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Hey Skip, Regarding NeatVideo, yes, get it. It's a lifesaver about half the time and unusable about half the time (if the footage is too mushy and grainy), but it will save your ass at some point. Regarding test footage, try this: try to get a stranger to let you film their daily life for an hour or two. Somebody random off the street from a radically different walk of life. Show them a little reel of your work on your phone if possible in order to get them to agree. Then try to film them in an up-close, intimate way that sheds new light on the details of how they live. Try to use only natural sound, no music, for a challenge. Example: OR try to re-work your b-roll footage into something with spoken narration to give it a tone poem feel. Maybe use your own voice for VO. Example:

Hello Forum! I'm from Russia This is my design - rig for BMPCC

I think a few wires may have got crossed here. Serves me right for getting my back up I suppose :wacko: I wasn't suggesting non-tech stuff shouldn't be discussed all over this forum, I just meant if you specifically want to divert a topic to say forget about the tech and focus on the other stuff, there is a place to do that. I should perhaps have put it more diplomatically.I certainly don't regard the non technical stuff as silly or daft, that's the bit I like best! What I think is daft is when someone asks a technical question and they get a response saying focus on the story. It happens too often and it's not helpful - it's patronising. I'll shut up now though, before I dig myself a deeper hole …

The "sharper" aspect has to do with the shutter speed, not the frame rate. When you increase the frame rate you're also increasing the shutter speed. Shooting with a high shutter speed at 24fps produces the same spatial crispness just without the temporal fluidity that the higher frame rate would have given it. In the 48-60fps range your brain chemistry changes how it interprets visual stimulus. At these speeds it's treating it as something happening live and now. That doesn't mean that you consciously accept what you're seeing as real, because you don't suddenly forget you're watching a movie and sitting in a theater but your brain is interpreting the imagery as something that you're witnessing in realtime. This can create certain involuntary reactions to what you see (good for novelty/theme park films). All of the research into this phenomenon was done a long time ago by Douglas Trumbull. As a measured scientific fact this is something that Peter Jackson needlessly screwed up on, either because he failed to research previous HFR for narrative attempts or because he failed to properly interpret the data (as well as appreciate the absolute flop that ShowScan was). He likely thought that the very real changes in brain chemistry that happen when a viewer is stimulated this way would aid the audience's suspension of disbelief but it works in the opposite way as well. HFR allows the audience to see through the veil of pseudo-realism that works for narrative films (that used to also count on the impressionistic recording of light and color by celluloid which added 50-75% more production value to what was being photographed in the case of miniatures, mattes and make-up) and perceive what's actually happening before their eyes: people playing dress-up, with heavy make-up on, carrying props that look like expensive items from a Halloween Store.

Find a great song that you feel is relevant to Mexico or the mood you wish to convey, and think about what you would like to capture to make great music video for it. sorry, no experience with neatvideo..

Well thought out!

Skip, First of all, I've been enjoying the lack of silliness on this forum lately so I don't want to waste any time dodging bullets, but I will say I think there have been some pretty daft responses to your posts here. This is a tech orientated site, that's why people come here. EOSHD set up >this thread for people who want to take threads off topic by stating the obvious. Personally I would ignore such posts or reply with the above link. In terms of what to shoot for test footage? Personally I liked the stuff you shot in the park! Neat video: I find it takes a lot of getting used to, but I'm getting decent results from it. It's horribly slow on my MacBook though, so I'm hoping my new iMac (which arrives tomorrow :lol:) will be more up to the task. Mainly as a result of seeing Brandon's stuff, I've been using Gorilla Grain to deal with the smooth/plasticky look. I looked into the other grain options but GG seemed the most appropriate for me. I like it a lot. My

It's not ISO3200 that's noisy per se it's the fact that there isn't enough light. Add light or get a lens with a wider aperture.

Skip, Sometimes you know the story beforehand, but to me, many times the story comes while filming or editing. Although it's not easy: sometimes you have the story and visuals outlined in your head but can't get them on your screen. That's frustrating and could lead to a form of 'writers block'. But first: I assume you're fully used to your D5300, know your camera, you can set it up quick and easy so you're not missing important shots. It's like a racing driver knowing his car inside out. Then: if you have a story in your head, go out and film it. If you don't have inspiration, no worries: just go to a city or forrest or something you've never been too. Stop fretting about wanting to make that great film, don't shoot yet, just feel the atmosphere, the mood the new surroundings give you. Then try to capture that mood. Some possess this quality naturally, others have to learn it, but if you train this often, you can distill the mood/emotions/story faster and easily convey that to your film. The advice from Brandon is great too, as is Tosvus'. If you see or hear or read something which touch in an emotional way, a song on the radio, a story in an newspaper, a quote on the internet; save it somewhere and use it later. Point I'm trying to make is: inspiration is always there, sometimes we don't know where to look for it, sometimes we're looking too hard for it when it's already there. It's conveying that inspiration to film is what we have to learn. Post-production: personally I find this the most difficult, because I've got the visuals and story or mood in my head, but my shots are not what I envisioned them to be. Sometimes I really have to push myself to start editing, use all the anti-procrastionation techniques, and once I've taken that hurdle, many times it flows from there. Don't let the drive for perfection get you, I've heard many great filmmakers are not entirely happy with the films they've made, even if they've won numerous awards and the public loves them... Just try and convey your story, and about the noise or neat video: story comes first. Even if an image is not up to your standards from a technical point of view, but it is essential in conveying an emotion, use it! Hell, Philip Bloom made a compelling story filmed with a VGA-Barbie-camera ;) And if, after editing, it's not really the masterpiece you've wanted, so what... It's not like Van Gogh or Rembrandt always painted masterpieces every time, but from every trial you learn, and this leads to experience, which maybe makes your next movie into a masterpiece, or at least your filming-life a little bit easier ;) Good luck.

neatvideo is a usefull tool and easy put it on auto profile it normaly does a good job and helps the grading after

I've used it to salvage some RED footage with too much ISO. You basically balance it out by applying as little of it as you can to do the job. So it basically depends on how much grain and how hard you're pushing the image to start with. I'd seriously consider trying to add light or getting a faster lens if shooting low light before relying on NeatVideo though. And hey, I just picked up the GM1 and GX7 for some future shooting. I'm in the same situation as you. What to shoot to grab some proof of concept footage? For me, I could go out and shoot some standard scenics, but I get more motivated when I'm building a story. Good luck!

$5000 for shipping from Germany to the US seems legit :) Maybe he plans on hiring Elton John to swim it across the Atlantic wearing a pair of gold Speedos.