"The Letter" - short film on the 7D

I loved the premise, well done.

The only thing I noticed was that in the scene in the car the color didn't look as good as the rest and I thought you could have cut to an over the shoulder from inside the car to break that scene up a bit. Obviously a subjective choice. And the shot of the potential victim running down the stairs seemed out of focus.

I enjoyed this keep up the good work.
 
Thanks, bill. We definitely wanted to go for a more traditional cinematic look and as nice and clean an image as we could get.

Btw, played it out on a 130" HD projection and it looked fantastic! :)

Chuck, thanks. Those were both creative choices we made. Thanks for the feedback! :)
 
Wow, that was fantastic! Could you please tell me a little more? What did you use for sound? I've been wanting to upgrade from my DVX for some time now and the 7d looks like the best option. I was thinking of using the DVX for just recording sound.

What are the good and bad points of the camera in your opinion?

Thanks again for sharing, it's really inspiring.
 
Thanks, Hutch! We actually got the 7D to replace our DVX as well, so we were very recently in the same boat.

The film was made in two days using friends as cast & crew. One of the great advantages of the 7D is low profile, speed, and mobility. It allowed us to work pretty fast using some basic lighting setups.

For sound, we used an AT shotgun mic into a Zoom H4N. I can't recommend this little gizmo enough. We have typically recorded our sound directly into the DVX using the same shotgun mic. There is simply no comparison. Get a Zoom H4N. You'll be glad you did.

The good points about the camera are the selective focus, the low-light sensitivity, the size and ease of use, and the interchangeable lenses. And of course, the sheer beauty of the images.

The ONLY bad point about the camera that comes to mind, IMO, is the codec. It stands up surprisingly well, even on a big screen, but it's still highly compressed and dumps a good amount of color. But even that limitation has work-arounds. I've not tried the Nanoflash solution, but I hear some very positive things about it.

Also, jello-cam to some extent, but that's a drawback of all CMOS chips, including the Red. And the form factor is not conducive to hand-held, but that is easily remedied with a good shoulder mount and/or IS lens.
 
dvxhutch, thanks! I'm the co-director.

Overall, I'm in love with the 7D. It's a perfect camera for narrative work for the web and smaller screens (though we did see our movie projected on about a nine foot screen, and it held up great). We color graded in Apple Color and were really impressed how the footage (converted to ProRes) withstood the process. In some shots the color does fall apart, but I'm confident we can fix those problems by being more careful in the shooting. This was a very fast shoot, just to test the camera, and we learned some lessons.

The camera has its negatives. The jello cam is no joke. It's real, it limits what the camera can do. Forget shaky handheld shots. The H264 codec is a compromise. And you can consider the camera's sound capabilities useless. But the thing is, this is an $1800 camera. If you get a nice zoom lens and maybe some primes, you'll be around the same price as the DVX when it came out, and this camera produces far superior images. It isn't a good camera for documentaries or I'd think weddings, but it's perfect for filmmakers who know they're not going to film or broadcast. I consider the 7D and its ilk a good stop-gap between prosumer HD cameras and high end digital cameras like the Red. The Red is priced to rent. This thing you can own and shoot until your head falls off.

I definitely recommend the 7D as an upgrade from the DVX or HVX.
 
Very well done, i enjoyed the twists and turns, and pacing was good enough to keep me watching throughout. Very good blocking and editing throughout the scnees with more actions (garage etc..)

My only gripe, was when he was on the phone about the address, you could tell his iphone was at the home screen and not on a call. Even then its BARELY even noticable, and i probably only caught it because i have the phone, and ive done scenes with it in some ways, so i wondered if you actually made a call when he was talking or just faked it.

keep it up, hope to see more
 
Thanks, Rakesh.

I was wondering if someone was going to catch that, Jon! :) If we'd had time, I would have gone in and fixed the screen. But this was just a test of the camera, so we let it go.
 
I watched this late last night shortly after you posted, but never replied.

First, thank you for taking the time to test you camera with a narrative. The montage clips are beautiful and fun to watch, but having a good three minutes of real story is (unfortunately) at a premium here.

And at that, you did a rather nice job with it! I really enjoyed watching it and I actually preferred the color grading. It was subtle, but actually helped the story along rather than crushing it.

Thanks to everyone involved and congratulations!
 
Thanks a lot guys for the great info! (and I like the Stanrick Kubley reference!)

Your film, even though it was shot fast, really checks all the boxes - interesting and amusind premise well executed, well acted, great sound and, of course, terrific looking images.

I'm going to rent a 7d next week just for a day or two to film the 2nd unit exterior wides, and I'll experiment with the actors as well. Any advice? How much can you record on an 8GB or 16GB card, or can you record direct to your hard drive? And is monitoring easily set up?

For sound, we used an AT shotgun mic into a Zoom H4N. I can't recommend this little gizmo enough. We have typically recorded our sound directly into the DVX using the same shotgun mic. There is simply no comparison. Get a Zoom H4N. You'll be glad you did.
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By this do you mean the H4N is a lot smaller and easier to use and you don't have the annoyance of being plugged into your camera, or that it records a much better QUALITY of sound? I don't know much about the technicalities of audio, but someone explained to me once something about the DVX not having the best "preamps" and that I should get an external recording device. The sound in your vid sounds so professional, did you do anything to it in post?

Sorry for all the questions, but watching this vid and the one Philip Bloom shot for George Lucas has got me so excited about this camera. I hardly shoot handheld, just dollies and sticks, so this seems like a perfect option.

Can't wait to see your next project with it!
 
dvxhutch said:
Any advice? How much can you record on an 8GB or 16GB card, or can you record direct to your hard drive? And is monitoring easily set up?
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An 8GB card holds approx 24 minutes of 1080p footage. Plenty for us for this particular project. Our first day just happened to shoot in an office at our post facility, so we just dumped that day's footage onto the SAN and formatted the card for the next day's shoot.

Monitoring should be easy in theory, but we didn't have a monitor on hand. Any monitor with HDMI inputs will work, which means you could get a 19" computer monitor, properly calibrated, for about $150 and be good to go. Obviously you won't get metering or histograms, but for checking the overall composition and focus, it's a great solution.

You can also feed the HDMI input into a Nanoflash drive for recording uncompressed video instead of the h264 compression that the 7D uses natively. I know very little about this device, however, but the potential sounds amazing.

EDIT: The Nanoflash is not compressed. But it does record at a much higher bitrate and color space than the native h264 format of the 7D.


By this do you mean the H4N is a lot smaller and easier to use and you don't have the annoyance of being plugged into your camera, or that it records a much better QUALITY of sound?
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Both.

The sound in your vid sounds so professional, did you do anything to it in post?
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Thanks! We didn't do anything special. Just sound editing and mixing in Soundtrack Pro and Final Cut Studio. I did have to correct a few levels, and the parking garage was a nightmare, but nothing out of the ordinary really.
 
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I just dont like the sound ,sounds like it was recorded in some regular room ,theres too much tiny reverb in it.
Yeah sound is not up to par with picture quality.Too much reverb and echoing.
 
Hey, nice work. Have you tried shooting flat then trancoding to apple prores later to do color correcting. I have great success with color using this process.
 
reem12 said:
Hey, nice work. Have you tried shooting flat then trancoding to apple prores later to do color correcting. I have great success with color using this process.
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That was exactly our workflow. :) The first thing we did after transfering from the card was transcode everything to ProRes using Compressor. It stayed in ProRes the rest of the way, including the grading in Color.
 
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