A film about online dating - shot with the GH5 v-log // production notes

[ulrikjepsen]

Hi,

Thought i would share a short film, that i have worked on for some time, as the technical side of the production might interest someone here

You can see the film here. http://www.ekkofilm.dk/shortlist/film/nem-dating/

There are no subtitles, but the synopsis is this:

A young high school student gets an after hours job, to pay for a trip around the world with his girlfriend. The job is as a promoter for an online dating site, where he writes to girls there, to keep them as subscribers of the site. One day he realises, that one of the girls are someone close to him, and he tries to make things okay again.

The film was shot over a week, and we mainly used the GH5. The camera is awesome and i loved the stabilization function, although it sometimes gave us trouble. 

We where mostly shooting with a Sigma 30mm 1.4 for canon and a focal reducer, and as this is an aps-c lens, it vignettede on the GH5. That is not so much of a problem, but when the camera was on a shoulder-mount also, it would counteract the internal image stabilizer, and the vignette would "bounce" around. So we found out to either use the camera handheld og turn the is of. Also we could use the ex teleconverter function, this lessened the vignette somewhat. We also used a canon 24-70 L 2.8 lens, and when using this, there where no problems with the bounching vignette, as it is a full frame lens.

For lightning we mainly used Yongnuo led light and some Aputures. They worked great, but the aputures are imo a lot better for color reproduction. 

For sound, we had a Røde ntg1 connected to a Tascam 60d. It was okay, but the ntg1 has a lot of hiss, and really needs to be close to the talent or have a stronger preamp.

On the tascam, don't use the highest gain option, it's really noisy.

I picked the Gh5 over an ursa mini pro for the film, as i could set it up more quickly, the battery would last longer and we didn't have to carry so much gear, which was important, as for the most time the crew constisted of myself on camera and directing, a sound-recordist and a gaffer/lightning guy. 

In the editing fase, we had to tweak the colors a lot, especially skin tones took a lot of time to get right, as they where a bit read of camera. But, as we filmed in v-log 10 bit, it was not a problem. I have also shot 8 bit footage with the camera, and the image falls apart when doing any grading in v-log, and i dont like the other profiles. I have read some people cant see the difference between 10 og 8 bit, and neither can i. But when you grade them, there is a huge difference, i would not use buy the gh5 if it did not have v-log and 10bit.

In low light i was also supprised how good the image looked, but i am not so afraid of noise. The camera is great in low light, as long as you have a small amount of light on the subject, like a bedside lamp or something. If there is no light, the camera dont look good, but i dont like those kind of images anyway.

I have attached some images also, but check the film out, as the stills don't do the footage justice.