
Since this is a camera-centric forum and people really want to know if the AF100 is up to the job, the answer is a very simple "Hell Yes." If you can't get theatrical-looking pictures out of this camera, well, it ain't the camera's fault. Put together a DP like we had, a gaffer like we had, the requisite tools to do the job (meaning adequate grip and lighting), and a location that looks good, and the AF100 will absolutely hold up its end of the bargain. Then again, try shooting something in your friend's apartment with a worklight, and it'll look awful on the AF100 -- just like those same shooting conditions would look awful if shot on a Red One, an EX3, a DVX100, a T2i, or an F35.
Did the AF100 do better than a DSLR would? Undoubtedly, unquestionably, the answer is a screaming yes. Enough to justify the price difference? For us, unquestionably absolutely yes. Would an F35 or Alexa do a better job than an AF100? Unquestionably. There's a point where you have to decide what's good enough for you. For me, the operational and image-quality compromises in the DSLRs push them below my own (I said MY OWN) level of acceptability, whereas the AF100 is well over that line and deep into the territory of "yes this is definitely good enough". There are absolutely scenes in this film where a DSLR would have puked like the "get me a bucket for my vomit" guy in Monty Python, and the AF100 just ate up the scenery for breakfast (with no puking). No it's not perfect, but ... dang... okay, look -- I am no longer interested in the F3. I thought I might get one, but after shooting this film, I've rethought that. I mean... why? yes it has some features that are better, but ... if you're a rental house or your clients are demanding a particular camera, sure, get whatever's in demand, but if you're shooting your own projects, I simply don't see the need to go with anything more. The AF100 is pretty darn ideal.
Looking forward to how the film footage compares. I shot 7201 Vision 2 50D, as well as some 250D Vision3. In some scenes I tried to get roughly similar framing, just so we could see how it holds up. It was romantic and nostalgic to roll the film and it was immensely enjoyable (when not loading/unloading the frickin' magazines, boy, that part has lost pretty much all of its appeal...) but I seriously doubt the film is going to have enough of an advantage to make it worth the expense and hassle to shoot it. The AF100 is nearly effortless, and does nearly everything, at a price that any working pro can afford. It really hits a nice sweet spot.
And yes, I was a pedantic whiny bastard the whole shoot, because every time we saw any shot on the monitor, I would ask whoever was standing next to me to please point out the horrible noise. Nobody ever did. It was never a question. I don't know the solution for the gamma shift bug or whatever it was, but all I can do is echo the opinion of every single crewmember who saw even a single frame of footage -- "wow". It delivers. It teaches FedEx a few things about delivering. Stephen even structured this film with certain aspects to really test and push the camera. The vest the bad guy wears has a hyper-thin striped pattern on it, which would be an ultimate test of moire. The aforementioned strawfield is an absolute nightmare torture test for any codec, with millions of thin strands of 3-foot-long grass all blowing in different directions and different angles, a location that would be a purple/orange aliased moire mushy-codec mess on a DSLR, but it looks great on the AF100. I wish we'd been rolling the Nano on those scenes because I'd love to have a side-by-side shot of that, to see how the codec is really holding up. It would be tough to think of a way to torture a codec more than that shot, so I'd like to see in comparison, but I can say that we watched that footage projected on a 10' screen and it looked fine, and that was off the native codec.
Would I use it on Jack's feature? Hell yeah. Not an ounce of reservation. It passed the test with flying colors.
On the schmaltzy side, this "critical mass" merger of DVXUsers has really inspired me. It's no secret that the tone of the boards has changed over the last few years, and not for the better, and there's been times when I've wondered why I keep at it. This week reminded me. Because besides all the mods that I already knew, I can say that meeting guys like Taylor Rudd, Matt Gottshalk, Brandon Boggs, and Pharpsied, as well as the prior visit to Leo Ticheli and Joe Walker, was absolutely energizing. It was an honor to work with folks of this skillset and the caliber of individual that they are, with their character and their work ethic and their dedication and their passion for the craft. Thanks to all of the crew for that opportunity. These are our DVXuser members. These are the folks you're interacting with every day on this forum. Let's all try to be more respectful of each other because there are some really, really good people logging in to this forum. You never know who you're talking to. I'd seen Taylor's name show up occasionally, but never knew a thing about him. Right now I would have no hesitation in recommending him on any job, or hiring him for anything that I ever do. I'd seen Pharpsied's name here for years, but after actually meeting the guy I can say that he's made me proud of him, and of this forum. He impressed me enough that I have committed to supporting him on a future project, and am actively looking forward to doing so. And there are more stories like this.
The images are only one small part of filmmaking. The the editing, the sound design, the score, all of those things can have a massive impact on how the final product is received, and whether any individual likes or dislikes the final product, hey, there's nothing we can do about that other than to say: we're awfully proud of what we made, and since the only thing we can judge on it are the images right now (since the other items aren't done yet!) I think we're all very pleased with the images that were delivered. Major hats off to Luis/Cliff/Stephen for the sets and art direction and logistics, and to Timur, who is a frickin' master image maker, and to Marcel and Taylor and Matt and Brandon and everyone else for enabling Timur and contributing so much to making this look so screamingly good (in my opinion... because, yeah, it looks screamingly good!)
And big thanks to Jan for pulling a couple of AF100's out of the extremely-busy test pool and dedicating them to us for this week. We told her we wanted to make a DVXUser all-star crew film, and how awesome would it be if we could use the AF100 for it, and while she gets millions of these requests every day, she was very kind to loan these AF100's to us for this production.
What can I say that hasn't been said? Awesome crew, great location, spent way too much money, got sunburned, saw Timur's crack and Mikko in a thong (not recommended, folks)... part of our shoot took place in a massive field of... what was it, straw? Or just wild grass? Anyway it was two and a half feet tall. And our crewmembers managed to lose a cell phone in that field. Oh, and also a wallet. And, oh yeah, some car keys. And, wait -- also a whole case of Lectrosonics wireless gear. And miraculously (and I do mean that), we managed to find all of it except for the keys. It was seriously a case of finding a needle in a haystack; we're talking about a cell phone lost in 3 feet of grass over the space of someting like two to five acres or so...
We were at the Alamo. And we did indeed find a basement. There was no bike.
Stephen tortured one of our actors, by making him run. And run. And run. And run. Poor guy must have run a total of about seventy-three miles in the course of four days. Torture, I tell you -- but what a trooper. They all were. Ask the actor if he minds laying down face-first in the dirt and in the rocks, while we do a massive wide shot? "Sure, no problem." Ask the actor to walk around in their sock feet in a massive four-inch-deep pile of goat crap? "sure, I'll do that." Cast and crew did everything asked of them. Awesome.
As for gear -- it sounds a lot bigger than it was. I know some folks are probably thinking that this level of production is way over anything they might be able to do. Not really. We had a 1-ton grip truck -- yes, that's a lot of pro gear, but it was also $350/day. Not exactly impossible to get, y'know? Sure we had a full set of Compact Prime lenses, which cost $25,000... but you can rent those for $300/day or so. If that's too much, cut the price by getting fewer lenses (we didn't use all 7 of them, I don't think). And we also used the Zeiss ZF's, which cost maybe $5,000 for the set we had. And you could easily use Nikons or Canons too. Our jib arm was a kessler crane, not some six-figure Techno Crane, but it did what we needed and is affordable. Our dolly was a Kessler slider. Not a Chapman Leonard or anything like that, no seat and dedicated dolly grip; it was the same slider that you all have and use. The tripod head we used most, was probably the Bogen 501. Not because we wanted to, because hey -- that's an awful head -- but it fit nicely on the slider, and we used the slider a lot. Our follow focus was a Shoot35, which costs 399 GBP. Not a $5,000 Arri follow focus. Our matteboxes were a Redrock Micro and a Chrosziel. Decent units, perfectly appropriate for the camera level, and not $4,000. And our camera was an AF100. Not an Arri Alexa, and it didn't need to be. All this stuff did the job we needed done, was easily affordable, and was backed up by a great crew. This wasn't a "high end" production, but the results are definitely high end. What we were able to get looks like a real feature film, and that's what we set out to do.
Since this is a camera-centric forum and people really want to know if the AF100 is up to the job, the answer is a very simple "Hell Yes." If you can't get theatrical-looking pictures out of this camera, well, it ain't the camera's fault. Put together a DP like we had, a gaffer like we had, the requisite tools to do the job (meaning adequate grip and lighting), and a location that looks good, and the AF100 will absolutely hold up its end of the bargain. Then again, try shooting something in your friend's apartment with a worklight, and it'll look awful on the AF100 -- just like those same shooting conditions would look awful if shot on a Red One, an EX3, a DVX100, a T2i, or an F35.
Did the AF100 do better than a DSLR would? Undoubtedly, unquestionably, the answer is a screaming yes. Enough to justify the price difference? For us, unquestionably absolutely yes. Would an F35 or Alexa do a better job than an AF100? Unquestionably. There's a point where you have to decide what's good enough for you. For me, the operational and image-quality compromises in the DSLRs push them below my own (I said MY OWN) level of acceptability, whereas the AF100 is well over that line and deep into the territory of "yes this is definitely good enough". There are absolutely scenes in this film where a DSLR would have puked like the "get me a bucket for my vomit" guy in Monty Python, and the AF100 just ate up the scenery for breakfast (with no puking). No it's not perfect, but ... dang... okay, look -- I am no longer interested in the F3. I thought I might get one, but after shooting this film, I've rethought that. I mean... why? yes it has some features that are better, but ... if you're a rental house or your clients are demanding a particular camera, sure, get whatever's in demand, but if you're shooting your own projects, I simply don't see the need to go with anything more. The AF100 is pretty darn ideal.
Looking forward to how the film footage compares. I shot 7201 Vision 2 50D, as well as some 250D Vision3. In some scenes I tried to get roughly similar framing, just so we could see how it holds up. It was romantic and nostalgic to roll the film and it was immensely enjoyable (when not loading/unloading the frickin' magazines, boy, that part has lost pretty much all of its appeal...) but I seriously doubt the film is going to have enough of an advantage to make it worth the expense and hassle to shoot it. The AF100 is nearly effortless, and does nearly everything, at a price that any working pro can afford. It really hits a nice sweet spot.
And yes, I was a pedantic whiny bastard the whole shoot, because every time we saw any shot on the monitor, I would ask whoever was standing next to me to please point out the horrible noise. Nobody ever did. It was never a question. I don't know the solution for the gamma shift bug or whatever it was, but all I can do is echo the opinion of every single crewmember who saw even a single frame of footage -- "wow". It delivers. It teaches FedEx a few things about delivering. Stephen even structured this film with certain aspects to really test and push the camera. The vest the bad guy wears has a hyper-thin striped pattern on it, which would be an ultimate test of moire. The aforementioned strawfield is an absolute nightmare torture test for any codec, with millions of thin strands of 3-foot-long grass all blowing in different directions and different angles, a location that would be a purple/orange aliased moire mushy-codec mess on a DSLR, but it looks great on the AF100. I wish we'd been rolling the Nano on those scenes because I'd love to have a side-by-side shot of that, to see how the codec is really holding up. It would be tough to think of a way to torture a codec more than that shot, so I'd like to see in comparison, but I can say that we watched that footage projected on a 10' screen and it looked fine, and that was off the native codec.
Would I use it on Jack's feature? Hell yeah. Not an ounce of reservation. It passed the test with flying colors.
On the schmaltzy side, this "critical mass" merger of DVXUsers has really inspired me. It's no secret that the tone of the boards has changed over the last few years, and not for the better, and there's been times when I've wondered why I keep at it. This week reminded me. Because besides all the mods that I already knew, I can say that meeting guys like Taylor Rudd, Matt Gottshalk, Brandon Boggs, and Pharpsied, as well as the prior visit to Leo Ticheli and Joe Walker, was absolutely energizing. It was an honor to work with folks of this skillset and the caliber of individual that they are, with their character and their work ethic and their dedication and their passion for the craft. Thanks to all of the crew for that opportunity. These are our DVXuser members. These are the folks you're interacting with every day on this forum. Let's all try to be more respectful of each other because there are some really, really good people logging in to this forum. You never know who you're talking to. I'd seen Taylor's name show up occasionally, but never knew a thing about him. Right now I would have no hesitation in recommending him on any job, or hiring him for anything that I ever do. I'd seen Pharpsied's name here for years, but after actually meeting the guy I can say that he's made me proud of him, and of this forum. He impressed me enough that I have committed to supporting him on a future project, and am actively looking forward to doing so. And there are more stories like this.
The images are only one small part of filmmaking. The the editing, the sound design, the score, all of those things can have a massive impact on how the final product is received, and whether any individual likes or dislikes the final product, hey, there's nothing we can do about that other than to say: we're awfully proud of what we made, and since the only thing we can judge on it are the images right now (since the other items aren't done yet!) I think we're all very pleased with the images that were delivered. Major hats off to Luis/Cliff/Stephen for the sets and art direction and logistics, and to Timur, who is a frickin' master image maker, and to Marcel and Taylor and Matt and Brandon and everyone else for enabling Timur and contributing so much to making this look so screamingly good (in my opinion... because, yeah, it looks screamingly good!)
And big thanks to Jan for pulling a couple of AF100's out of the extremely-busy test pool and dedicating them to us for this week. We told her we wanted to make a DVXUser all-star crew film, and how awesome would it be if we could use the AF100 for it, and while she gets millions of these requests every day, she was very kind to loan these AF100's to us for this production.
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Paul Vicente
Well-known member
Oh oh, does this mean when you finish the film and post it everyone is going to complain that the AF100's color is very poor? I can see the war from here.... Hopefully not.
Barry_Green
Moderator
If they do, then they're way off base. The AF100 has massive variations of color, and we chose a desaturated palette on purpose. If someone complains about that as a "camera limitation", then they would have no idea what they're talking about. That'd be like complaining that milk isn't orange like orange juice.
Coolbreeze
Member
A big thank you to Barry and the team for sharing the experience and the awesome information about the film and experience with the Af100. It is greatly appreciated. Best of luck with the film.
Luis Caffesse
Admin
Don't worry.
We also have some glorious shots Timur and Mikko got at the end of the shoot with some slightly different settings - showing off the color the camera is capable of.
We also have some glorious shots Timur and Mikko got at the end of the shoot with some slightly different settings - showing off the color the camera is capable of.
Thanks, Barry. This is extremely helpful, because now we can know what we are looking at... there was a lot of talk about $100K cine lenses needed to get the best out of the af100, good to know that we can do a lot with more affordable lenses the average indie is liable to have access to. I can't wait to see the footage.
What an AWESOME post Barry. (It should be an article....honestly people need to have the chance to read it "stand-alone".) TRULY inspiring. I hope that one day I can experience this sort of collaboration. Thanks so much. Now I'm going to have to talk myself OUT of buying the AF100. CURSE YOU BARRY GREEN!!!
RyanDeFranco
Active member
Congratulations on an amazing shoot! Nice to hear you're happy with the camera. In case the world ends and someone throws a DSLR in your hand, I hope it's not a Canon--
We shot in an abandoned field in Queens two weeks ago--low budget short, GH-1 and ZF lenses, dense three foot grass with insane backlit fine detail--no moire whatsoever. Canon would have been a vomity mess, sure, but not the Panasonic counterparts. (Or maybe this GH-1 just has a lucky OLP filter... it certainly has the noise issues though.)
Keep in mind this was a) a moving shot on steadicam, b) a field with horrendous wind--you can see the blurred lines and curved seed pods, that's from wind knocking everything in twenty directions c) three generations removed from the original .MTS file and d) one of the day's worst shots--rushed because we needed to move on to the next location. I'm putting it here because it has deep focus and it's not deliberately overexposed, unlike any of the others, and while it clearly shows the AVCHD fast motion mud issues, you have to look to see them, and there's no moire.
Barry, you have such a high reputation and post count that people take your word as gospel, and because you are far more experienced and knowledgeable than I am, I'm really sorry to play the gadfly here. It's especially bad taste to do so considering you just came off an awesome shoot with great people. But the DSLR bashing really needs to differentiate the Canon (which I'd never point at waves, wood, grass, or anything with detail) and the Panasonic cameras.
I'm sure the AF-100 promises to be an amazing machine--at the same time, its little siblings are not vomit-inducing.
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Drew Ott
Wish I were banned.
I have the focal length for every shot, but nobody was doing detailed camera reports.
