movies with cinemek G35, feedback please.
 

Hi, I posted my movies over in dv for masses but I barely got a response. I thought more people would be interested in 35mm adapter footage...:(
Anyway, here they are for what it's worth.

First is a short black comedy about a man contemplating suicide called "Perfect Day."
http://www.funkalicious.net/perfectday/perfectday.mov

The second is a parody music video of James Blunt-this is self explanatory. (we got a great response for this one, featured on vh1 best of the week blog)
http://blacklotuspro.trafikfilms.com.../emotional.mov

The third film is a noir style film called "Ginger" directed by myself.
http://www.trafikfilms.com/ginger/Ginger.mov

-Koa

Im downloading the james blunt one now. sounds funny.


alright, watched it. pretty funny. kinda sick, actually really sick. not something ill show other people for entertainment. haha

Just viewed the James Blunt video, funny stuff!

That James Blunt vid brilliant. Love the scene where he was masturbating. Ginger was excellent, love the colours.

....no comment... J/K =)

what cam was ginger shot on?

Hello,

Thank you very much for your comments! All the films were shot on an xl2, with the older 16xII lens(not the 20x). I'm still waiting for a relay lens, but it has done me lots of good:). So if you see a difference in image/color from film to film, this is just from color grading differences.

We just had our annual festival yesterday here at uc irvine, and 5 out of 6 films I dp'd for (G35&xl2) won awards including best overall. It also made my night when one of the judges told me she swore we shot on 35mm:)! Thank god for G35 I said. Sorry if the emotional video was offensive, but it does not even compare to what we are working on now...lol but of course as filmmakers I don't think we should worry too much about offending people.

Thanks, if anyone wants to share knowledge on camera settings, color grading and such, I would love to discuss...

-Koa

Yes, ginger colour grading? Did you use FCP? What matrix did you use?

Very impressive work. The 35mm adapter complements the chosen look very well (for example Ginger - soft look, shallow dof, technicolor style CC looks combined with the Sin City look)

I think it is a prime example of how a 35mm adapter can be used to support the story rather than simply hiding the video look.

By the way, the "emotional" video was indeed very funny.

Thanks Thomas, I appreciate the comments! As far as coloring, all I've been using is Graeme Nattress's plugs in FCP, the gfilm, and it's speedy and awesome-so many options. I have magic bullet but it just doesn't do it for me. I think he's with RED now and his plug is awesome, so I can't wait to see what he does for those guys. What do u mean by matrix? I don't know too much about tech terms...

but question, is it better to color on an uncompressed timeline? I always get some degradation when bouncing a file no matter what I try, and it get's so much worst when I try to make a dvd...

-Koa

i like the first one alot, its very true to life, even if theres seems to be some strange artifacts when i watch it - flickering of a cd if its on the adapter?

Thanks Tim!

The artifacts should be from the compression. I encoded it in mpeg4 "low" quality, so I apologize for that. How do they get the apple trailers to look so good?? So if there is flickering, it can't be from the adapter-mine is a static version.

man, my small bandwidth is killing me...

i think its about the codecs they use - mpeg is quite an old codec, so a newer one in theory would give better quality

i encoded a few vids in MP4 and i was quite happy with the quality,even at low bitrates

Apple uses the H.264 CODEC to encode their movie trailers. I've been told that the CODEC was developed to distribute high definition footage at 720p, 1080p, or 1080i over the internet at reasonable download sizes. The CODEC is a huge leap from Sorenson 3 (their are some minor bugs with it, however). The big plus to it is that you can have a larger movie file and better audio quality at the fraction of the file size of other compressors. The H.264 can convert audio to the AAC file extension -- the official iTunes music format -- during compression to have superior audio.

And you know what the most amazing part of it is? You can encode your files with the H.264 CODEC for just $30 if you upgrade your software to QuickTime Pro 7. I use the Canon XL2, and even though it is a SD camera, the web version of my footage look spectacular. I'd post some stuff if my website bandwidth wasn't so low. ;)

Yes. And if you have too much spare time, encode it on a shot-to-shot basis and glue it together.

G35
 

Hey koa, can you tell us your experience with the g35 adapter? Any problems, things that could be better?

Koa, you are using an older G35(static)?
and the Relay Lens?...
I have a letusXL35 with relay and it's quite wonderful...
Nice work

I've tried the h264 but it looks crappy... plus my computer is way too slow. Anyway it's the older static G35, I'm totally happy with it, and have been pushing it's limits constantly-it definitely holds up big time. I still think it's the sharpest one out there, the only one that I can see coming close is the Brevis-I like that one:), and I wish I had a relay lens-but as we learned in film history, limits are what allow for creativity. It squeezes the range into a nice curve I can work with, and the best thing is that I can really light the scenes which ever way I want. It's great, no complaints here, and my prof's think I shoot on 35mm:) One thing though, I will never shoot a narrative without a 35mm fov ever~ I want one of those red cameras!

Koa, what 35mm lenses did you use for your shorts?

Sound
 

What did you use for sound? It was pretty clean.

-rh

G35
 

How much did you pay for the G35 and when did you get it?