Kendy Ty and the T2i - one guy doing amazing things with a 5 year old DSLR

[Shane Essary]

Kendy Ty has 666 Likes, 66 Channels, 66 Groups, and 666 Following.  

 

W. T. F.

Obviously, he sold his soul to Satan to get such amazing work out of such limited resources!   :D

 

From reading more, it appears he's not even using the Magic Lantern hack except to help him handle audio, is this correct?  Wow.

[Julian]

Yep, I think that is the point of the topic. He's just using standard H264 :)

[Liszon]

This guy is indeed impressive. Give him 5 minutes, boom. He knows how to fill it. His videos feel much longer, in a good way.

The other thing is that you can see his vimeo channel from the start, how he polished his style.

For example the "Real Fighter" wasn't as good as his later stuff, but you can clearly see that he was working on his ideas until they became "perfect".

Also I was thinking about the creative use of broken glasses and other things in front of the lens since I saw this video:

 

 

But now he makes me revisit the idea. Besides of the mood it gives, you can certainly improve on highlights as well. Watch the shots against windows in his videos. The foggy flare looks really great, no sign of bad DR or shitty roll-off.

[Michael1]

Great work by Kendy!

 

I see that many of his shots have bokeh, so the equipment does matter to some extent.  It would be interesting to see what he could do creatively with a small sensor camcorder.

 

I read that he does not use lighting, only ambient.  If the scene is dark, he says it adds to the mood, and that lighting would only make it look "fake".

 

He uses no tripod or Steadycam.

 

He doesn't use external audio gear, just "in camera" with a Rode mic.

 

He uses After Effects to edit and grade, and he does it himself.

 

He created his own camera picture style, which he sells on his website for 9 Euros.

 

He has no crew.

 

He has no budget.

 

He is self taught, and only starting filming a few years ago.

 

If this doesn't prove that you can create great things with minimal gear, and no budget, I don't know what will.  It's very inspirational.

 

Michael

[Liszon]

He has no name..

 

He has no past.....

 

But he has a .44 Colt Walker!

[Shane Essary]

...Burma Shave.

[1tkman]

Ty's use of sound is really impressive, I would have overlooked this aspect of things had it not been mentioned earlier.

 

Special "shout out" to Aaron's latest... the sound effects are timely and leave me reassessing my own efforts.

 

[Glenn Thomas]

The other thing is that you can see his vimeo channel from the start, how he polished his style.

Actually, he's deleted all his old videos from years ago. When I first came accross his work 4 or 5 years back, he was shooting with a little Canon Ixus 110 and posted a new video everyday for a few months. Videos of all these famous locations around Paris with Metallica music over the top, shots of co-workers in the Daily Motion offices where he was working (which I thought was funny, as he was posting all this stuff on Vimeo), and a bunch of other random stuff. He was still using After Effects then, but with Magic Bullet and Colorista, and would render his videos using the Huffy avi codec, which was like the Quicktime animation codec. Then his Ixus 110 was broken, so he got the Ixus 220, and continued shooting some nice videos with that. One funny thing I remember, is that there would always be shots of his feet as he was walking. Really shakey too!

Later he upgraded to a GF1 with just the 20mm f1.7 lens which he was using for a while and did some nice work with that. Videos he has also removed. I remember him messaging me then about this blogger lady by the name Eugenia who was giving him a hard time for buying the GF1 which she thought was rubbish, telling him he should have bought the 550D. He thought she was crazy for criticising his purchase like that, but he had some good reasons to explain why he'd bought the GF1. Then he went and got himself the 550D anyway :)

I see that many of his shots have bokeh, so the equipment does matter to some extent.  It would be interesting to see what he could do creatively with a small sensor camcorder.

Yeah, his early videos I mentioned above would be a good example. He actually had some really nice shots of buildings around Paris. The tripod ones were better. Although when he had the Ixus 220, I remember a few videos he did where he would fake the bokeh by masking out a foreground object like a statue or something in After Effects, and blur the background.

[mtheory]

Linearity and Continuity are two different things. And a continuity error in Kendy's short is not a big deal, - given that a huge chunk of Hollywood movies get released with continuity errors too. I think there was a site somewhere dedicated solely to spotting them...

[mtheory]

This guy is indeed impressive. Give him 5 minutes, boom. He knows how to fill it. His videos feel much longer, in a good way.

The other thing is that you can see his vimeo channel from the start, how he polished his style.

For example the "Real Fighter" wasn't as good as his later stuff, but you can clearly see that he was working on his ideas until they became "perfect".

Also I was thinking about the creative use of broken glasses and other things in front of the lens since I saw this video:

 

 

But now he makes me revisit the idea. Besides of the mood it gives, you can certainly improve on highlights as well. Watch the shots against windows in his videos. The foggy flare looks really great, no sign of bad DR or shitty roll-off.

 

Yeah, he used to post at Cinema5D, I told him he better hurry up and make a feature film, I hope he listened is gonna blow us away someday. 

[Shane Essary]

Later he upgraded to a GF1 with just the 20mm f1.7 lens which he was using for a while and did some nice work with that. Videos he has also removed. I remember him messaging me then about this blogger lady by the name Eugenia who was giving him a hard time for buying the GF1 which she thought was rubbish, telling him he should have bought the 550D. He thought she was crazy for criticising his purchase like that, but he had some good reasons to explain why he'd bought the GF1. Then he went and got himself the 550D anyway :)
 

 

I wonder if that was Eugenia Loli, from osnews.  IIRC she was big into the camcorder (HV/HD 20 something?) back in the day, as well as talking about alternative operating systems (mine was BeOS).  

[QuickHitRecord]

Here's another wonderfully done no-budget short that hasn't gotten nearly enough views: 

 

[Michael1]

Here's another wonderfully done no-budget short that hasn't gotten nearly enough views: 

 

Nice short, but if it was done by Kendy Ty, the credits would have been him, the actor, and that's it.  That's one thing that is so impressive about him.  When other directors yell out, "Lights, camera, action!", Kendy only yells out "Action!".  There are no lights, and the camera is in his hands. :)

 

Michael

[jbCinC_12]

Here's another wonderfully done no-budget short that hasn't gotten nearly enough views: 

 

 

I watched it, and was quite impressed by it.  Goes to show you that you don't have to go to film school, or be a big shot just to make a movie - short or otherwise.

 

 

It's done by a short filmmaker... Patrick Boivin (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2281464/?ref_=tt_ov_dr)

 

 

 

Cheers!

[Chrille]

The guy still knows how to impress: He shot this on an a6300. I believe in HD. You can also download the source file on the vimeo page.

 

[heart0less]

1 hour ago, Chrille said:

The guy still knows how to impress: He shot this on an a6300.

To be honest, I much more prefer his older work made with T2i
Surely, it looked raw and unpolished, but to me it was added value.

Nowadays he uses a gimbal and grades the footage in a modern "cinematic" way - those two things doesn't really fit his way of storytelling, imho.

[Inazuma]

Same. I think his older stuff looked better, although this latest one is a step up from his other recent work!

I still think it was a strange move to go from the Canon to the Sony. The a6300's 1080p is as bad as Canon's in terms of moire and detail. It was like a sideways "upgrade" but with worse colour? 

[Video Hummus]

On 5/13/2014 at 9:55 PM, Liszon said:

This guy is indeed impressive. Give him 5 minutes, boom. He knows how to fill it. His videos feel much longer, in a good way.

The other thing is that you can see his vimeo channel from the start, how he polished his style.

For example the "Real Fighter" wasn't as good as his later stuff, but you can clearly see that he was working on his ideas until they became "perfect".

Also I was thinking about the creative use of broken glasses and other things in front of the lens since I saw this video:

 

 

 

He did a composite image at around 0:53 where he had the guy in focus but also the tent in the background.

Wonderful piece of work and a reminder that its not about the f*cking gear!

[leslie]

1 hour ago, Video Hummus said:

He did a composite image at around 0:53 where he had the guy in focus but also the tent in the background.

Wonderful piece of work and a reminder that its not about the f*cking gear!

could he have used a split diopter to get both in focus ?  Someone else has already mentioned the creative use of broken glass, seems like not much of a stretch to throw a split diopter in there. But perhaps i am wrong and if i am wrong (again) how you you tell the difference ?