evinsky
Well-known member
Today I directed/shot my first real job with the HVX. It was a national commercial for Pro flowers.com. A smaller competitor to FTD and the like. It was written by BBDO and we shot at a smaller studio here in Hollywood. A simple product shoot with a clever idea, it only took a half day (6 hours). This was a good test for the HVX. A real job with clients, but ones that didn't have the money for film or big HD. I wanted to be able to give them big prod. value and still keep it affordable, after all they need to buy air time.
So, what's the verdict....
This thing rocks!
The clients and agency were drooling over the monitor. They couldn't believe the color and detail. They never once said anything about the camera size except how cool it was I didn't need three people to move it. in fact I used a small jib and dolly and was able to do very complex moves I could never do on a large camera without twice the space and crew. At the end they actually asked my producer about shooting again around June.
Ok, so what about workflow, IQ and techie BS? Right, settings right?
Noise?
You noise freaks are smoking crack! This is one clean &%$#@&* camera when lit correctly. It's way cleaner than super 16, like EXR 500 35MM. Per Barry's suggestion I used the normal Matrix and Normal HD Gamma.
Master ped -5 and detail of -3. That's it really. We mostly recorded directly to a Raid HDD through FCP 5 on a 15" Powerbook using a 25' firewire cable. I did some P2 recording for the Steadicam stuff but thats it. The capturing was mostly trouble free. We had a few crashes of FCP but nothing that got in the way or was really annoying. Mostly it was user error like forgetting to take the camera out of 30PN before capture.
White balance is pretty important, I had the Pany 17" HD LCD as a production monitor and it was set a bit cool so when I got back to my bay and looked at the footage on the HD SDI Sony tube it looked a little yellow. It should be easy enough to correct though. All in all a very successful and profitable 1/2 day.
Tomorrow is a full day of green screen shooting of a series of industrial trade show videos. Gauntlet number two starts at 8AM.
For those of you planning on making short films or shooting that indie feature I don't know yet if this is the camera for you. But for those of us who live by the cam and die by the cam this is one broad sword. It's feature set, size and jaw dropping image (When used by someone who knows how to light and shoot) mean its potential for generating income is almost limitless. Granted, this is my 6th year directing and shooting professionally, and my third broadcast commercial, but I was able to pay for this camera in one weekend of shooting! I saved about $1200 shooting this camera compared to renting an SDX-900 (two days), which BTW I had sitting in a truck outside (for another shoot my producer is doing on Sun.) as a backup in case this didn't work out.
Sorry, I can't post footage till the spot airs, hopefully before Feb. 1st.
I'll try and post after tomorrow's shoot with more details.
E.
So, what's the verdict....
This thing rocks!
The clients and agency were drooling over the monitor. They couldn't believe the color and detail. They never once said anything about the camera size except how cool it was I didn't need three people to move it. in fact I used a small jib and dolly and was able to do very complex moves I could never do on a large camera without twice the space and crew. At the end they actually asked my producer about shooting again around June.
Ok, so what about workflow, IQ and techie BS? Right, settings right?
Noise?
You noise freaks are smoking crack! This is one clean &%$#@&* camera when lit correctly. It's way cleaner than super 16, like EXR 500 35MM. Per Barry's suggestion I used the normal Matrix and Normal HD Gamma.
Master ped -5 and detail of -3. That's it really. We mostly recorded directly to a Raid HDD through FCP 5 on a 15" Powerbook using a 25' firewire cable. I did some P2 recording for the Steadicam stuff but thats it. The capturing was mostly trouble free. We had a few crashes of FCP but nothing that got in the way or was really annoying. Mostly it was user error like forgetting to take the camera out of 30PN before capture.
White balance is pretty important, I had the Pany 17" HD LCD as a production monitor and it was set a bit cool so when I got back to my bay and looked at the footage on the HD SDI Sony tube it looked a little yellow. It should be easy enough to correct though. All in all a very successful and profitable 1/2 day.
Tomorrow is a full day of green screen shooting of a series of industrial trade show videos. Gauntlet number two starts at 8AM.
For those of you planning on making short films or shooting that indie feature I don't know yet if this is the camera for you. But for those of us who live by the cam and die by the cam this is one broad sword. It's feature set, size and jaw dropping image (When used by someone who knows how to light and shoot) mean its potential for generating income is almost limitless. Granted, this is my 6th year directing and shooting professionally, and my third broadcast commercial, but I was able to pay for this camera in one weekend of shooting! I saved about $1200 shooting this camera compared to renting an SDX-900 (two days), which BTW I had sitting in a truck outside (for another shoot my producer is doing on Sun.) as a backup in case this didn't work out.
Sorry, I can't post footage till the spot airs, hopefully before Feb. 1st.
I'll try and post after tomorrow's shoot with more details.
E.
Did you rent it from EVS, or do you actually own one at this point?
