FS7: Short Doc ELECTION NIGHT - shot on FS7

K

Killick

Active member
Hi all,

I shot this short on Nov 8 out here in the UK. The folks at Short of the Week were kind enough to premiere it, and it was chosen as a Vimeo Staff Pick and an Editors Pick at The Atlantic.

Shot all on that fateful night, with the FS7 in Cine EI, Slog 3, exclusively on the Sigma 18-35 and the Canon 50 1.2L. All natural light.

Audio recorded straight into the camera with wireless mic for the bartenders, but everything else was from a boom mic.

Overall pretty happy with the image quality considering the low light environment, though you really do end up limited in the color grade when the image is too far under. Love to hear your thoughts/questions.

 
Congrats on an excellent piece of work.

It's a shame to see people fall into the trap of supporting one deplorable candidate over another deplorable candidate. The real story of the US election was that there was no choice and only one person articulated that in the video.

Supporting Clinton because she's not Trump but she's a woman is a batshit stupid as thinking Trump gives a flying dog-doo about the struggling people in the rust-belt and voting for either would change anything.

Unless the voters get clued up they'll be served up more fait accompli in the future and they'll have no one to blame other than themselves.
 
Very, very nice Ryan. Good storytelling. Well shot.

I would have been scared to death shooting S Log3 in a low light environment.
Vimeo compression doesn't really allow me to see just how noisy the blacks are on your story. Curious why you chose Slog3 for a low-light situation?
 
Agree with above sentiment. Very nice work Ryan and good storytelling / editing, which is never easy when I assume you had lots more footage to wade through. But seems to perfectly capture a moment in time. I too am curious why you stuck with CineEI in that situation and if all practicals allowed you to keep one preset of WB or if you had to jump around between all 3.
 
Lovely work Ryan, I'm also dumbfounded that you decided to shoot with Cine EI, but all in all the noise may help the look.
 
Hi everyone, thanks for the comments and kind words about the film.

You can chalk shooting in Cine EI Slog3 up to poor understanding of the way the camera performs at the time. In hindsight I would have probably approached it differently, though the person I worked with on the color grade was able to reduce the shadow noise significantly and I wasn't terribly disappointed with the final product.

So let me ask... what color gamut would you shoot with in this environment? A friend has recommended HG8 for low light situations... thoughts?

Oh and Markfpv... I stayed in 3200 for the duration of the shoot. The blues from the screen rendered nicely with the warmth of the rest of the room. Pretty happy with the color overall, for the most part.
 
I wasn't expecting that to affect me as much as it did. My stomach tightened up at the end and I felt sick all over again. But, I guess that also means you did a good job. :)

The audio came out well. The background noise fit the piece too, since anyone who's been in a bar like that knows what it would sound like.

As for the picture, I don't think I would've used S-Log3 like others have said, simply because it's hard to expose for the correct IRE even in lowish light wi S-Log3, but you pulled it off.

This does remind me of a trend I've see all over the VICE network, though. Along with Vice News (nightly), a lot of their shows rely on the FS7 frequently. But-- and this is what I find strange-- their footage often looks significantly less saturated than yours, no matter how much light they have to work with. It almost looks like S-Log3 SOC, plus a tiny push in saturation. I wince when I see it because it just reinforces the misunderstood "bad Sony color" cliche (to those who are weird enough to pause a show when the reflection of a camera is shown).

Two questions when you get a sec., Did you have video noise reduction turned on in camera, and if so, what level? and, What on-camera mic did you use?

Nice work. ��
 
Nice work!
I think slog3 looks best even in lowlight. Colours are nice and latitude in highlights are still there.
 
I don't think the noise detracted at all from the piece.

Personally I find HG7 in CUSTOM Mode the best route for lowlight, it crunches the blacks and has a good white roll off and you have the benefit of additional gain. In post you have to desaturate the highlights otherwise it's very rec709 saturated looking but for the same amount of noise you could've had an image with much more contrast and better use of 10 bits.

I'm not sure why there is such a love of highlights on this forum as, for me, it's all about getting the subject exposed as close to perfectly as possible and letting the highlights blow if necessary. I'm sure there's a down voter out there ready to pounce on such sacrilege. 3, 2, 1...

Thanks down voters you snide c*nts.
 
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I used to not particularly obsess over highlights, but clipped highlights are (to me) the first thing thing that can make an otherwise "filmic" image instantly appear like video. You have to let some highlights clip, obviously, but I'm a lot. Ore sensitive to it than I used to be.

I agree wi your HG settings. I will default to HG7 in low light, and HG8 in daylight, etc. I think HG7/8 both have about 10 stops of DR, which fits a 10-bit codec well, and you aren't taking near the amount of risks you are in an S-Log mode. HG is highly malleable and really robust. It's not as safe at the Standard gamma, but it's not spread too thin, and you get another 3 stops out of it.
 
My concern would be how that large grain in the blacks would fare during encoding/compression and re-compression on vimeo. Obviously there's a ton of artifacts and macro-blocking happening as I view the vimeo file. Did you stick with the Slog 3 at the default ISO or did you push it further while shooting? Like the others, I would have gone with a custom or HG look and make sure noise reduction is enabled in-camera. I'll admit I'm not sure if NR is available in Slog3...it might be disabled by default in that mode.

I'm sure it looks a heck of a lot better projected or viewed from the original cut file versus watching online. Lens selection was key for this shoot. Your lens choices helped you greatly in pulling this off.

All that said, the content definitely transcends any tech issues in the story. 99% of viewers would notice or could care less. Lovely, sad story.
 
I did shoot and tried to expose as close to native ISO that available light allowed, overexposing when possible. I had NR on medium.

I actually just saw the film projected for the first time at a festival, and I have to say I was shocked at how incredible the image looked. Really rich and smooth, barely any noise noticeable.

And yeah, I have absolutely fallen in love with the Sigma 18-35. I've never owned a more versatile and stunning lens.

Thanks for the tips regarding HG settings guys, I'm going to give HG 7 and 8 a shot in the future.
 
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