Hello everybody,

we've just finished our first music video shot using our homemade mini35 adapter for the Sony HDR-FX1 (pal). It was a long but well prepared 2 and a half days shoot with a crew of only 4 with the help of some friends (catering,...). Basically, we did everything from pre-production to post. This music video is for a belgian singer and it's going to be aired on many music TV channels here like MCM,... maybe even on MTV France. Yeah, we know, the content is quite "commercial" but it was a great experience, low budget like always but it was a real fun.

We did buy the FX1 end of December and decided to go for it. Not enough time for advanced testing, we went directly to the shoot: two days indoor, then one half day exterior. We shot in a small bar, by small we mean it, it's an old european house in the center of Brussels. Actually, it was a good thing we were only 4 because there were a lot of people on the set, we had to move quickly so everyone ended up being director, dp, gaffer, grip,...

About lighting, we had a Lowel 1000w Tota, Lowel 650w Omni, Ianbeam 800w, our trusty el'cheapo 500w halogen lamps and few hand-painted colored light bulbs (40w and 150w). We did use some homemade reflectors, 2nd hand gels and diffusers,...

We did use 3 lenses, a Sigma 20mm 1.8, a Nikor AF-D 50mm 1.8 and a Nikor AF-D 85mm 1.8. We shot wide open all the time and did use some close-up diopters (+1 +2) to get some real shallow depth-of-field effects.

The asa rating of our camera setup was around 100-125 at a shutter of 1/50 0db gain so we needed a lot of light. It wasn't easy at all getting the right amount of light and a good control of the final aspect. We had to run cables everywhere because of the weak electric setup of the house,...it was fun..

The focusing was tricky too, all we had was some cheap 5.6'' LCD Car Monitor and a 14'' CRT Sony TV we had to place upside down to get the picture reversed. Please children, don't try this at home, you'll get mad asking if the person you are shooting is in focus or not ;-)

Then, we went for the exterior, wasn't much easier... sky was quite gray and we wanted to use some artificial lighting too. We're lucky to get three 2kw Fresnel Lights for free but it wasn't enough so we did use everything we had. We did warm up all the lights by at least a 1/2 CTO and used filters on the camera (ND gradient Cokin P filter).

We did capture the rushes using ConnectHD from Cineform. Then converted everything to DV (and flipped the picture). We edited in DV in Premiere Pro 1.5. Later on, we did import the premiere project in Adobe After Effects 6.5 and replaced the DV footage by the HDV footage. We did the color correction, effects,...in uncompressed HD and converted the final to uncompressed SD for final output to Digital Betacam.

Yeah, sure it wasn't perfect, we're still working a lot on the mini35, practice more cinematography,... but it was a hell lot of fun and a great human experience. Like we did for "Marla." (Just Facts: another guide to digital filmmaking), we're going to publish a new PDF guide based around the new mini35 and HDV workflow (from capturing to final output). It will be available on our website in the soon-to-be-online blog.

Our old team has split, new members are there, it's all new and fresh, we're called "the black sheep". Our goal is simply to make some movies and to share all we know and learn from it so we're really pleased to share our little experience here.

We hope you'll like it, if you have questions, just ask, we are here to answer ;-)



LINK:

http://www.originalversion.net/temp/larmiers.mov
http://www.theblacksheep.be/portfolio/music/02/larmiers.mov


Camera setup:

http://www.originalversion.net/temp/tbshdv35.jpg


Making of pictures:

http://www.originalversion.net/temp/makingof

Olivier et al,

Congratulations again guys - the images are stunning.
The only shame is that there wasn't room to get back a bit sometimes to give a sense of place, but like you said, it was a small building.
I note that you've graduated from supporting the camera on a plank of wood!
I hope that the video gets an airing on MTV France - there's no reason for it not.

Wel done...

Regards,

Robin

guys this so beautiful . this is just the point of all the work done here. you have put together a professional video from homemade indie tools.

keep up the great work!

what kind of GG you used?
can you pass a single tiff frame - just to see how it looks.

thank you,

filip

That looks great - is it a static device? It looks really small, which is great...I would love to see the device by itself as well!

Great Footage! that goes to show how close we are getting to conufusing video with film. as for the gg i can see its static, mainly cuz up in the top i can see a small fiber of some sort. same thing i get with my aldu35 adapter. its a pain to try and clean every single particle out of the lens. nearly impossible.

I really liked it!
One little question.
Sometime you see something like lens flare (like 1:10/some grey spots).
Is it lens flare/ how did it get there?
Was it intentionally (left there)?

Thank you so much for the nice comments !

The MINI35 we used is a static device. The GG is a homemade one (sigma UV EX 50mm, alu oxyde 1000). We'll post more pictures and full frame pics real soon. We're currently working on the PDF guide, it'll take some time before it's released but it'll be as complete as possible.

We had some troubles with flares, we had 3 +4 macro diopters on the FX1,. A lot of glass produce a lot of internal flares. We didn't have a mattebox or even flags to cut the light, sometimes it did look good, sometimes we just had to leave it and go forward.

Thanks again guys !!

Looks great at web cam resolution !
Care to post 5 seconds of 1280 x 720 media9 at 9 megabit/sec data rate ? That's what it would look like on an HD DVD. A slow panning shot would be best.
Thanks!
-Les

We're sorry, we knew we wouldn't have an HD broadcasting, so we prefered to use the HD rez to reframe some shots,...and make sure the SD version looks great.

So at the final, we went back to SD for final tweaking, we can post few seconds of MPEG2 SD if you want.

On our future short films projects, we'll stay at full HD rez for sure, this time we we're a bit short in terms of rendering time and hard-disk space.

hi guys you might want to try this.
the 1500 grit difusser is the finest grain I have found yet .

I saw the $35,000 ps tecknik first hand ,and the ground glass they use in not even close , to the opto sigma 1500. the ps tecknik used glass that looked like 300 grit .


http://www.optosigma.com/miva/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=OS&Product_Code=pg211&Category_Code=Filters+%26+Apertures
to keep the dust out I have been using compressed air.
and this anti static brush. I have been scanning black and white negatives on a scanner, this brush was the only thing that worked. the negatives are even more sensitive to dust than our static adapters . I think the best price for this was $17@ adorama in N.Y.C . http://www.rolyn.com/html/page_12__vid_1004__catid_42__companyid_64329__lineid_1145__.html

Richard,

I didnit quite understand. Is the OptoSigma better or worse that what's in the mini35?

Thanks,
Josh

this is a still from a static adapter with 1500 opto sigma glass.
It is shot with a lousy 1 chip camera. the focal length problem was solved in the next version you have to get the distance from the lens and the ground glass within 1mm.

http://www.dvinfo.net/media/mellor/PDVD_540.BMP

this is the adapter. that is not a hotspot that realy is the lighting.

http://www.dvinfo.net/media/mellor/aldu-test-44.jpg

thank you again for the clip guys.

I think you have proved that the technical limitations of the
static adapter .can be worked into the artistic vision you are seeking to create.

Thanks for the nice video and adapter.. Makes me think about using a static adapter when I seen this... WOW

Olivier,

Nice photography.

Do you use condenser? What kind? How close to screen? What side of screen?

Radek

That's very nice work olivier, olan, quentin & adil! I noticed that you guys are in Belgium - so am I, so if you need an extra set of hands (I have both a left and right one), for holding lights, duct-taping random things to other random things, or for just reading that David Lynch book you seem to have on set, let me know. Check out this site to see some of my work: www.newshots.tk. Ciao!

Thanks a lot everybody !

we did use a 50mm diameter/50mm length condenser from General Optiques in Paris, wasn't that great. Since the shoot, we tried a GG and condenser from OptoSigma, they're way better.

Thanks a lot Han too, we went our your website, really nice stuff ! We won't forget you if we need help.

Here's a link to full-res SD grabs: http://www.originalversion.net/temp/sdgrabs

They weren't edited in any way, they're straight out from the uncompressed SD master in After Effects. We just added the logo and exported in JPEG (quality: 10).

Thanks again,

the black sheep
creative film video & photography
www.theblacksheep.be

Besides the slight distortion/loss of colour, you got it set. Those stills looks nice.

Great job, Olivier! The editing and effects are very creative and unobtrusive.

What is the purpose of using a condenser and what does it do?


Thanks!

Yes, nice video! Without wanting to bring the thread off topic, I know there are many threads here regarding 35mm adapters. Are there any sites that are good to go to get a consolidated set of info on them? There are thousands of posts, lots of experimental stuff etc, that seems silly to have to wade through to get to the current information.

Cheers
Aaron

thanks very much!

the condenser helps reducing the hotspot effect by concentratring the light into the camera basically, some other members of the board could explain this way better than me.

Thanks, Olivier.

Which condensor did you use?

http://www.optosigma.com/miva/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=OS&Product_Code=pg85&Category_Code=Spherical+Lenses

And which way did you point it, with the curved side toward the Sony or toward the 35mm film lens?

Also which side of the GG was it on, the camera side or the 35mm lens side?


Thanks, we are all enjoying reading about this one!

I really think a lot of the professional quality of this video is thanks to FANTASTIC lighting. It's an art in itself and something I really want to learn how to do.