New travel film-making setup and pipeline - I feel like the tech has finally come of age

[ac6000cw]

On 3/31/2025 at 1:54 AM, kye said:

To be honest I just find it baffling that everyone is throwing the word "cinematic" around and yet all the colour grades look like they haven't been converted from LOG to 709.  It's one of the easiest changes you can make in post to take your footage from video to cinema, and yet hardly anyone does it.

Pushing as much contrast and saturation as you can was the best film-making advice I ever got.

I agree the low-contrast/low-saturation look seems to be fashionable at the moment - and I don't like it either. It's not accidental that the 'standard' settings of cameras (and TVs) usually have relatively high contrast and saturation - it makes the images look attractive and eye-catching. What sort of film would 'The Third Man' be without its high-contrast monochrome imagery, or 'Goldfinger' without the glitzy look?

Out of interest, was the choice of GH7 versus the 'sister' smaller and lighter G9ii down to the internal 4k ProRes recording and fan cooling/longer recording times on the GH7?

[kye]

16 hours ago, ac6000cw said:

I agree the low-contrast/low-saturation look seems to be fashionable at the moment - and I don't like it either. It's not accidental that the 'standard' settings of cameras (and TVs) usually have relatively high contrast and saturation - it makes the images look attractive and eye-catching. What sort of film would 'The Third Man' be without its high-contrast monochrome imagery, or 'Goldfinger' without the glitzy look?

The low-contrast look has been fashionable for a long time, since people started shooting in LOG and then editing in it and getting used to how it looks.  Colourists talk about this problem like it's been around for many years and simply never went away.  This caused a feedback loop where directors fought the colourist to keep things bland, which made films get released with bland grades, and then this became the reference for future directors and also all the amateurs.

Also, it's quite hard to add contrast in post because it requires a clarity of thinking that many do not possess.  When you look at your image and see it's captured all this information in the shadows and highlights and then apply a healthy level of contrast you immediately miss the details that are now crushed in the rolloffs.  This leads to the question of what parts of the scene can be obscured.
The only way to be able to answer this question is to understand what the shot is about, and therefore what is relevant.

This is a level of maturity not yet attained by many.

16 hours ago, ac6000cw said:

Out of interest, was the choice of GH7 versus the 'sister' smaller and lighter G9ii down to the internal 4k ProRes recording and fan cooling/longer recording times on the GH7?

I didn't really do a systematic comparison with the G9ii, but in general terms, why would I pay several thousand dollars for a new camera that isn't the leading offering, when the flagship is only a few hundred more?

Certainly, if internal Prores and cooling fans were absent on the G9ii then either of those would probably have been an instant disqualification.  The size comparison is pretty moot as well, for street work I'd consider both to be full-sized bodies.

[kye]

First day out shooting in Seoul.  Here are some images.

These are all frame-grabs, were ETTR, had a look put over them with Resolve FLC plugin, and I adjusted exposure on each (and contrast on the odd one or two) and that's it.  I'm sure I will finesse them once I start editing for real, but this is essentially just looking at my dailies.

Setup is incredibly easy to use thanks to the huge DR, AF is super-snappy, the 14-140mm zoom gives so much flexibility and I'm finding I'm using the long end a lot more than I thought I would.

I'll post some video footage of it later, but I'm also finding that I can hand-hold at 140mm (280mm FF equivalent) and with the OIS + IBIS working together get almost no movement in the frame at all, and with a slight crop in post I'd get locked-off images.  At anything below 80mm or 100mm the frame is locked and won't need any stabilisation in post.  Incredible results.

[MrSMW]

2 hours ago, kye said:

I'll post some video footage of it later, but I'm also finding that I can hand-hold at 140mm (280mm FF equivalent) and with the OIS + IBIS working together get almost no movement in the frame at all, and with a slight crop in post I'd get locked-off images.  At anything below 80mm or 100mm the frame is locked and won't need any stabilisation in post.  Incredible results.

That is some stability Kye!

Various Netflix and other productions should take note; I hate all this super handheld jittery stuff.

[kye]

A few more from today, in Hongdae.  Even less grading than yesterday, but trying to lean into the contrast and deep shadows more.

 

[MrSMW]

I'm finding this last set a little too dark Kye...but that might just be my personal taste.

I often do the old 'Squint Test' when it comes to images and these are just a tad too dark for me.

Hope you don't mind me saying...

[kye]

12 hours ago, MrSMW said:

I'm finding this last set a little too dark Kye...but that might just be my personal taste.

I often do the old 'Squint Test' when it comes to images and these are just a tad too dark for me.

Hope you don't mind me saying...

I don't mind at all, I mentioned it partly to raise the topic as I'm not sure about it.

What I need to do is to get a bunch of references and study how they distribute the DR of the images into the final grade, so I can get a sense of things.  A bit like how cinematographers get an understanding of levels and ratios, using false colour or a light meter.

I pulled a few reference stills from the movie Perfect Days which is set in Seoul to compare:

and some from Kill Bill vol 2, as it's a bit more contrasty:

and The Matrix, because it's got that feeling of the matrix not being a real place, which gets to the idea that Seoul is like a world unto itself:

or The Killer has quite a dark grade to things:

There's something about the rich dark areas, and having rich dark colours that I'm chasing, but obviously I'm yet to work out what it is and how to get it.

Works in progress though!

[kye]

Edited and uploaded the stabilisation test video.

Test of how well the GH7 and 14-140mm combination is able to stabilise hand-held footage.

GH7 was using the Boost IS mode, which is a more stable version of IBIS (but it doesn't do electronic IS, that's a different mode, so this mode has no crop).   My hands were more shaky than normal when filming this, and the first shot was standing up without leaning on anything, and the second shot of the hotel was sitting down.

Results aren't perfect, but they're good enough for my purposes.

[MrSMW]

Pretty stable and even with the post stab, not a huge amount of cropping going on 👍

I'd say FF Lumix is about the same level with S5ii.