LilacProductions
Member
We've just completed a Music Video for broadcast and I thought I'd post it on here firstly for your feedback and secondly to share our experience with some of the more specialised kit we used.
Music Video:
Making Of:
My aim was to make the video haunting and beautiful, I'm personally not a fan of stories in music videos and prefer to create images that compliment the sound. I'll let you decide whether or not I achieved that.
We shot on the 301 with the stock lens and 7D with a Canon 24mm 1.4, Nikon 35mm 1.4, Nikon 50mm 1.4 and Nikon 85mm 1.4. This is a bit of an unusual combination as the HPX301 has a 1/3" full raster HD CCD and the 7D has an APS-C sensor, roughly 3 or 4 times the size, meaning there was a huge difference in the depth or field. However the bigger issue, despite using high quality primes was the sharpness difference between the two due to the 7D resolving at somewhere just over 720 and the 301 being full 1080.
The main reason for using the 7D was more to do with using the Kessler "Bloom" pocket dolly and Oracle motorised controller as I was keen to have subtle tracking movement in each shot. With the unit being motorised this made achieving flawless smooth motion incredibly easy and for the price we bought this package for I can't rate it highly enough. Visit Kessler cranes for more info and also watch episode 3 of Pimp my gear.
The 24mm and 85mm lens were the two most used on the 7D mainly because the 24 was sharper than the 35 and offered a slightly deeper depth of field which helped when matching to the 301. The ISO was also set to 640 which despite being slightly more noisier than the lower ISO's meant we could stop the lens down to F4/5.6 and deepen the depth of field further on the 24mm.
As I'm a huge fan of Timelapse photography and love the lonely, atmospheric feel you can create, we decided that we'd use them fairly heavily at the start of the video, partly as a scene setter and partly as a link to the lyrics. All the timelapses were motion controlled on the Kessler dolly and we were fortunate to have a relatively clear starry evening.
The large part of getting a good Timelapse is trial and error, setting the right shutter to compliment the aperture (which was generally wide open and a 15 - 30 second exposure) reviewing the footage, checking the framing and then repeating until happy. Introducing the vertical track/jib timelapses were also tricky as the movement was difficult to judge - some worked, some didn't.
Lighting music videos is possibly my favourite area as there's a lot more freedom than with narrative. I was also keen to have a distinct back light on all the close ups and really try and pump some colour into the scene with the fills. We used a mixture of Mole Richardson, Arri Redheads, 300W Gullivers and a couple of Kinos all CTB'd up to 5600 Kelvins. Due to how good both cameras are in low light we were able to get away with a single 2K key light.
The little effects were created in after effects using a Iris replica created by Mocarg. Editing and grading was done entirely inside Final Cut Pro.
I hope this is of interest and please feel free to ask questions and of course I'd love to hear feedback on the video.
Thanks Steve
Music Video:
Making Of:
My aim was to make the video haunting and beautiful, I'm personally not a fan of stories in music videos and prefer to create images that compliment the sound. I'll let you decide whether or not I achieved that.
We shot on the 301 with the stock lens and 7D with a Canon 24mm 1.4, Nikon 35mm 1.4, Nikon 50mm 1.4 and Nikon 85mm 1.4. This is a bit of an unusual combination as the HPX301 has a 1/3" full raster HD CCD and the 7D has an APS-C sensor, roughly 3 or 4 times the size, meaning there was a huge difference in the depth or field. However the bigger issue, despite using high quality primes was the sharpness difference between the two due to the 7D resolving at somewhere just over 720 and the 301 being full 1080.
The main reason for using the 7D was more to do with using the Kessler "Bloom" pocket dolly and Oracle motorised controller as I was keen to have subtle tracking movement in each shot. With the unit being motorised this made achieving flawless smooth motion incredibly easy and for the price we bought this package for I can't rate it highly enough. Visit Kessler cranes for more info and also watch episode 3 of Pimp my gear.
The 24mm and 85mm lens were the two most used on the 7D mainly because the 24 was sharper than the 35 and offered a slightly deeper depth of field which helped when matching to the 301. The ISO was also set to 640 which despite being slightly more noisier than the lower ISO's meant we could stop the lens down to F4/5.6 and deepen the depth of field further on the 24mm.
As I'm a huge fan of Timelapse photography and love the lonely, atmospheric feel you can create, we decided that we'd use them fairly heavily at the start of the video, partly as a scene setter and partly as a link to the lyrics. All the timelapses were motion controlled on the Kessler dolly and we were fortunate to have a relatively clear starry evening.
The large part of getting a good Timelapse is trial and error, setting the right shutter to compliment the aperture (which was generally wide open and a 15 - 30 second exposure) reviewing the footage, checking the framing and then repeating until happy. Introducing the vertical track/jib timelapses were also tricky as the movement was difficult to judge - some worked, some didn't.
Lighting music videos is possibly my favourite area as there's a lot more freedom than with narrative. I was also keen to have a distinct back light on all the close ups and really try and pump some colour into the scene with the fills. We used a mixture of Mole Richardson, Arri Redheads, 300W Gullivers and a couple of Kinos all CTB'd up to 5600 Kelvins. Due to how good both cameras are in low light we were able to get away with a single 2K key light.
The little effects were created in after effects using a Iris replica created by Mocarg. Editing and grading was done entirely inside Final Cut Pro.
I hope this is of interest and please feel free to ask questions and of course I'd love to hear feedback on the video.
Thanks Steve
