Shooting a feature with the EOS 7D?

Barry_Green said:
That's the point. Fireproof looks fantastic, it looks like a "movie" -- but it's unwatchable. The acting and dialogue are simply too horrible to be believed. I almost thought George Lucas must have directed it.
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Boo for the Lucas hate. Lucas inspires me. But I guess it's a matter of opinion. :Drogar-BigGrin(DBG)

I think a feature made on an HDSLR is completely acceptable and I have no doubt we will see many more "good" features being made on them. Sure it isn't the easiest equipment to use but I don't think that will stop people from doing it. As far as quality between the two? Well I'm sure most of us have seen the quality test with the RED, 5D, and GH1. I think that showed it their possibilities. There were features being made years ago with cameras of much less quality. It won't ever pass the test with trained eyes but the general public is a different story. Sure there would be difficult challenges but I don't see why making a feature on an HDSLR wouldn't be acceptable.

I think as artists it is our duty to push technology to its limits and not be afraid to try new things.
 
Many more good movies with hobbled cheap gear is definitley a confident statement. =D

If we get one good movie by the end of the next year helmed primarily on any dslr, image and content wise, I would be greatly surprised. It took how Lon to get a decent RED feature?

And I still have only seen a handful of narratives that look great. Not one of them were from the feature trailers that popped up recently. There are three shorts in MonsterFest that look really really awesome though.
 
I just finished shooting my feature with 7D (20 days of shooting), and me as a director, and my DOP were very happy with it, in all the over 320 gb of videos we shot.

For my project it has been the perfect camera, doesn't mean it will be perfect for everyone, but for me, it has really been the best.
 
I often have to double check and see if I'm on the 7D forum or the Red forum when I'm reading these posts. The Red is what it is, but the 7D is what my clients are asking for....instead. End of story. It's a fantastic tool and incredibly easy to use, which I think is a major part of the client appeal vs. their aversion to intensive and expensive Red crew/client unfriendly field/edit workflow. I think a lot of agencies/clients saw that infamous Red/5D/GH1 intercut test and said...WTF? I, for one, am glad. I love the DSLR's. I think we should be talking about how the 7D CAN do features instead of why it can't compared to...you-name-it camera.
 
Barry_Green said:
If you're talking about some $3,000 running-around-in-your-backyard, friends-as-actors type of thing, shot on nights and weekends over the course of six days... no, the Red would be the totally wrong tool for that, and the situation would be reversed. No way could you pull that off on a Red, nor would you want to even try, the 40-pound behemoth would prevent you from doing it.
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And with that I think you hit the nail on the head.

chrisccw said:
I often have to double check and see if I'm on the 7D forum or the Red forum when I'm reading these posts.
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I agree. Listen, why are we talking about using the 7D for bigger budget feature film? Sure it can be done. The 7D is not a camera I'd expect to see on set of a major Hollywood production or even a film shot with a $100k budget.

The 7D is a camera for shoestring budget filmmakers like myself who make entire feature films on $2-3000 of their own out of pocket money. With a cast and crew working for copy and credit.

Yeah we take what we do seriously, but we also work day jobs. Our films get funded by saving our pennies. The 7D is a great little camera for people like myself. That said if I were to jump to the next level and actually find some investors for my next project, you can bet your bottom dollar I'd be renting a Red and a nice kit of cine primes.
 
Here's a crazy question (or not)..but...could a movie like Slumdog Millionaire be shot on a camera like the 7D?
 
Ian-T said:
Here's a crazy question (or not)..but...could a movie like Slumdog Millionaire be shot on a camera like the 7D?
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Too much camera movement means bad rolling shutter artifacts.

But, otherwise, I don't see why not...
 
I agree. I was just trying to put things in a different perspective with that question. But come to think of it even Slumdog Millionaire wasn't shot "entirely" on the same camera. It was mostly on the 2k camera but I believe certain scenes were shot with another camera (I can't remember). But if it were the same scenario with cam like the 5Dll/GH-1/7D then I think a smart director would have used/borrowed a different camera for those scenes with heavy movement. But yes...overall I agree that these DSLRs could pull it off.
 
TimurCivan said:
well quite frankly, you just cant DO alot of things with a 7D. You cant monitor on Stedicam, you can barely monitor for focus, and forget about a video village, Waveforms, or any kind of scopes....

480P is not quite enough to pull focus for HD. Unfortunately, modern Canon lenses are coarsely marked, and pulling with a measuring tape isn't exactly efficient. In fact a lot of the EF lenses, actually go past infinity, and are tough to match up, so marks on a FF are moot.

To be honest, over the course of weeks shooting a feature you will just get exhausted dealing with the issues. barry's skateboard analogy was about right.
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That is my point. If the producer in the original post thinks that, "...That the image of the RED sucks? (WTF?) and if he insists that the flick be shot on the 7D (since he would be signing the checks, I assume), then he should be willing to pay any costs savings from using the 7D, at least, to the original poster for the hassle of having to shot with a camera like that.
 
Your sig (the Coppola quote) and your opinion seem to be at odds....

One of the better producers I ever got the pleasure of working with (Mark, are you still out there?) had his philosophy clearly printed on his business card: "Everything works if you let it."
 
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So. I just finished producing a feature shot all 5d and 7d. The film looks incredible. The day after the feature was done the dp was contacted by janusz kaminski in order to come on the set of a new Reese witherspoon movie and teach Janusz how to use the cameras. Just food for thought.

The other cameras on set weren't RED.

Just so it's clear. They are using the 5d/7d as secondary cameras. Just like many films like Iron Man 2 have done. The same Dp that worked for Janusz knows the people who were using the 5d on Iron Man.

As for the feature I produced a trailer should be out in a week or so. The film is called "Feel" and it is Disney's first feature debuting on the Internet. The cameras performed incredibly and everyone at Disney is blown away by what we've done with a tiny budget.
 
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mhood said:
Your sig (the Coppola quote) and your opinion seem to be at odds....
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Not at all. I still hope some, "Little fat girl from Ohio", goes out and makes a beautiful film with a 7D or any of the other new low costs v-DSLRs, or the other high quality cameras available today. The question is about hiring someone else to shoot a movie for you and insisting that they use a camera not well suited for that task, over a camera much better suited for the task, because you think that the image quality of the less suited camera is better. If you insist on using the lesser suited camera, then you should be willing to pay the person you are hiring for the extra effort and craftsmanship that will be needed to work with the lesser suited tool. A hand honed piece of furniture would cost more than one built with mass production power tools.
 
...or you could hire a little fat girl from Ohio. My point is that people who are heavily vested in a particular way of doing things will be the very last to know about another way of doing things if it is outside their scope of the way to do things.
 
ryansheffer said:
So. I just finished producing a feature shot all 5d and 7d. The film looks incredible. The day after the feature was done the dp was contacted by janusz kaminski in order to come on the set of a new Reese witherspoon movie and teach Janusz how to use the cameras. Just food for thought.

The other cameras on set weren't RED.
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That's very cool. I keep thinking about Robert Richardson's work on Oliver Stone's "JFK" and "Natural Born Killers". He used everything from Super 8, and 16mm color, B&W negative and reversal stocks, to video images inter-cut with 35mm film. I think that these new v-DSLRs would be great for that type of expressionistic filmmaking and will be used to create some great shots in mainstream movies.
 
The problem with the 7d and 5d will always be the awful codec and compression. I can work around the rolling shutter, I can work around the small resolution, non swivel lcd, but when I load the footage on my 24" screen in the dark, this is where the biggest dissappointment hits, as I truly see the codec for what it is - no good.

Sure, if you are going to 720p with a bit of film grain you could cover it all up and say you shot red or even film, but why would you want to do something like that ?

I think that the only real advantage the 7d has over the other cameras today, is the low light sensitivity, really take it out on the street at night with a fast lens and just drop your jaw from what it can see, but even so, without proper lighting, it all looks like a documentary.

Conclusion = the 7d is really just a stepping stone for a beginner filmmaker. Use it wisely, and try to move on to something better.
 
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