Petri Teittinen
Well-known member
My Epic-X was used to shoot a music video this past weekend. I worked on the shoot as a mix of AC, 2nd AC and a DIT. It was my Epic's first paying job.
It was also a cluster**** from the start. The script had several locations, interior and exterior. There were mentions of an airplane and a stretched limo. Two days before the shoot I learned the production had not budgeted any money for lights. Apparently the main location, a night club, had "plenty of bright lights in the ceiling" which they thought was enough. In the end I volunteered to bring along my light kit consisting of three 800 watt Tungsten redheads. Not much, but better than nothing at all, right?
I was asked to arrive at the main location at 10am. When I got there, I found out the artist and all the extras were arriving at 2pm - and we were supposed to vacate the location at 8pm. Yeah, we had all of 6 hours to shoot this thing. The director/DoP binned the script there and then, and said we'd shoot what we could within the time limits.
The main location was practically a batcave. The night club's rep turned on all their lights, strobes, roboscans, LED cans, what-have-you... and it was nowhere near enough, as expected. It was a veritable Noise City, as far as Epic's exposure view was concerned. We set up a shot with the three redheads and got enough light for T2. Oh, did I mention the focus puller had never pulled focus before? Also, my Redrockmicro Follow Focus vomited its parts all over the dancefloor 15 minutes into the shoot. (Good riddance, you piece of garbage.)
Tungstens and mixed lighting sources worried me a bit. Trying to calculate WB from a gray card gave wildly inconsistent readings, thanks to all the disco lights spinning and flashing in the ceiling. In the end I picked Epic's 3200K Tungsten preset and tried to make sure there was something in every shot to set WB from in post.
Old stories about Tungsten and a noisy blue channel kept bugging me as well. I had not shot any Tungsten tests on Epic (yeah, I know, my bad) so I had no idea what, if anything, needed to be done to compensate. Guessing sounded like a bad idea, so instead I simply tried to make sure we shot a fat negative while exposing to the right and keeping a close eye on the traffic lights and the bars for noise and clipping. Judging from the clips I've had a chance to view it worked out great: there's practically zero noise and skin tones look good once WB is set properly.
All in all the shoot had all the ingredients of a nightmare. But it was also a lot of fun! I remember grinning madly when we were trying to shoot inside a stretched limo which was a lot darker than the night club, then spent nearly an hour driving the limo all around the city center, trying to find lights, any lights at all we could use to light the interior. Everyone involved got a little bit hysterical at that point
I'll post some images when I get a permission.
Oh, almost forgot: Epic worked very well for the most part. On three separate occasions the camera booted up but there was no image on the LCD screen. This was easily fixed every time by disconnecting, then reconnecting the LCD cable from the brain. No other issues what-so-ever.
It was also a cluster**** from the start. The script had several locations, interior and exterior. There were mentions of an airplane and a stretched limo. Two days before the shoot I learned the production had not budgeted any money for lights. Apparently the main location, a night club, had "plenty of bright lights in the ceiling" which they thought was enough. In the end I volunteered to bring along my light kit consisting of three 800 watt Tungsten redheads. Not much, but better than nothing at all, right?
I was asked to arrive at the main location at 10am. When I got there, I found out the artist and all the extras were arriving at 2pm - and we were supposed to vacate the location at 8pm. Yeah, we had all of 6 hours to shoot this thing. The director/DoP binned the script there and then, and said we'd shoot what we could within the time limits.
The main location was practically a batcave. The night club's rep turned on all their lights, strobes, roboscans, LED cans, what-have-you... and it was nowhere near enough, as expected. It was a veritable Noise City, as far as Epic's exposure view was concerned. We set up a shot with the three redheads and got enough light for T2. Oh, did I mention the focus puller had never pulled focus before? Also, my Redrockmicro Follow Focus vomited its parts all over the dancefloor 15 minutes into the shoot. (Good riddance, you piece of garbage.)
Tungstens and mixed lighting sources worried me a bit. Trying to calculate WB from a gray card gave wildly inconsistent readings, thanks to all the disco lights spinning and flashing in the ceiling. In the end I picked Epic's 3200K Tungsten preset and tried to make sure there was something in every shot to set WB from in post.
Old stories about Tungsten and a noisy blue channel kept bugging me as well. I had not shot any Tungsten tests on Epic (yeah, I know, my bad) so I had no idea what, if anything, needed to be done to compensate. Guessing sounded like a bad idea, so instead I simply tried to make sure we shot a fat negative while exposing to the right and keeping a close eye on the traffic lights and the bars for noise and clipping. Judging from the clips I've had a chance to view it worked out great: there's practically zero noise and skin tones look good once WB is set properly.
All in all the shoot had all the ingredients of a nightmare. But it was also a lot of fun! I remember grinning madly when we were trying to shoot inside a stretched limo which was a lot darker than the night club, then spent nearly an hour driving the limo all around the city center, trying to find lights, any lights at all we could use to light the interior. Everyone involved got a little bit hysterical at that point
I'll post some images when I get a permission.
Oh, almost forgot: Epic worked very well for the most part. On three separate occasions the camera booted up but there was no image on the LCD screen. This was easily fixed every time by disconnecting, then reconnecting the LCD cable from the brain. No other issues what-so-ever.
:shocked: