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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 :)

John Marchant's " Kindling " shot on DRAGON MONOCHROME

Thanks Jarred for the opportunity to play with this camera. The monochrome is my desert island camera, I'd take it over anything else.... so to see it grow up into Dragon is spectacular.

I set out to shoot something specifically to leverage stills and motion in the same piece, and to play with high ISO, high DR and some of the new toys like burst mode. If you feel like you understand the piece, then you understand the inside of my head... that may or may not be a good thing hehe!

Here are some stills from this piece.

Click them for full size.
















































 
Shots in this piece range from 400 ISO to 6400 ISO. Even at 4K the dark 6400ISO shots look great. There's grain, but its pretty to my taste.

Lenses were all Nikon - mostly a 14-24 and a Zeiss 25 f2 - there are a couple of more degraded shots on an old 75-300 push-pull zoom I like.
 
That was fantastic! The monochrome dragon is a beast! Beautiful imagery and great choices with audio... it really pulled me in and kept my attention.
 
Nice work John. I love the shot that follows her face as she turns to the side when lying on the ground, very smooth.
 
John, love the look and the grade! What sort of harness did she wear for those gathering shots? Very smooth moves too on some of the other shots.
 
Would love to see the BTS of the GoPro style mount. Very cool
 
The reverse POV rig for the girl was a steadicam style vest, which we knew would hide under wardrobe, with a custom mount made from a few 1" square tubes. With a hacksaw, a welder and a stack of inch tubing I can make anything hehe.

The rig on the gun was fun to make too. I love wielding the Epic in a near-GoPro fashion in its barebones mode.

A few BTS shots. Note the really expensive mattebox solution for the 14-24 ;)
povrig.jpg

gun1.jpg

gun2.jpg

smoke.jpg

jib.jpg
 
So what's your guess on how heavy the rig is she was wearing? That third tube between her legs looks rather uncomfortable, how low was it mounted on the vest?

Thanks too for posting the BTS photos. We've used a similar matte box when flying the Epic.
 
The third leg was designed to rest on the floor when she was sitting to take the load off... More of a problem for the gentlemen I think (!)

I'd estimate the metal in the rig weighed no more than 1kg, but then the camera and baby fluid head has quite a bit of leverage from out there. Sarah, our actor, had no issues with the weight, and happily ran about in it for a couple of hours.
 
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What do you feel the green filtering does for the Dragon image?
 
As its a true monochrome I was using heavy colour filtration to put the contrast where I wanted it. A heavy red for the soldier brings out the sky and deepened his camo face paint. Green on the female talent does the opposite to what I might normally aim for- increasing the appearance of skin imperfections and freckles, but also bringing out her eye colour.
 
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