First paid shoot, HELP!

Started by Rob Curd, October 20, 2017, 01:41:06 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Rob Curd

Hi,

I have secured my first paid client in my quest to make photography and videography my full time gig.

The client is a mens hair product company and they are looking for a cinematic scene to be used in the launch of their new product in November.

The shoot is on Sunday and I was hoping to get some tips from from some of you with more experience out there.

The video will document the model getting their haircut and styled using the product. The client would like me to emulate this video https://www.instagram.com/p/BXN10-zn-e5/?taken-by=dukehyde

From what I can see they have shot it in a higher ffs and done some speed ramping. Also a shallow depth of field, not sure if it was for creative purposes or due to lack of light.

I guess what I would like to know is does anyone have any general tips, problems I am likely to face and or how you would shoot or improve on the above video.

Thanks
Rob


D_Odell

If you want high speed and slow motion, shoot 48 if your timeline is 24 or 50 if you use a 25p timeline. Then you can either have slow motion or go for lips sync.. Going 60p is mor challenging to get to lip sync.

Have some direct light (soft or whateverk) etc front light and you'll get some classic flairs often going well on ML.

Good luck!
5D3 [size=6pt](OLPF removed)[/size] :: 1.1.3 :: Canon FD L Serie

jpegmasterjesse

Hard to give advice without knowing much about your setup.  Do you have faster lenses?  My guess is that video was shot on something like a 35mm.

If you're set on slow motion I wouldn't use a canon camera.  I would rent a Sony A6300/A7 series which can shoot at 120fps.

If you do have a 5d3 and want to mess with 48fps, make sure you give yourself plenty of time to troubleshoot this.

But most importantly, your style will be your own.  If you spend your entire career attempting to emulate other looks you won't be able to generate your own look.  Think about light, and maintain high standards when it comes to the rudiments.  Don't jack your ISO too high. 

If RAW is too problematic just skip it.  The creative heart and your communication with the client matters much more than bit rate.

bpv5P

The scene is interpolated (artifacts at 12s). It has a "plastic" looking, probably because of strong noise reduction. The lens is probably of about ~85mm. The aperture is probably about f/1.8. The color grading is terrible but, well, it's the normal high-contrast teal and orange stuff.

What I would do:
- First choose if you'll record in raw or normal h.264. If your camera and card support high fps recording with raw, I would say "go for it", since the quality will be much better
- Turn-on the fps_override. Put on high_fps mode and 60 fps
- The shutter speed should be at least 45 degree (1/480), so it will have less motion blur and have a better effect after interpolation
- Open your lens to the maximum (f/2.0 will do the job, although a f/1.4 would be great)
- Adjust the ISO according to the scene (you can get more light from some open window in the room, no need for artificial lighting). I would also suggest you expose to the right (let the scene more exposed than normal and in post-production you reduce it)
- Adjust white balance

Then, after you record, go to post-processing:
- If you recorded in raw, use CinemaDNG conversion and put on some software that support raw decoding (After Effects, Resolve, etc)
- After that, you should use a denoise software, to get this "plastic look". NeatVideo works ok
- Interpolate the images using Twixtor or some other in-frame interpolation software
- Save in a lossless format (ProRes, DNxHD, Cineform, Lagarith, etc)
- Put on Premiere Pro and do the color grading using LUT's on Lumetri (the Ektar 100 lut from hyalinejim seems to work well for raw images, although I haven't tested it myself - ImpulZ always work for me on h.264 images)
- Export using h.264 mp4, using bitrate of about 10Mb/s CBR

a1ex

Quote from: bpv5P on October 27, 2017, 02:18:28 AM
- Turn-on the fps_override. Put on high_fps mode and 60 fps

That usually won't work. If you need 60 FPS, you should select it from Canon menu and leave FPS override off.

bpv5P

Quote from: a1ex on October 27, 2017, 05:21:09 AM
That usually won't work. If you need 60 FPS, you should select it from Canon menu and leave FPS override off.

Yes I should've said that too.
But, wait, why is fps_overriding not working? Can it be fixed? Or even disabled, if it's not working...
I used to use it for enforcing exact 24fps (instead of 23,976 ntsc standard), but now it doesn't makes sense anymore.

a1ex

It usually works for small increases in FPS (e.g. from 30 to 35 if you are lucky, otherwise from 30 to 31 or maybe not even that, depending on camera model). It won't work from say 24 or 30 to 60. It will do nothing useful if you already have 60 FPS in Canon menu.

If you want to get e.g. 48 fps from 60, then it will work.

At lower FPS it has a bunch of other uses (low light, fine-tuning rolling shutter etc).

It has side effects in H.264 (ever wondered why it disables sound recording?)

What should be fixed and why it should be disabled?!

bpv5P

Quote from: a1ex on October 27, 2017, 05:54:13 AM
What should be fixed and why it should be disabled?!

That's a communication problem. I thought fps_override was not working at all, but that's not true. You were refering on the first comment to the 24 > 60fps, that obviouslly would not work.
And yes, indeed, it's very useful for timelapse and stuff like that.
Anyway, sorry for the noise.

D_Odell

For your own sake go out and do some tests. Never do a test for the first time on set!
5D3 [size=6pt](OLPF removed)[/size] :: 1.1.3 :: Canon FD L Serie

Teamsleepkid

the only way to emulate that video is to be 18 years old and be a youtube "creator."  :P
EOS M

Rob Curd

Thank you for all your replies!

I posted this maybe with a bit too much short notice so I've already been and shot it.

Here is what I did:

Shot h.264, I couldn't risk using RAW on this shoot however thanks to @bpv5p I used the 10bit module last night in London and it worked a dream!
I shot in 60fps 720p to give me the ability to do speed ramping.
Remembered to use a white surface to white balance the scene.
Remembered to set the camera to PAL also so not to get light flickering.
I Shot with a manual lens wide open at f1.7, although the above video is very dark I wanted to have more light to play with in post.

Thank you for all your comments, will be handy to know going into the next one.

Now time to edit! Will let you know how I get on!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk