'The Addicted' Production Diary Episode 1

As promised, here is the first instalment of our production diary videos. I'm going to try and upload a new one every week right up until the film is finished.

This one is an introduction to the project and doesn't have a specific theme... but some of the others will do.. like FX work, camera choices, lens choices, post production workflows etc.

'The Addicted' artwork....from Empire Poster Comp

The poster competition on Empire's website is still running for a while yet... and i had to post some more of the designs. I'm sure you'll agree there's some stunning design talent out there. Every couple of days i see a new one that i like best...  it's going to be really tricky to choose only one.

HyperDeck Shuttle 2...and news update.

BlackMagic Design have announced version 2 of their popular HyperDeck Shuttle SSD recorder. It's pretty much the same as version 1, but it adds the option to record not only to uncompressed files, but also to Avid's DNxHD compressed codec. Much like Pro Res, DNxHD boasts much smaller files sizes than uncompressed, but with almost no noticeable difference to the eye.... and considering the cost of SSD drives, that makes the HyperDeck Shuttle a much more attractive proposition. The Shuttle is still a bargain at just $345.

BlackMagic Design have also addressed the problem of mounting the Shuttle on your camera rig. No more will you have to gaffer or cable tie it to your rails... the mounting plate makes life far easier. For $99, it's probably worth it just to know your Shuttle (and more importantly, your footage) is safely mounted.

GoPro have just announced the new Wi-Fi Backpack & Wi-Fi Remote Combo Kit  for their GoPro Hero2 mini camera. It basically gives the Hero2 Wi-Fi which means it can then be remotely controlled via various smart devices such is iPhones or iPads. Also, it allows you to stream video over Wi-Fi so that you can capture both on the SD card in the camera and on your laptop/smart device or the web at the same time all by using a free GoPro App.  For aerial based work, this could be invaluable... it also gives the Hero2 a serious advantage in the 'crash cam' stakes. If the footage is not in the device... you don't have to worry about damage. (apart from the hit on your bank balance) It's waterproof too.

I should point out that the original GoPro Hero HD does not support streaming over Wi-Fi... only the remote control options will work... for the full streaming experience you will need the Hero2. The remote can control up to 50 GoPro cameras at the same time.

The Combo kit is due out in March.


'The Addicted' News
Today was another full day of editing. It was also another day spent wrangling with FX. There was a scene where an 'entity' has to appear... be menacing for a bit..then disappear. (not too tricky) Then there was a scene where someone has to be completely enveloped in light...almost like an explosion, but more paranormal. We shot the scene using some very bright lighting effects on set...which gave me a very good start, but i needed more. It fell to some slight 'mis-use' of some Magic Bullet looks tools to get the effect i wanted. All i need to add now is the final element which i've been working on in After Effects this evening. Hopefully all the elements will fit together tomorrow and i can move on to the next scene.

When i'm just cutting regular scenes...people talking/walking/moving about etc... i can get lots done in a pretty short space of time. Even with multiple camera angles, i should be able to get 5 minutes of screen time cut in a day. It may not sound like much, but it's quite quick. But, as soon as there's FX shots...things slow down. It took all day today to do a scene which was no more than 10 seconds long.

Here's a sneak peak at some screen grabs taken from the teaser trailer we've just finished... hopefully we'll release it soon...

Right... it's late and i need to watch some mindless TV for a while to unwind.

More soon.

Testing iPad Blogger App "Blogsy"...& The Addicted update.

 I've had this ipad2 for months now and I'm still finding what it's good for....sometimes I use it a lot, but sometimes I forget I've got it and it sits in my rucksack for a week.

Keeping this blog up to date is tricky sometimes....finding a spare half an hour here or there to get a new post up can be hard. I've tried using my phone, and it's possible but not ideal, it's just too small.

The iPad seems perfect and it's a lot less intrusive to use an iPad in Starbucks/Costa/The pub (delete as appropriate) than the MacBook Pro which usually annoys people and with its upright screen....can be a bit public.

Anyway.... So far, this post has been pretty easy to put together using Blogsy.  There's some good formatting tools, access to my Picasa albums, my YouTube account, and full use of all the iPad's tools like the photo album and camera.

In other news... I'm now 1 hour into The Addicted edit. Today I was working on 2 of the scenes set 25 years ago. They both came together pretty quickly apart from an FX shot that I had to do in Photoshop...that took an hour for a shot that lasts just under a second. Tomorrow I'm working on another scene with a big FX shot in it...although I'm tempted to keep it simple. Less is often more when you're trying to create tension.

Hopefully, assuming I catch up on the mountain of paperwork I've got on this week (as well as the edit) I'll be posting the first of a series of regular video blogs on the post production of The Addicted. The first one will bring everyone up to date on where we are and then there will be regular updates leading right up to the end of the post process.

Right...time to post this and see if it works.

 

 

Empire Mag running poster comp

Just wanted to let you all know that those nice people over at Empire magazine are running a competition through their online forums for someone to design the official poster for 'The Addicted'.

http://www.empireonline.com/forum/tm.asp?m=3312279&mpage=1&key=

We saw some of their previous poster competition entries and were blown away by the quality of the work submitted.

All the details are explained over on the Empire site, but basically, we're looking for an image to use for the poster, the DVD cover and all the promo material. We're making this whole thing on a very small budget, so help like this is vital..and hopefully we'll help a top designer expand their portfolio into a new area.

There's so many great designs on there already and we've not even begun to think about any decisions... but here's a taster of just 3 i saw on there today..

Fantastic work... can't wait to see more.

The winner will be announced on the Empire Forum... and then maybe here after that... but not for a while yet... so get designing.

Making the Video Part 2... The edit

Last time i talked about the shoot of a music promo i was working on... this time it's the edit.

Once i got the two SATA drives from the Atomos Ninja backed-up on to another FireWire800 drive, i could begin trawling through all the footage. I like to watch everything i shot and then label and move the shots i want into another folder, ready to import into Final Cut Pro. I label them so that i know what is what when i am assembling the edit. It's no good calling them take 1, take 2 etc... i need to know what it is, so i call them things like 'Vocal Mime to Cam 1' or 'Audience Reactions 3' etc. It keeps things simple.

Once i've chosen all the footage, i then import the audio file of the song into Final Cut Pro. In this case, it needed some mastering work first. There was very little 'bottom end' or bass, and it also need converting into an AIFF file to make FCP run quicker. I made the adjustments in PEAK and then exported it.

Once that was done, i dropped it onto the timeline and started dragging in the clips. I knew already what the plan was, so i started at the beginning, looking for the opening shots and then the speed dating clips. As usual there was far too much footage, so it was a case what not to use... a nice position to be in. When you shot a promo in one day with no crew only a tripod and a shoulder rig, there's no slick dolly moves or long tracking shots, so you shoot accordingly and that means keep the edit snappy too. Linger on any one shot too long and people will lose interest. A huge mistake you see in lots of amateur band videos is a wide shot of the band performing that just lingers on screen too long. If the camera's not moving, the edit has to.

 The shot of the singer looking right down the lens seemed the best way to start and as there's no lip syncing during the speed dating section, it seemed preferable to using some of the gig section too near the beginning.

Then it was a case of trying to tell the story without hammering it home. The audience aren't stupid and nothing is worse than trying too hard to make a point... people can and will watch it more than once, so give them some credit and let them work it out a bit.

Luckily, i'd shot all the gig sections right the way through, so i could line up the beeps at the beginning of the takes and they would all sync up with no drifting issues. Then all i had to do was switch between takes while dropping in some of the story based takes at regular intervals to keep the flow.

I was really happy with the stuff we shot at the table of the singer singing to Matilda (or Nat as she's really known...) The lighting looks great and it joins to the two main sections of the video together perfectly.

Once i'd got all the clips in the right places and i'd watched it through a few times i began on the colour work. This involved using Magic Bullet Looks to grade it. I shot it all quite bright so i needed to make it darker and more moody. I used a preset i'd created for 'The Addicted' which only needed tweaking on the exposure to get each clip to match. On a few shots i added some anamorphic lens flares just to give it a bit of punch and then i added a widescreen matte which i eventually cropped off altogether at 2.35:1 for that cinematic look.

Un-graded footage shot with Frank Glencairns G-Log profile

The graded footage using one of my presets from Magic Bullet Looks

Al i had to do then was add the titles. Dan had already sent me the OffBeat Music animation and i already had the Recoil Films one, so i just needed to create the credits. I did this in FCPX as there's some nice looking presets which are really easy to tweak. Then i exported them and imported them into FCP7. A quick render (the quad-core i7 iMac really renders fast) and then export. Lastly, i dropped it into Compressor 4 to generate the 1080p web version which i uploaded to Vimeo.

Dan (the 1st AD), shot this little making-of video on the day of the shoot... it shows the fun (and the mayhem) involved in the shooting process. Notice how much everyone is enjoying themselves while i'm permanently staring down the viewfinder... such is life when you've got just one day to shoot. Mustn't complain though, we did fit in time for a pint and a McDonalds. ;-)



Here's the finished promo...




What would i have done differently given more time or money?
Well, a dolly and track would have been great, and a circle of track around the table scene would really push it onto another level, but there's always a wish list and you've got to work with what you've got. I'm really happy with it. I don't think you'd make much difference without spending 10 times what it cost and even then would any punters actually notice? Probably not...

I'm looking forward to working with the band again when they're in the top 10. ;-)

TVLogic Announce EVF coming soon...

Just a quick post about a new EVF coming from TVLogic. TVLogic make some really good quality HD Broadcast monitors so i would expect this to be right up there with the Zacuto EVF, if not better.

It's got some great specs such as HD-SDI Loop-Thru, which will please a lot of people and also HDMI in and out... not to mention a resolution of 960x640, amazing for a 3.5" display.....all very professional.

The flip up loupe looks good too.

Feb 2nd is when they are going to tell us more apparently...

Making A Music Promo for 'Dance A La Plage'

On 4th Jan i was hired to direct a music promo for 'Dance A La Plage', a band from Banbury. Unlike a lot of music videos, i hadn't heard the track beforehand and all i had was some YouTube links sent to be by the band to give me an idea of what they wanted.

They had come up with the treatment/concept themselves... all i had to do was simplify it, shoot it and edit it. This blog is going to be in two halves... this first one about the shoot and the second about the edit.

The band wanted the video to be in two halves... a story section which features the band speed dating and a performance section where the band play at a club in front of an excited crowd.

They had already found a location which could be used for both sections.. it's a bar which holds gigs anyway, but also has a really cool vibe and some great quirky furniture, ideal for the speed dating bar.

I arrived with my standard kit for this kind of shoot as well as my new DiT station. My current kit includes the Sony FS100 on a rail system with Follow-Focus, MatteBox and the Atomos Ninja Pro Res Recorder. I've also added some custom bits like a speaker system to check takes back with on-set audio and an arm to hold the Ninja in place and allow it to move and rotate... it's basically half a magic arm mounted on rail mount.

My FS100 Rig with Atomos Ninja

The DiT Station is a flightcase that holds my MacBook Pro, the Ninja's Dock, a 500GB Firewire 800 drive for backing up to and all the chargers for the many Sony batteries. It just means i can open it up, plug it in and i'm ready to check footage, back up and do quick test edits without looking for somewhere to set up and scratching around for cables on set.

The DiT Station, my lens bag and some mini par lights.

The first set up of the day was the speed dating scene. We tried a couple of different table arrangements before we settled for the one that looked best on camera. It's always good to remember that this isn't reality... it doesn't matter how odd it looks in real life, it looks good on camera, you never have to let the viewer see how odd it really is... so try moving people closer together than is natural...change the angles of chairs and don't worry too much about how it feels.. just make it look good on camera.

I had to keep the lighting simple, and thanks to the great Super35 sensor and my F1.8 Zeiss 50mm prime lens, that wasn't a problem. I used a par-can shining through a big diffuser for a front light and 2 mini-pars with diffusers for the faces of the two stars of the scene. There were some big windows just out of shot, so i had some daylight too as well as the lights in the venue itself... so white balancing was quite tricky.  I used Frank Glencairn's G-Log A picture profile on the FS100 as i love the scope this gives me for the grade in post... the only issue with it is that it's sometimes tricky to see what you're shooting.. you need to really check that you're not clipping the highs.

The first set-up for the speed dating scene. Dan wrestles with the diffuser on the Par-Can.

We ended up moving the tables into two rows which looked much better and we then began shooting. First of all it was all speed dating stuff... no music. The blokes all changed seats for each different take and we made sure everyone had a drink... the story was that a particular girl is who the singer is after, but she likes another bloke who is there... It ends badly, but there's some humour in there too.

After the speed dating scene, we shot the bit where people come in and sign in... we also got some posters printed advertising both the speed dating night and the gig...  might be useful in the edit.

We also decided to shoot a scene where the singer sings the whole song across the table to 'Matilda' the girl in question... This we did to camera as well as in profile. Just as we were wrapping up this scene we came up with the idea to pan across the table from the singer to the girl and back again, but to swap the singer for the bloke the girl preferred in between pans and then to end up with the singer looking down the table towards the camera. It was a real off-the-cuff idea, but i think it's going to be a very important part of the video.

The first speed dating set up...

The 2nd and final speed dating set up...

Checking the shot on the Ninja. I started with a static shot and then went handheld.

Lastly, we shot the performance aspect. This involved setting up the band on the stage in the venue which i decided to make time-lapse of....(you never know... it might come in handy)... we then waited for 'rent-a-crowd' to turn up. (the band put a shout-out on facebook)

A 28mm prime with a Vivanco Wide Angler adapter on the end... i used this for the time-lapse.

Great lighting and furniture in 'Also Known As' in Banbury... our location

Eventually, the crowd turned up and i had to shoot the performance. As we didn't have enough people to really fill the venue, me and Dan (the 1st AD) re-arranged the crowd to take up only the parts of the venue the camera could see at any one time. This meant lots of takes... one take of each of the band in close up, several takes over the heads of the crowd towards the band...several takes of the crowd from the drummer's position on the stage...several takes on the stage with the band (and it was a tiny stage...so that wasn't easy).

I ended the day's shooting with a shot of the couple walking out of the venue hand in hand...  4 quick takes until i got the one i wanted.

The band setting up on the tiny stage. The small size helped with the intimate and crowded feel for the gig section

Next time i'll talk about the edit...(once i've done it) and also i'll post the finished video itself.

Huge thanks to Mark at 'Also Known As', to Nat for being a great 'Matilda' and to Dan for shouting at the extras and sorting me out with cups of coffee and bacon sarnies... not to mention a very long drive home.

Merry Xmas Everyone...

Thanks to everyone who has read my blog this year. It's gone from a very small following to quite a big one and i appreciate the support.

2011 was a very busy year for me with a full length feature shoot, 3 short shoots, several trips to the USA including a 3 week tour with Howard Jones, a European tour and a full UK tour.

In 2011, Recoil Films underwent a huge change with many new people getting involved and it's set to keep changing for the better in 2012.

Our current feature project, the horror film called 'The Addicted' is in post production right now and we'll soon be releasing the teaser trailer online. In May we're off to Cannes with the finished movie.

We're hoping to shoot our next feature in the Autumn of 2012. More news on this soon.

January is going to involve me sitting in the edit suite day in, day out..  and hopefully i'll get the bulk of the edit done before i head off to Japan in February for some gigs with Howard.

In the coming weeks, i hope to do a thorough review of the Sony FS100 and the rig i've been using. After the last few months of using it in a movie situation i think i've probably got some good insight into the camera.

I've also got a music promo shoot and edit coming up in the first week of Jan too... so i'm looking forward to using the FS100 on that.

Anyway.... have a great Christmas and New Year people. I think we all deserve it.

NLE choices... or not.

Years ago. i cut my first music promo clip on a Speed Razor system. (anyone remember them?) Almost immediately, i moved on to Adobe Premiere on the PC. I then moved over to Mac, but stuck with Premiere. Then, about 6 years ago i made the move to Final Cut Pro. I've never had any problems with FCP and i've really enjoyed working with it.

You may have read in my posts from earlier in the year, i was very open to the changes that came with FCPX. I started working with it as soon as it came out... i really liked a lot of it. I was prepared to perservere and learn to love it.

But... then i ran into some serious problems with FCPX. It crashed and lost a lot of work... gone without trace. That's just un-workable and that was the main reason i moved back to FCP7. The lack of professional monitoring was also an issue.. as was the lack of support from some of my favourite plug-ins.

However, all these issues are being rectified...and hopefully, sometime next year, FCPX will be up to the task.

I've been trying out the other popular NLEs again today. It's hard work. Premiere 5.5 looks and works in a similar way to FCP7. But i find a lot of the workflow clunky and slow. Ok, it does some things much better than FCP. The way you can import so many codecs and just work is good...as is the ability to just drag a clip's length on the timeline and the speed changes to fit...i like that. But, it's just not quick enough in any other respect for me. I know that if i stuck with it, i'd probably get quick... but i don't have that kind of time.

Avid's Media Composer 6 baffles me. It's very sleek and simple to look at... and from my experience, a bit too simple in operation. I couldn't get things to flow very quickly on MC6 at all. Importing a selection of clips and then arranging them on the timeline with some multiple layers and then doing some colour correction seemed very very slow. I'll admit that simple cutting is easy enough... but anything slightly more complicated seems to really stress out my brand new iMac..  so MC6 is not for me either at the moment.

It looks like it's back to FCP7 until FCPX comes of age....and Apple... if you're out there.. these things need looking at to make FCPX usable:

• A manual SAVE option. I need to know my work is saved!!!
• Media management that i can work with. I don't want all my projects showing up all the time...
• Re-Connect Media!!  That's a must. (Is there a way to do this already? I can't find it)

4K vs 1080p.... or just a good film.

I love trailing around the various film making forums online. There's some great tips on film making... some great links to really useful websites and lots of interesting people all contributing to the global film making community.  But, there's a hell of a lot of arguing about camera resolution. Ever since RED upped the game with the RED One, people have been talking about 4K acquisition. The new Scarlett is refreshing the argument all over again.  There's a whole bunch of cameras that can shoot in 4K now and there's a growing number of online film makers who will tell you that resolution is king.

I've just shot a full feature in HD for the first time... 1080p HD looks amazing when projected onto a huge cinema screen. Just ask any number of Arri Alexa users...it may capture upto 3.5K, but most users are shooting at 1080p....  even Roger Deakins is shooting the new James Bond film on one in 1080p. If it's good enough for him...  and you can't argue that James Bond isn't meant for a cinema release!

I enjoyed the technical side of preparing for my last shoot. Shooting a feature is grueling. You need to pick the right equipment for the job. I knew we were shooting in low light most of the time, so i picked the Sony NEX-FS100 and Atomos Ninja combo.... they did a great job, thanks to our Camera Op, Amy Wilson and some vintage lenses.

But... are the lovely images making my edit flow better? Is the shallow depth of field making the dialogue work? And, conversely, is the 1080p as opposed to 4K making the story weaker? No, of course not. I've got all kinds of problems in the edit, which is completely usual... it's par for the course. But, not one of them has anything to do with resolution.

1080p HD looks stunning...especially if it's shot right, and so does 4K, but neither is going to affect how good your film is. If film makers spent as much time on script development and rehearsals as they did on camera equipment, maybe the films we get to see would be better than they currently are?

Magic Bullet Looks for FCPX

I love Magic Bullet Looks. It's an incredibly creative piece of software that i can't imagine not using on my projects... so not having it for FCPX is a real issue for me. Aside from the bugs that FCPX has, not having access to some of my favourite plug-ins is a real dealbreaker for me. Well, Red Giant are on the case, as you can see in this little video:



Preview of Magic Bullet Looks in FCPX from Red Giant on Vimeo.

So it's another bug within FCPX itself which is slowing the release up. It just makes me more sure that i need to stick with FCP7 for now. However, i'm convinced that in a couple of update's time, FCPX will be ready for some serious use.

If i had to pick one feature to add to it... it would be the ability to save a version of the 'Event' manually anywhere i want at any time...and with all the footage and files it needs to re-open the project.  It can't be that hard...and i'd lose less sleep.

S

Canon C300 vs RED Scarlett.. and FCPX goes in the recycle bin.

It's been very tempting to blog on the recent releases from Canon and RED...but everyone's at it and i'm sure i don't need to be clouding the landscape with my views. I've sat back, read a lot, listened to other film makers and slowly come up with some clarity...i think.

From where i'm standing, the C300 is a bit of a disappointment.  It's features are close to what we all wanted from a 'Pro' Video DSLR...but not quite there. The form factor is ok... things like that don't matter too much these days as most drama film makers need to mount it on a rail system anyway...so small is good. But, the price....Jesus!! If Canon had made it compete with the FS100 and AF100, they would have cleaned up... a whole new generation of film makers would have flocked to it. But at around £10k without a lens... ouch. That's put it firmly in the Pro market....and probably the bottom end of the Pro market... which is never a good place to be in my opinion. And anyway... how does it cost that much? I don't see where all that extra over the price of a 5D Mk2 is going... £5k i could have understood...but £10k? No thanks.

The Canon C300.

The new RED Scarlett specs are kind of what we were all expecting. They've dumped the 2/3 sensor in favour of a 35mm one and they've gone with an interchangeable lens system in either Canon or PL flavours.  Lots of bloggers are kicking up saying that the Scarlett isn't usable without spending an extra £5k on storage and batteries etc...and with a new RRP of $9750...which will probably still be around the same in £s once it's shipped here...its looking like an expensive option. Other issues include RED's slightly unstable operating system which has caused people like Phil Bloom issues with his RED Epic and also the sheer size of the data the RED generates. You'll need a DiT and shit-load of HD space to work with it.

RED's latest incarnation of the Scarlett. Will it finally see the light of day without any more spec changes???

At this stage, my money's on Canon to win this little game... the Scarlett has been coming in one form or another for about 3 years.... i'm bored of waiting. It really needs to be stunning to make the wait worth while.... and i think it's going to a pain in the arse to all but the most professional users who are prepared for it's quirks and lengthy workflow. The C300 on the other hand, although far from perfect is ready to shoot out of the box and will be far easier to deal with in post. Early reports suggest that the pictures this thing generates are amazing and contradict what the hardware and codec might imply would be possible...it's apparently a very cinematic image. Canon know their sensors...so i'm hopeful these rumours are true.

I'm sticking with my Sony FS100.... it's turned out to be the best choice for my kind of budget and after having started on the edit of my latest feature i shot on it...i can confirm it is truly a stunning image.

One more thing...

A few months ago i was singing FCPX's praises. I must confess that i have gone back to using FCP7 this week. FCPX crashed on me after a 5 hour editing session and lost all my work...gone...without trace. I was really not happy with that. I was also really missing some of my plug-ins that are FCP7 only still... so for now, i'm using the old trusty 7 to edit my film. Apple need to sort FCPX out... losing work in a professional situation is not an option. Rant over...

Until next time...

Steve Jobs... RIP

 Woke up to hear the news that Steve Jobs has died. He's been ill with Cancer for some time, so i guess there's some relief for his family that he's finally done with the suffering and pain that Cancer brings.

Steve was a true visionary. He didn't give people solutions for their problems... he gave them solutions for the problems they'd have in the future. He always looked ahead. His way of thinking infuriated some people...(mainly the PC mob), but for many of us, he was showing us how cool the future could be if we let technology shoulder some of the burden of everyday life. The iPod, iPad, iMac and the iPhone changed everything. Even if you never owned a single one of them...their influence touched everything that came after. Remember the first iMacs? They were white and blue...or white and orange or red or green. In those days all computers were beige...nasty nicotine coloured things with no design at all. Then suddenly the iMac arrived and everyone realised that computers could look stylish at the same time as functioning well.

That changed the world. PCs started arriving on the market in more outlandish colours. Steve moved on... The G5 tower arrived. Sleek, aluminium...very functional and very stylish... but different from the colourful iMacs. Let's not forget OSX. A truly revolutionary operating system that Windows has been trying to catch up with ever since. OSX is still going strong... easy to use, easy on the eye...no annoying bullshit in the way of you getting things done.

What about the Macbook? A really small and cheap laptop that can out-perform a lot of desktop PCs.... it's £700!!!  That's madness... And if small is your thing, there's the MacBook AIR... a stunning piece of design that fits some people's idea of the perfect travel laptop.

I could go on.... Apple TV, iPod Nano...(how small???!!!) ...and the iPad!! The iPad is still finding it's feet in the world...and yet there are more iPads in the world than there were PCs 10 years ago.. Think about that. That's a lot of iPads.

How did i get into Apple? I was forced...  back in 2003, i was a PC user. I was using a package called Logic Audio on the PC for all my music production work. I loved this software...i still do. Then, Apple bought it. They discontinued PC support straight away and i was left with a choice... learn a new piece of software, or buy a Mac. This meant a huge upheaval. Replacing all my software and ditching the PC forever...   I rarely had issues with my PC. I had learnt to build my own and i knew how to optimise them for use in the studio. It rarely crashed and i wasn't keen on spending £2k on a G5... but that's what i did. It took about a week before i realised i was never going back to PCs.

Soon after that i got my first iBook. A little 11inch laptop that changed the way i worked. I could work from anywhere and never have to wait for it to boot up....i just left it in sleep mode all the time.. impossible in those days on a PC.

Then i upgraded to a newer Macbook.... the 13 inch model. I loved that laptop. It's still going strong now. Then i upgraded to the 15 inch MacBook Pro...the unibody one. That's what i'm using right now. It does all my editing, my composing, my internet, my calender...everything. I picked up a second hand G5 iMac for the kids to use at home...and they also have my old G5... it's still going.

Last summer i bought an iPad 2....  and in about a month i'm going to buy a new iMac for editing on.

So, as you can tell... i'm a huge Apple convert. Their products work perfectly... the OS never crashes.... they are fast... they are beautiful and the back up from Apple is second to none. I once took my secondhand macbook in to an Apple store because the case had a crack in it. No receipt. No paperwork...nothing. They took it back and replaced the casing for free. No questions asked. That's service.  A friend of mine had a logic board go on their MacBook Pro recently. They replaced the whole thing for free. It's that kind of support that makes buying Apple a no-brainer for me.

I hope they keep pushing boundaries and keep giving us cool products to work with.

Steve Jobs will be missed.

Sony NEX-FS100... after shooting a feature on it...

I thought long and hard about what camera to use for shooting my latest feature 'The Addicted'. It had to be one of the new breed of large sensor cameras. I love my DSLRs, but i wasn't keen on the H.264 compression and the less than ideal workflows associated with it. The Panasonic AF100 was top of the list for a while, but it's low light performance let it down. The Sony F3 was always out of the price bracket...so when the FS100 came along... it was a pretty easy choice. As i've mentioned in previous posts...i used the Atomos Ninja to bypass the AVCHD onboard codec of the FS100.... huge bit rates are what i need for the grade not to fall apart.

Amy Wilson - Our fantastic Camera Op with the FS100

The FS100 with LED light and actor John Cusworth in the shot

Me and Amy lining up a shot. Ninja and LED light attached

So, what do think of the FS100 now i've been using it for nearly a month solid?

Here's some good and points...

GOOD

•  I love the form factor - it's very configurable and works for my way of shooting.
• The screen is fantastic...very accurate and full of excellent information... such as:
• Peaking... nice.
• Zebras... much missed on DSLRs.
• Histogram... very useful.
• The viewfinder is very good. Shame it can't point down, but really very good.
• The kits lens rocks! Ok, it's not fixed aperture and it only goes down to 3.5, but it's got a great IS system and as a run and gun lens, it's hard to beat.
• Proper audio!!  I only use it for a guide track... but it's very good. 2x XLRs with phantom... :-)
• Slo-Mo... it's full 1080p and at 50fps with a shutter speed of 100 it's very smooth.
• The picture profiles are very cool. I use 2 custom set-ups...one for indoors, one for outdoors.
• The battery life is great.
• It's light...but pretty strong. Not a single issue with build quality.

BAD

• HD-SDI would be nice... 
• The cable on the handgrip is too short... if it was long it could control the Ninja when connected to the other side of the camera.
• The 1/4 20 screw points on the top of the camera all obscure the screen folding back properly when you use them....annoying.
• Fitting the battery is a bit of a faff...could be easier.
• No 1920/1080 25p over HDMI.... (may be a HDMI standard thing...)
• Slightly noisy mic and pre-amps.... it's perfectly usable though.
• Noisy at +18db...which is fair enough... it's not perfect, but it's usable at +18db.

The only issue we had was that the battery charger died after only a couple of days... i'm still waiting to hear back from CVP about that. It would be nice if they replaced it quickly though.

The super 35mm sensor is crazy. It really looks amazing. There's no way anyone can compare DSLR footage to what the FS100 can capture onto something like the Ninja.

Wish list?

I'd love a case big enough for me to be able to slip the camera on it's rig, with the rails, mattebox, follow focus and Ninja attached straight into it. Breaking down the rig each time is very boring.

If anyone is looking for a large sensor camera to shoot an indie feature on...this is the one. I used all my old lenses on it using a bunch of adapters... and the footage is stunning. It really does need a mattebox to add ND filters and stop flares...(unless you want them... most people do these days...)

It'll be interesting to see if Canon can compete with the FS100 with whatever they have up their sleeve for this market sector.

Atomos Ninja... after 2 weeks on set.

 

A few weeks ago, i bought the Sony FS100 and an Atomos Ninja Pro Res recorder. I decided on the Ninja after months of reading up, testing and research.

One of the first things i did was update the software to Version 2...this gives you full quality playback which is vital in the field.

I meant to buy a pair of spinning drives and an SSD for all the action shots we would be shooting. As it turned out, we never got an SSD...so the whole shoot was done on regular spinning drives...and only 5400rpm ones too. There was lots of running around with the FS100 and Ninja on a shoulder rig... and only twice in 2 weeks did the drive not cope. Both times the rig was being really shaken about. All the other times it performed perfectly. I think this proves that Atomos are right... for 99% of the applications, the regular spinning drives cope well enough.

It was so nice to be able to whack the drives into the docking station and check the rushes back on my MacBook Pro. We could see instantly what was working and what wasn't. Things like strobing... which often didn't show up too clearly on the monitor were all too evident once the footage was viewed full size on the Mac. This kind of flexibility is what makes the Ninja system so perfect for feature shooting.

The dual battery system meant we never lost power...and they lasted for ages!

Problems? Well...not really. The only slight issue i have with it, is that you can't erase a take you know isn't needed... you can only format the whole drive. (on the unit itself) And... sometimes the take numbering goes a little astray... but if you're good at keeping logs, you won't get lost.

The more full the drives get, the slower they access the files for playback... this can slow you up a bit when you're checking back takes on the Ninja itself. But it takes no time at all to whip out the drive and replace it with a fresh one... so it's no biggy.

There's been a lot of talk on Vimeo and other sites that the Pro Res files on the Ninja don't look any better than the FS100's native AVCHD files... and to some extent, that is true.... right up until you try to grade or colour correct in anyway. The Pro Res files let you really go to town... you can pull and twist the colours and it really takes a lot before the footage breaks up. The original AVCHD files do not behave this way at all. You can whack a Magic Bullet preset on them, sure... but you try and do anything more adventurous and you'll come unstuck. We're shooting everything really bright and well lit and then darkening the whole thing down in post.... this only works without adding noise and banding using a high bandwidth codec like Pro Res. AVCHD is fine for weddings or event video stuff...but for indie features? It's not good enough.

If you're looking to shoot something great with one of the new large sensor cameras, you'd be mad not to try and capture as much information as possible before you start messing with it in post.

Other stuff?  Well, it comes in a seriously good quality case...with 2 batteries, a dual charger, a really nice docking station with 2 x FW800 and USB2... and all the cables you need. I used 2 x 160GB HDs in it... i know there are bigger... but 160GB was perfect for one days's shooting and it meant i didn't have hours and hours of footage living precariously on the Ninja drives before the nightly back ups were made.

So... there it is. The Ninja rocks. Oh and one more thing. I really needed a short HDMI cable... and the only one i could find cost £5 in Tesco. I could have spent 10 times that... but the cheap one worked perfectly. It does my head in that Hi Fi nerds say you need expensive cables... as long as you're not constantly plugging and unplugging... cables are cables as far as digital data is concerned. They work, or they don't...   and my £5 cable worked fine...and it's still going.

I'm looking forward to shooting on the Ninja again this week and on future productions. It will be interesting to see what other functionality Atomos add to it next.

S

The Addicted. End of main location shoot.

Wow... it's been 14 days of solid, hard work in our primary location...which was a large, damp and creepy ex-factory.  The cast and crew really pulled together to get the required shots done in a very small amount of time and i'm really pleased with the footage.

Amy, our Camera Op. got some great footage and combined with Ian Holmes' excellent lighting...we've got a fantastic look which will grade perfectly. I must mention that the Pro Res 422 footage from the Ninja is infinitely more pliable in post than the AVCHD captured on the FS100 itself. We only used the camera's own codec for the slo-mo shots which were captured at 50fps in full HD....awesome. Anyone not sure if the Atomos Ninja is worth getting...trust me, it is. Easy capture...easy to import into your NLE and very very solid build quality. Also, anyone who was unsure if Pro Tools works on location? It does... ok, maybe not ideal if you're moving locations all the time...but we were in one building for 2 weeks and it worked fine. Jon very quickly got the lav mic placement sorted and we got some great audio.

Ian contemplates the load-out.

One wing of the location...it was huge...

Those nasty toilets.... they were fine for a couple of days...but then...not.

So what issues did we come up against on this budget shoot? Well, although we had enough cash to rent toilets, catering (albeit basic) and a simple green room set-up... it was still a bit grim to be stuck in there for 2 weeks. It's a big ask to get cast and crew to use portaloos and eat ready meals.... although we did have some rather good cups of tea and coffee....and lots of energy drinks and custard creams to keep our energy up in the middle of the night.

We managed to keep to schedule right up until the second week when a failed camera battery charger meant we didn't have any spare batteries...and that cost us half a day's shooting. But... thanks to a slightly less hectic 2nd week and a very dedicated crew...we caught up. But... like with many low budget shoots...we didn't have loads of time to get the required shots. We had to work fast...all the time. It was a case of making decisions quickly and sticking with them. We simply did not have the time for multiple takes and dozens of angles... i had to decide what i wanted and run with it. We usually shot 2 or 3 takes which is plenty if your acting talent is on the case.

Biggest cock up? A really important prop... a syringe with a retractable needle rolled off the gurney we were shooting on...and smashed on the floor. Disaster! But... we managed to fit the needle part onto another syringe which worked ok...but we did have to shoot it slightly differently.

Biggest surprise? How professional everyone was. From the make up girls to the cast...every single person on the set pulled their weight and worked together. Film making is very much a team game...and this team really worked. I will definitely work with all of them again... (if they'll forgive the dodgy toilets..)

We also can't forget our Exec Producer, Lawrie, without whom, none of this would have been possible. 

A couple of days off now...then down to London for the last week of the shoot.