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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Hey folks, here is a Sundance-YouTube short I shot with my Zeiss ZF glass

C.H.Haskell

C.H.Haskell

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No time to post these days but I thought I would share some RED frame grabs and footage of my recent results I had on my last low budget 48 hour shoot.

The competition was for Sundance and YouTube, its called Project:Direct. My good friend and talented director/producer Lucas Krost in VA called me and said he wanted me to come down to VA to DP this short for the competition and that it was due in 5 days! They wrote the script in a day, and we shot it in 48 hours and they spent another couple days on post production.

This was a low to no budget and guerrilla as it gets...very small crew with lots of running and gunning. We got rained on heavily which made life quite miserable but yielded a nice weather effect which made it all worth it.

Lenses:

ZEISS ZF (nikon mount...25, 35, 50, 85)

Lens baby (nikon mount) for dream sequence footage.

The script was 8 pages so they had to really trim it down to get to 5 minutes for the competition, I have no clue if we made it as finalist or not but I think they will announce the details on the 27th. Winning film goes to Sundance.

FILM HERE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2WiUrBjVUI

We did not get the HD version up in time unfortunately, but considering we did this in 2 days, I feel pretty excited with the results and it was a lot of fun to get back to my guerrilla roots. Any comments on youtube are much appreciated as well.
 
Richard Darge said:
Loved it Clay! What'd you do for light?
Click to expand...

Hey thanks Richard, we had an arri soft bank tungsten kit at 1st...kit inlcuded a 500w, 2x 650s and a 1k I believe. Then later on in the shoot, Graham Copeland of studio 108 shows up with a couple of HMIs for the EXT moonlight, car crash and swamp scene.

We were under the gun and seriously lacking time and hands so once we were finally able to strike the HMIs...we did not move them too much, just re directing and fidgeting along the away.

INT car stuff was a lit with a small LED panel.

I should really give a shout out to Graham Copeland and Danny Eckler for all there help, these guys are nothing short of professional down in Richmond VA. This is the kind of shoot where some of our actors were gaffers and grips, cheers Barry Ellenberger the bartender.
 
Joel Kaye said:
Nicely done.

How did you pull the crash off? Looked great to me.
Click to expand...

If you ever need to make the impossible, possible...give my boy Lucas Krost a shout at THE BRANCHING. They are associated with a group of stunt drivers and I believe Lucas called up a "Kid Richmond" to find some junk cars last second to crash.

Kid pulled through with a couple of cars, padded up his drivers....we rehearsed the scene and slammed the cars into one another. Pretty simple and straight forward, as much as our non budget would allow. We wanted to crash the cars more but they did not start up again naturally.

PIX below...On the RED is yours truly, then my AC jessica TA, Jesse Clark on sound and to the right my man Lucas Krost.
 
great work, clay.

"you dig first" = :unsure: :help:
 
Andrew Walker said:
Looks very good and makes me happy that I just bought a set of Zeiss Nikon mount lenses.
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Yes you will be happy with this set, its the most professional still lenses I have worked with to date...both mechanically and optically speaking. I always say if you have the budget for cinema lenses then go for it but if your looking for an alternative then these ZFs under the proper conditions continue to blow me away. Have them outfitted with gears and you will hear less complaints, Peter sensor of rplens took care of this for me.
 
C.H.Haskell said:
Yes you will be happy with this set, its the most professional still lenses I have worked with to date...both mechanically and optically speaking. I always say if you have the budget for cinema lenses then go for it but if your looking for an alternative then these ZFs under the proper conditions continue to blow me away. Have them outfitted with gears and you will hear less complaints, Peter sensor of rplens took care of this for me.
Click to expand...

I am going to outfit mine with gears. If you could post the price for the gears to be added because I was thinking of using Duclos out here for that service. I'm just trying to decide if I want to get the 25mm or the 28mm. The 28mm is a f~2 and the 25mm is a f~2.8. Plus when the 21mm comes out I would like to pick that one up as well. I'm seeing these as future Epic lenses with the FF35 sensor.

The reason I'm into these lenses now is because I got to see a set that Richard has in his kit. Very nice lenses, can't wait to start shooting with them.
 
Call Peter sensor and see what he can do for you. The gears were pressure fitted to my lenses (heats them up and cools them down) so they really feel solid and built onto the lenses. I sent my lenses to him and got them back in about a week if my memory serves me well.

If you know for sure were going to get the 21mm later, then I say go for the 28 f2. I really needed something wider then 25 so I ended up adding a tokina 11-16 to this kit but have not yet testes to see how they will match.
 
Thanks Albert, will try and post some more grabs for folks interested in the Ziess ZFs. Busy working post production this holiday season...have them up in about an hour.
 
Looks good man. We have ZFs too and love them. They are sharp as hell and the throw is long and very smooth. We also have a 17-35 Nikon zoom but it never seems to get sharp on the RED but on the D90 its really sharp.
 
Just saw it. Congrats, it looks great. I love the story too. It's really tough to craft a narrative that feels natural and un-rushed in such a short runtime and at the same time get so much info across. It's my constant struggle when writing.

Props to you on the cinematography and production quality and props to the writer - director on the quality of the story/script. I hope you guys place well in the competition.

Happy Holidays,

Omar
 
Thanks for the feedback guys...I notice my stills I posted look awfully compressed, I need to figure a better method for sharing frame grabs, anyone know the preferred method for posting stills?

Anyways, I dont know that we mad the cut for the competition :( but they officially announce the finalist tomorrow so who knows?!

Hey Spike, to reply to your comment above in regards to your 17-35...have you tried adjusting the back mount to this lens?
 
I used Duclos for my ZFs and am very happy. Best to get them to supply as well so they can tech check. They rejected one of the lenses in my set. If they hadn't also been the supplier it would have been a real pain to double handle to return.

Jim

Andrew Walker said:
I am going to outfit mine with gears. If you could post the price for the gears to be added because I was thinking of using Duclos out here for that service. I'm just trying to decide if I want to get the 25mm or the 28mm. The 28mm is a f~2 and the 25mm is a f~2.8. Plus when the 21mm comes out I would like to pick that one up as well. I'm seeing these as future Epic lenses with the FF35 sensor.

The reason I'm into these lenses now is because I got to see a set that Richard has in his kit. Very nice lenses, can't wait to start shooting with them.
Click to expand...
 
jimhare said:
I used Duclos for my ZFs and am very happy. Best to get them to supply as well so they can tech check. They rejected one of the lenses in my set. If they hadn't also been the supplier it would have been a real pain to double handle to return.

Jim
Click to expand...

Sounds like it would have been a good idea if I had known about it. But it sounds like from what other have posted about the Zeiss lenses being looked at and cine converted, its a little expensive. I want to get the lenses geared eventually but I'm not that hot on the whole de-clicking thing. I just need to play with them when they get here to see what I want to have done to them.
 
Just so you guys know, Peter Sensor and Duclos use the same style of Delron rings, same 80mm fronts too. I believe they are roughly the same price. If you want to save a few bucks, you can easily de-click your ZF lenses yourself. Just unscrew the back cap and the little ball bearing should slip out.
 
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