A7s sample footage

kennethcmerrill said:
Thanks! I really appreciate you taking a look at it.
I'm agonizing a little over the useless ambiguity of the whole thing. The concept wasn't mine; I was hired to do the spec by a micro-managing wannabe-creative. Not an excuse, just an explanation. I could certainly have done better with the first shot or two, and it would have made a world of difference.
Hind-sight is 20/20. Now the question of whether or not I should put it on my reel...
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If you can't add any shots I would definitely just get rid of the first shot all together. Then your first shot is the guy bursting out of the back door which is a much stronger shot. Any ambiguity is then purposeful instead of accidental. And to be honest it would be less ambiguous anyway. A guy running out of a back door naked? you can pretty much guess what happened. The fact that his pal is a woman just makes him less creepy. You can analyse things to death, but many adverts are arbitrary anyway. As far as they go this probably makes more sense than most. Take other members hints on grading as well, and it will be looking good. One thing I should say though: Im not sure about american slang, but to my british ears, "Back Door Man" sounds like a porn film. Maybe "levi spec ad" or similar might be a better title.
 
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Samuel H said:
I don't like variable NDs: that's two polarizers one in front of the other, it creates some unwanted effects in terms of color and sharpness, plus it's always polarized so no reflections in skin and such, which can make people look plasticky.

And I wouldn't stack adapters if possible, the full contraption will be less accurate and you can get some major wiggle. Just get something like this or this (depending on whether he needs aperture control or not). The only reason for stacking adapters is if each lens has a different mount: then you either get an adapter for each one, or you adapt them all to something common like canon or nikon and go from there. But then you need high quality adapters (or, even better, mount replacements).
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Erik Wittbusch said:
But I won't use this kind of adapter. It's not the best idea to put glass between
the sensor and your glass if the camera doesn't know. It another optical
element which can produce certain optical flaws.
If the camera has no built in ND, it belongs in front of your lens - not between
sensor and lens.
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Thank you Samuel and Eirk for your advices!
So, I guess at this point it's either high quality adapter or mount replacement.
Trying to save money he can probably go with a good Canon adapter and still keep all his old nikon, helios, olympus lenses with their individual canon adapters already mounted to the lenses?
Maybe something like this to allow him to mount and swap them all?
http://amzn.com/B00DW0EV2I
 
Mattoid said:
If you can't add any shots I would definitely just get rid of the first shot all together. Then your first shot is the guy bursting out of the back door which is a much stronger shot. Any ambiguity is then purposeful instead of accidental. And to be honest it would be less ambiguous anyway. A guy running out of a back door naked? you can pretty much guess what happened. The fact that his pal is a woman just makes him less creepy. You can analyse things to death, but many adverts are arbitrary anyway. As far as they go this probably makes more sense than most. Take other members hints on grading as well, and it will be looking good. One thing I should say though: Im not sure about american slang, but to my british ears, "Back Door Man" sounds like a porn film. Maybe "levi spec ad" or similar might be a better title.
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Yeah I'll recut and weigh whether it would be adequate to simply cut the first shot or go to the trouble and expense of getting a couple more for the beginning. Really appreciate everyone's feedback.
Color-wise, thanks for the help. Allister's LUTs do push those whites pretty hard. I'll see what I can do about recovery. I definitely want to get hold of the Impulz luts--have to see if a couple jobs come through this month; I just had a baby, and he's expensive.

Thanks again, everyone!
 
kennethcmerrill said:
Hi all!
I'm very close to finishing a spec ad I shot with the Son A7s. I'm posting the close-to-finished product here because I want everyone's opinion both on the edit and the color.
Notes: Shot all in unmodified PP7 (Slog, Sgamut). Shot all in APS-C mode. No controlled light. No time. No money. Some of the final shots were done at up to 8000 ISO!!! All grading was done in Resolve, beginning with Chapman's 3D filmic LUTS, followed by some slight color adjustments to match the shots (continually changing light, partly cloudy, with the sun going down makes for many different white balances that I didn't have time to adjust on set).
Let me know what you think! Thanks :)

https://vimeo.com/107118862
password: levis
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Looks pretty legit, nice work.

There's just one edit that might need to be cleaned up, when the guy jumps into the bed of the p/u truck. Something feels clunky there.
Otherwise, looks pro all the way.
 
I would have said at 0:15 when he stops running, but that's if you make me say something that may need a bit more polish: I think it's quite solid as is
 
Another fun video with the a7s+Flaat. I'm loving this camera, so much better than anything I've had before.

Three things I learnt while editing this piece:
* I need to up my game as a focus puller. Unlike my old T2i and NEX-5N, this thing is so sharp that if you are just a little off, it shows. Not sure it goes through the YT compression, but on the file I have it's pretty clear I'm often just a bit off.
* The record button can bite you in the ass quite badly. I shot around 200 clips for this piece, and twice I failed to hit the record button, thus ended with no clip (well, actually, I ended up with two long clips from a camera pointing up to the ceiling).
* I'm very happy with my Flaat settings. I graded with just WB adjustment, simple curves and some MB Mojo. I didn't have to add or take away saturation at any point.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Juwd1bH_LU&index=1&list=PLXfQ_R9rAMS5K0qx8OOqpL-n_uRULcjB5

 
Samuel H said:
Another fun video with the a7s+Flaat. I'm loving this camera, so much better than anything I've had before.

Three things I learnt while editing this piece:
* I need to up my game as a focus puller. Unlike my old T2i and NEX-5N, this thing is so sharp that if you are just a little off, it shows. Not sure it goes through the YT compression, but on the file I have it's pretty clear I'm often just a bit off.
* The record button can bite you in the ass quite badly. I shot around 200 clips for this piece, and twice I failed to hit the record button, thus ended with no clip (well, actually, I ended up with two long clips from a camera pointing up to the ceiling).
* I'm very happy with my Flaat settings. I graded with just WB adjustment, simple curves and some MB Mojo. I didn't have to add or take away saturation at any point.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Juwd1bH_LU&index=1&list=PLXfQ_R9rAMS5K0qx8OOqpL-n_uRULcjB5

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It seems you've had some fun! :)
Was this hand held or something else?

For what concerns the focus thing, I see where the difficult comes from as being a FF I guess getting the right focus is harder than with a Crop sensor BUT isn't the peaking pretty good on the A7s? Does that help or the game doesn't change that much?
 
Samuel H said:
Another fun video with the a7s+Flaat. I'm loving this camera, so much better than anything I've had before.

Three things I learnt while editing this piece:
* I need to up my game as a focus puller. Unlike my old T2i and NEX-5N, this thing is so sharp that if you are just a little off, it shows. Not sure it goes through the YT compression, but on the file I have it's pretty clear I'm often just a bit off.
* The record button can bite you in the ass quite badly. I shot around 200 clips for this piece, and twice I failed to hit the record button, thus ended with no clip (well, actually, I ended up with two long clips from a camera pointing up to the ceiling).
* I'm very happy with my Flaat settings. I graded with just WB adjustment, simple curves and some MB Mojo. I didn't have to add or take away saturation at any point.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Juwd1bH_LU&index=1&list=PLXfQ_R9rAMS5K0qx8OOqpL-n_uRULcjB5

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That was hypnotic.
 
Hehe, thanks. It was a lot of fun indeed. I love these cosplay conventions, I get the best possible wardrobe & makeup department, basically for free :) (the only downside is that they are not actors, so I can shoot some scripted silent stuff but never dialogue).

I shot that with two lenses and two very different techniques:
* The portraits are shot with a Leitz Elmarit-R 90mm f/2.8, usually at f/2.8, with the camera on a MagicRig and using the EVF and focus peaking for focus. It kind of works (though taking a few seconds to do a zoom-in for focus works even better).
* Everything else is shot with a Leitz Elmarit-R 24mm f/2.8, at anything from f/2.8 to f/8.0, with the camera on a Flycam Nano and using the calibrated marks on my lens for focus. This is where I got the most focus problems. I have to get better at staying exactly 1m away from my subject if I set focus to 1m, I tend to go around a foot closer after a few moves.

BTW the difficulty for focus is not just the shallow DoF of FF: I had exactly the same DoF with my NEX-5N+speedbooster, but this thing is so sharp that any mistake really shows. It doesn't look terribly soft when I miss the focus a little bit, but it doesn't pop as it does when I nail it (individual eyelashes in a head-and-shoulders portrait are a new thing for me). For the record, with that 24mm at f/2.8, DoF is 25cm at 1m, and 57cm at 1.5m
 
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This sort of thing probably works a bit better in Spain than the US as the percentage of the costumers that are morbidly obese is much lower in Spain. That girl that's your thumbnail is beautiful.
 
Hehe, she most definitely is, it's no coincidence that she's in the thumbnail :) This is her FaceBook fanpage.
Many cosplayers are really commited to their hobby, and keep in good shape to fit their characters better. I think that goes for the US as well.
I think the best cosplay convention in the world is DragonCon, it was a few weeks back in Atlanta. This is a kind-of-fun video.
 
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Samuel H said:
Hehe, thanks. It was a lot of fun indeed. I love these cosplay conventions, I get the best possible wardrobe & makeup department, basically for free :) (the only downside is that they are not actors, so I can shoot some scripted silent stuff but never dialogue).

I shot that with two lenses and two very different techniques:
* The portraits are shot with a Leitz Elmarit-R 90mm f/2.8, usually at f/2.8, with the camera on a MagicRig and using the EVF and focus peaking for focus. It kind of works (though taking a few seconds to do a zoom-in for focus works even better).
* Everything else is shot with a Leitz Elmarit-R 24mm f/2.8, at anything from f/2.8 to f/8.0, with the camera on a Flycam Nano and using the calibrated marks on my lens for focus. This is where I got the most focus problems. I have to get better at staying exactly 1m away from my subject if I set focus to 1m, I tend to go around a foot closer after a few moves.

BTW the difficulty for focus is not just the shallow DoF of FF: I had exactly the same DoF with my NEX-5N+speedbooster, but this thing is so sharp that any mistake really shows. It doesn't look terribly soft when I miss the focus a little bit, but it doesn't pop as it does when I nail it (individual eyelashes in a head-and-shoulders portrait are a new thing for me). For the record, with that 24mm at f/2.8, DoF is 25cm at 1m, and 57cm at 1.5m
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With a Flycam Nano? Respect, I find that thing just crazy to calibrate. I spent a good amount of 2 to 3 hours last week trying to calibrate that damn thing just to get a wobbly, unpleasant result.
Thank you for the details Samuel H, that's very interesting. Such nice lenses you have!
 
Samuel H said:
Hehe, she most definitely is, it's no coincidence that she's in the thumbnail :) This is her FaceBook fanpage.
Many cosplayers are really commited to their hobby, and keep in good shape to fit their characters better. I think that goes for the US as well.
I think the best cosplay convention in the world is DragonCon, it was a few weeks back in Atlanta. This is a kind-of-fun video.
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Great video - they look like a fun bunch! Wish my friends were that interesting.
 
hehe, well, they weren't my friends until I started making these videos... XD

re: flycam nano:
It could be A LOT better, but with practice it works. For calibration, what I did is that I took away the plates it comes with, and installed instead a sliding QR plate (for left-right calibration) and a cheap macro rail (for front-back calibration). Now it's a breeze. But the thing won't be completely horizontal no matter how well calibrated it is: I'm building a cheap DIY 1-axis movi-like thing, to have perfect horizon at all times (very slow development since I'm so busy lately with so many projects).
BTW: The arm thing for the flycam nano is a must, so much more confortable to use.
 
Samuel H said:
That's Hideaki Kobayashi, one of the guest stars of the show... really weird to be around a middle-age man dressed as a school girl, but he's actually really inspirational
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Ah, thanks. I've definitely seen this guy elsewhere online but couldn't point my finger on it.

I am assuming he also behaves in character? Does he talk in a high pitched voice?

I like that he's breaking cultural norms and subverting gender and age roles, but the school girl type he's adopting is a bit fraught with pornographic and pedophilic associations (whether or not he's channeling those on purpose I don't know). There may be a darker side to this that the CNN article doesn't address.

Sorry o/t.
 
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