Ambient Works by Mr Woofer

[projectwoofer]

So I thought I’d devote a new thread to this as it’s an ongoing project that I’d love to share with this beautiful community. As some of you may know, apart from the fact that I’m new to this forum, I’m not a professional cinematographer or colorist. I’m a musician, I teach and compose music and since 2018 I’m trying to incorporate moving images to my creative projects. 

So I have not a great experience in cinematography. It became a passion for me though since I bought my first camera, a Panasonic GX85 with 12-32 pancake back in 2018. It soon became clear to me that I wanted to create projects which would include both music and video so I started reading, watching tutorials and experimenting on the field. I soon bought more lenses for the GX85 and then I found my old Soviet Zenit and its two lenses: a Helios 44M-4 and a MIR-1B. Soon after came a focal reducer and more vintage lenses: a Carl Zeiss Tessar 50mm 2.8, a Pentacon 50mm 1.8, a Pentacon 30mm 3.5 and then a Mitakon Speedmaster 25mm 0.95. 

I’ve shot a tonne of footage with the GX85 and edited in Hitfilm Express but after a while I moved to the studio version of Davinci Resolve and never looked back. I love this camera and still use it today, although more as a B camera to the S5 that I bought earlier this year bundled with the 20-60mm for a good price. The S5 was accompanied by some more lenses, a Jupiter-9 and a nice and sensibly priced Canon FD set: the 28mm 2.8, the 50mm 1.4 and the 100mm 2.8. Although the S5 is generally on another league, the footage from the small and humble GX85 has indeed a very interesting quality and with a bit of careful post production it can be gorgeous. 

The thread from fellow member @kye on the GX85 made me dig deep in my hard disks for older footage from the GX85 that I hadn’t used in any of my music videos and I could use for a new project: Ambient Works. This will be an ongoing project, a sort of a creative diary that documents simple moments like a walk on the mountain or a trip to the sea. The footage will be accompanied by atmospheric soundscapes and original electronic ambient music. I’ll also be using S5 footage in the future. The main goal of this project is to work as a motive and inspiration to just go out and shoot!

I’ll be posting the results in this thread, also trying to document some basic technical aspects of each video (such as camera settings, lenses used and post processing workflow) as accurately as I can. Who knows? It could be an interesting experiment. Let’s see how it goes!

[projectwoofer]

So this one is already posted in the other thread but one more time here for completeness: the footage was shot with the Panasonic Lumix GX85 in 4K 24fps, using the Speedmaster 25mm 0.95 and Lumix 12-32mm pancake on location of Filothei Athens Greece, 9-10 January 2020. I used the Cinelike D profile with contrast, sharpening and noise reduction to -5. I edited and color graded in Davinci Resolve Studio with Emotive Color S1Alex and FilmConvert Nitrate.

About the music: I've used the following instruments and effects: Kawai K5000R, EHX Small Stone, DOD Rubberneck, Lexicon MX200, Boss DC-2w, Elektron Analog Heat, Valhalla Supermassive. The environmental sounds are from the actual field recordings during the shooting. The music was composed and mixed in Cubase Pro and mastered in Izotope Ozone.

[projectwoofer]

Here’s the next one! The footage here is actually a bit older. It was also shot with the GX85 in 4K 24fps, using the Speedmaster 25mm 0.95 and Lumix 12-32mm pancake on location of Filothei Athens Greece, on 16 April 2019. Edited and color graded in Davinci Resolve Studio with Emotive Color S1Alex. Here I used FilmConvert Nitrate with the print slider turned to zero (as a negative film emulation only) and I used a separate PFE node in the end. 

About the music: I’ve used the following: Yamaha TX802, DOD Rubberneck, Lexicon MX200, Boss DC-2w, Elektron Analog Heat, Valhalla Supermassive. The environmental sounds are again from the actual field recordings during the shooting. The music was composed and mixed in Cubase Pro and mastered in Izotope Ozone.

A note about field recordings: they are heavily processed so as to give this “out of this world” atmosphere but also to cover a bit the fact that they were just recorded with GX85’s internal microphone. At the time I didn’t even have the idea of using the original field recordings as I normally never do for my music videos so it didn’t matter! Future projects will be improved in this regard.

[projectwoofer]

Hello friends!

Here's the next project: a video shot back in July 2019 in Donousa Island in Greece.

As usual for me at the time, so around 2018-2020, I used the 12-32 pancake and the Speedmaster 25mm f/0.95. The GX85 was on 4K 24fps CineD mode. The footage was edited and color graded in Davinci Resolve Studio with Emotive Color S1Alex and FilmConvert Nitrate.

About the music part, instruments and effects used include the following: Korg MS-20M, Electro Harmonix Small Stone, DOD Rubberneck, Boss DC-2w, Elektron Analog Heat, Valhalla Supermassive. The environmental sounds are from the actual field recordings during the shooting. The music was composed and mixed in Cubase Pro and mastered in Izotope Ozone.