GH13 GH1 and GH2 still rockin - Gryffindor Music video (Harry Potter)

ErikTande

ErikTande

Well-known member
I shot this with 2 cameras, a GH1 and GH2. The long lenses shots are the GH1 with the Olympus 45mm and 75mm. The steadicam / wide shots are my GH2 with the Panasonic 14-42. I directed, shot, edited and did the VFX, and recorded and mixed the vocals. If you like it share it and subscribe :thumbsup:

 
Thanks! It was my first time using a Steadicam merlin, I had rented it from a website for the weekend. I was really happy with how it turned out. The hardest part about the shoot was cold it was, well below freezing for most of it.
 
I can't blame you for the song, but I can salute your talents with a camera! Great job! If this is completely shot on GH's you put some shame into guys shooting on RED or Alexa.
 
dustylense said:
I can't blame you for the song, but I can salute your talents with a camera! Great job! If this is completely shot on GH's you put some shame into guys shooting on RED or Alexa.
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Thanks, that means a lot! I work my butt off on these videos and I love to hear it's paying off! The trick for me on super sunny days is A LOT of ND filters (3 stacked) to keep it at 1.8, reflectors to keep the faces nice and bright and I tend to manually white balance quite a bit warmer than is technically correct. I find I can cool things down in post a lot easier than I can warm them up, so I like a nice warm image to start with. My profile was Standard and all set to 0.

Here's a screenshot from Behind the Scenes, I'll upload a quick video here in a bit.





I'm sitting in the grass shooting wide with my GH2, I have my friend shooting my GH1 with a long lens and my fancy PVC rig :D

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ErikTande said:
I shot this with 2 cameras, a GH1 and GH2. The long lenses shots are the GH1 with the Olympus 45mm and 75mm. The steadicam / wide shots are my GH2 with the Panasonic 14-42. I directed, shot, edited and did the VFX, and recorded and mixed the vocals. If you like it share it and subscribe :thumbsup:

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Nice video Erik, great work! Also I have to mirror Dusty's comments, you put a lot of people to shame shooting with bigger crews, and more capable gear. If you are like me you know a lot of the magic happens through editing and you did an excellent job, salute....


ps. Those singers were really really singing off key, honestly the song imo was very bad.
 
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Eric great job! Wish I was that good. Good luck to the local girls and their parodies...they do sing on key...nevermind the haters
 
Yeah, we've had a lot of comments on the singing on this video, it's definitely an issue that needs to be addressed. We need feedback like that to get better though.


Here's a few quick BTS shots, I'll be editing a full BTS video this week.

 
Fantastic! Really glad you posted this. I'm getting ready to do my first music video ever and will be using a GH2 as well. I never had any doubt that the image would look amazing, but it's great to see yours and get some confirmation. This does look really amazing, not just saying that.

As far as the music goes, have you ever considered using autotune? It might even add that parody feel. Just a thought. Either way, can't wait to see the full behind-the-scenes.
 
hey, not going to comment on the singers. ;)

Love your VFX on these parody vids. The other ones you showed me before, I remember thinking "ok, cute parody- nice steadicam, good use of avoiding mud on the GH1... WTF, WAS THAT DOBBY THE HOUSE ELF?! REWIND!"

Great and fun as always. My critique, if you are looking for it, is on the color grading of the captured footage. Some of the footage was graded either to serve a specific purpose (dementors) or by nature (dumbledore's green screened office looks awesome and has great lighting, and the foggy grey sky for the quidditch match looked cool too), but then the rest of the outdoor scenes appear to not have any grading at all, just boring overhead sun and the saturation it brings with it. I know it is hard to work with the sun at wherever it is in the sky, especially without a crew holding up a sheet diffuser or anything to block the intensity of the sun. And you can't shoot only during magic hour all the time. But the lack of consistency between the feel of those scenes stuck out to me.
 
^^ Yeah, that was tough to deal with. I really didn't grade anything except the dementor attack and dumbledore, just like you mentioned. I didn't have time to do any real grading with all the vfx shots to complete, so I just threw some levels on the shots and called it good. ;)

We shot over the weekend (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) and half the time it was bright and sunny, and half the time the clouds and fog would roll in. The way I dealt with it was I tried to keep sunny shots at the beginning of the video, cloudy shots toward the end. Shooting at 10,000 feet elevation brought some crazy weather challenges. The dance sequence in the ties was about 18 degrees fahrenheit. Those girls were troopers. We would do a take, jump in cars to warm up, jump out and do another take.





Sunny
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extreme fog
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greenscreen!

rhubh4.jpg
 
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Yeah, that about sums it up!

To be honest- I think the whole thing should have been shot in the fog. I know there is only so much you can do without a controlled environment, but those shots were head and shoulders over the others IMO.

LOL- We've all got projects like this from time to time. I did a bizarre rap video with a guy dressed up like a cat on some train tracks that involved running from location to location at various points in the day, with noticable differences in clouds/sun. A good post-grade smoothed out most of the changes in lighting, but it is one of those things I'm not comfortable sharing publicly (mostly due to the content more than the production value- ha!)
 
As a Potter fan I felt you really captured the essence of Harry Potter. Yes that includes some cheesiness as well. Not everything can be crime movies, cats and rap music videos after all. I do have to agree the music wasn't the best but honestly I felt it sold the cheesiness even more.

As a visual effects artist myself I say damn good work. Damn good. Is it perfect? No but few movies are. The first Matrix movie makes me sick how many flubs in the effects work there are. For what I am assuming was a virtual non budget or very low you pulled off some effects work that fit the Potter world very well. Top notch rig for your green screen by the way. Love It! It is nice to see people take visual effects seriously and not just shove a talking head in front of a green screen and freak out right away about shadows on the floor. Love that somebody finally showed a great example of how you don't have to have 4:2:2 or 4:4:4 for effects work. 4:2:0 can work very well, especially if you filter the chroma. While most of us would not turn down better then 4:2:0 it doesn't have to be a show stopper.

Great job.

JK Rowling needs to see this.

By the way are you doing the Dr. Who parody they mention at the end? lol
 
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