"Dearheart's Bakery" Test Capture

SUPPATIME

SUPPATIME

Active member
A quick recap: in a week or so, I'll be shooting a short film entitled "Dearheart's Bakery", a period piece about a girl living in a fairy tale world that crashes down around her. I finally got ahold of the camera so I could do some preliminary tests with a simple 4-light ARRI kit (2x 150W, 1x 600W, 1x 1000W). This is a camera-alone test... not with any of the accessories we'll have on set (P&S Teknik and 6 Panavision Ultra Primes, Anton Bauer battery pack, ARRI Mattebox and 4 P2 cards... 2 4GB and 2 8GB) and we'll also have a better lighting setup with the 3-ton grip truck and the ARRISTAR.

Here are 3 grabs (sorry for the "squeeze"... how do I make it appear widescreen as a still?) from inside my apartment:

Derek.jpg


Table-Wide.jpg


Cracked-Glass-Detail.jpg


Jug-CU.jpg



These were done on F5 with the following settings:

Detail Level +7
V Detail Level 0
Detail Coring +7
Chroma Level -2
Chroma Phase -2
Color Temp 0
Master Ped -4
A. Iris Level 0
Gamma CINELIKE V
Knee AUTO
Matrix NORM
Skin Tone DTL ON
V Detail Freq THIN

My settings were as above... what do you guys think? The majority of this shoot will be done at night... I have yet to do gel tests for how I want the lighting to look, but I plan upon using CTB 1/2 on the majority of the backlights, bounced HMIs for the key lights (mainly the 4K in the ARRISTAR) as well as some Plus Green on the fill lights... possibly Kino's because of how even they light. Again, I have some playing around to do.

What do you guys think of the image so far, though? I've been working at getting realistic saturation and very low video noise out of 720P 24P mode. The digital "shutter angle" is 180.
 
Lighting looks a little harsh to me- seems as though a bare open face was pointed straight toward the subject. I think this may also be emphasized due to your detail level - take it down some. Just curious, why plusgreen for the fill? And how did you manage to get your hands on Panavision ultra primes?
 
These Frenel lights are all un-gelled and have no color correction... so yeah, the light is very harsh.

It wasn't much of an experimenting with lighting as it was what the camera could pick up on. I was mainly looking for color and detail reproduction within the camera before I started tweaking lights.

The camera's white balance was set to 3200K and these lights were at about 3400K. I know it's harsh (I personally think it's downright ugly) but wanted to see how close the camera could get to reality.

I know the detail level is jacked up way high... but I want to get the most out of the image before the video noise takes over... and by upping it all the way, I've attempted to see where the noise starts getting distracting. +7 is probably a bit high, but I want to keep it aroung +5 for the actual shoot.

I managed the Panavision stuff because I was given money in the budget for it. Panavision, Florida is about 20 minutes from where I live in Orlando. I've been doing production work here for 6 years and know some of the guys who work there. I've worked with some of their gear before on DV, 16mm and 35mm shoots. I've worked with the Super Speed lenses on a DVX-100A several times, and can't wait to see how they look on the HVX.

As far as the Plus Green... in working a lot with keyed moonlight and fill, the Plus Green seems to offer a more even and less "blue" look to the moonlight. I've worked with them with softlights and bounces. It's pretty even.

I'll post screen grabs from the actual production in a week to show you what it looks like... hopefully when done right. I am a little nervous shooting entirely on P2 and uploading to my Producer's PowerBook.
 
Gotcha- what do you mean when you say plus green seems more even? more even than what? and how?

Can't wait to see some grabs. Make sure you've got backups - on a shoot of this size (one that can afford panavision lenses), I'd probably export everything at the end of each day to tape - hardrives fail too often.
 
Sorry for pending typos... I am officially wasted after a night of pre-Thanksgiving drinking in downtown Orlando...

The geared head I found at the Film Equipment Room at the local University... it was busted until my roommate and I took it apart and repaired it. A little bit of gear oil and it will be almost as good as new.

As far as Plus Green goes... when highlighting the HMI or CTB for moonlight, I prefer to use an even green tone for the fill light. Why? Because at 3200K it seems to disperse better than CTB would as a fill.

Let me find a grab from something I did 2 years ago...

TeaParty-MasterShot.jpg


The key light is a 5600K Desisti 1200W HMI placed back about 15 feet. All of the fill is between two 1000W softlights with PlusGreen gels over them. The exposure was at F11 the entire time.

The Director and I agreed that we wanted to see everything within the scene... the story was about a little girl who got molested by her stepfather on New Year's Eve. It was a surprisingly touching story about the girl and her stuffed animals.

The green provided a subtle glow for the rest of the room.

I wasn't satisfied with the rest of the lighting (as the practical lamp in the room would have been casting the most light), but it was an early experiement in having total control over a set.

I was DP and Gaffer for this shoot.
 
Reading through your settings brings up one issue.
Why would you use a +7 for detail?
You can always add detail enhancement in post but can never get rid of that ugly "video" effect it gives the image.
If you check on this board you'll see that the recommended detail level for narrative filmmaking purposes is somewhere around -3 (negative value), this is especially important if the film will be projected on a big screen at some point.
you shouldn't turn in completely off (-7) but a +7 seems a bit much for the purpose...
 
If you use final cut pro, the stills are exported at 720x960 for 720P and 1080x1280 for 1080... that's the way the HVX ccd records images.

You will have to use something like photoshop to make them look "right"
I made a Photoshop "droplet" that automates this process.

If you want a certain width, for instace 400 pixels, then do this equation
H = (W/16)*9
(400/16)=25 times 9 = 225
to confirm, 400/225=1.77

hope this helps
 
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