First Time Posting - Introducing myself with a new camera reel

[Riadnasla]

Hello! 

I've referenced this website for trouble-shooting as any other lurker for the last few years, but finally set up an account and logged in recently. Figured I'd introduce myself and start joining the conversations, starting with posting my first camera reel. 

Except for shooting speaker events and conferences, all footage was shot exclusively with my Sony PMW-F3, and much of that was recorded via my Convergent Design Gemini 444 with S-Log. For this project, I did the colour in Premiere CC's Lumetri Panel, using Tangent's Element-Vs app for fine-tuning. (for more detailed work, I often print in Resolve free). The conferences are typically the resulting file from live-editing jobs, where we record with Canon XA30s into a Roland V-1HD and recorded on an Atomos recorder. We're still waiting on our automated pan/tilt heads before we can kick that business into high gear. 

[Justin Bacle]

Hi and welcome here

Here are a couple of remarks (after viewing it twice) : 
- It is quite long, i think you don't need 2 min but less than 1, try to keep it concise.
- Begin by the stuff which has more chance keeping attention. I think the car sequence or nature sequences have a better overall look than the narrative stuff you put at the beginning. Just my two cents.
- Make a nice overlay and a bit smaller. The text you put is quite big but isn't that visible still. A nice but small animated overlay with a two-word description of the shot you are seeing (like Project Name & Date) would be a better solution IMO.

Here is the good stuff now : 
- The car sequences look good, so does the mountain sequence and snow sequences

Here is the stuff I don't know what to think about :
- The music 
(As I don't know what to say, no details here :o)

Nice to see an F3 user here ! Did you get it used recently ? I'd love to get my hands on one

[Riadnasla]

Thanks!

2 hours ago, Justin Bacle said:

- It is quite long, i think you don't need 2 min but less than 1, try to keep it concise.

Good to hear. I am quite new to cutting reels at all, and couldn't find any "standard" across Vimeo and YouTube.

2 hours ago, Justin Bacle said:

- Make a nice overlay and a bit smaller. The text you put is quite big but isn't that visible still. A nice but small animated overlay with a two-word description of the shot you are seeing (like Project Name & Date) would be a better solution IMO.

Could you link something that you think fits the bill? I picked up on my current overlay as a cinematographer mentor does this to prevent others from ripping his shots from his reel, though I'm very open to using other styles that might do the trick.

Awesome to hear what shots you like, as I was unsure about keeping the snow shots or not. The music was a case of a temp track becoming a "better something than nothing" as my editing stack kept growing while on Christmas break.....excuses, I know. 

2 hours ago, Justin Bacle said:

Nice to see an F3 user here ! Did you get it used recently ? I'd love to get my hands on one

That's actually a fairly annoying turn of events to be honest. 2 years ago I bought an F3/Gemini(3x256GB incl.)/18-50mmPL kit without realizing the cost of SxS media, Sony battieries, and  fairly basic rigging, even off amazon. Now, I finally have a fairly basic kit that I can tripod or shoulder-mount without renting anything, and will last about 4-6hrs without charging batteries. 

 

If I could ask for your opinion, I am actually at a bit of a crossroads. When not shooting speaker events, any camera work I do is as a solo shooter, often without *any* kind of help. While small for a "cinema camera", the F3 is still fairly large, especially when you include extra lenses, lights, etc. I would love to work on more creative projects, but also would enjoy dipping my feet in journalistic camera for local stations. Everyone seems to want to buy "budget" F3s recently, and I'm debating whether to keep mine, or sell it to fund a more portable camera such as the C100MkII. As a newbie operator with zero dollars to keep investing, I am not sure what the "business smart" thing to do might be.  

1) I love the image I get from the F3, and no doubt is it a cinematic image with forgiveness, but I'm marketing against people with Red Epics and Weapons, as well as people running DSLRs. The F3 is neither the 4/5K beast with 14 stops latitude that the Red is, but it is much heavier and more unwieldly than any C-series or DSLR as well. 

2) I have heard good things about the image of the C100MkII internal codec, as long as you don't need to perform a heavy grade. It is also only about double the size of my T4i, and the lenses are much more portable and available. (My F3 has an 18-50mm PL, as well as FD lenses I adapt to the body) I can see bringing around an entire C100 kit in my camera backpack vs. the larger kit I currently bring with the F3. However, I don't know if it can handle filming anywhere near the same image I am used to with the F3, especially when you consider the snow and driving shots in my reel. 

 

Anyways, just some of my musings. If you have any opinions or recommendations, I'm all ears!

[Justin Bacle]

20 hours ago, Riadnasla said:

If I could ask for your opinion, I am actually at a bit of a crossroads. When not shooting speaker events, any camera work I do is as a solo shooter, often without *any* kind of help. While small for a "cinema camera", the F3 is still fairly large, especially when you include extra lenses, lights, etc. I would love to work on more creative projects, but also would enjoy dipping my feet in journalistic camera for local stations. Everyone seems to want to buy "budget" F3s recently, and I'm debating whether to keep mine, or sell it to fund a more portable camera such as the C100MkII. As a newbie operator with zero dollars to keep investing, I am not sure what the "business smart" thing to do might be.  

1) I love the image I get from the F3, and no doubt is it a cinematic image with forgiveness, but I'm marketing against people with Red Epics and Weapons, as well as people running DSLRs. The F3 is neither the 4/5K beast with 14 stops latitude that the Red is, but it is much heavier and more unwieldly than any C-series or DSLR as well. 

2) I have heard good things about the image of the C100MkII internal codec, as long as you don't need to perform a heavy grade. It is also only about double the size of my T4i, and the lenses are much more portable and available. (My F3 has an 18-50mm PL, as well as FD lenses I adapt to the body) I can see bringing around an entire C100 kit in my camera backpack vs. the larger kit I currently bring with the F3. However, I don't know if it can handle filming anywhere near the same image I am used to with the F3, especially when you consider the snow and driving shots in my reel. 

I don't have an F3, but I would exchange my AF100 for an F3 any day. The IQ you can get from an F3 is outstanding ! Yes it is a bit big, but you don't need much. A shoulder rig with the external recorder on it and a small zoom, and you're good to go. But if you like small systems, I can understand your problem. Personally, I don't mind having the AF100 (a bit smaller than the F3) on the shoulder rig plus a small bag of lenses. 

20 hours ago, Riadnasla said:

Could you link something that you think fits the bill? I picked up on my current overlay as a cinematographer mentor does this to prevent others from ripping his shots from his reel, though I'm very open to using other styles that might do the trick.

Here are a couple overlays I made for some videos ... pretty simple stuff done as After Effects templates for the editor. I'd be happy to make a template for you if you want (and have a bit of an idea of what you want :D ).

[Riadnasla]

Awesome, thanks! I've just replaced the video with a second full cut. In this cut, I added some footage from another project, removed "dead" shots, and replaced the music to something more motivated. All that's left is to really fine tune the cuts, and add the lower-thirds.  Any new thoughts? 

Edit: And replace the temp audio with paid no-watermark version.