Sitcom Pilot Demo Shoot

J

Jus10m

Active member
Hey guys,
I was hoping some of you could take a look at a demo video I shot for a pilot that we will later produce.
I've shot with the HVX200 for that past couple years, but this was the first shoot using a 35mm adapter. (RedRock)

After going over the footage countless times, I've come up with some reasons as to why I am not completely happy with it.

• The depth of field is way too shallow in some shots. In a medium 2 shot, one of them will be slightly out of focus. Now is the way to fix this, blasting more light and closing the iris? I hope that's not the only solution since we were using every light we own for that shoot.

• Some of the takes has the background looking very close up to the subjects. To change that, would I use the 50mm lens instead of the 105mm lens and just move the camera closer to the actors?

• Some of the shots make it look as if the actor is standing in front of a green screen. Mainly the shots with them in front of the windows. Does that have to do with the back ground being too out of focus, or is it the light outside having a different color temp than the lights inside?

Thanks guys. If you see any other things that could have been done better to improve the look, PLEASE let me know. Don't worry I can take it. ;)

Here's the link to the vid: http://blip.tv/file/1483038
PASSWORD to watch it: breakaleg

Thanks again!
-Justin
 
First of all; great job. The talent is first rate, the lighting, comps, all nice

THE only option I can imagine is not using the RED ROCK on EVERY SINGLE SHOT. In this case, you're in a small office .... why the need for any shallow DOF at all ?

Shouldn't it be motivated and not shallow for shallows sake ? I'd take off the Red Rock, back the camera up as far as you can get away with and zoom in from there. That should soften it a bit.
 
Wow, thanks! It was a crazy long shoot and we had to start getting crafty with the angles since the sun was going down near the end of the shoot.

As for taking the Red Rock off, I had posted a few weeks back about using footage with and with out the adapter - think the post was called "Shooting the Walk and Talk", and a lot of people seemed to think that switching back and forth would look bad.

But I'm thinking it's nothing that some CC'ing can't remedy.
 
And one other question...

I noticed that which ever lens I used. 28mm, 35mm, 50mm or 105mm - my DOF was extremely shallow. Now I thought at least using the 28 or 35 would give me a good amount of room, but it didn't. Is there a way to use these lenses and increase my DOF?

Because I'm watching shows on TV - Studio 60, House MD, Boston Legal and your are right, there are many times they do not have a super shallow DOF, yet I know they aren't shooting on a stock HVX200.
What are they doing or using differently?

Is this all coming down to how much I can close my aperture?
Thanks again.
 
Any takers?

I know that one of the big reasons that you get a shallower depth of field on higher end cameras or film is that the imaging chip or film is larger than the one on the HVX200.

If that's true, then how do shows that use the higher end cameras get a deep DOF when using say - a 50mm lens.
Because when I use a 50mm lens on the RedRock, my depth of field is super shallow.

Thanks.
Justin
 
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looks great - acting/dialogue/story/location all top banana.

Nothing wrong with blown highlights, but in this scene the lighting is erratic. Where is the light coming from? The blown highlights draw attention to the inconsistencies.

my advice - lose the letus. If you are trying to emulate a big budget movie, fine. But for a sitcom/webvid it doesn't add much.
 
pwyll said:
looks great - acting/dialogue/story/location all top banana.

Nothing wrong with blown highlights, but in this scene the lighting is erratic. Where is the light coming from? The blown highlights draw attention to the inconsistencies.

my advice - lose the letus. If you are trying to emulate a big budget movie, fine. But for a sitcom/webvid it doesn't add much.
Click to expand...

Ditto. Nice job, it looks like a real tv show. I too am in the midst of planning a sizzle reel for a comedy series and I am probably not going to use my Letus. Unlike your concept though that should look glamorous and sexy, my concept needs to look dreary and depressing.

In comedy especially, content way over style. I have been watching Curb Your Enthusiasm, which IMHO, is not a very good looking show, at least in some episodes, but it works because the writing, acting and direction are decent. Shooting with a 35mm adapter is so much more hassle too, I would skip it personally. Lighting is much more important and your lighting looks good, if inconsistent in this clip.

Dan
 
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One big thing you can do is back up from your subjects.
a 35mm 1.4 can have reallllly shallow dof but if you're 10 feet away from your subject it's not that shallow anymore.
 
Thanks so much for your insights guys! Much appreciated.
We're planning on shooting another practice scene before the main shoot. In it, we'll try cutting between footage using the RedRock and footage without it. Then we'll see if we can make the shots match using a little color correction and grain filters.

I'll for sure post what we end up with as soon as it's finished.
Thanks again guys, this site really is my own private film school!

-Justin
 
Hey Guys,
So I guess this is a BUMP.
We went and shot another Promo/Footage Test for the web series we're working on.
I'm much happier with the what we got this time around than on the last thing I showed you guys.
Although after looking at the footage after the shoot, I can say that we tended to shy away from having dark shadows - which I think would have made the images look better.

But anywho, let me know what you guys think.
Thanks!
-Justin

P.S. I'll post the video as soon as it's edited.

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You have a couple of issues happening when the actors are in front of the windows:
The daylight outside is blowing way past the limit of the chip which is giving that yellowish out of focus shafts of light. Not only is it creating that yellow tint in the blown out highlights, but it is also bringing too much attention to the background

You're mixing interior tungsten lighting with exterior daylight. There are no objects between the actors and the window to give the set a more depth.
Add that to the fact that you're having the actors act against a flat wall (the window) the resulting composition gives it what looks to your eye a greenscreened look.
 
Sweet, thanks for the tips Dan.
We're going to be shooting in that office again some time so any tips on making it look better are greatly appreciated.
Unfortunately, tungsten lights were all we had, so we made do with adding CTB to them. Obviously that did not solve the problem. We'll probably rent different lights next time around.
And the tip about adding props between the actors and the window is a great idea.
So thanks again man!

-Justin
 
Jus10m said:
Thanks guys. If you see any other things that could have been done better to improve the look, PLEASE let me know. Don't worry I can take it. ;)

Here's the link to the vid: http://blip.tv/file/1483038
PASSWORD to watch it: breakaleg

Thanks again!
-Justin
Click to expand...

I saw a iPhone widget that given a lense, circle of confusion, and F-stop, calculate the various distances such as near focus, far focus and hyper focal distance, etc.

The problem here is that I don't know what affect the use of the adaptor lenses have, but in any case, it seems that you don't have a convienent way to calculate these paramaters, and then block out the shots in such a way that you get the focus you want.

To me, there were only a couple of shots were the difference in focus was particularlly disturbing, perhaps the most noticeable to me was near the end, an over the shoulder shot from behind the man, of the man and woman couple, towards the man at the window of the office.

Also, you could think about your blocking such that the people in a two shot, from an angle looking towards them from the side, are positioned closer than they naturally would be and adjust their eyelines such that from the Camera POV, they look natural, but in reality they are close enough together to be in the DOF zone.
 
Thanks clark! The blocking idea is good.
Also, after the shoot I was doing some tests and researching when I realized that from the center of focus, you a greater distance of focus going back than you do coming towards the camera
So if I had set the focus to the girl instead of the guy in the back like I did, I would have had a better chance of having both of them in focus.
 
OK first, looks good. Polished professional, cut well, actors look like they know what they are doing etc.

But, though I know it's not your department, SOUND. It's not bad but it's not polished at all and doesn't match the rest. There is the ubiquitous low budget signature hollow echoey sound. So in production it might be possible to pad down the surfaces a bit, maybe. But post could make a huge difference. There are no BG's, Foley etc that would fill out the emptiness and fill the space. Some of the echo could be removed in post but it's not horrible IF the rest of the track were filled out. The boom op should probably push closer with the boom but???

So why this is not totally OT is that a better sound track will make the show LOOK better. How? Well some of the shallow focus you didn't want can be mitigated by having some city out there. If there is something we know we don't really want to see we won't be bother by not seeing it. A filled track can add things that weren't shot and people will think they saw them. and lastly everyone benefits from that warm comfort of knowing your watching something that is being done by professionals. On one level it's a small thing because the sound certainly isn't bad but it's also a big thing because it sucks a really big amount of the $$$ on the screen right back off. I'm probably a bit more sensitive than most but I hear the thin low budget track and it doesn't matter what it looks like I know it wasn't shot high end because it obviously didn't have an audio post. It's a little like walking around, if your a woman, with a Prado bag (cheap knock off of Prada), it might look identical to the real deal but once the label is noticed the mystique is gone and every body knows it's a cheap knock off.
Great job over all.
 
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I like the adapter shots... a lot. The visuals move with the dialog, everything is fast-paced, so minor issues are missed by the average viewer. But I went back and watched it after reading each critique, and it was amazing to see the clip in a new way each time. Pretty cool.

The story line is intriguing ... looking forward to seeing the finished product.
 
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