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in my experience, crowdfunding campaigns at this level have much more to do with backing the person behind it, and less to do with the content of the project. aaron demonstrated an eagerness to continue his growth as an artist and that's exciting to me. his pitch video was polished enough that I know this will be executed well, whatever it turns out to be. so it's my pleasure to throw him a couple bucks if it will help give him an opportunity to learn from the kind of experience that only comes from doing it.

I can't totally agree on this and weight on the final part sounds a bit bitter. I do agree that Panasonic took a bit too long and that this delay may cost them but I think it's a bit unfair to call out Panasonic like that almost like they were Canon itself. There is a reason why Samsung is doing this. First because they can, Panasonic does not have the same firepower and resources as either Sony or Samsung, Panasonic is much more like Fuji. Secondly because Samsung is the one racing from behind, the one that had no credit in the market so if they were any serious about video, they HAD to show that to the world, so the firmware guerrilla is a big part of that and a way to sustain interest from people. I don't think Panasonic would had been able to offer V-long off the bat, I doubt they had resources or engineers for that, at the time they were already proving the first of its kind, they were the one pushing bounderies. Sony wasn't even able to provide internal 4K in time with the A7s, that's why they pushed the S-log. Sure, after that Panasonic should had start thinking more serious about providing V-log since it was clear that it was a matter of time before 4K was coming to Sony cameras. Panasonic still provided the FZ1000, the LX100 and now the G7, which seems to be an excellent budget choice, all great cameras for the price and feats and only now Sony is catching up on that front. So, from my POV, this is back and forth and Panasonic is a bit late but just that. Panasonic won't come up with a new GH camear every year like Sony is doing with the A7 family. The A7s still doesn't offer internal 4K and it will never do that, and as I said, Panasonic doesn't have that same power to push new products like that. But Panasonic better wake up though. With Sony being able to provice internal 4K, S-log2, IBIS, etc. Sony basically took away most of Panasonic's upside. Panasonic still has the better lens ecosystem but with adapted lens with electronic connectors working as they are with the A7RII, anyone that have Canon glass can easily jump into Sony, just selling their Canon body. So Panasonic better come up with a new sensor, better sensitivity, faster readouts - possibly better slowmo -, IBIS, 4K/slowmo, etc. Panasonic still have a swivel screen, no overheating issue, better battery and some other things but that's barely enough now. Maybe not just a GH camera but an AF as well. I would like Sony to make the rumored A9. They could use their new tech for faster readouts and improved low light. There are 2 alternatives. One would be something like a bigger brother of the A7s with that insane low light capabilities and DR, another, which I think might be interesting as well, would be to make a sensor with more pixels, which would allow them to have lots of PDAF - to work well with electronic adapters - but one that could do 1:1 pixel crop in Super35/APS-C mode in 4K. I think they would need a 24MP sensor, this way you have the option for FF or Super35, in Super35, you would get less rolling shutter and differently from the A7s or A7RII, a true 4K image output. You could even use Metabones to get more light and FF look. Plus, 24MP would be enough for photographers as well. With a bigger body Sony will be able to put a better shutter for faster burst, without the miniaturization limitation that the A7 family faces, it would have better battery life, zero overheating issues and a swivel screen as well. I'm not sure Sony is ready to make the A9, but I think a camera like that would be pretty nice and it would make sense as well, it wouldn't be cheap though but I doubt Canon would be able to respond to that with a possible 5D MKIV or even upcoming EOS-C cameras. Anyway, this is all about competition and this is great for consumers. What more can we expect from the A7s II, the GH5 and what's the next step for Samsung?

I pretty much agree with the sentiments of this article. 1st off...I have owned the GH4 for about a year now, and actually I love the Camera, I have become a lot more skilled in how to set it up and use it over the last few months. I love what I am now getting out of the camera, and yes there was a learning curve with the GH4 to get the best out of it...I found that despite the fact that I used the GH2 for a long time as well. BUT (And I am not pissing in Andrews pocket here) there were 2 sources that really helped get the GH2 a lot of recognition...and that was EOSHD and Personal View, plus the Vitaliy / Driftwood hacks. Now Panasonic appear to have given Nick Driftwood a copy of V-Log2,(thats good) yet not Andrew? I know Andrew and Vitaliy appear to not get on...but that aside, to not give Andrew or Vitaliy a copy is nuts. Now both parties dont speak of Panasonic that favorably...can you really blame them? they gave Panasonic free advertising for several years, by virtue of genuine enthusiasm and some honest criticism as well. Now Panasonic more or less snub them and give copies to others, ...Seriously!! they get a D or lower for marketing!! PLUS...The current users of the GH4 have recieved no information why it has taken sooo long to get the V-Log L right...apart from Ilya Freedman saying once or twice...its coming sometime, cant say more than that tho...once again Panansonic gets lower than a D for marketing...possibly a Z for ZZZZZZ. Yes I know...They cant give away secrets and all that (I have been a 3d beta tester and builder for years...I know about this stuff) and I know crap when I see it, and Pannys marketing is crap!! with a capital C. They could easily say "We value our users, and we are developing V-Log L. we want to get it right and this V-Log that will increase this or that in the Camera...they could easily do this and not give away a thing...but nope.... [...] corporate silence and seat warming....and the occasional Youtube vid showing a flat vs some LUT applied along with Youtube compression...so GH4 owners can guess away...seriousy this is BS!! Meanwhile Sony has been chomping at the bit and moving into overdrive with mirrorless cams , BMD has created some really exciting new cameras coming up (yes they are generally more expensive...and they are only on paper right now, but they are still competition)...and of course Samsung has entered the market and made aggressive firmware updates to the NX1. Meanwhile Panny has done a little, but probably Too little...and Too late, they really need to get off the collective corporate arses and do something ..or say something thats solid. And give the firmware to some of the bloggers like Andrew!! [...] As I said I am a fan of the GH4, but if they dont get a clue soon..I for one will be looking at Sony, BMD or Samsung for my next cam for certain.

A couple of reasons why the market needs to be pro-active about this. First users are tired of paying good money for camera bodies that are obsolete in 12-18 months. Second, imagine your a rental house and your faced with having to keep your inventories current, its getting to where its not going to be sustainable. Keeping your current camera body for 36 months and leveraging firmware (even paid) to keep it updated for that period of time makes much more sense.

The A7RII isnt even out yet, and for some reason this makes the GH4 (which is now over a year old and a third of the price) insignificant? Do brand new camera releases suddenly mean the previous awesome camera (GH4) isn't awesome enough to film with? I haven't bought a GH4, A7S, NX1, FZ100, LX100, G7.. (or any other 4k mirrorless). Still using my GH3 as the small camera. It does fine, still makes money. Doesnt have V Log or 4k and is just as good as when I bought it 2 and a half years ago. All on cheapo FD lenses. Firmware is a simple equation. Either crippled for product segmentation or promising the world (whilst delivering poorly in other key areas such as battery life!). Let's just buy ALL the cameras and we can have all the firmware we want! I do agree firmware is very important though. Poor firmware affects my creativity. The slow, sluggy speed of the FS7 menus means I have less time to work on the shot. The Monitor LUT dissapears. WHY!? The 1DC (official cinema DSLR champion) doesn't have peaking. And this camera launched for $634,000,345 as a Cinema EOS whatever thingy. "Modern" firmware is the way forward. Samsung has ideas and Blackmagic really seem to be onto a really simple, inutitive, elegant system. Sexy.

Panasonic disrupted everyone last year and this year they got disrupted. I don't think they deserve the criticism yet. I do think you have a great point that firmware is the way forward as hardware is really solid now.

Hey all. I posted a couple of weeks ago asking for advice on crowd funding, and crowd sourcing. I got some great advice, especially from Zak Forsman. I've launched a Kickstarter and my goal is to create a short film based entirely off of a soundtrack. The said soundtrack is from Johnny Jewel (Chromatics) and can be heard here: https://soundcloud.com/johnnyjewel/symmetry-themes-for-an I've contacted Johnny and received permission to use the score in a non-profit sense. It's very 80's influenced and the movies I'm rewatching for inspiration are Escape From New York, Terminator, Collateral, Nightcrawler, and a few more. It's going to be led my a strong female character and take place on the streets of Chicago, at night. If you guys could help me out even with a few dollars I'd be forever grateful! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/172703888/symmetry-short-film

​to put it in camera terms, bit rate is like dynamic range and sample rate (kHz) is like frame rate. 24bit has a range of 144db while 16bit has a range of 96db. the latter is more limiting in terms of how from you can swing between your lowest lows and highest highs. But just like how cameras also have a "useable" dynamic range, the noise floor in an audio recording device is also a limiting factor. either way, 24bit gives you more room to work with. a sample rate of 48khz is adequate for dialogue, but if you were to be recording sound effects that you might want to slow down in post and manipulate to create new sounds, you'd want to record them at a higher sample rate (higher resolution) to capture more detail in the audio. in camera terms, it's like if you wanted a slow motion shot. if you shot at 24fps and slowed it down to half speed in post, you'd be doubling frames. but if you captured it at 48fps and slowed it by half, it would still be smooth in a 24fps sequence.

Here are the 2 lead female characters that I'm planning on using.

From my understanding, you do want to have tiers to promote, upsell, some donations.

The camera/firmware race is great! The real problem, and I really have little hope for a solution, is that normal people can't jump from/to a Sony, Samsung, Panasonic, Canon without having to rebuild a lens set. Adapters are OK sometimes or too expensive. For the price of a Metabones adapter I can get a LX100!!!

I'd make it 20 or 25 bucks though. Watch pbs during their telethons, the point is why should I donate 10 bucks when for 10 bucks more I get this great tote bag. Apple is the king of that as well for their upgrades.

​Well, I have the A7s and s-log2 is unusable in 8-bit if you care one bit about image quality. Plastic skin everywhere once you restore contrast; simply not enough tonal precision in 8 bits for the flatness of this curve. Besides, the s-log2 setting doesn't use a huge chunk of the coding space, this way further screwing the tonal precision. Canon c-log is a different story. Its curve is not log really, just log-like in the upper end. And it has less DR than s-log. Much more 8-bit friendly. Codec is important but not as important as the bitdepth. Try working with 16 stops log in uncompressed 8-bit and see what happens even if there is no codec at play.

After the nx1, I really doubt sony can counter attack in the apsc arena. Samsung has access to the most advanced computational hw (the cpu in nx1 is a 'monster', by camera standards). Samsung simply has to further tune its sw (fw) and add slog2 and vlog, along with cropped 4k and, if technically possible, even higher bitrates and 10bit recording.

Amen.

I agree Andrew, sad that v-log is still not here on gh4. I'm heavily invested into that camera. But oh well. I'm still happy with my footage in cinelike D thanks to your guide!

Log on compressed 8bit video files? Did I miss something? Wouldn't grading such files cause banding and other such horrifics on files from the Gh4?

Backed. Good luck.

Maybe your guy's problem is that you don't know what's available over in the broadcasting realm of motion pictures... ;-) Now. Now, that's sufficiently bad-ass, right? Obviously, that's as goofy as hell, but don't tell me you couldn't use such lens effects for at least one cool shot in a narrative movie.

donated! good luck!

Late is better than never, when can we get H.264 recording option from Samsung? Right now we need even more space for H.265 because it need to be converted to H.264 first.

While I agree that V-log on the GH4 should be released Asap, since it is already late I kind of disagree on releasing lots of firmware updates. I feel that Samsung should have done more to make the H.265 format more editing software compatible. That is doing its bit for greater sync. The biggest complaint of users was inability to use the codec either completely, or fast enough, and that workflow was seriously hindered. Right now the GH Series only lacks in-body stabilisation and higher ISO. The higher ISO is partially dealt with by faster lenses, that with the new metabones adaptor go all the way up to f.0.8. That's 2/3rd of a stop more light that an f2.8 lens. While I am sure the next in the GH series may consider in-body stabilization, new pistol gimbals have mostly dealth with that too. One can add these, considering the Enormous Price difference betwern Panasonic and its Sony competitors. About the Varicam, well it records in 3 different formats, simultaneously, and has some very interesting in-camera grading options apart from a host of other great features. The good thing about Panasonic from GH2 onwards, is that they seriously listen to user feedback. Only if they would hurry up with the V-log now.

​Please keep us updated

It's all good enough for me at this point. I came up in the days where if you didn't have pro gear it really showed. You had to buy-in to get great IQ. That was high 5 (into 6) figures, easy, now it's in the low 4's. The fact that's there's two less zeros between these cams with pretty much indistinguishable IQ to all but the most discriminating viewer...well, I'm cool with that. You whippersnappers and your expectations! Why, when I was young I had to film uphill in the snow! Both ways.

I'm still quite happy with the images coming out of the GH4 with or without V-log. The metabones XL adapter just added that much more capability to the camera if I should decide to slap on some bigger glass. I might actually be more impressed with Panny if they release a V-log update a few months before the GH5 is announced, that would buck the trend of holding back advanced features for a next-gen product. I can honestly say that I don't feel limited by technology for the first time in a long time. The new Sony tech is very good from the standpoint of hybrid imaging, but not earthshaking for a lot of filmmakers. 4K/60P would be more useful for me than any of the features announced in the A7R II and I doubt they'll be delivering that in a future firmware update.

Based on just a few hours of shooting XAVC-S on the A6000, the new codec does improve the levels of detail in the image a lot. I'm on the road at the moment and I don't have access to a 1080p monitor right now, so I don't want to draw any conclusions just yet. I am seeing a touch of moire here and there, in detailed brick-work etc, no worse than any down-sampling cam (but I need to look at it in 1080p). It looks like it's only in the luma channel, so at least it's not colourful rainbows. Sony's AVCHD lagged quite far behind Panasonic and Nikon's 1080p image (I have a G6 and I used to have a D5200). XAVC-S seems to close the gap, but I need to shoot more before coming to conclusions.

You guys just don't get it... This film is a disturbing social commentary on the American family and the human condition... The mom "entering the fridge" is really symbolic for her addiction to crystal meth (ice). Notice how the family has to function more and more without her as her addiction gets worse? I didn't watch the ending (who could make it that far), but I like to think something really shocking (like GoT shocking) happened at the end, like maybe her pimp and drug dealer ends up executing her family one by one.

Well, doing "this" certain look or doing "that" certain look is nice and all (and you should strive for a cohesive aesthetic--even if it's just doing the whole thing on a cheap 50mm lens) but you should really save more particular image considerations for the bottom of the want-to-do list. Ultimately, nothing is going to make your film more viable and successful than a good bit of considered pre-production planning. And most of that stuff has nothing to do with lenses or cameras. Also, it's free. Arguably, you could shoot the whole thing on an old VHS camcorder and if the story was solid, people will watch it. Heck, I'd argue that the IQ low-fi quality of such would be a helluvalot more compelling than contemporary electronic imaging. Obviously, good IQ is great for a film, but certainly over-emphasized here. An old NEX and a kit lens is more than good enough in capable hands...IMHO. Especially for a western where the limitations of a "softer" camera fit the rustic quality of the setting. Would great dynamic range be nice to have? Yes. Is it a necessity? Well, I guess that's for you to decide. Again, the most solid advice I can offer since you're on a time constraint, is definitely do the storyboard. If you're real ambitious, slide-show your story board and then do a real time edit with a dialog comp/music track. This can be fun if you have willing and eager players involved to do their voices (it's even a sort of rehearsal) and it'll also illustrate any camera-shot holes you might have...before you're on set. Recently I made an experimental short film wherein I attempted to film actors on-locations in a documentary style. While successful on certain levels, ultimately it didn't hold together as too many shots where absent, the production went way too long, and the talent floundered too much. A director with more tenacity and skill probably could have tied things together better and artistically, but I definitely ended up stretched beyond my capabilities. So, knowing what to do going in is the best bet. At least it was from my experience. If nothing else, all that pre-pro that helps you stay on task. Ironically, it seems like you have the initial insight and (most important) helpful crew, that'll allow you to be more accomplished at this --more so than some aspiring "pros" like myself would be. Obviously, come back here and post your results when you're finished. I would love to see it. I wrote a Western script last year that made it deep into pre-production before the investor pulled out...and I have a soft spot for that genre...hope it goes well for ya!

Great Celli! Looking fwd to your work. I'm Italian (as your two idols are) and I grew up with their movies. +1 for you!