One of the first short shot with F55 !

[Josselin Billot]

Hi,

I'm a french Dop and I'm happy to post and share my experience with you, i hope it be useful.

Our little film "Lucy From Paris" is one of the first independent short film shot with the Sony PMW-F55

Shot in Raw 4K at 25fps and 60fps with the Arri Ultraprime serie, edited in Premiere CS6 and graded in DaVinci Resolve 9.

This delirious film about an English girl landing in Paris is in fact the opportunity to test this camera on a real shooting, to show you what is possible to do with the F55 when it used by technicians who actually work in fiction.
The two 240fps high frame shots are made with the Red Epic because F55 can't do it at the moment ! At the best we can shot at 60fps in Xavc. Sony will update it in few months...

Tell us what you think about it !
A documentary on the footage will be available soon !

The video is here : Lucy From Paris - Test Sony F55 - Vimeo

Josselin Billot
DOP
Web Site

[Dennis Hingsberg]

Hi Josselin, congratulations on your short. It looks absolutely great. Probably the best skin tones and overall color balance I have seen shot on the F55 to date.

Can you comment at all on some of the lighting used, or possibly how you went about determining your exposure for working in RAW?

Many thanks,

[Alister Chapman]

+1 looks very good indeed.

Would love to see it in 4K on a big screen, now that would be something!

[Josselin Billot]

Thanks,

The lighting was relatively simple :
- For the party : all the background was "real light" from the apartment, with somes candles, light garland, and for the comedian a 800W quartz with XL chimera on backlight and a handmade "lantern" with modulars occulting parts (60w) for the key light. The senvibility of thr F55 is just great.
- For the intro and out, it's natural light (sun)
- For the outside part, we used a Joker 800 with CTO for the "sunrising effect"
- For the black studio part and slow motion we put 2x Joker 800 in backlight and one 1600 Alpha in key.

To determine my exposure in raw I used an Astro WM 3014 (waveform), and I expose the face between 50 and 60 on daylight condition and 40 and 50 during the party. When i'm not sur (changing condition) i used the "expose to the right" technique. In raw you can found more informations on the highlights than the lowlights.

Sorry for my english (I'm French...)

Sincerely,

Josselin Billot
DOP
Web Site

[John Richard]

Wonderful!
Great script, excellent production value, well acted - a joy to watch.

Can you talk about the grading decisions chosen and a little detail about the overall primary node grade.

Thanks for sharing.

[Dennis Hingsberg]

Josselin thank you so much for behind the scenes look at lighting, I am forever learning it.

[Josselin Billot]

Thanks Richard ! I'll tell that to the director ;)

For the grading chose, it's difficult to explain it in english, because I'm french and the vocabulary is very specific for this kind of work.

But as usual when you start from very flat raw, the first step is to give more power to the highlights and to turn the black on real black. Then we give a little bit of saturation. We didn't touch to the middle.

The main idea, because it was primarily a camera test, was to stay near from the F55 natural tones and contrast. So we try to not twist the raw ;) The main color effect were made directly on the set.

I'm working with a colorist, so I can't tell you exactly how he managed the nodes and all his tricks...

For the "golden tint" of the party we work at 4300K white balancing with 3200K lights.
And for the sunrising (there were no sun actually !) the colorist made several mask to create the sun and the cloud on the sun. On the set, the face were light up by a 5000K projector, with a 5500K white balancing.

I hope you will understand my words, and it will be informative for you.

Thanks again for your post ;)

[Nate Weaver]

Originally Posted by Josselin Billot

Thanks Richard ! I'll tell that to the director ;)

For the grading chose, it's difficult to explain it in english, because I'm french and the vocabulary is very specific for this kind of work.

But as usual when you start from very flat raw, the first step is to give more power to the highlights and to turn the black on real black. Then we give a little bit of saturation. We didn't touch to the middle.

Hey Josselin,

I had a really long post that was kind of boring...but the short story is the "flat" from the raw is log encoded and is intended for a LUT or reverse gamma curve to be applied.

The curve I applied below is probably a touch too aggressive, but it illustrates the point. Sony raw to SLOG2 needs reverse gamma applied :-)

[Josselin Billot]

Thanks Nate for the sample. It's pretty good but it's doesn't exactly fit the story. The colors are great but the director wants something warm for the party. But I appreciate your work ;)

You know like me dop can't made everything they want's with color grading, they have to respect the story and try to help it.

I see my colorist make some adjustments in the gamma curve, so i think he made something like you, but less aggressive ;)

Great to share my work with all of you, and have your feedback

[Nate Weaver]

Originally Posted by Josselin Billot

Thanks Nate for the sample. It's pretty good but it's doesn't exactly fit the story. The colors are great but the director wants something warm for the party. But I appreciate your work ;)

Oh man, it wasn't work. Just screwing around. :-)

Originally Posted by Josselin Billot

You know like me dop can't made everything they want's with color grading, they have to respect the story and try to help it.

Of course. I just was trying to bring attention to the statement where you said "we didn't touch the middle".

It's intended to be touched :-). The grade I applied is immaterial, pretty much. One choice of many.

What I'm talking about is making the effort to halfway linearize the midtones of the camera, to put it on equal footing with Red and the Blackmagic camera. You agree Red and BMCC have a different "look"? That's what I'm talking about. Red and BMCC do these things automatically for you, Sony does not. I think it's important, I just want to draw attention to the issue in case you think it's important too.

It would have been possible for me to straighten out the midtone gamma and still have a low-con look. Or any look that suits the story.

[Josselin Billot]

Ok Nate, thanks for the advise !

If I can I try to post here some raw pictures for you guys can play with it !

[Josselin Billot]

Hello everyone,

We just post the english version of the "behind the scene" documentary here :

Making of Lucy From Paris EP 2 - English Version - Sony F55 on Vimeo