HD100/Mini35 Music Video Posted

[Nate Weaver]

So my big project that I talk about in thread:
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=53759

...is now officially released (or at least went live on Yahoo Music tonight), so I'm sure I can post it here now and not get in trouble: http://homepage.mac.com/nweaver/dirthouseext.html

If you don't have Quicktime installed, or are on a PC, here's the Yahoo Music link. You're looking for Static-X "Dirthouse" : http://music.yahoo.com/promos/premieres/

Many questions about the vid can be answered in the above DVInfo thread.

[Brian Duke]

With my earplugs in place the footage looks STUNNING!!! Amazing!!! Good job nate.

Would you share your settings on your camera? And if you did any post modification to the images? Such as Magic Bullet etc?

Again, GREAT job!

[Michael Maier]

Looks great Nate! You did an awesome job. Congratulations!
But was that shot with the so called defective camera? Hmmm, I wonder if you are magic or something? Did you go to wizard school by any chance? I could swear your video looked incredibly professional, well shot and just overall amazing! How could you turn that up using the defective camera? It was low light and I didn't even see the split screen.
From now on, I'm calling you Magic Nate or maybe just Nate Porter, or maybe Merlin Weaver :D

P.S. For those on a PC, I managed to play the video out of Nate's webpage. I decided to give it a try after yahoo kept on showing me the stupid commercials for nearly 5 minutes and never started the music video. The one on Nate's page is much bigger and higher resolution anyway, so don't waste your time with yahoo music. The Mac link works for PC too.

[Thomas Smet]

Very very nice. Is it possible to show us a tiny full rez clip or maybe a few screen shots?

You have really made this camera shine.

How did you feel working with the camera for this project? Did it fall short in some areas for you or did it work well throughout the production?

I'm sure you had some issues during editing since 24p from this camera isn't supported very well yet.

Again great job on the video. Any chance of me seeing it on MTV?

[Soroush Shahrokni]

Well done Nate. Is it possible to download the vid in full rez?

[Douglas Villalba]

Very nice work, Nate.
I must be getting old, I don't know if could have being there for more than a minute without going nuts with that music.
They say that it is all about the content and not the cinematography. I think that you just proved them all wrong.
Congrats,

[Nate Weaver]

Originally Posted by Brian Duke

Would you share your settings on your camera? And if you did any post modification to the images? Such as Magic Bullet etc?

Thanks Brian. The video was shot clean (without filtration). Pretty much all the camera settings were as stock, except for Black Stretch 3 and Tim's DVX color matrix. HDV-24P mode, 1/48th shutter on the normal performance stuff, 1/100th and 1/250th shutter when I wanted the flying dirt to stand out (the feet shots, some of the wides when it was falling).

I cut in FCP5, and used the 3-Way Color Corrector with mids swung warm, and the blacks swung to Cyan. Each shot had the black level tweaked individually to control just how much of the background I wanted to fade to black. There was no Magic Bullet, literally or figuratively.

[Nate Weaver]

Originally Posted by Thomas Smet

Very very nice. Is it possible to show us a tiny full rez clip or maybe a few screen shots?

I originally wanted to do this, but after doing a test h264 encode, I've decided not to, and I'll tell you why. In short, a full res h264 looks horrible on a PC screen for several reasons, but the full res AIC or uncompressed timeline looks tremendous displayed on my landlords 42" Sony Plasma, or my 14" HD CRT. The reasons are:

1-Since I shot with the Mini35, there was added grain in the image, especially in the almost blacks. Strike one against pure resolution.

2-All this added grain was then compressed by the HDV codec, which was about all the codec could take. The raw HDV looks merely ok.

3-I had to choose an AIC based post flow to get the job done. This means a recompress from already kinda grainy HDV to even more funked up AIC.

4-Add another recompress to h264, which can't handle all the grain. It looked really dookie.

But yet, after all that, the video still looks great on your average plasma HD display, because there's so much resolution rounding off on a consumer display. Same goes for my 14" HD CRT, but to a lesser extent.

The h264 viewed on my Apple Cinema Display exagerrated every macroblock, every flaw. When I go for the HDCAM output, I will be rendering an uncompressed 10-bit full res version for output so I will only have the effects of the HDV recompressed to AIC and that's it.

The biggest thing to remember is that my deliverable only needs to be SD Digibeta. I knew that even with all the above, an SD uncompressed timeline created from the color-corrected HDV clips would look great, and it did.

Originally Posted by Thomas Smet

How did you feel working with the camera for this project? Did it fall short in some areas for you or did it work well throughout the production?

The HD100 works for me. It'd be almost perfect if the viewfinder assembly was a little heavier built, and the LCDs were higher res. But even if they were of higher quality, you'd still have to know how to use peaking and focus assist to focus...there's no getting around that.

Nothing went wrong or wonky during the shoot. If you treat the camera like an overgrown DVX and with the same care, you'll be alright.

Originally Posted by Thomas Smet

Any chance of me seeing it on MTV?

Absolutely. MTV2 Headbangers Ball, I'm sure, plus others.

[Brian Duke]

Originally Posted by Nate Weaver

Thanks Brian. The video was shot clean (without filtration). Pretty much all the camera settings were as stock, except for Black Stretch 3 and Tim's DVX color matrix. HDV-24P mode, 1/48th shutter on the normal performance stuff, 1/100th and 1/250th shutter when I wanted the flying dirt to stand out (the feet shots, some of the wides when it was falling).

I cut in FCP5, and used the 3-Way Color Corrector with mids swung warm, and the blacks swung to Cyan. Each shot had the black level tweaked individually to control just how much of the background I wanted to fade to black. There was no Magic Bullet, literally or figuratively.

Hey Nate,

What lenses did you use?

I have own the same equipment you shot on and I am here in LA. Maybe we should connect somehow if you want. My email is duke@superbadmusic.com
I own the Mini35, HD100U, Chroszeil Mattebox and follow focus system etc.

Give me a shout if you want =)

[Carlos Rodriguez]

The footage looks clean. I think clean is a very good way to describe it. I like Static-X, I just saw them here in Modesto about 2 weeks ago. Great work!

[Robin Hemerik]

Great work!

Not my kind of music though, almost smashed my speakers out of the window ;)

[Duane Smith]

Beautiful work, Nate!

I'm not exactly a fan of Static-X, but I am quite familiar with them...mostly because Wayne Static has a wicked-cool Ford Early Bronco rockcrawler. He's a bit of a 'celeb' within the off-road community. :-)

But serriously tho, the video looks fantastic. Truly stunning camera work.

[Shannon Rawls]

HOTT video!!! Shut 'em down Nate!

- ShannonRawls.com

[Steev Dinkins]

I just got caught up with my HBBs on Tivo and saw the vid on there. Very cool!

http://www.holyzoo.com/000/images/ra...tatic_Nate.jpg

[Nate Weaver]

Hah! Thanks for the still.

I Tivo'd it myself, was really bummed at how bad the vid looked by the time it aired. Most of it due to the DirecTV MPEG-of-death.