fuzzynormal

GX7 was a fav of mine. That had some great IQ mojo. I like the image better than my GH5. I'd shoot with that thing again without hesitation. Still bummed I lost that camera. It had the weirdest glitch though. You can't do 60p with a 60shutter speed. You had to set the shutter to 125 for the camera to legitimately record 60 frames per second. 60p/60ss would result in a 30p video...even though it would register as 59.97 in the meta data. Damndest thing.

Depends on what kind of filmmaker you want to be. Most advice from these places will suggest technical skills development. If your deposition is to play with the tools and make great images, then that's perfectly fine and fun. But, FWIW, I help run a small film festival. Almost every indy film I see now-a-days looks half way decent. Getting the tech to do it's thing is pretty easy. I honestly don't know what sort of advantage an IQ specialist is going to have moving forward in the business when literally everyone can make decent IQ. "All hat, no cowboy." (Love that expression) OTOH, only about 10% of the films I have to watch/endure throughout the submission season have the ability to hold my attention. Story is key... Can you write? Failing that, can you recognize a good story when you see it? Can you develop the skill to elevate the words on a page? It's freakin' tough. Being a person that can do that is really remarkable. I've taken to watching successful films that are 50-100 years old. If the story works without the spectacle of modern tech, then all you gotta do is pay attention to those sort of storytelling and acting fundamentals ...and figure out if you can develop the skills to facilitate them as well. I find myself re-watching David Lean's early work at the moment. That sort of inspiration is very valuable.

As do I. The newer people on the planet probably don't care. I definitely came of age going to "grind-house" cinemas. My visual biases are falling by the way-side as probably no one under 20 has ever seen a battle-worn print in a shitty theater. Heck, my favorite movie theater was a small converted cotton gin warehouse; never screened a print of a movie that hadn't been on the road for half a year... Still, I stick to the notion that the analog quality of 24p film smooths out the hard edge sheen of a production. For instance, I bet you could watch Wizard of OZ with 60p interpolation --and just that change would remove a lot of the "magic" we internalize without even realizing it. I want that magic. I often push my digital stuff into that emulation mode to grab some it. For instance (and I've said this many times) but I typically shoot 24 frame rate with a 25 shutter. I just love the motion blur and the "non-digital" look of it. Visual butta'. I'm just finishing a film that's in B&W and is a direct homage to 1940's code era films. As such, I've been shooting things "wrong" to make the IQ feel authentic to that era and NOT look like it was shot on a cheap digital camera. The slow shutter thing is a bit of a secret sauce many tend to overlook or ignore.

Eh. Just cheap looking. Interesting. My feeling is that film, because it puts an organic sheen on the visuals, helps fiction narrative. Whereas super clean digital often pushes stuff into uncanny valley. With digital, the conceit of film-making is too often revealed. You quickly see the fakeness of things. Some films use this to an advantage, others make a mistake and embrace the tech only to be betrayed by it. It's certainly debatable how the director of this film wanted it to be. Personally it didn't jibe with me. Also, the story? Whatever. Yawn. Gave up on the flick about half way through and watched The Great British Baking Show instead. Which also wasn't as good as the originals.

You can't save crappy shots. You screw it up in the field it'll never look right. That's why I'm always left scratching my head as to why shooters are so laser focused on squeaking out .5 stops of DR with their gear.

A work around is to do proxy editing with proxy files on your hard drive and keep the source file on your NAS. You'll only access the source files when it comes time to render and the network access speed won't be a big issue for that process.

Illford D400 with the FilmConvert Plugin. Then a bunch of subtle variable tweaks with Red Giant Universe's MisFire.

Nah, I shot in color so we can do some secondary HSL adjusting in post for contrast if needed. Turns out it's not really needed. However, when the gang and I ran around last week to make our fundraising clip, we shot that straight B&W in camera. I've been doing B&W film since I was a kid back in the 80's. I'm still pretty enamored with analog, so T-Max and Illford HP-5 still make me happy. And new tech is great, but damn if going to nostalgic looks isn't my default mode; almost always trying to make digital look analog no matter what I do!

Thanks for the bump. BTW, since we're back in this thread now, I saw this at the Borrego Springs Film Festival back in 2020. Pretty sweet:

It was certainly fun to not sweat about the wild color balance stuff we were seeing on set.

So I gave network editing a try too. However, A few years ago I couldn't get fast enough networking transfer speeds even when my computer was hard wired to my LAN. I think it has something to do with networking data packets --and the hardware's ability to switch that data in/out fast enough. So it's maybe not just about the raw numbers with throughput? Maybe some consumer hardware is more advanced these days? I don't know, but (even if somewhat functional) I'd be skeptical of this being productive overall.

Leaning heavily into the "Golden Era" of Hollywood filmmaking with this one. Cool to play around with visual styles from yesteryear. 8-bit 4K from a EM10iii and a GH5, for those that are interested in tech specs.

I have a vague memory of someone shooting with a compact camera and Voigtlander MFT primes - was this you? I'm keen to hear more about which lenses you were using and how you were using them? I've done a few doc shoots with the Voigts, but the project listed above it was on the Only 12-40 f2.8, using a variable ND filter. I also used (still use) a vintage Nikkor f1.4 50mm for other footage and interviews.

On my old Gx7, it's 1080 somehow outperformed other cam's downrez'ed 4k. Not sure what was going on with that LUMIX generation's sensors and internal processing, but it offered pretty sweet IQ to my eye. Sadly, I lost that camera. [sad face]

I shot a doc series for our local PBS station with a couple of these guys. Worked like a charm. The exact reason M43 is a good format for me is embodied in this sort of gear: low-profile with impressive IQ.

Oh yeah. B&W. Also some aesthetic tricks to make it look a bit more analog rather than digital. Wanted to shoot 4:3 too, but the set build was such that an aspect ratio like that wouldn't work. We're blogging about the process as much as possible. Pretty casual stuff posting right now, but it'll get more intense when we do a funding campaign to try and cover the cost of the post-production.

If you're interested in all about making the sausage of a small indy film, my wife and I are writing about it here: www.agiftforallagesfilm.com I suspect nothing new for you lot, but I'm throwing it out there for those wanting a peek-a-boo.

The world is sliding again into the standard dark places it always seems to eventually go --and the anxiety of our lives reflect this. The scales of the internet have violently tipped to manipulation and exploitation and the earnest golly-gee-wiz of it all is long gone. Hard things to rally against it, but it's just the reality of it all. Your site reflects what the net used to be. Anyway, EOSHD is a refuge because fo that. Thanks for getting me into LUMIX. I wouldn't have even considered M43 without your reviews. Glad I did because it's been a perfect platform fit for me.

2014, eh? So what's happening with Bill Cosby? We ever find that Malaysian airliner?

You should mention actors again. tbf, we had a good cast and a chill set. Still barely held it together. Can't imagine how it is for productions that have personality issues on set. Heck of a lot different than doc, where it's just my wife and I and the few people we're filming...

Normally my wife and I normally make documentary films as our creative outlet. We just produced and shot a narrative short film. Man, that shit is hard to do. God bless the intrepid. That is all. https://www.facebook.com/AGiftForAllAgesFilm/

Doesn’t bother me much. I’m gonna get all Busby Berkeley up in the joint.

I subscribe to this idea. Shooting a narrative short that'll put this to the test in a few weeks. I'm gonna pull focus on the fly by eye. If it goes a little soft in a few places, "oh well!" If the dolly bumps in a few places, "oh well!" There's gonna be a bunch of "oh well!" and I kind of love it.