mercer

I spent a little time to catch up with this thread and have been pretty impressed with the results you guys have been getting with the GX85. It's interesting to see the different settings used and the different looks achieved. It seems like different flavors of Standard and Natural are the favorites. Does anyone have any with and without A3/G3 shots?

I just love how both movies have a random dance party scene.

Yeah right. It's almost as though Mr Breen is a little more thoughtful with his badness.

This one slipped past me as I just heard about it today.

Birdemic!!!

eos-m raw?

This looks great. The lighting, IQ, sound design, and acting are top notch. Good on you!!!

Thanks, I do remember hearing that, I just thought it looked really dark... But that's about right.

Quick question about C-Log, just to make sure my camera isn't faulty. At ISO 500, in c-log, the image is darker than ISO 500 in WideDR... Is that a normal byproduct of C-Log?

Let us know how you get along with it. After getting the camera, all I wanna do is talk about it... And obviously shoot with it.

The Exorcist really is the scariest movie I have ever seen. That movie in 1972 went places that would never even get an R rating today and that was nearly 50 years ago.

If you like your t2i and the canon colors, then I would stick with canon. Get a C100. If you like S-Log, you'll probably love C-Log.

I think the G7 had a filter that did it. And I'm pretty sure it worked in video. But don't quote me, I never tried it.

Yeah it is a great interview. I really enjoyed learning how he handled the tech and how he and his wife handled the transition to Hollywood and the Los Angeles lifestyle. Yeah, I love the simplicity of the short... it is merely circumstantial, but still tells a small story... I compare it to the the joke structure for short films... which I think Sandberg discusses in that interview... it's basically... Setup and Punchline. That short and this interview was one of the final nails in the coffin that got me to buy the BMMCC. For small, contained short films like Lights Out... they're great cameras. I wish I liked them better for larger scale projects.

Yeah, just to be clear about the XC10... the exposure stops aren't stepless, but there aren't jarring exposure steps in the video... it looks like a smooth exposure change.

Sandberg recently gave a 2 hour interview on Indie Film Academy's Podcast. A great interview where he goes in depth of his beginnings in filmmaking and how he rose to direct the feature film version of his award winning short that went viral overnight. He also gives a crap ton of BTS info... Including how he snuck off during break and shot some flashbacks with the BMPCC. http://www.indiefilmacademy.com/ifa-49-lights-out-director-david-f-sandberg/

The XC10 really makes shooting fun again. Between C-Log, the IS and the 4K image, there's nothing not to like about the camera. If you feel like shooting auto, have at it, it's a pleasure. The face tracking works great in AF. If you feel like shooting in manual. The step less exposure wheel let's you ride the exposure as you follow your talent in and out of different lighting scenarios. It's just very intuitive. Every button is where you need it to be, but the most important thing is the image and you can shoot in high bitrate 4K or even the MXF 1080p in C-Log or WideDR is just gorgeous and still very flexible in post. The best purchase ai have ever made for video... So much so I have C100 saved in my eBay watch list... If the prices get in the right ballpark, for me, I can easily see myself picking one up and maybe a 20-35mm L lens.

Is it called "ghosting?" Lol. Probably not because I just made that up. I have never heard of this technique, but it sounds like a really good idea!

It's a great idea to cast yourself in your movie... You work cheap and you know you will always make the call. I am a slow burn, horror/thriller writer/director so there isn't a ton of dialogue in my scripts to begin with, so I am not too worried about it. In the short I am working on now, it is a mix of traditional narrative and POV camcorder footage... So most of the dialogue is in the camcorder footage, which is supposed to sound like audio being recorded through... You guessed it... A camcorder... So I will be recording all of that dialogue in camera with the Rode VideoMic Pro. I am looking at it how I approach lighting... Where is the light coming from... Is it a lamp? Why is there a bright light in the actor's face in the middle of the night in the dark woods? I hate that! So, I want to look at sound in a similar way, I believe the camera is a character in a movie. It doesn't have a name or a backstory, but it has a POV... Usually mine. So, if I am shooting a wide establishing shot, why would I hear the actor's conversation as if I was doing a close up? I read an article awhile back that discussed how online journalists record audio. And they do all of the interviews (dialogue) with a mono microphone and then all of background sound (foley) with a stereo microphone. With a small, pocket recorder + lavalier microphone you can capture your dialogue with a mono lavalier microphone and then plug a stereo microphone into your camera to get your foley. Again it's not the perfect solution, but for run & gun projects it really makes sense to me. As for movies that are ADRd, yeah I do not get when they just ADR one line in a scene, it is so obvious, especially in no to low budget indie films, but awesome in no to low budget Kung Fu Theatre. I wish I could "like" this twice.

You will always have to synch some lines, or parts of lines.... Meaning you will be using lines, or parts of lines from different takes in different shots. Audio editing is a laborious task As you said, if you have a wide, establishing shot with dialogue, unless you go wireless... Which would probably be a good option for you BTW, you will have to edit lines from other takes to match sound fidelity. That's unavoidable. If you want to make life easy on yourself, don't mix mics in a scene. Don't take one line of dialogue from the lav and then the next line of dialogue from a shotgun... It will be a pain to match their sound qualities in post. Since you are personifying an inanimate object, or animal, you should definitely record that dialogue with the same mic the other actor's were recorded with. With all of that being said, if I were you, I would get a Rode and a deadcat, or get a couple small recorders... Even some higher end dictation recorders can be used because they are small, or the Little Darling recorders from JuicedLink, or the Tascam that IronFilm linked to, and get some lav mics... You can get a decent one for less than a hundred. I've used Azden lavs and the sound is good enough... They cost 25 dollars. I am a fan of in camera audio. Mount a shotgun like the Rode Pro and boost the signal +20db, or if you have a preamp like a JuicedLink or use your zoom as a line in recorder and then get an extreme close up takes of every angle. Audio sucks and is a craft of its own, so unless you hire a professional audio guy, you will be bastardizing it. If you have to bastardize it, make it as simple as possible.

And also from learning and watching based on the work I performed as crew/producer on two of my good friends' half a dozen, or so, no budget indie films... After the ES scandal I don't want to sell myself as anything more than I am... An aspiring, amateur writer/director with more opinions than credits.

Okay, this will be a long answer full of personal theories that will probably enrage someone... From an acting standpoint, I find ADR to be extremely easy, but I'm not a real actor that has studied and honed my craft. To go line by line and listen to your line reading and then repeat it, is probably the easiest thing I've ever done as an actor. With that being said, it is pretty soulless and devoid of any form of performance creativity. But I am totally fine with the most generic of styles, a friend of mine who is an indie filmmaker, will sometimes do a line reading and then ask me to repeat it the way he said it... Especially with specific lines that require a specific cadence. I do not get offended by this type of performance, but I am sure a lot of actors would because they want to bring something personal to their character. I don't care about such things. I am more like David Mamet who believes that everything an actor needs to know about a character is on the page. As a no budget director, ADR sounds both liberating and terrifying. Now when I say no budget, I am not mincing words, I am not speaking micro budget or low budget... I mean NO BUDGET. I have a decent day job that affords me the time and a little cash to pursue this, but I am in zero position to invest too heavily into any one project. I am a one man band filmmaker that will occasionally have a little help, but I have learned very quickly that you can never count on any help when it comes to making movies on the cheap. You can only count on yourself. I do pay my actors on a small per diem basis which is usually enough to cover their expenses and put a little coin in their pocket. So I try to schedule everything I need from them for as few days as possible... So much so I will rewrite characters and combine characters if it gets the short made. I believe in getting the best quality I can get based on the level I am at. I am not a professional audio guy. I cannot afford a professional audio guy... or gal. If I can plug a Rode VideoMic Pro into my camera and get usable audio, I will do that every time. If I will get better audio doing double sound with a lav and a small pocket recorder... I will do that. If I have to do ADR, I will do that, but never before I attempt to get good on set dialogue. Where my opinion differs from most, is that a lot of low to no budget filmmakers believe that if they use a sennheiser Mic plugged into a zoom recorder and have a friend hold a boom pole over the actor's head, they are getting professional sound because Hollywood does double system, and Hollywood sound techs use boom poles. Sure that's true, but Hollywood has professional equipment way better than a zoom recorder and a mixing board with a mixer adjusting the levels of the tracks as the tape is being rolled. And you know what, even after all of that, in a lot of instances, Hollywood films are ADRd in post. There really is no right answer but there are a lot of options and every shot, scene and sequence has a mountain that needs to be climbed to get it in the can. So, do what's best for the time and resources you have. If you can get the dialogue on set, awesome... One less thing to worry about. If not, fix it in post. To add one more thing, my theories and practices are based on 2 short films I have done and a half dozen or so, that I started and then abandoned because they either didn't have the legs they needed to be a compelling short on either a personal or artistic level, or they turned out to be something I couldn't do well enough at my level... Some projects require more than I can give.

This was a great short. Technically the short was so well done, the tech almost goes unnoticed because it served the story so well. The acting was very good as well.

Yeah, I am just looking for a little fill to help brighten his facial features. I briefly thought about a ring light, but wasn't sure how good they were, and never really heard of anyone using them. Do they throw enough light? It would definitely help to keep my rig small and handheld... Which is really the most important thing to me.

Thanks @andy lee I really need to start picking up some lights. As of now I have a mix of small LED panels, some Home Depot clamp lights and some practical lights I put some photo floods in. I also try to stage my scenes around the practicals and available window light. In the short I'm working on now. I have a scene in a tent. I think I'm gonna light the outside with flood lights to try and mimick moonlight shining through the tent. Some shots in the scene will be POV through a camcorder, so an on camera light should work well as a key and hopefully the floods outside will provide the fill and backlight. I will also have a lantern hanging from the top of the tent, so I may try and hide a small China ball lantern with a photo flood at the very top of the tent... Or if I have to, I'll cut some of the roof off and hang it above it outside. Anyway, thanks for the links, I'll definitely be checking these out.