My FS700 Fire Performance Video

GDV

GDV

Active member
Hi guys,

Long time no post. I wanted to share a video I shot on the FS700 with you guys. Over a dozen fire performers, dancers, breathers, eaters etc all captured doing their art at either 120 or 240 fps.

Shot with both Canon and CP2 lenses.


https://vimeo.com/87938418

Would LOVE to get the opinion of you trusty DVXusers!

Best!
G. Daniel Velazquez
 
I like the use of the filter you have for giving you horizontal bloom on the fire, but it becomes a little strong when you have large portions of the screen taken up by fire. Are there different strengths to that filter? I feel like when it blooms up a lot of the screen it takes away from the performance of the fire itself.

I personally would have used more speed ramps and edited it faster for an online showing. Audiences online are pretty low attention span for just about anything.

All the closeups are great. I would have put the camera on a dolly for the wide shots to keep them a little more dynamic.

A couple shots appeared to be noiser than the rest, A little bit of fill light could have helped with these issues with a black crush in post. Fire is a very low color temperature, so even a warm fill could have been useful. It also would have allowed you to control some of the shadowing on the face if you wanted. (I personally wanted to see the face of the performers a little better, but the shadow could work if you were trying to keep it more mysterious)
 
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Did you record this via internal SD cards? If so, i'm AMAZED at the quality of the AVCHD you obtained!

Dave
 
Just want to reply with the black issue. My PC for some reason is not displaying black on youtube/vimeo videos at 0 but at 16 for some reason. I wrote a bug report to Google.
 
Nicely done, thanks for sharing!

I too would like to know if you used the internal AVCHD recording, or if you were using an external recorder... especially for the slowmo, to avoid 8 & 16 second blocks & get continuous slowmo recording.

Also curious what in-camera frame rate you used for the non-slowmo, shutter speeds and ISO.

Looks like a very low light environment for the higher shutter speeds usually dictated by slowmo.
 
Thanks dmitrizigany, glad you liked it. Figured it was a good subject with which to use the FS700.
 
Thanks for taking the time to reply Demistate. I appreciate the input for sure. Yea the streaks were in camera. I used some Tiffen streak filters, one of them 2mm and a 3mm. I'd always seen how streak filters work on fixed lights, but I'd never seen them used on a more fluid, organic source like fire. And well, slowmo fire at that. I was curious to really see how it'd behave with it and how the camera would handle different gradients of highlights I guess. Might've been too much at points, but for the most part I dug it. :cool:

I was considering editing a shorter version, but I wanted to at least do one cut where everyone that performed during the shoot was in at least one shot somewhere. Then we I got going with the edit, the song kept me entertained the whole time. In the end I figured why cater to the short attention span peeps? Might as well do one long version. Maybe I'll edit a shorter version.

Good call on a dolly for the wides. I actually had one cam on a small jib, but I didn't have a follow focus system so couldn't really try too many moves while keeping focus sharp. I think I was at F4 most the time... not too crazy but still..

Yea on vimeo the noise shows up a lot more even though I tried diff export methods. I thought about having more of a fill light, but kinda opted for letting the fire become the key at points and letting the hairlight act as fill and even as key at times. Kinda went for the fire to be main character almost and then the people to look slightly more mysterious. I'm almost certain I shot at 32k wb.

Demistate said:
I like the use of the filter you have for giving you horizontal bloom on the fire, but it becomes a little strong when you have large portions of the screen taken up by fire. Are there different strengths to that filter? I feel like when it blooms up a lot of the screen it takes away from the performance of the fire itself.

I personally would have used more speed ramps and edited it faster for an online showing. Audiences online are pretty low attention span for just about anything.

All the closeups are great. I would have put the camera on a dolly for the wide shots to keep them a little more dynamic.

A couple shots appeared to be noiser than the rest, A little bit of fill light could have helped with these issues with a black crush in post. Fire is a very low color temperature, so even a warm fill could have been useful. It also would have allowed you to control some of the shadowing on the face if you wanted. (I personally wanted to see the face of the performers a little better, but the shadow could work if you were trying to keep it more mysterious)
Click to expand...
 
djosbun said:
Did you record this via internal SD cards? If so, i'm AMAZED at the quality of the AVCHD you obtained!

Dave
Click to expand...

Dave,

Yea I recorded straight onto SD cards. Don't remember what brand I used that nite (I have quite a few) but they were all hi-speed.
 
Demistate said:
Just want to reply with the black issue. My PC for some reason is not displaying black on youtube/vimeo videos at 0 but at 16 for some reason. I wrote a bug report to Google.
Click to expand...

How did you figure that out? Did Google get back to you?
 
Hey Juan,

Yep I shot straight on camera with sd cards. The trickiest part was exactly that Juan, mixing the slowmo capture timing with the burning of the flames and with the performer's moves. Having 2 FS700's helped immensely. Some stuff I shot at 120fps and faster tricks or props that would burst with big blazes I'd shoot at 240fps. It was crazy tricky to time the 8 seconds with a good move. I did Start timer but sometimes wished I'd done End.

I think mostly shot at 500 shutter and I don't believe I went over 1250 iso maybe?

JuanDiaz said:
Nicely done, thanks for sharing!

I too would like to know if you used the internal AVCHD recording, or if you were using an external recorder... especially for the slowmo, to avoid 8 & 16 second blocks & get continuous slowmo recording.

Also curious what in-camera frame rate you used for the non-slowmo, shutter speeds and ISO.

Looks like a very low light environment for the higher shutter speeds usually dictated by slowmo.
Click to expand...
 
GDV said:
How did you figure that out? Did Google get back to you?
Click to expand...

No but there is a fix to go into the Nvidia control panel and set it manually.

All other browsers work just fine so there still is a chrome bug of it not reporting the color space as it passes it off to the video card.
 
Demistate said:
No but there is a fix to go into the Nvidia control panel and set it manually.

All other browsers work just fine so there still is a chrome bug of it not reporting the color space as it passes it off to the video card.
Click to expand...

So are you saying the blacks looked fine on most browsers, but on Chrome the blacks looked brighter and noisier? On other browsers the blacks looked nice and crushed?
I'm curious because this WAS my first official dwelling inside the world of color correction. I used a mix of Premiere Pro's own color tools, mixed with Colorista and Magic Bullet Looks. I believe I was using my waveforms correctly...for the most part I believe. :)
 
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