Question about shooting with dvx.

M

mastertee31

Active member
I'm not quite sure where I could've posted this but, I couldn't really find an appropriate spot. I'm going to be renting a dvx100a for a weekend to shoot a music video. The thing is, I've never used the dvx before. (I have a canon Gl2 which I've pretty much mastered) Basically my question is... If I rent the camera Friday evening do you think I'll be ready to shoot by Saturday noonish and get footage like the pic below? I've seen pretty good looking footage come from the dvx, I just want to know if it requires a lot of work to get my footage to look like this:



Picture credited to:
nobody356

Do you think I'll need more time to play with it before I can do a video that'll look like this? My entire video will be very well lit, but I want my colours and blacks to be very saturated and punchy. Any suggestions?
 
Well I'm glad you liked my grab and "look" so hopefully I'll be able to help you out with some stuff. First off the DVX is not soo much different from any other camera...its got a lot of different features but if you dont have soo much time I'd suggest not really worrying about some of them. Maybe somone will call me crazy but I think that you can get good images from any scene file(within reason) and my advice is to shoot for somethin neutral. I always white balance the camera and use manual iris with the zebra feature to make sure I'm not "blowing out" the picture. Alot of it is what you like and that will be difficult to experiment and find out with the short time you have with the dvx. So go for something neutral and try to get the feel you want in post. I personally love vegas for CC but I'm sure you can use anything...I think that magic bullet can be a good tool but definately dont use it as a fix all. I know people have criticized me for using the overused magic bulletty look but they even say that on grabs that havent been MB'd, I like the look however so if you do too I'd say go for it. I awhile ago somewhat changed the look I'm using for that set of scenes to be a little sharper because the others were really too soft

heres a look at the same shot with a slightly different(still not final) CC on it:



also here are some shots i did on my first day with the dvx....they are smaller ones(click to enlarge) so I dont waste too much space:


its been a while so I forget but I think they have little to no CC on them....and I was a newb at CC back then so I know I could make them look better now.

Also, when you say well lit do you mean there will be alot of light or that the scenes will be lit very professionally. Lighting is sooooo important. And btw I like a low master ped :) and heres another random recent grab from my project...
 
If you are going to have this video broadcasteded on a music televison station, I would look into getting a higher quality camera if your budget allows for it. I've seen some good stuff using 35mm adapters but for the most part, music videos shot with the dvx look amateur. No offence to the crew of these shoots..it's just the camera has some serious weaknesses and limitations. It's hard to compete against other entries shot on film. If you can't afford to do this, then by all means go with the dvx because even though I just said what I said, I have seen some guys here do some things with that camera that blew my socks off.. like what Nobody has done above.really nice work. Tizzyentertainment has some great stuff too..and check out his DPs work.. http://homepage.mac.com/alexmia/Menu2.html
I totally agree with having great lighting..and a lot of it. I've taken pictures on set with a throw away camera that came out looking professional because of the lighting that was lit already. Get tons of it, tweak it and pull it back and it'll make the world of difference. Good luck!:)
 
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