GH2 Successful Actors Pitch & Interview

[vcassel]

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I AGREE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWZnHNBVMvI

I've never had any urge to try my hand at anything non-narrative, but a friend of a friend was in a bind and needed someone to shoot and edit this at the very last minute. I was given two days to shoot and edit. What the heck, who am I to say no to a pretty girl? Besides, maybe if it turns out OK I can use it to demo.

Ashley Pontius is a talented up and comer who just spent the better part of her education studying Theatre in England. She just hosted the pre-Grammy Skoole Awards honoring Motown legends and is contracted to write this book, Successful Actors, for 50 Interviews, of which this video was filmed to pitch to possible interviewees.

The location was pretty terrible--her two story tall living room with floor to ceiling windows on a clear, sunny Los Angeles day. Not much I can do about that on such a quick and cheap project, so I blue gelled and diffused my 1K Baby to try and shape the face as much as possible. Video was recorded on a Panasonic GH2 with the 'Nostalgic' film setting; the audio was recording with a Rode Videomic Pro and Zoom H4n.

For my post workflow I converted the .mts footage into Cineform AVI files, popped them into Premiere Pro, used Neat Video to clean them up, sharpened them, layered them with blending modes and blurring to saturate the skin tones a bit, and color corrected in FirstLight. Audio was cleaned up and enhanced slightly in Soundbooth. This is still a fine edit; I feel the timing is a bit off here and there, but it is what it is. The only other thing I'm considering changing is cropping the first shot a bit more. I tried doing this with FirstLight, but this feature seems buggy. I'll just take it through Photoshop.

Things I learned:
1) Blonde hair and full, direct sunlight don't mix.
2) Lost a few shots because I used the LCD to focus. I'll never do that again. I now fully see the need to spend good money on a Marshall.
3) Point your mic away from the window facing the street.
4) When filming interview as reverses you'll cut across later, it pays to have the interviewee take long pauses before answering. This will set a better pacing for the entirety of their answers.

I've got another one coming--the interview portion.

 

[EWS]

Cool, It is good to see this camera going to work. Were you using Panny Lenses maybe or primes? Detail looked good even on you-tube.
Audio seemed fine as well. I am ordering an external monitor as this is a really good investment. The first interview I ever attempted on my Gh1 was just slightly underexposed, yet it looked fine on the lcd, not to mention some missed focus. I vowed never again. That is the beauty of this little cam, being able to put a production monitor on it.
This interests me because I have a short doc coming up with the GH2. Almost tempted to sell GH13 and pick up another GH2 body for 2 cam shoot.
I have the H4n as well but I think I am gonna bite the bullet and get a SD 302 mixer. It hurts the wallet, but as the saying goes" Buy Once, Cry Once"
Anyway nice job all around.

 

[vcassel]

I used a Nikon Nikkor 24mm f/2.0 A-IS and a Nikon Nikkor 50mm f/1.2 A-IS. Good thing they have their aperture rings declicked, because working with the sun can be frustratingly inconsistent. I had to keyframe the exposure setting in FirstLight to smooth the rest out.

 

[Stefanos]

seems like you have a quick and sweet work flow going there, good for that type of commercial/web videos that need that clean/crisp/saturated look. I don't think many clients of that sort would appreciate slightly underexposed/non-contrasty . grain overlayed "filmic"(I hate using that word) footage by the way, I've never heard of FirstLight, I'll look it up. is it any good? At the moment I use Synthetic Aperture's ColorFinesse in CS5 and I was thinking of upgrading to the stand alone application. I've got the Nikkor 1.2 as well-sweet lens. Do you know how the 24mm compares to the pancake 20mm at f/2 only in terms of image quality? not mechanics/field of view etc . irrelevant but she was slightly annoying don't you think, kind of over dramatic ? anyways, thanks for posting