Hip Hop - Music Video - Canon 7d w/ Nikon Superspeed BNCR Mount

Hey Everyone,

Just completed a music video. Quick background on the project. The artist is PISMO who is located in Brooklyn, New York. I'm based in California so I wrote a quick treatment for the artist then was flown out to NYC. By the way it was during that crazy heat wave. I was sweating bullets. I need to stream line my equipment for the trip. So I loaded my trusty CANON 7D, gorillapod and 85mm, 55mm, 35mm, 20mm lens into my newly purchased camera backpack. If you don't have a camera backpack I definitely recommend one. As for the overheating, I saw the warning icon once when it starting to warm up a bit but other then that is was smooth sailing. Pre-production was done in two days, scouting locations, meeting up with talent, and running around renting a couple kinos, tripod, and grip stuff. It took two days to shoot the video. Everything went fairly smooth, so I ended up shooting another video for the artist on green screen at a backup location. That video will be done in a month or so. Anyways, that's pretty much it. It was awesome to see NYC and film there.

Some behind the scene pics.

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enjoy
 
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Wide shots were beautiful. Close shots seemed really flat. Might be my screen. Great vid. I watched w/o sound.. but i usually hate hip-hop, so that might have helped. =/
 
Some of the story didn't make sense. I would have liked to have seen more performance instead of relying so heavy on the story which at times I did not like. Blind Girl in New York with people trying to attack her and Man trying to help her. Questions that arise are if it's so dangerous why is a blind woman outside in the first place + one that looks this attractive? Why is her hair done and face with make up? Personally I give the story a C-, edit an B and color grading + locations a B+. Overall the project looked very nice and professional, just since you focused on the story so much I felt like it lost the viewer. Regardless though you had some very nice shots and excellent sharp detail there. I would grade your overall project a B with just the story falling flat, but your excellent angles and color grading really made the level look really nice.


So IMO, tighten up that story and you would have a perfect project!
 
Hey Guys,

Never got good grades in school so I'll take that "B" with pride because you can always do better:) Seriously, life4eva thanks for taking the time to give me some feedback. As for the flatness, I did a Gamma Correction for the internet or it's just flat. I noticed it varies from browser to browser on the gamma. I tested several computers. Still trying to find a happy medium. Thanks for all the feedback.

-paul
 
was was the setting of your camera? how did you do the color grading? can you explain the steps you did?

would help me a lot.

thanks
 
Overall I liked the video and song. I personally associated the flatness with her being blind which worked. I would like to see more performance with the two interacting! Story only got confusing when he would stalk her and then run away?

Overall I liked it and would watch it over and over. You can quit your day job:)
 
When I shoot I tend to use "superflat" settings because I always color correct my clips. You can find tons of stuff on "superflat" discussion how bad it is or how good it is. It depend on how you like to work. I use a lightmeter when I shot because I'm from the film days. It gives me a good starting point. The best thing to do is shot as much as possible and color correct to see how can achieve specific looks. There's plenty of good info out there but doing it is only way to really know. As for color correction I use Apple Color. First thing, I do is quick base correction to get the whites and blacks at the right levels. From there I start to do specific thing like color isolation, tinting, power window etc. But make sure you use those waveform and vector scopes help you keep thing legal and consistent. If your doing a long edit it's good to use the "still store" to help you keep your look from not drifting to much. Hope this helps.

artistiam2 thanks for the feedback. I definitely see your point with possibly more performance. I was making conscious effort to not do to much performance. I'm really trying to explore the short story form for better or worse. My first tendency is to not have performance if the artist gives me creative license but if they really want performance I try it incorporate it as part of the narrative if possible. Again it's just what I try to do. Thanks again for taking the time to say something.



Thanks again for the replies.
 
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