I'm wondering if the people who will go see Tangerine are going to think that something is wrong with it because it was shot with an Iphone?

If they like the film, they will overlook the fact that it looks like those TV shows shot on early digital cameras. And let's be clear here: the use of the iPhone was for a much smaller footprint in Los Angeles, which is notorious for clamping down on filming without permits.

Even though I believe that filmmakers should thrive to create the best photography they can, I'm wondering if the people who will go see Tangerine are going to think that something is wrong with it because it was shot with an Iphone?

I would watch any Iphone shot movie that has a great story over a movie like "run all night" which was shot on a Arriflex with Liam Neeson which I saw recently and made me fell asleep twice (seriously) in the cinema and the only reason why I watched it out to the end was because my daughter woke me up me twice.

IQ is not the only important thing but I do have to say I much prefer the look a Arri or Alexa or whatever real filmcamera can achieve, it's the way they can make the color look, the way the camera can deal with high contrast scenes, the way it never seems to clip any highlights. It's a certain look that is hard to explain but when you see it you know it is not shot with a camera that any of us will ever be able to use, and even if we would, we would probably not know how to grade the footage in a way it will get the "cinematic" look everyone seems to be achieving.

The bmpcc can give give you a glimpse of such a look but only in the hands of a experienced shooter and colorist, that might explain why I see so many films that just look weird and with only a handfull that give me that "feeling" I get when I watch a film in the cinema.

I"m sure I won't be getting anything close to that special look but I certainly will be trying :)

I"m sure I won't be getting anything close to that special look but I certainly will be trying :)

Practice!

Hi Noa

Just wondering how you're doing with the BMPCC

Haven"t had the time to shoot anything with it, I have some projects with a deadline which I have to finish first and right after that I plan to take it out again.

A neighbor has a BMCC and I tried it on his girlfriend as she walked in the neighborhood, which is the woman in the clip. I've never played with Resolve before this and don't own a BMC myself. This is my first try with the cam and the software.
Down rez to 1080p show in raw.
I'm glad I've tried it and frankly considering that I don't think it's looking great I understand I have a looong way to go learning how to process the BMC footage if I ever decide to get one myself. Frankly unless I was going to shoot a feature length narrative I don't think I'll bother with one of those BMC ever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEJ9uLNph_s&feature=youtu.be

I got Resolve when I got the BMCC. I think the hardest part of using it is that it doesn't act like "normal" PC Software - probably due to it's roots as a stand a dedicated workstation. I haven't updated to 12 yet and it might be better in that regard.The simple color correction isn't that hard, and I think you can do it in most good NLE's now.

Or shoot in Video (instead of "film" mode) to start out.

I rather like mine but there's no way it's a hand held camera without investing in a cage with a shoulder mount extension etc at a minimum.

Definitely not a hand held cam.
Now be honest and I won't take it personally, what do you think of the footage?

Hi Larry

Well (and I'm far from an expert and most of my usage is locked off on a tripod as an overview camera for classical orchestra recording)

1) It was handheld = shaky. Stabilizing in post would help a lot if you cut out the shakiest parts. Of course a shoulder mount would help too.

2) It's still pretty flat - I think it can use more work in Resolve (or equivalent) to bring up the color/contrast. I see enough distinct shadows and blue sky in the clip to think it wasn't as overcast/flatly lit as the clip would suggest. Of course I could be wrong (as usual!!!)

I'n still in the early stages with Resolve myself - I think so far the best tutorials I've found were by Warren Eagles. I haven't seen one for Resolve 12 yet, - still watching the Resolve 10 tuts and they're damned good.

Jim,
Yes, it is flat. But I guess in my mind film is flatter than video. But yes, I have a huge amount of work to do it I want to get the best out of that cam. I still don't own it, but I'm going to have the chance to use footage from my neighbor's cam and play with it.
Here's the last attempt: Test with Betty - YouTube

Is that better?

larry-

"is it better?"

you chose a very high contrast scene to "test" the bm.

i thought the white of the snow was dead-on.

have you checked your scopes to see if it is legal?

(looks legal but could be close)

i think the young lady in scene has skin tone which is okay, it looked normal.

again, the sunlight cast a shadow and is so harsh.

there is plenty of blue and subtly in the sky to the right of frame.

and when she leaves frame that breath of red in her clothing also appears very natural.

i am no blackmagic guru or even user.

but i am a VERY interested bm lurker who is oh so close to leaping on one of the blackmagic cameras.

i just don't know if i should wait till autumn and the release of all that was shown at nab 2015 or buy a bmpcc for $500 and play around.

that said, i think you are on the right track.

thumbs up.

ymmv

be well.

rob
smalltalk productions/nyc

Thanks Rob.

I don't know if you can buy bmpcc for $500 anymore, I think that deal is gone!

PS: What you call young lady is my 70 year old neighbor, the wife of the guy to whom the cam belongs!

Hi Larry

The snow looks right on as Rob said, and skin tone looks OK.

I think it's "better" (whatever that means, since everyone has their own idea of good better best. You can play with this stuff forever so it's really a matter of what you WANT it to look like. To my (admittedly aging) eye(s) it looks more like I imagine it was. Bright, contrasty, but not (I think) blown out.

Looking at it again, it seems like the front of the house behind her MIGHT be on the verge of blown out - maybe dialing it back a "skosh" would be a good idea.

Best idea would be to shoot a variety of scenes with the camera. Maybe you can hold onto it under the guise of protecting it/checking it out for the owner.

I wonder what there is about the BMCC that appeals to us 70+ individuals?

Jim,
I think you're right about the front of the house. I realize I got the snow right, for some reason.

Ok, I"m going to see if I can play more with his camera and see how I do. I'm happy to have the opportunity to be able to actually play with somebody's cam before buying mine. I guess if I can't get something decent out of it through Resolve I might as well save the money!

Good luck!

The way I look at Black Magic is that they don't sell cameras, they sell boxes with a sensor and recorder and you get to buy all the bits and pieces needed to turn the box into a camera. My C-100 out of the box is actually a complete camera, not so my BMCC and BMPCC's.

But having said all that, you can get VERY good results with the BM products. Takes a bit of work, but when you get it down it's worth it IMHO.

And Resolve is great - strange interface due, I think, to it's history as a stand alone workstation. I'll be really interested to get my hands on Resolve 12 in a couple of months.

See if you can find the Warren Eagles tutorials. I got mine from FXPHD. I don't know that he distributes them any other way but I'm pretty impressed with them.

To keep things in perspective, check this footage, and check which cam did that!

Cadereyta Promotional on Vimeo

As in the guy behind the camera is more important than the camera itself?

I still use my JVC HD 110 - although I've chickened out and record to a Ninja-2 instead of tape.

And I still get great results from my 110 year old wooden 8x10 film camera with a 120 year old lens on it.

To keep things in perspective, check this footage, and check which cam did that!

Cadereyta Promotional on Vimeo (https://vimeo.com/8016557)

But this is a thread about the bmpcc, not the xh-a1 :)

I understand, Noa, but if somebody had retrieved that footage from online, remove all references and post it here as footage from one of the BMC, nobody would have been able to tell it was not. Nobody would have been able to tell that it was actually produced by a cam shooting 1440x1080 made in 2006.
That's my point and it is relevant to the BMC.

I still don't understand what the xh-a1 has to do with the pocket cam, I can find gopro 4 footage shot in 4K that under the right circumstances will look better then what a xh-a1 can produce, but what would I be proving with that? I have shot for several years with a xh-a1 and know very well what it can do, it can produce some nice images in good light and also some very ugly ones in not so good light, the xh-a1 is no match when it comes to dynamic range if you compare it with a pocket camera once you start shooting and grading in raw, there is no comparison. Every camera has it's pro's and cons, in the right hands and under the right conditions any camera today can look good, the trick is to show what a camera can do best and to work around it's limitations.

The footage from a pocket cam can be pushed further then any other camera in it's price range, the secret seems to be able to know how to get beyond that point where most other camera's give up. That's why I find so much footage from Black magic camera's that don't look good and just a handful that does as many people just don't know how to shoot and edit with this camera and it's based on that footage other people, including you, think you might as well be shooting with a xh-a1.

I probably won't be able to get the best from the pocket cam either but I most certainly am going to try to make an attempt very shortly, and it's not going to be some handheld footage from my garden or cat. :)

I think some people may be missing the advantage the BMPCC has over many other cameras. It's not simply how good but how much control you have.

With the BMPCC recording in ProRes flavors and especially in cDNG, you control the look. You can grade it any number of ways, not break the codec and, create any number of looks.

I think a telling test, rarely done, is to take the same video and create two entirely different looks and show that each looks good. That's the thing you can do with the BMPCC that you can't do with other cameras.

With a good DP, most cameras can look good, knowing how to work within the limits of the codec, dynamic range, noise floor, color science. With the BMPCC you have just about the widest door to make changes in post of any camera on the market.

Whether the BMPCC is the right camera for you depends on how important the post grading control is for you.

Sure, both comments are fair.
I don't feel bad not having done a good job with the BMCC as I don't own one to play with it at leisure.
But what Noa says is very intriguing: "That's why I find so much footage from Black magic camera's that don't look good....."
I'm not sure what this means, but I too haven't seen any footage I like shot with any of the BMC, as a matter of fact. I've seen amazing stuff shot with a GH4.
I understand what you are both saying, but I'm wondering if most people are simply not just "wasting" money buying that cam. Wouldn't it be better to download the free version of Resolve, learn how to become a colorist, them buy the cam?

I'm not sure what this means

That means many don't know how to color correct footage from a bmpcc, or they think they do and call it "cinematic".

Exactly - +1!!!!!

It is perhaps useful to recall that when the BMPCC was first offered for sale the loud and pulsating headline was '13 stops of dynamic range'. Of course the file format meant that pushing and pulling things around in post, serious color grading, was doable. That was way back when Grant Petty didn't have any grey hair, perhaps a couple of years or more ago. It is fair to suggest that Black Magic was targeting the would-be movie maker, or at least the videographer including the home and garden variety, the same way that Panasonic did when they introduced the DVX100 cam that shot 24p can you believe (which of course was all that you needed to make movies just like you see at the movies).

That was way back when Adam was a cowboy.

Things have changed dramatically from a technology point of view. Today even point and shoot cams sport high bit rate XAV-C and relatively decent dynamic range. Every day, it seems, Sony do what they never did in the past; they issue firmware updates and quicker than you can say Jack Robinson.

The BMPCC is not all that unique all of a sudden. Seems to me folks who are fluent with capable grading software can push and pull footage from most any cam including a state-of-the-art cell phone and produce 'art', sort of.

And what with the action cam craze (I refuse to say GoPro), selfies and such like, who cares about making movies anymore! It's for Facebook, YouTube and sharing on cell phones, stupid.

How things have changed, and continue to change...

So when it comes right down to it what is it that the BMPCC brings to the table that is so special these days?

Nostalgia perhaps!

So when it comes right down to it what is it that the BMPCC brings to the table that is so special these days?


The bmpcc offers what Panasony and Canikon doesn't,
13 stops of dynamic range
Raw plus high bitrate codes
Great color
At a really low price.

Still unbeatable. If you haven't tried you won't know but once you get used to raw there is no going back to avchd, h.265 or that brittle XAV-C.

I've yet to see footage from a gh4 or Sony a7s that gets close to Blackmagic, red and so on.
Canon is decent with the c100 but the codec and DR isn't up to speed imo.

For what it offers at the price it's hard to beat it.

John, that was a very interesting post.
Mattias, I've seen your video online and you do say in one of them that you are not actually making film.
What am I saying this?
Well, if you're just going to have fun with a BMPCC and not really make movie, but just 2' clips, sure, you can handle to shoot raw as you film your dog. You're not really facing all the issues and headaches this cam could give you.
If you're going to shoot a low budget that last 90 minutes on screen and you choose to shoot raw, seems to me you'll need a very decent computer and around 15TB of hard drive. Do the math.
Now I've just had a brief glance at what the BMPCC can do, yes, it's great but frankly I've reached an age where I don't really care about the sky being blow out or not being able to see the cat in the shadow. Content, content, content.
I'll watch Death and the Maiden shot on VHS or an Iphone anytime, as long as Ben Kingsley and Sigourney Weaver are still cast in it and it's still directed by Polanski. I'll watch Duel if Spielberg shoots with an Iphone.
That was shot with a GH4, and yes, Noa, this is indeed relevant to the BMPCC as we are now debating if that cam is really justified for the tiny bit of DN range it's going to bring. Most people who are not in the business of comparing cams, will, when they watch that short, bother about the story, how fun it is and won't realize anything about dynamic range. At one point a certain amount of headache should justify a big return, and I'm not sure this is the case with the BMPCC or any other BMC in the hands of 99% of the people who buy it.
Le Cas GH4 - A mini epic in 4K on Vimeo

I've reached an age where I don't really care about the sky being blow out or not being able to see the cat in the shadow. Content, content, content.

Why waste your time then talking about camera's, start your own thread about anything content related. You won't convince me I made a bad choice buying the camera, I"m sure I will have fun with it, not while shooting weddings, for that I have other camera's, including a GH4, but to waste my free time and harddrive space on raw footage from that little box with a sensor. :)

Also, that video you linked to, what I find most impressive is it was written in an hour and shot in 1,5 day, something I would not be able to do, but that's the only good part about it, the only thing I see when I start watching this is overexposed, out of focus images and bad sound and that made me stop watching after 2 minutes, this is not exactly a good example of what the gh4 can do and since I didn't feel like watching it completely the content was also not able to convince me either.

Whether I shoot in Raw or ProRes or whatever, I spend about the same amount of time grading so the only difference to me is how big an SSD I need to stuff in the BMCC (or how many .5TB SSD's). I already have several fast computers because I also do CGI and some of the renders run for a week or two on two or three machines - in fact I have my eye on a couple of used12-core MacPro's to add to the "local render farm"

Image quality is very important to me (maybe because I'm really a Large Format film stills photographer branching out into video in my waning years.) I shoot classical music performances so the "content" that I have to depend on to keep people glued to their seats is the music itself - I just have to be sure that the audio and video (in that order of course!) enhance rather than detract from the performance.

And yes, I'm crazy enough to spend hours grading footage of our cat!

Sort of way out in left field topic wise, but the only TV we watch is Japanese NHK via satellite, and they have a series running where some retired Japanese cameraman travels around the world filming cats on the street. Greece, Turkey, Italy - just cats! How he gets such great cat footage is a mystery to me. Cats on walls, under cars, on windowsills. Every time I point a camera at our cat she runs away or pounces on the camera!

John, that was a very interesting post.
Mattias, I've seen your video online and you do say in one of them that you are not actually making film.


I've made a good living shooting/producing video, radio and TV-broadcast for the last 15 years.
Now maybe the productions with about 100 000 000 viewers world wide isn't something as fancy as "film", I still think I'm allowed to give my opinion on a forum.

And you do absolutely not have to agree with me in any way.

But please, we have never met, you have no idea about my life nor I of yours. So let's stick to what we know and give opinions based on our self, not others.

My first more serious attempt to shoot and edit raw footage, dealing with raw in post is very timeconsuming and I"m not satisfied yet with the output as I noticed very fine aliasing, still need to find out what codec to use when I export from after effects. My workflow was to import the raw dng into after effects and colorcorrect in adobe raw, then export to canopus hqx avi and edit further in Edius, only that export to hqx avi does not seem to work very well, need to find another solution there.

My impression so far shooting with the pocketcam, it is worth shooting in raw for me, I have tried to colorcorrect prores but have a hard time getting good results, in raw however colorcorrecting is much easier but also much more timeconsuming.
The level of control is addictive, there were some very harsh shadow/highlight contrast in my video but I was able to balance that in post, something my GH4 would not allow me to achieve.

Only shooting itself is not exactly fun, I only shot for max 10 seconds per clip to save time in post when I had to render out the footage, I had a loupe with me for the screen yet I had several clips that where not in focus (I let the camera prefocus but I should have used the peaking as well on all shots)
Not being able to tilt the screen makes it impossible for me to shoot from low angles.
I only turned on the camera when I knew what to shoot, took my shot and turned the camera off, in total I managed to get 12 minutes worth of footage on one battery.
Setting exposure is a bit tricky, I used the zebra's set to 95% and just changed exposure until the zebras where gone in the image which worked well for some shots but not so well on others, this can result in getting more noise in your image, will have to experiment more on that.

This is a camera that I only will be using when I have a lot of time to setup, when there is a script so I know exactly what to shoot, when my shots are very short and for occasions where I will be dealing with shots that require a good balance between light and dark, shooting inside building with lots of backlight from windows should be easy for this camera to handle. Now I need ot find the time to figure out a better workflow :)



bmpcc raw on Vimeo

Well done Noa, very nice. On my screen there is a yellowish tint and it is a tad soft as one might expect. Glad that you are enjoying the process. It was definitely worth buying, eh :-)

Cheers...

John

Yeah, I did not get the color exactly right but I noticed many bmpcc clips have that yellowish tint, they all probably, just as I, don't know how to colorcorrect :D That tint should be easy to correct though in Edius but I it's not that I dislike the way it is now.

But I have to say, it's not bad for a first serious try, and that it's a bit soft, that's because we all are spoiled with 4K these days.

I get that yellowish tint working with ProRes so it comes with the sensor, perhaps, as does the softness. I found sharpening in Vegas Pro worked just fine where it was appropriate. Clearly pin sharp is not always appropriate and I agree; 4k is something else in that regard.

I would go so far as to say for a first attempt it is more than just not bad but in fact is damn good! Lovely subject matter too.

I had my wife take a look, she doesn't do video at all but has a canon 60d which she extensively uses for photos, I always show her my personal work and this is the first time she said the color looked weird, I"m going to have another go at it the following days to color correct so it looks more natural.

Made some changes, not directly in after effects with adobe raw but shifted the color a bit in Edius and added a bit more punch to the footage, I feel it looks better now.
I"ll go out one of the following days to shoot side by side with my gh4 so I have a better idea how big the difference can be and how much it's worth to shoot in raw, too bad I didn't have my gh4 with me at the time of this shoot, the very first shot of that lady sewing at that table it was very dark where I was standing and the window was very harsh in contrast yet I managed to balance the shadows and highlights pretty well, would like to have seen how my gh4 woud handle such a shot.

[QUOTE I feel it looks better now.[/QUOTE]

Totally agree :-)

I have to say it's pretty good! Good job!

Nice Job, Noa.

Re Workflow:

My understanding is that RawPro4, assuming you have loaded the Cineform codec available with the GoPro Studio app, will convert raw footage to Cineform raw.

I actually have the last Cineform paid for version, but I saw Jake Seagrave indicate that Cineform's raw codec is available with the free GoPro Studio app.

Thx :) Chris, would I not loose the easy grading ability with Cineform raw? When I colorcorrect the raw dng's in aftereffects with adobe raw it takes just one click on "auto" to have a good starting point to tweak the image further, it only takes time because you need to correct every single shot in that way and not to mention the very long render times to get a editable file. I have seen that edius will be getting raw support in coming updates but I doubt it will have the same color correction tools like adobe raw has.

Noa:

Cineform Raw, like other raw codecs, is designed to preserve the raw benefits of latitude, etc.. With Cineform, after conversion, you can go into Studio and apply a base color correction that essentially carries over in the original file. You can choose a lut, as well as input and output settings, add sharpness and contrast, etc, And, with the original file on a time line in your editor, you can go back to studio, make a further change, or just return the file to its original settings, and it will instantly change in the editor.

On other hand, you can also download and use Davinci Resolve Lite from Black Magic, which is a high end color correction tool.

Thx, I tried resolve but it looks to complicated for my use, I do have gopro studio though and will experiment with the cineform raw to see if that works better.

Yeah, I agree with the complicated part of Resolve, but I think things will become a bit more familiar in the next version.

I just got an email from Raw4Pro which explains that it now has the Cineform codec free:

"We have received a number of inquiries from people who don't quite believe that RAW 4 PRO v4.4.1 comes with completely FREE CineformRAW.

This is understandable, given the fact that CineformRAW was selling for about $500 for some years.
However it's true - you can get it completely free (no additional charge) with RAW 4 PRO now. We tested CineformRAW output up to 4K.

This is in addition to ProRes on Windows, H264, and DNxHD outputs.
RAW 4 PRO accepts compressed or uncompressed DNG input, as well as JPG timelapse folders. All Blackmagic cameras supported. Odyssey 7Q RAW DNG supported. Reads and syncs D16's AIF audio."

FYI, I was involved in testing early on, but I have no financial interest in Raw4Pro.

I think (hope) Chris is right. What puts me off about Resolve is that it doesn't act like a normal PC program - you have to preset the directory you'll use and you can't add clips to the directory while the program is open (you can add them but it won't see them.) It only runs full screen, you can't minimize it (have to completely close it) etc. The actual operation of the program isn't so confusing, just the logistics around getting it running and aiming it at your media. It still smells like a stand alone workstation app, which it was.