Snowmass Balloon Festival, Shot on Epic

[James Drake]

Images from gorgeous Snowmass, Colorado. The 36th annual balloon festival was held on Sept 16-18, 2011.

http://vimeo.com/30297039

Went very light on grading, just touching up contrast and such. Love the mixture of redgamma2 and redcolor2.

Also a "night glow" video is in the works. What I found interesting about shooting ISO 1600 at night on Epic... our T3 lens held about the same exposure as an F1.8 on my Canon 5D mark ii, also at 1600 when compared side by side. The 5D soaked in yellows and reds, even with neutral/desaturated color settings, while the Epic provided gorgeous skintones. I'm convinced that it shoots prettier images than my eye can see.

 

[Justin Kirchhoff]

Great work, James. I really loved it.

 

[James Drake]

Thanks for watching Justin!

 

[Zeb B]

Nice Work!
Like the intro. Pan to the Snowmass sign was a bit fast - could slow down in post. Like the VO concept. Might use some crowd noise to blend the audio from clip to clip so you don't hear the drop offs. Some background audio of crowd/happy kids fading in/out throughout could make a nice emotional atmosphere. Saturation could be cranked on the balloon/sky shots - these events are hyper-real so slide 'er to the right! A shot from the balloon down and air to air would be cool as well.

 

[Justin Marx]

Nothing tops the golden though!

 

[Steve Sherrick]

Shots looked great James!

Like Josh, I am curious about seeing this a bit more saturated, especially with the balloons. Colors looked muted to me. I know you said you went light on grading, so perhaps a future version will be more colorful.

Otherwise, really nice stuff.

 

[James Drake]

Funny enough I time-ramped that sign shot in AE, hasty job on my part there.
Definitely right about the audio! Atmosphere is so key.

Thanks for advice

 

[Brent Carter]

Thanks for sharing, James. I really enjoyed that.

BC

 

[James Drake]

For round two of this project I'll be working on the "fun" edit with some cool night-time, slow-mo, more quirky/very saturated!! Excited to see what color information the REDCODE holds!

 

[Steve Sherrick]

For round two of this project I'll be working on the "fun" edit with some cool night-time, slow-mo, more quirky/very saturated!! Excited to see what color information the REDCODE holds!

Will you be doing color work inside something like Resolve? Looked to me like there was still plenty of room to pull out some amazing colors and probably even go in and do some very specific isolated saturation if you really wanted to go to town on it. Can't wait to see it.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Good stuff. Balloons need to be saturated...

 

[Omar N]

Very nice! Framing wise this looked very professional. The editing was also spot on. The colors did not bother me when I watched it, but now that it has been mentioned, I supposed I would not have minded it to be more saturated.

Overall great work!

 

[Karim D. Ghantous]

The sunstars (such a poor word, but what can you do) at 1:52 were beautiful! No evidence of the crappy blown highlights that a video camera may have shown. Also, the music choice was great. It's annoying when on-line video blowhards try to force their particular kind of 'cool' music down the viewers' throats. Very nice work.

It seems that your saturation was below 'neutral'. I don't necessarily agree with Jeff, but he's not wrong either. Maybe a polarizing filter as well as a 'neutral' grade in software is enough. Obviously it was not your camera, but if it were you could have loaned it to a person in a balloon (or gone in one yourself if you had the chance).

I love these documentary vignettes.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Yeah, I'm not saying I'm right... Just stating a preference. I agree with Karim that the video looked a little de-saturated. My stills I posted are a bit punchy, but hey, I was having fun... Shot those a few months back in Boulder, CO. Wish I could post more, but I really can't. Did a promo DVD for one of the many balloon ride / experience outfits there. Was supposed to go back and shoot some more stuff and make a web video, but we got cancelled by bad weather a couple weeks in a row and then they decided to put that other stuff off until next spring. ...I think they decided the next spring part right after I gave them the invoice for the first part of the job. lol.

 

[Antoine Fabi]

Superb job James!

Resist putting too much color and too much contrast!!!

pushing too much color and contrast looks DSLRish

Which lense(s) did you use ? I really like the color balance.

Antoine

 

[James Drake]

Let me start by saying... I'm not sure what the etiquette for responding to multiple people on reduser is. At one time forums looked down on double posting and such things, so if there are guidelines written somewhere, I'd love to read them. I'll consolidate my answers into this one response... hopefully this makes sense

@Steve- I'm still perfecting my Premiere -> Resolve workflow at the moment. Not sure if I have a buggy computer or what, half of the files would not show after sending an EDL from Premiere... once I iron out those details, the short answer is...YES, I would love to attack the footage with powerful CC tools (vs. RCX and source settings in Ppro). I'll definitely post here when the next cut is ready, though it may be a bit.

@Jeff- Wow... seeing those pix of the balloons definitely puts it in perspective. Saturation boost is a must!! I've been walled inside the DSLR/prosumer color space, time to spread the wings a bit. I love that shot in the air above the Balloon... we missed media day this year due to a conflict so we didn't get to go up :/

@Brent and Omar- Thx!

@Antoine This piece was all on the Red 18-85. It pains me a bit to admit it, but it was just myself and a colleague out shooting, and I sent him off to get audio bits, leaving me to man-handle the beast. On primes, the Epic is a pretty manageable setup. With the 18-85... still manageable, but pulling focus is a bit funky with your arm 2 feet out in front of you while you're trying to op. Great fun nonetheless.

Thank you all for your thoughts and encouragement.

 

[Frank Weeks]

Balloons need to be saturated...

Agree with that. My day was cloudy and dull. Makes quite a difference. Nice work all around guys.