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Still and motion workflow - studio and client

A

Alberto Guglielmi

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I am coming from the two separate backgrounds of photo and video shoot. I am trying to understand what is the workflow the people here use for an hybrid shoot.
I did a few in the past, but I was wondering what others do that might improve my way of doing things.

For photo, I shoot tethered (medium format or 35mm) and provide client/agency with monitors. Stills are discussed on the spot and adjustments/picks made.
For video, there is always the client/agency monitor. In a somehow similar way, takes are discussed on the spot and adjustments/picks are made.

When shooting hybrid, with the RED, it gets more confusing for me.
Assuming I give equal importance to the stills and the motion, like it happens when you create a fashion video or similar. Client will want to use both.
Assuming as well that you provide client/agency/magazine with a monitor where they see the motion being captured.
Do you stop at the end of the take, go over the frames, pick the one you like in RCXpro and export it to a tiff for the client to approve then? It is quite time consuming that way.
Are there alternatives?
What other workflow do you use?
Which software?

Any words of wisdom here is appreciated. I am trying to pick as many information as I can to improve.
 
I don't shoot a lot of fashion, but is it possible for clients to ok a take, then, after the shoot, for the creative team, either locally or remotely, to go through the take and pick the best frames?
 
My main concern with shooting Red to replace my medium format is a) shutter sync speed and b) compression artifacts. But I hear you on the monitor out. It's not the same as tethered. I'm not even sure you can shoot tethered with a Red.

I really, really want to ditch my still camera and work exclusively with Red, but I'm not sure its practical yet.
 
Shutter synch speed it is not a concern for me, as long as I have enough continuous light to use.
Quality of a single well lit medium format file it is superior. For practical reasons, though, I think 18Mp raw files, well shot on a dragon, have better quality than most cameras used on shoot these days, and most of the medium format of few years ago. So it is well usable for print jobs.
It remains the difficulty of the actual workflow on set, with approval process of creatives and clients.

Apparently you can shoot kind of tethered using this cable http://www.red.com/store/products/lemo-to-cat5e-ethernet-cable-9
But it is still different. It doesn't really work for what I need.

I haven't found a solution yet, and not much feedback here on other workflows so far.
 
Alberto, shutter synch speed is related to lighting with strobes and is limited to 1/75s with can be problematic especially if you have a lot of ambient light. Now in general I won´t suggest to "replace" a stills camera with a RED. I very much like the motion workflow for portraiture or business stills and we´ve done an entire fashion editorial with our RED and have been extremely happy with the outcome but I don´t see the use for commercial or fashion photography indicated for general use. You will shoot and probably also light different for stills than you would shoot and light for motion, just pulling stills from a clip made for motion is wishful thinking and don´t forget the huge amount of data you´ll create. IMO.

Cheers,

Ulf
 
I think that as long as you plan, it is not a problem. I did all sort of mixed shootings.

0. Prioritize video over photo or viceversa, so that you set a starting point for camera settings.
1. Forget flash, use continuous light.
2. If you need to use flash, then you need to light for video and stills and shoot at separate moments.
3. Adjust depending on what you try to achieve. Sometime you need to do different takes at different settings for motion or stills.

Said so, my main issue at the moment, is the client approval workflow. The lack of speed in presenting the still to the client becomes an issue.
 
Yes, except of categorically forgetting flash it sums it up quite well. Strobes still have their place, I played with strobes even in motion and xenon light has a nearly perfect spectrum of light emission. Choosing the right equipment for a job is a fundamental decision, an if a client approval workflow is imperative it might rule out the DSMC route. If you can depend on your own decisions you may be rewarded with some lively vivid images.
 
For your fashion work, are you using tungsten or Kinos for your continuous light? (Question is to anyone in general).
 
I have some profoto tungsten that I used often, because I can use most of the same modifiers that I have for flash. Type of the light becomes similar to the profoto flash, but I don't love tungsten for skin tones too much. For as much as you white balance, it still doesn't always look right to me. When possible I try to rent HMI stuff that I can use with modifiers. Kinos I never loved to much because I can't control the light as much. I prefer something I can use as a strong direct light, or bounce/filter to have it softer. But that's my personal opinion.
I am experimenting with some small LED by filled. You can control color temperature and the quality of the light is quite good. But they are not very powerful.
 
A VTR opp / DIT sound be able to pull stills out of the raw motion and display them. If they do both (VTR/DIT) they should be able to tweak the color a little. - These won't be the native files but you can go back to the Raw post shoot.

That's how I would go about it. Hope it helps.
 
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