Swan Song by Brightwood (Shot with Hvx-200a & SgBlade)

Dillon Novak

Dillon Novak

Well-known member

"Swan Song" Brightwood
http://vimeo.com/5112275

Last Thursday i had the pleasure of driving down to the Great Sand Dune National Park to shoot a music video for Brightwood's "Swan Song" off of their album Wake.
The full version will be released soon, along with a behind the scenes. I hope you're just as excited as i am.

This was my first time using an HVX and I was very surprised it turned out so well!

We also used my SgBlade and Nikkor Lenses.




Please feel free to ask any questions.​
 
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Looks great! Looking forward to seeing the whole piece :)
I can see that the groundglass was acting up in the stills, but didn't notice it in the vid.
 
Thanks smettli! I'm excited to release everything.

Smettli said:
I can see that the groundglass was acting up in the stills, but didn't notice it in the vid.
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Yeah, i noticed the same thing.

Lesson Learned on this shoot:

Just because the batteries are in the package, doesn't mean that they are good batteries.
 
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davidpula said:
This is stunningly beautiful!
Just a bit of vignetting in a couple shots.
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Thanks David!

The vignetting is entirely purposeful, there wasn't any vignetting in the first place, which is great because i like to add vignettes only to certain shots.
 
It seemed odd something so well shot would have vignetting unless it was intentional ;)
gorgeous stuff! i want more!
 
davidpula said:
exactly which lenses did u use?
settings on the HVX?
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Nikkor 28mm f/3.2, 50mm f/2.0, and 135mm 2.8
they're slow lenses but for what ever reason they made the stuff look really great as opposed to my faster ones, also i haven't noticed any CA.

Settings on the HVX would range from 1/500 shutter speeds for the over cranked stuff. All of the slo-mo syncing with the band was shot at 36FPS and the rest of the band b-roll/concept slo-mo was shot 60fps.

I believe i used Cine-D or V. I'm not sure because i rented it and I forgot what i set it to.

but i'm not sure if that answered your question correctly.

Mike Harvey said:
RR1 or RR2?
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RR2, very beautiful results.
 
This looks better than your previous ones imo cause dof is not so extreme shallow like before.Some nice shots.
 
The music video is now posted, encoded for the web by our very own Demistate.
Let me know what you think of it. What is special about this music video is that I am 17 therefor no band wants a music video from me...so i wrote up my treatment and went up to several bands asking them if they would like to make this music video. Most of them didn't reply but Brightwood replied and said they would defiantly love to do it. So because they didn't have any money to do the video i wanted to do, i funded the project almost entirly out of my own savings and from money i had gotten for doing a video for a non-profit a while ago. Because i knew i could make them a good enough music video that it would be worth it because everyone would walk away from the video with something great. And it was completly worth it because now i have several music videos lined up over this summer.

I am so happy!

So please enjoy my latest music video..

"Swan Song" Brightwood
http://vimeo.com/5112275

Behind The Scenes
Http://vimeo.com/5148893

Band
http://www.myspace.com/brightwood


Full res screen grabs to follow...
 
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Dillon, OUTSTANDING JOB! I'm sure that the band is thrilled that they let you produce their music video. I think you've found your niche.
 
Awesome video bro, lighting was so cool you did well to work with the sun, how did your talent cope with the reflectors?
 
mvansomeren said:
Dillon, OUTSTANDING JOB! I'm sure that the band is thrilled that they let you produce their music video. I think you've found your niche.
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Thanks man, they were very pleased with it! And it seems to be getting a great response from their fan base. I'm in love with what i do! haha, i'll have another video up in august...pretty cool concept...

PhantomVideo said:
Awesome video bro, lighting was so cool you did well to work with the sun, how did your talent cope with the reflectors?
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I agree, the weather was very good to us.

Originally i had wanted the proformace shots to be overcast because the sand dunes look beautiful when the clouds are out.


we started the performance shots and got through the drummer's entire set, when SUDDENLY this giant sand/wind/ice rain storm came and knocked everything over sand blew into all of my equipment and my lenses fell out of the LOCKED CASE...(that's how bad the wind was) and into the sand.

It was a good thing i thought to bring some tarps just in case =D.

After the storm passed and we assessed all damages it all was nothing a towel or some compressed air couldn't fix.

The sun came out and gave us this ray of light onto the band while the background was all cloudy and dark looking. So we brought out the reflectors and it looked gorgeous. So i scrapped the entire set of shots we had just done with the drummer when it was over cast and did 3 new ones while my techs were setting up the dolly.

after the storm it the shoot went flawless. you can see a clip of the storm in the behind the scenes posted. But to really answer your question...

It was actually pretty cold out so the reflecting light really warmed them up =D
 
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Dillon Novak said:
The music video is now posted, encoded for the web by our very own Demistate
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If your batteries run low in your adapter, the rotating glass can be pretty visible in some shots. Combine that with the noisy nature of the HVX200 and it can lead to some pretty gritty images. I have special pre-processing methods that help to eliminate this unnecessary artifact while still retaining and actually gaining some lost detail.



Click images to Enlarge

Professional Pre-Processing like this really helps with compressibility for online video services, as well as DVD and Blu-Ray. Thats why the vimeo link looks so good, while stills from the original source look noisy.

The above images are saved in the same quality, PNG. The Original source comes out to 1.12Megabytes, where the pre-processing comes out to 822Kylobytes, a 28% reduction in file size which allows the encoder to spend more data bits on your image instead of the noise signature of your camera/spinning glass/film grain. I saw very little macro-blocking in the footage and there are some pretty fast moving scenes that always play hell with video sharing sites like VIMEO and YOUTUBE.


Think of it as audio mastering, only for video. Check out the link in my signature if you're interested in my services.
 
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Demistate said:
If your batteries run low in your adapter, the rotating glass can be pretty visible in some shots. Combine that with the noisy nature of the HVX200 and it can lead to some pretty gritty images. I have special pre-processing methods that help to eliminate this unnecessary artifact while still retaining and actually gaining some lost detail.

http://alexandermejia.net/images/Original_Source.png http://alexandermejia.net/images/Professional_Processing.png

Click images to Enlarge

Professional Pre-Processing like this really helps with compressibility for online video services, as well as DVD and Blu-Ray. Thats why the vimeo link looks so good, while stills from the original source look noisy.

The above images are saved in the same quality, PNG. The Original source comes out to 1.12Megabytes, where the pre-processing comes out to 822Kylobytes, a 28% reduction in file size which allows the encoder to spend more data bits on your image instead of the noise signature of your camera/spinning glass/film grain. I saw very little macro-blocking in the footage and there are some pretty fast moving scenes that always play hell with video sharing sites like VIMEO and YOUTUBE.


Think of it as audio mastering, only for video. Check out the link in my signature if you're interested in my services.
Click to expand...


How does your encoding compare to using the Neat Video plug-in to remove noise? Neat Video seems to do a nice job as well.
 
mvansomeren said:
How does your encoding compare to using the Neat Video plug-in to remove noise? Neat Video seems to do a nice job as well.
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That's like asking the cook what the secret ingredient is in the soup! :) One of the stages in my pre-processing method has a similar result to what Neat Video can do, but its only part of my chain.

You can download the full video from here:

http://alexandermejia.net/movie/Brightwood_Again[YoutubeHD].mp4

Right-click --> Save-as
 
Looks good and I am digging the music! I had to watch it in SD, I am sorry (Some people are anal about having you watch their stuff in full HD). I am at my parents home and they don't believe in high speed internet but looked great on SD also.
 
Demistate said:
That's like asking the cook what the secret ingredient is in the soup! :) One of the stages in my pre-processing method has a similar result to what Neat Video can do, but its only part of my chain.

You can download the full video from here:

http://alexandermejia.net/movie/Brightwood_Again[YoutubeHD].mp4

Right-click --> Save-as
Click to expand...


Good analogy. You probably won't be surprised to know that I actually do ask cooks for their recipe and/or try to recreate the dish. :grin:

Part of the fun is figuring out how things work. You certainly get good results with your recipe.
 
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