D90 - Feature Films

strangeworth

strangeworth

New member
Alright,
Not able to acquire the funding I wanted to make my feature film I bought a D90 (4 months ago) and am setting out on a journey of shooting my Feature with whoever jumps on board. http://www.myspace.com/nandfilm
I'll be posting diaries and blogs and what not.

Any one else shooting a feature on a D90 and want to share.
I'd love to hear some experiences and troubles/accomplishments.

Ps. Anyone know of a descent Boom Mic for a small amount of cash? I was looking at the Zoom H4 but not really happy. Anyone?
 
The Zoom H4 is awesome as a capture device, not as a mic. Get the Zoom H4, because you'll have to anyway, and then go with one of the rode shotguns. Not the video mic, but the ntg-1 or the ntg-2. I've had good experience with rode stuff. It has a good, not great, but acceptable sound.

The more important thing is good technique. Or a boom operator with some experience.

Another important thing is having someone who is good with post production sound mixes. This is where your sound can easily fall apart with little things.
 
I have a rode. The Octava is good too and probably a bit cheaper in the US. There's a couple of protagonists here that have shot features with the D90, I'm sure you will be hearing from them soon. If you can afford it a D5000 would be good as a backup when your D90 overheats. G/L
 
Been shooting fundless and productionless since march, project tentatively named 'year of the boomerang'.

If anyone gives me any money, i'd personally blow it all on paying actors and taking care of crew.

D90 is a sweet camera, even with its faults, cause unlike other cams with more control, you HAVE to get a shot right on camera with this thing I've found. Fast manual glass, and the step fix make a slammin DV output.

Indoors is a problem, you need a TON of light all the time, I'm in flicker heavy PAL land, so its frustrating, been shooting ads with it and flicker/rolling on lights is a pain. I have not tried pro lights, but LED's a flicker free, and they look pretty good.

My biggest problem with the cam aside from setting shutter (not even ISO, just shutter and let ISO do what it will) and the jelly.

If it's one thing that makes this cam straight up unusable is the jelly.

I fixed this by taking a li'l sony UDR handycam along with me. Till now we use the Nikon 80% of the time, and if there's mad movement we fire up the camcorder.

That's for camera.

Feature? My thing is and has always been actors. You'll be writing and changing stuff even after you shoot.

I say performance is your most important aspect here. Have PAID actors, cause that makes them stick. You need the same bunch of guys/gals lookin the same for as long a time as you need.

If anyone here gives me money to make YOTB the feature, I'm gonna blow it on the crew and actors. If not, then shoot with a video camera and if the money's ok, just go film, 16 is not expensive, and if planned well, film is the FASTEST workflow you've got. The 'blind' shooting and relying on your lightmeter instead of your LCD really snaps people into shape. If you're doin a four take max during shoot, with film you'll find you're rehearsing the week before twice as much, and doing half the takes. Film makes you plan rigidly.

The reason i like my faulty uncontrollable D90 is it forces the same kind of planning, a li'l extra work is good.

D90 feature means it's all in the crew, not the gear.

I've shot (moneyless) about 60 min of YOTB, just to look. Shot with nothin but the cam and a few props. After looking and writing I'm asking for maximum 2500 dollars to spend on gear etc. the rest goes to crew.

The smaller you are, the more independently you can work.

Cheers mate, good luck. There's a short on this forum called CONTRA, its sweet. It's short, but its D90, and it feels great to watch. There's jelly, but you don't care, cause it feels great.

Don't be a DP when you watch stuff, be an audience member, they have more fun and enjoy movies more than we do ;)

Audio leads. All the time. Audio leads.

That's what I think. I need a ton of help on this feature as well, would love to hear your experiences or anyone else's.
T
 
Reading my morning post I realized I didn't do it justice. Ima doit again.

CONTRA on this forum, is awesome. I watched it the other day and was sooooooooooooooo happy it was shot with a D90, cause dammit one minute into the thing you completely forget about all this junk and dig the movie.

It's so good you don't notice. I think that's what it's about, makin it feel so good you don't notice all the DP stuff people have no idea about or don't care much for.

CONTRA is a damn good short, if he can do that with a D90 he can probably do that with any other cam.

We've a lot to learn. God forbid we wake up and not have that much to learn anymore.

T

P.S. All this aside, if a 30p to 24p looks ok, I'm doin a 5DII. Is there such a thing as 30p to 25p?
 
Hi there. Just starting production on an indie feature here in Athens, Greece. Two D90s will handle all the shooting, while two JVCs GY-HD250U will exist as backup.. (how's that for weird?)
Details soon.
 
i'm currently editing a d90 feature. it was a pain to shoot it, i wouldn't recommend it to anyone unless they're prepared for it and feel the benefits outweigh the problems. i was and i did, and i'm very happy with the results. if i hadn't been shooting with no lights, completely improvised and with mostly stolen locations i'd much rather use something like a prosumer hdv camera, or 16mm as mentioned.

http://vimeo.com/4293535

/matt
 
Nikon firmware development off shoot

Nikon firmware development off shoot

According with news on dpreview, Nikon is outsourcing the development for new firmware:

"....a subsidiary of Nikon Corporation. The initial investment will be around $1m and the company will employ 100 people...."

well.... that's an average of $10,000 per year for each employee, including the CEO, CFO, managers, cleaners, janitors... wonder if they have anything left to employ any real programmers?
 
Maybe Zak can correct me but I think he used the Zoom H4 in his film Model/Photographer as a mic.

I'm thinking about buying the Zoom H4n.
 
dario that looked pretty cool, i'll try to see it for sure when it comes out. do you have festivals in mind or is it meant for dvd and so on? pardon me for asking though but why did you use the d90 if you went for the cheap home video look anyway? i would use an hv20 or similar if that's the style i was after, with much less hassle.
 
Thanks Mattias, I'll definitely try to see yours as well, I attended the work-in-progress screening at the swedish film institute, and that was inspirational.

For this piece, DVD or similar is the goal. Or if I come to think of a suitable festival. The D90 was used because of the stealth factor, DOF, and because I needed both movie/still camera, and budget didn't allow two separate ;)

There's no color correction applied yet, but I'm grateful for tips about what can be done with the D90 image in post. My personal opinion is that it looks much better color wise than the HV20 from start, but some post-tuning wouldn't hurt. Some lighting could have been done better, especially indoors, we'll see if we have time to re-shoot that.
 
that makes sense. :-) are you in stockholm? if so you can swing by my office with your material and i'll give you some hints on how to grade it. it's hard to do in a forum post or even an email. what software are you using to post it?
 
that would be great, to drop by your office and get some hints! I'm in Uppsala but it's not a long trip. I use premiere 4 for editing at the moment, we can discuss suitable post-editing options.

I'll send an e-mail to your adress on your homepage and we can try to find a day for the visit.
 
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