evinsky
Well-known member
As some of you noticed I was able to get ahold of one of EVS's two HVXs for this last weekend. I was shooting two fairly large projects for two very large advertising agencies (BBDO & DGWB). One was a :30 sec. national commercial for Pro Flowers.com the other was a series of three trade show industrials for Argent financial. Having been one of the beta footage shooters on the initial three camera shoot with Jarred and Barry I was confident the camera could deliver the goods on set. The only thing I wasn't sure of was my direcct to HDD through FCP workflow for both days of shooting. Luckily Barry invited me to the 4+2 comparison we've all been hearing about and I was able to verify the system worked before we actually tried it. My producer had an SDX-900 waiting on the truck if it didn't.
But it worked fantastic and I had instant logging and review as well as verification the clip was intact. Plus instant HD playback. This turned out to be very usefull for matching shot sizes later on. The only computer there was a G4 1.67 15" powerbook w/1.5 Gb of ram. FCP 5 was very stable as long as we didn't close the Capture window, if we did it crashed, but rebooted and started working again immediately.
I described the Pro flowers experience in my last post so I'll concentrate on the Argent shoot. This was a tough shoot from the beginning. The agency was revising the scripts right up till the night before. I had to shoot three people on greenscreen delivering almost three minutes of continuous dialogue each. All of this would later be used in an After Effects generated environment. I was director and DOP so I sat next to the dolly with the 17" HD Panasonic LCD for reference. The camera did not really need an operator because almost all the shots were static but we used an O'connor head anyway because it needed to support the teleprompter as well. The only problem I had was a scratch on the teleprompter that kept spilling some green onto my talents leg. But we picked it up on the HD monitor and fixed after about three takes.
The direct to disk capture was done to the same Wiebetech RT5 1.6Tb FW800 drive as Pro Flowers. The awesome thing is FCP automatically detects the 24 FPS 720 stream and deletes the dupe frames on import so at the end of the shoot I only had pure 720 24P clips!
Hooray! Saved me time and disk space. I wish I had set up my 30P project the day before like this.
So how did it key?
Awesome, just peachy, no real issue except the teleprompter acted kinda like a promist 1, they just are not up to HD yet, so there was a slight bit of softness to the edge of the talent, but the choker handled it fine. I have to say it was so easy to pull a clean key we just started taking it for granted. Once we had the AE keylight filter set, we just dropped it on the clips, never needed to tweak it again.
Well I did the preliminay effects with my team and now the footage is off to NY to get the heavy duty treatment.
Again, I want to reiterate that I am totally biased toward this camera, I helped test it, I feel very comfortable with it, and it fits into the kind of "WORK" I do perfectly. This bias comes from experience, not blind faith or loyalty, I also shot some of the XL-H1 footage Cineform used to create their capture product. I do not think it would have been possible to get these shoots done with the XL. Why? Because of workflow integration, variable framerates (Used in Pro Flowers spot), and 4:2:2 colorspace for keying. Now I have never used an H1 for a key, but I would assume the 4:2:0 colorspace would present a slightly less robust platform for chroma keys, even if actual resolution is a bit higher.
Lastly, noise...
I know you all want to know about noise...
It's there. It's not a problem, it didn't get in the way of the key and I even felt we were underexposing by a 1/2 because the damn teleprompter took out almost two stops. We also shot in Cinelike_D despite Barry's suggestion because I just liked the way our lighting looked in that Gamma. Still, in 720P on my HD Sony reference CRT you can make out some slight noise in the dark pants the talent is wearing, but only if you're looking for it, otherwise it's just not an issue. I personally think the camera offers much more control over noise and image parameters because the Gammas let you fine tune your response and the matrixes your color. The Cinelike matrix really does add noise, as well as very punchy colors. So far I prefer the normal matrix, but when I need the punch Cinelike is there.
All in all I can't wait to get mine and begin to really dial it in. I get one from the next EVS order so hopefully next week. I'm leaving for Sundance in about three hours, if any of you are going send me a PM, we'll try and hook up and I'll show you some footage on my Laptop over a steaming cup-o hot chocolate. I can't post paid gigs till they air or are presented, sorry.
BTW the proflowers spot will be airing on all the "2s"(ESPN2 etc.) next week.
Keep an eye out.
E.
But it worked fantastic and I had instant logging and review as well as verification the clip was intact. Plus instant HD playback. This turned out to be very usefull for matching shot sizes later on. The only computer there was a G4 1.67 15" powerbook w/1.5 Gb of ram. FCP 5 was very stable as long as we didn't close the Capture window, if we did it crashed, but rebooted and started working again immediately.
I described the Pro flowers experience in my last post so I'll concentrate on the Argent shoot. This was a tough shoot from the beginning. The agency was revising the scripts right up till the night before. I had to shoot three people on greenscreen delivering almost three minutes of continuous dialogue each. All of this would later be used in an After Effects generated environment. I was director and DOP so I sat next to the dolly with the 17" HD Panasonic LCD for reference. The camera did not really need an operator because almost all the shots were static but we used an O'connor head anyway because it needed to support the teleprompter as well. The only problem I had was a scratch on the teleprompter that kept spilling some green onto my talents leg. But we picked it up on the HD monitor and fixed after about three takes.
The direct to disk capture was done to the same Wiebetech RT5 1.6Tb FW800 drive as Pro Flowers. The awesome thing is FCP automatically detects the 24 FPS 720 stream and deletes the dupe frames on import so at the end of the shoot I only had pure 720 24P clips!
Hooray! Saved me time and disk space. I wish I had set up my 30P project the day before like this.
So how did it key?
Awesome, just peachy, no real issue except the teleprompter acted kinda like a promist 1, they just are not up to HD yet, so there was a slight bit of softness to the edge of the talent, but the choker handled it fine. I have to say it was so easy to pull a clean key we just started taking it for granted. Once we had the AE keylight filter set, we just dropped it on the clips, never needed to tweak it again.
Well I did the preliminay effects with my team and now the footage is off to NY to get the heavy duty treatment.
Again, I want to reiterate that I am totally biased toward this camera, I helped test it, I feel very comfortable with it, and it fits into the kind of "WORK" I do perfectly. This bias comes from experience, not blind faith or loyalty, I also shot some of the XL-H1 footage Cineform used to create their capture product. I do not think it would have been possible to get these shoots done with the XL. Why? Because of workflow integration, variable framerates (Used in Pro Flowers spot), and 4:2:2 colorspace for keying. Now I have never used an H1 for a key, but I would assume the 4:2:0 colorspace would present a slightly less robust platform for chroma keys, even if actual resolution is a bit higher.
Lastly, noise...
I know you all want to know about noise...
It's there. It's not a problem, it didn't get in the way of the key and I even felt we were underexposing by a 1/2 because the damn teleprompter took out almost two stops. We also shot in Cinelike_D despite Barry's suggestion because I just liked the way our lighting looked in that Gamma. Still, in 720P on my HD Sony reference CRT you can make out some slight noise in the dark pants the talent is wearing, but only if you're looking for it, otherwise it's just not an issue. I personally think the camera offers much more control over noise and image parameters because the Gammas let you fine tune your response and the matrixes your color. The Cinelike matrix really does add noise, as well as very punchy colors. So far I prefer the normal matrix, but when I need the punch Cinelike is there.
All in all I can't wait to get mine and begin to really dial it in. I get one from the next EVS order so hopefully next week. I'm leaving for Sundance in about three hours, if any of you are going send me a PM, we'll try and hook up and I'll show you some footage on my Laptop over a steaming cup-o hot chocolate. I can't post paid gigs till they air or are presented, sorry.
BTW the proflowers spot will be airing on all the "2s"(ESPN2 etc.) next week.
Keep an eye out.
E.
