P Diddy, Dirty Money, Rick Ross - Angels Remix

anyway, this has been turned into a school yard shouting match. i was really interested in matt workman's thoughts on why he chose the 7d when he obviously has access to whatever. i was interested in a PRO's opinion on the matter. instead, i get bombarded with fanboys defending the 7d when it wasn't even being attacked!!!

screw it, it's not worth it....
 
cinebuddy said:
No you turned it into that with the fanboy comment. He shoots with what the production company picks...don't you?
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sorry if you thought the fanboy comment was directed specifically at you. i was making a general comment as i got 2 irrelevant comments within a minute of my question. seemed appropriate...

and to answer your question, rarely does a production company dictate which camera i will be using. most of the time, they ask my opinion and i work with the director and producers to come up with the best solution within our budget.

do you have some knowledge about this production? is that how it went down? the producers dictated?

i saw that he had his 7d package shipped from abel cinetech rentals so it obviously wasn't just a matter of convenience. i just really want to know his motivation.
 
Cheez, if you have a real question (which you do) just shoot Matt a PM or email him your thoughts and leave the kiddie arguments where they are.
 
Cool, misunderstanding. I've chatted with him before and it seems certain directors have picked the 7d (and before that the 5d) when he's been working with them. I just get the vibe he's getting "requests" for the canon, and my gut says rap video budgets more than anything may be dictating the camera choice. Is a Red rental that expensive? I'm in Slowlumbus so the daily rate hear is close to rape, but in NY or LA i'd think they were a dime a dozen.
 
cinebuddy said:
Cool, misunderstanding. I've chatted with him before and it seems certain directors have picked the 7d (and before that the 5d) when he's been working with them. I just get the vibe he's getting "requests" for the canon, and my gut says rap video budgets more than anything may be dictating the camera choice. Is a Red rental that expensive? I'm in Slowlumbus so the daily rate hear is close to rape, but in NY or LA i'd think they were a dime a dozen.
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thank you. this kind of illustrates my curiosity. in la ALL cameras are a dime a dozen. and since matt is from LA....

i realize budget is always an issue and could be a reason to shoot dslr. however, when i saw the prod. stills and saw the car setup and the extra 30' jib, i knew budget couldn't have been the reason. another thing that surprises me is that everyone, especially in the hip hop game, has RED fever. kind of annoying actually. i would love to think that there is a new dslr craze among high end clients because i don't own a red and i do own a 7d. that would mean lots of business for me that i currently lose to red owner/ops that go out for $300 a day. but in la at least, this is not the case.

it seems to me that workman chose the 7d over other possibilities. i would just like to know what he sees in it that motivated his decision.
 
Gotcha'. Well I think you may be in luck, i've been peepin' alot of BTS pics of late for rap vids and been seeing a ton of 7d's and i'm not talking indie acts (Lil Wayne, Kay Slay, etc). $300 a day with an OP???!!! Man a local spot hear is renting the 1d for $275 a day no lenses.
 
are you a PRO?
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Does 35 years in the imaging business, stills and video, and paying my rent from it count as a pro? I don't know, maybe. The VDSLRs are here to stay and grow in quality, features and popularity. If people out there can't see that and why it is, they are pretty far behind in industry savvy.
 
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Hey Guys,

Canon and Red will be happy to know that their cameras have been stirring up some drama. :kali:

I've shot with the RED, Canon 5DMKII, and Canon 7D on quite a few projects. So I have my list of pros and cons with both systems.

The RED can be treated exactly like a 35mm camera. Same lenses, support, and crew members for the most part. You can take the 4k dailies into a DaVinci and the end results are very high quality. Thats why you see more and more A List music video directors and DP's turning to RED. Joseph Kahn "Katie Perry - Waking Up in Vegas", Crash "Alicia Keyes - Trying Sleeping with a Broken Heart", etc. The camera system has proved itself, at least in the music video industry. The Ad Agency world is a different story...

So why consider a little still camera over a much "superior" camera? Our reason on this production was for form factor, light sensitivity, and a damn good looking image.

Having the camera literally be smaller than most cinema lenses allows for us to use very light support gear and to be able to move very quickly and put the camera in hard to reach places. Its a massive understatement to say we did a LOT of setups and moved very quickely on this video in a way that would have been very difficult with a RED camera or even a Arri 235.

On the creative side the 7D can deliver very clean images in low light. Most of this video is at night, and a lot of the day scenes are night for day scenes. If you notice in a lot of the photos we shot at both sunset and then at sunrise. Mainly to capture that Miami magic hour. Having the ISO range from 3200 - 100 we can stretch magic hour longer than say if we shot RED.

The other obvious factor is budget. We chose to put the money towards shooting two days, having a helicopter, a jimmy jib + operator for two days, a camera insert car for two days, and the crew to make all this happen ... for two days.

I've heard that the video is premiering on BET today, not 100% sure, but check out 106 & Park if you are around and you might be able to check out some 7D footage in you very own homes. :shocked:

Cheers,

Matt
 
thanks for the insight matt. how do you deal with monitoring with the 7d? are you able to run to multiple monitors?
 
Great stuff man. I direct music videos too and just shot one on my 7d due to the iso and form factor as well.

Quick question however, i hear you mention shooting at 3200 iso. I'm shooting a feature on the 7d and have done extensive testing and for the life of me i can't shoot above 1250 and get a remotely clean image. is there something i'm not getting? I'm talking ext. nights of course. other than that scenario i dont really see the need for such high iso's however i would LOVE to be able to shoot those iso's for my ext. nights.
 
C: We used the AV out cable and had one SD monitor for the jib and other remote applications. We didn't need multiple monitors really, but I suppose you might be able to split the HDMI signal or AV signal? I'm not sure, I do wish that we could use the screen and a SDI out at the same time.

RJ: I'll post a link on vimeo or on my site when I get a copy of the master. Yeah, when I see my videos on MTV, Vh1, FUse, BET, etc. I somtimes think they look better on Vevo or HD youtube.

M: Hey, I just did a video in Toronto at Pie in the Sky Studos last weekend. Small world. What ISO you determine to be acceptable is subjective. For a narrative or something that needs to stay clean I probably wouldn't go past 1000 iso. But for something like this project it was worth the added grain to be able to capture situations we wouldn't have been able to due to the low light level.

Also ... secret here .... we shoot at f4-5.6 a lot so we minimize the "everything's out of focus" look that a lot of 5D and 7D videos have. So having a higher ISO allows us to do that with moderate lighting.

False alarm with the BET premiere, oh well.

Cheers,

Matt
 
matt, i see you said you stayed at iso3200 when possible. are you getting clean images at that high iso or are you going for a grainy look? thanks for anwering our questions.
 
Good job on the video man. Wish I could see a higher res version. I liked those crane shots when he say's YO!! Those slow motion scenes....did you use 60p?

I'm stil tripping on P-Diddy singing (of course it's all computerized)...ha. Very catchy tune.
 
cheezweezl said:
thank you. this kind of illustrates my curiosity. in la ALL cameras are a dime a dozen. and since matt is from LA....

i realize budget is always an issue and could be a reason to shoot dslr. however, when i saw the prod. stills and saw the car setup and the extra 30' jib, i knew budget couldn't have been the reason. another thing that surprises me is that everyone, especially in the hip hop game, has RED fever. kind of annoying actually. i would love to think that there is a new dslr craze among high end clients because i don't own a red and i do own a 7d. that would mean lots of business for me that i currently lose to red owner/ops that go out for $300 a day. but in la at least, this is not the case.

it seems to me that workman chose the 7d over other possibilities. i would just like to know what he sees in it that motivated his decision.
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Well, to be quite honest the lil' DSLR flare HAS picked up in our territory. My cameras are out all the time, I'm either shooting or consulting along with them. Still, the larger budgets do not skimp, and I define skimp as "shooting with a 7D".

I'm on location right now and you bet we're shooting RED because the budget may allow JUST enough to do that.

Again, though, I've seen a lot of this stuff sway toward the DSLR fad strictly because of budget and people trying to make more money off of the already-tanked business of Music Videos. Oddly enough, the videos don't get more creative, new, different... it's still the same stuff so I suppose it doesn't matter what camera it's shot on.
 
Great looking video. Thanks for sharing that. I'm sure you'll post the HD version so I can see it FOR REAL. If the 7D is good enough for Diddy it's good enough for me.:grin: Now it's off to Louis Vuitton to get me a duffle and then to my bank to stuff it with cash, after of course I stop at Rolls Royce of Bethesda. How can you hate Diddy.
 
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