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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 :)

One of my last Weapon Dragon spots... Buick China.

Christopher Probst

Christopher Probst

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Shot this spot in Shanghai and the deserts and mountains in north-western China a few weeks ago for director Jan Wentz. A fond farewell to my Forged Weapon, but I'm really pumped to start showing you guys what Helium is capable of!

[video]http://artistry.net.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Probst_Buick_2_Jan_Wentz.mp4[/video]
 
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FrankMcPartland said:
Once again, I am blown away by your work.... I wish I had .01% of your talent!
Click to expand...

Having just bought the Epic-W, I feel like I do when I buy new golf clubs... buying the clubs is easy... where can I buy the skill? If only the skill of Toia and Probst were also available at the Red store...
 
great work! I found the subtle change in color across the course of the piece to be a strong choice as the buick really popped out more toward the end in a very pleasing way. Also NAILED the dolly/zoom of the person working in the glass room -- not too much and not too little.
 
Great cinematography Chris.... I cannot wait to see the Helium spot you just shot .... Thanks for letting me see some grabs.... back in LA from Transformers in London on the 21st.

Lunch?

Cheers,

Peter
 
Christopher Probst said:
Shot this spot in Shanghai and the deserts and mountains in north-western China a few weeks ago for director Jan Wentz. A fond farewell to my Forged Weapon, but I'm really pumped to start showing you guys what Helium is capable of!

[video]http://artistry.net.s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/Probst_Buick_Jan_Wentz.mp4[/video]
Click to expand...

Curious to know if you'd ever find reason to shoot with a DRAGON sensor? If yes, would love to understand why. Outside of the FOV commentary. Thanks! Look forward to checking out your helium work!
 
Thanks All,

To answer a few questions. We shot 4 days. 2 in Shanghai and 2 in North Western China, a few hours outside of Urumqi in the Xinjiang province. Most of the color was set in camera and was copied through from dailies and through the final grade. I did a little adjustment pass on this link above from a very compressed source, as I'm still waiting for an uncompressed version for my archive. There is a lot of compression artifacts evident and I couldn't fully color correct it without excessive banding, which I still see in the dim scenes.

Shanghai was fun and chaotic. We shot the first night in the office doing the dolly-zoom in the crazy, LED-lit hallway in a building downtown...

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and then moved to the exterior night streets, which we captured some pre-dawn scenes of the jogger.

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We finished out the day moving to our gym location and the fashion designer's studio...

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For our car work on the second night in Shanghai the film coordination was pure chaos, the city double booked the same street intersection for 2 separate film productions and we ended up working around each other, even with our rain towers drenching the streets...

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The extreme slow motion was shot with a Phantom Flex, which was tricky to color balance as we were shooting with Sodium Vapors lamps in the background and we wanted to match our predawn, blue feel in this environment at 1AM. So white-balancing slight of hand came was in order to bias the Phantom to match what I was doing on the Weapon.

There was no Russian arm to be had on our dates in Shanghai, as we had to ship the one available to Urumqi for our desert and mountain work... Instead, we opted for this...

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Pretty sweet!

We did a few daylight driving shots in the city and drove an hour and half to a make-shift water tank facility for the underwater work. Once wrapped, we headed sticky and beaten to the airport and flew 6 hours to Urumqi.

North Western China is an amazing location to shoot in, 2 hours in 1 direction, you have MARTIAN looking landscapes. 2 hours the other way, Alpine mountains. We got a hotel smack dab in the middle of those two extremes and headed either direction both production days.

The mountains had some nice winding roads which we shot Russian arm material for.

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We also used the location for our mountain climbing narrative thread...

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Director Jan Wentz and I scouting on the mountain top...

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The desert scenes we again started pre-dawn with the climber beside a camp fire... This was basically all available light and not much of it save for the fire! I did end up edge lighting and filling in some insert shots with car head lights and white bounce for the shot of the hands silhouetted against the fire...

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I will say, I dig the rural parts of China as they all basically eat hearty meat and potatoes type food, in China's case, it's mutton (Sheep) and lots of it!

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Seasoned to perfections make Chris a happy man!

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awesome man! 2 questions, will this be shown in china in english? Is a buick a desirable car in asia? The cultural stuff is just about as exciting to me as the cinematography. Love the right turn in the rain, looked awesome man!

Steve
 
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