FIFTY THREE YEARS (Short Doc shot on BM Micro Cinema Camera)

[jhnkng]

https://vimeo.com/184950832

This was shot in Hiroshima over a couple of days in 2016. It was shot entirely on the Micro Cinema Camera with the BMPCC Speedbooster with the Tokina 11-16 and various Nikon primes.

I struggled with moire like crazy, I only had a Tiffen IRND with me and it wasn't always enough ND so I was stopping down for some of those outdoor shots, which really amped up the moire. I've since gotten the Mosaic OLPF and that has improved things dramatically. I shot it in Prores LT, edited and graded in Premiere Pro with Filmconvert. Some of the night shots needed noise reduction, but mostly to remove the colour noise -- I actually like the structure of the noise, just not that keen on red and blue ants crawling all over the screen. Neat Video does a good job of removing chrominance noise while leaving the luminance noise, and it blends nicely with a little bit of Filmconvert grain.

Hope you enjoy the film, love to hear what you think!

[Tomas Stacewicz]

Stop pulling my leg and admit that you shot this with an Arri ALEXA!

On a serious note, this is one of the nicest and best footage I have seen coming from any Blackmagic camera. Respect.

[jhnkng]

Oh wow, that is a massive compliment -- thank you! I love that little camera, though it's not so little now that I have it rigged as an A cam. The colour just looks great out of the box, and even the ProRes LT files grade really nicely. Thanks again!

John

[goodgoings]

Beatifully shot and the colors look great. Care to share which LUT you are using and your workflow for grading?

I also find ProResLT "good enough" for documentaries.

[jhnkng]

Beatifully shot and the colors look great. Care to share which LUT you are using and your workflow for grading?

I also find ProResLT "good enough" for documentaries.

Thanks! Just realised I actually graded in Premiere though I played with it in Resolve first. The basic grade came from Filmconvert using the KD5207 Vis3 preset. I originally started with the Osiris Vision 6 LUT which looked really nice for most shots, but there were just some shots that went candy coloured and it was difficult to make the whole film match. The KD5207 Vis3 had a very similar look but it was consistently good across the whole film, so I stuck to that.

In terms of workflow I spent a fair bit of time going between Premiere and Resolve trying to work out which had the better colour. I'd only just gotten the BMMCC a couple of weeks before I left for Japan so shooting this was kind of a shakedown test for me. In the end I stuck to using Premiere for both the editing and grading because I was using Filmconvert anyway. Plus I already knew how to treat moire in Premiere, and there was quite a bit of moire to deal with. I prefer to edit graded images (usually a LUT in Lumetri on an adjustment layer I can put above all my other tracks) so I would adjust the grade as I edited, going back and forth looking for the right tone for the film. Once I locked the edit I regraded the whole thing from scratch on a duplicate timeline, but I always had the old edits on different timelines that I can refer back to if I had to.

Of course I'm not almost exclusively shooting compressed raw so for everything I've shot since I've been round-tripping between Premiere and Resolve. But with the v14 beta I've been working on a project where I'm editing and finishing audio in Resolve, and it's really really great!

[Andrew]

I really like this. Well done! Thanks for sharing.

[jhnkng]

I really like this. Well done! Thanks for sharing.

Thank you!

[Note Suwanchote]

Awesome job!

[stevesherrick]

Nice job on this John!

A few questions:

1. How were you handling location sound? Were you going through an external mixer/recorder or directly into camera? What microphones?

2. How were you handling moire? Standard approaches or did you find new ways to tackle it? It boned me again on the BMPCC yesterday. Really strange affect where the patterns on a tie were bouncing around in a way I haven't really seen before, and I've seen a lot of moire. I've been fighting the urge to get the OLPF for it only because I've already spent way more on that camera than originally intended and it's a B Cam. But I'm thinking about it again.

3. FilmConvert does pretty well with the BMMCC and the BMPCC. I tend to go with the Kodak Vision 3 as well, although I have had some fun with other stocks as well. And good approach with focusing on the color noise and leaving the luma noise in there. That tends to work really well. Neat Video is a great value when you really think about it.

4. You mentioned you have done mixing in Resolve. Are you using the new Fairlight component?

[jhnkng]

Awesome job!

Thanks man! I've been meaning to comment but I LOVE your Halo concept, I definitely want to see that at the movies!

[jhnkng]

Nice job on this John!

A few questions:

1. How were you handling location sound? Were you going through an external mixer/recorder or directly into camera? What microphones?

2. How were you handling moire? Standard approaches or did you find new ways to tackle it? It boned me again on the BMPCC yesterday. Really strange affect where the patterns on a tie were bouncing around in a way I haven't really seen before, and I've seen a lot of moire. I've been fighting the urge to get the OLPF for it only because I've already spent way more on that camera than originally intended and it's a B Cam. But I'm thinking about it again.

3. FilmConvert does pretty well with the BMMCC and the BMPCC. I tend to go with the Kodak Vision 3 as well, although I have had some fun with other stocks as well. And good approach with focusing on the color noise and leaving the luma noise in there. That tends to work really well. Neat Video is a great value when you really think about it.

4. You mentioned you have done mixing in Resolve. Are you using the new Fairlight component?

Thanks Steve!

All the ambient sound was recorded in camera on a Rode VideoMicro -- as in the cheapest Rode Mic available that only needs plugin power from a 3.5mm jack. Hands down the best bang for buck mic out there! The Micro has vastly improved preamps, and it sounds great. I recorded the interview on my Zoom H5, and I thought I'd have to go and re-record all the ambient with that but once I downloaded and listened it was totally usable.

With moire I put a gaussian blur on an adjustment layer and set the layer colour mix to Color, so it blurred the crap out of the colour moire and masked the section with the moire. Once I removed the colour I left the aliasing alone, since it didn't really catch the eye so badly. I learnt the technique from here: http://www.4kshooters.net/2016/02/13...after-effects/
After shooting this I went and ordered a Mosaic OLPF, because I just couldn't handle how badly it would moire when you're not shooting wide open. Though I bought my BMMCC to be my A Cam, so I didn't mind (as much) about spending money to get it right. I think I've spent something like $3000AUD on the "accessories" alone, with the speedbooster and OLPF, V-mount battery pinch and batteries, cage, rods, BMVA monitor, cards etc, that's about double the cost of the camera itself! But I have an HD Raw shooting camera that will run for 6 hours continuously for $4500, which isn't crazy for an A Cam that makes me money.

I didn't mix the audio in Resolve, I finished the film before the v14 beta came out. I mixed in Premiere. That's actually one of my favourite things about Premiere, it has pretty robust audio tools and you can do pretty much everything in one program. That said, it doesn't support BM's compressed RAW, so I've edited my last couple of projects in Resolve 14, and while there's a lot about Fairlight I really need to learn, it's now got pretty much all the features I need to replace Premiere. Plus I think Resolve just has better colour -- using Filmconvert to set a base grade and making adjustments in Resolve is a fantastic way to work.

And I'm with you regarding how to treat the BMMCC noise -- I love the noise structure of the camera, and once I remove the colour noise I could almost not use any grain in Filmconvert. It's just such a beautiful file straight up, even though it was a bit of a risk to invest so much extra money and time to build this camera, I'm super glad I made the effort!