Balloons By Paul Frederick On ExposureRoom (http://exposureroom.com/members/PFproductions.aspx/assets/2d50c8fc1dfe444e8f9a44928916b0ac/)

An epic style war film with....kids? That was the intention anyway! My kid and nieces and nephews wanted to make an action film. So I cooked up this idea on how it would work. Since no one is a professional "actor" I kept the dialogue to a minimum. Its about 8 minutes long.

Shot mostly in 1280x720 24p. Used alot of overcranking to 60 fps for the slo-mo action scenes.

Enjoy!

Very funny.... liked it.

Jon

That was awesome, great work!

Excellent job.

Beautifully shot and staged.

Editing is nice ,too.

And best of all, the kids look like they had a great time.

Nice closing line as well.

Very nice.

I appreciated the understated use of the Letus. Sometimes people abuse them, like several entries in our city's 48HFP last week where they tried to get zero DoF _all_the_time_ which is, to me, quite annoying ... when a single spot on an actor's cheek is in focus but not the nose or ears. As if having nothing in focus makes it look "more film-like".

With great power comes great responsibility. Well done. ;-)

-brooks

Wow,
looks like it would have taken a looooong time to shoot! Full marks to your kids, great performances. (working with mine is like photographing scared meercats...). And it looks great.
Loved it.

David.

Very fun video. If I was one of those kids, no doubt this type of video certainly would've been one of my summer highlights! Cool that you all took part in making it happen -- have they all asked for their own cameras and Final Cut Pro stations now?

Those colors look great. What were your PP setting with this?

Very nice.

I appreciated the understated use of the Letus. Sometimes people abuse them, like several entries in our city's 48HFP last week where they tried to get zero DoF _all_the_time_ which is, to me, quite annoying ... when a single spot on an actor's cheek is in focus but not the nose or ears. As if having nothing in focus makes it look "more film-like".

With great power comes great responsibility. Well done. ;-)

-brooks

I agree Brooks! I did have my Nikon F2.8 30-70 zoom lens wide open all the time, but it still holds the sharpness quite well, to really go crazy, I can put it in macro mode, then we're talking inches of focus!

Very fun video. If I was one of those kids, no doubt this type of video certainly would've been one of my summer highlights! Cool that you all took part in making it happen -- have they all asked for their own cameras and Final Cut Pro stations now?


My son is learning the trade pretty well (he's the one that pops out of the bushes!) but it didn't take the others long to start running over to the camera to see the playback of each take! (Gotta love the REC REVIEW button on the EX!). They say never work with kids and animals, well, I'd like to add never work with water balloons either! We had a heck of a time getting them to pop. The actual water balloons you buy don't get very big, but if you use real ones....they don't break too easily!

Nice one Paul great demo of composition framing editing

Well done.

Mark

Those colors look great. What were your PP setting with this?

Ryan,

Here's what I used...sort of a combination of what I found on here. For shooting people, I don't like the way skin turns "plastic" when the knee starts to kick in while using Cine-modes.

Here is what I used:

Matrix: On
High SAT
Level +20
Phase -4
R-G +75
R-B +0
G-R -17
G-B -31
B-R -26
B-G +12
Color Correction: off
White Offset: off
Detail: factory setting (Letus softens image enough)
Skin Tone detail: off
Knee: ON Auto Knee: ON Knee Sat level: 50
GAMMA: STD 4
Black: -5
Black Gamma: 0
Low Key Sat: 0

Hope this helps. I also did a little Magic Bullet Looks on a few shots that we shot as it was getting real dark one night to make it match. Mostly the stand off stuff at the end.

Also used the indiSlider for a few shots too!

Thanks for all the great comments!

And best of all, the kids look like they had a great time.

Nice closing line as well.

Thanks Bill. The kids didn't get the closing line but I thought it was fitting and could have a couple meanings!

Great fun, loved the timing and camera work.

Was expecting mum to get the final balloon.

Hi Paul

I really liked your film. The kids did a fantastic job, and I loved the colors, depth of focus and editing style. I particularly loved the pug as I have a gorgeous little female puggy who often sits there with her tongue sticking out like that!

I have an EX1 which gets a fair bit of use though I havent gotton around to testing out the over or under cranking function of the cam. Your film has motivated me to test it out!!

Cheers

Jamie

Thanks Jamie! You HAVE to try over and under cranking on the cam. Its one of the best features in my opinion. It's under S&Q motion in the menu. Set cam to 720p 24 or 30fps, then make the S&Q motion "on" and 60 FPS. SHoot away! Then hit rec review, and you have perfect slo mo!

I will give it a go! Thanks Paul