Yup, that was the LA7200G lens. You should see how good it looks on DVD. Even though it was only intended for web-based mp4 playback, I encoded a DVD of this project and took it to Circuit City. I played it back on a huge plasma display that could do the 24fps pulldown. It was incredible.
I will NEVER shoot anything without this lens again. If clients want 4:3, they can go somewhere else.
In fact, using the letterbox AND the lens gives you perfect 2.35:1 Cinemascope aspect. I've tried that as well, and it looks great. I'm planning on doing some "artsy" projects that way.
BTW, the audio was live, recorded with a matched pair of Rode NT5's straight into the DVX100. Some eq and compression in post and walaah! The credits were all done in LiveType, which is ridiculously easy to use, and the intro/outro music was from SoundTrack. Thank you, Apple!
I tried to "fake" a two camera shoot. We recorded the real audio during the taping of the wide shot, and we also had a MiniDisc recorder capturing the audio. That way, the guitarist could play along with the music from his good takes while I grabbed the left and right hand close-ups. Synching all that up would have been a nightmare for another editor, but I am a guitarist as well, so I knew how he was playing and what he was doing--at least enough to make it look real.
The audio sounds SO good in spots (particularly the steel string work near the end) that it almost sounds fake, when it was actually more authentic than the close-ups! Oh well... It also helps that the guy is a monster player!
For lighting I used four polished aluminum PAR64 cans with white frost gels in front of them and taped the whole thing in my living room. I did very little if any color correction. Nice and warm, earth-toney, which is what I was going for.
Man, Apple is so lucky to have LiveType! Does anyone know of a alternative product for us Windows users? And no, I don't want to use After Effects. I'm too lazy!