The art of firmware update warfare

squig said:
I'm 38 and I'm off to film school next month.....oh joy
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Kinda the same boat. 4 years ago went to film school. I was 45 then. Mid-life crisis; blonde and red sports car or film school. Wife decided for me.

I start shooting in July. What's your schedule? Maybe we can keep up on each other's progress. PM me if interested.

Art Messenger (yup, that's my name)
 
I sympathize. I'm 37.. Went to film school a long time ago (and a good thing too. Tuition is murder here in the states especially for private schools..) I've DP'ed 6 features, none of which have gotten distribution. Some of them I knew going into it that they didn't have a chance, but you always want to be supportive and give them the benefit of the doubt. You see that look in their eye that this is the culmination of their life's efforts and dreams - how can you say no? You have to give it your best shot. But let me give you some hope - there's a saying here in LALALand - you're only one movie away from making it. And it's true. Make one great movie that gets distributed, and the failures wont matter at all.

Nighthawk said:
Kinda the same boat. 4 years ago went to film school. I was 45 then. Mid-life crisis; blonde and red sports car or film school. Wife decided for me.

I start shooting in July. What's your schedule? Maybe we can keep up on each other's progress. PM me if interested.

Art Messenger (yup, that's my name)
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Kholi said:
I implore you to find a Blu Ray player and purchase THE SIGNAL. XL-H1 + P+S 35mm Adapter. PLEASE look at what they did under the limitations this system imposes on its operators. Then realze that even though the XL-H1's compression is a bit more robust, the GH-1 will hold up in just about every situation presented in that feature film.
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I haven't watched "The Signal", but I did just watch the trailer. It definitely does look impressive, no doubt. However, even in the trailer I can see plenty of high-energy scenes that would just collapse under codec/bitrate on the GH1. Hell, simple pans make it fall apart in some cases (http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/DMCGH1/DMCGH1A.HTM#vids). Don't forget, not only does the GH1 suffer from a low bitrate, but it also has no B-frames, which further exacerbates the problem. Kind of a bad codec double-wammy, if you will. :-P

Kholi said:
Again, that's just my opinion on it. Would I like updates, upgrades? Yeah! Am I worried about it? No.
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That's cool. But what harm is there in trying? If nothing happens you're no worse off. If Panasonic does respond, then we all benefit, and an already good cam becomes great. That's my 2 cents.
 
Never said anything about their being harm in trying. Go all out.

on The Signal and High Enegery scenes: 720/60P. By the way, there's a shot in The Signal where the ground glass is off.

Know how much that movie sold for? Just saying... there's a certain point where the camera isn't the most important thing.

Anyway, crusade away.
 
Two words-

El Mariachi


If RR was was just out of film school and making EL Mariachi today I think the GH1 would be on the short list of formats, instead of 16mm stock and processing.

It's possible to get impressive results with this little camera. Nice lenses don't hurt either.


I.

Illya Friedman
Hot Rod Cameras
 
6 films and no distribution that must suck, all that hard work for nothing. The worst part is that there are so many bad films that do get distribution. I guess we have it pretty easy here in comparison.

My schedule Art, fook knows. I was planning to start shooting about now but I've been stuffing around with the budget and the script still needs some work. I want to find a house I can rent and shoot some scenes in at my leisure. I don't think I'll start shooting anything before september at this rate. Yeah sure I'll keep you posted, I'll probably start a GH1 cinemascope feature making thread next month.

I was building a house until I got the DSLR storytelling bug and I've noticed something that applies to both building and indie filmmaking. You have to choose two of the following options: fast, good, and cheap. So I'm going with good and cheap. if it takes a year of weekends to shoot it then so be it.

It would be good to get some dialog going with panasonic and hear them address our concerns/recommendations, the users here combined know more about how to apply their technology than they do. I can't see the GH1 being a huge consumer hit unless they can really market it to joe sixpack as THE camcorder/DSLR replacement that they have to have. To do that successfully they need to market it like it's the new super 8, a real hobbyist home movie semi-pro retro style movie cam, and to do that they need indie filmmakers and videographers to lead the way. That puts us pretty high up the panasonic food chain.
 
squig said:
maybe sonic can mail letters to the japanese execs.
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Steal a car and crash through the gates for you Squig :) All the best for film school.

By the sounds of it Australia is calling me home for the film industry support dollar...

Japan's major movies are pretty under funded as far as I know (which is not very far at all). I guess Hollywood and various other film centers keep the Japanese audience intact...there are some very beautiful flicks made right here though...speaking of which actually looking for a 6 month old baby (wait let me finish) for a feature going to be shot here with some Japanese big names as well as a HW actress you will probably know...anyone wanna lend me their baby (need profile pics by tomorrow)....we are working with the talent agent if your wondering but I see it as my way to get onto the set.

Anyway where were we? Oh yeah, updates! Looking up Panny HQ right now...
 
Illya Friedman said:
Two words-

El Mariachi


If RR was was just out of film school and making EL Mariachi today I think the GH1 would be on the short list of formats, instead of 16mm stock and processing.

It's possible to get impressive results with this little camera. Nice lenses don't hurt either.


I.

Illya Friedman
Hot Rod Cameras
Click to expand...

I watch PRIMER like once a week, literally. Just watched it the other night and I'm thinkin' "Wow, these guys knew like nothing about the process, shot with 16mm ends and some sweat... good grief".

I wouldn't have that movie any other way, because the limitations really make that feature. But, I could only imagine what these guys would have done with a Gh-1 had it been available at the ime.
 
Yeah, "Primer" is brilliant. And for a film like that (virtually no fast action), the GH1 would positively sing. But if you're making a film with a lot of action or moving camera, the GH1 will be a LOT of work. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to get the best 24P look out of 60P you really have to twixtor it (or some other time-ramping software). And while that's fine for a clip here and there, it becomes a huge deal if you have to do shot after shot with it. A simple addition of a MJPEG 720-24P mode would solve that and make everyone's life a lot easier. :) It SEEMS simple enough, but I'm no engineer so I have no idea what it takes to enable something like that on Panasonic's end. But it certainly wouldn't hurt to make an effort to make sure Panasonic knows we think the camera is brilliant but we'd like at least this one addition. Heck I'd even pay a firmware update fee.
 
Regarding PRIMER:

I won't get into a whole 16mm vs GH1 thing on this thread, but being deeply invested in 16mm gear, I looked at a lot of 16mm footage on vimeo.com and compared it to GH1 and Canon 5D footage. I am sad to say that most of the 16mm footage looks like crap, whereas the GH1 footage looks technically a lot better.

I think there's a few reasons for this:
One, you can't just take a 16mm camera out of a box and not know anything about how to shoot. You need a light meter and need to know how to use it. Most of the uploads were by students, probably their first year.
Two, so much depends on the telecine process and where they had it done and what format they ended up on.

There are a few things shot on 16mm on vimeo that I felt were worthy comparisons, like Hunter's footage. But that was one of the exceptions. In such cases, I felt 16mm looked superior - but that's my subjective opinion.

I'm not saying the GH1 is better than 16mm, that would be like shooting my own foot, but it seems like its much easier to get great results quickly and cheaply to the web, so the GH1 like other good video cams be very empowering.

I wasn't too happy with the way PRIMER looked - rather dull to the eye - but as a movie it really worked.
 
SonicStates said:
Steal a car and crash through the gates for you Squig :) All the best for film school.

By the sounds of it Australia is calling me home for the film industry support dollar...

Japan's major movies are pretty under funded as far as I know (which is not very far at all). I guess Hollywood and various other film centers keep the Japanese audience intact...there are some very beautiful flicks made right here though...speaking of which actually looking for a 6 month old baby (wait let me finish) for a feature going to be shot here with some Japanese big names as well as a HW actress you will probably know...anyone wanna lend me their baby (need profile pics by tomorrow)....we are working with the talent agent if your wondering but I see it as my way to get onto the set.

Anyway where were we? Oh yeah, updates! Looking up Panny HQ right now...
Click to expand...

I have a 14 month baby, she looks like a manga character. japanese tourists freak when they see her and go mad with their nikons. she has asian eyes and burgandy hair.

I have an idea for a film I wanna shoot in japan in a couple of years
 
I just scored my anamorphic lens adapter, now all I need is a bloody camera!

Kholi did ya forget to feed the grading gimp? where's the footy?
 
magic bullet = plug-in

actual grading = real skill

Takes a little time to grade, man. Especially when people have to work as well. =P Soon as I get the footage you'll get it.

In the meantime, time to do some ISO testings.
 
I have a question-

If someone were to make a 62mm 1.34x front anamorphic element, optimized for the GH1....

1) Would you be interested in buying it?

2) What would you be willing to pay?

I.

Illya Friedman
Hot Rod Cameras
 
Ilya,

That would be a great addition at the right cost.
I have used an older model (Century) with PD150 cameras. The main issue was that it was limited to wide angle, almost anything past a certain focal length was out of focus.
Also, you could not zoom through.
There is one around, manufactured by Panasonic, selling for about 1150 aussie pesos, but I don't know if it is from the second generation, allowing zooming and shooting at the long end.
 
Illya Friedman said:
I have a question-

If someone were to make a 62mm 1.34x front anamorphic element, optimized for the GH1....

1) Would you be interested in buying it?

2) What would you be willing to pay?

I.

Illya Friedman
Hot Rod Cameras
Click to expand...

1) Yes

2) Not sure.

Question: Would a rear-element produce better results instead of a front? I'm not familiar with it, but I'd take one.

=T I guess it's almost time to get rid of the HPX170 and Ultimaet.
 
sorry guys... what is this thing firmware?... can some body please slowly explain what it is and what it does to me so I can be in the same page with you guys
 
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