Miguel Angel

Vivarium, Directed by Lorcan Finnegan, 2020. Being one of my most expected movies of the year I'm a bit sad that I wasn't able to catch it in the Dublin Film Festival because due to the coronavirus pandemic Vivarium has gone through online distribution without having a proper cinema release (at least in Europe, maybe it did in the States). Lorcan Finnegan and longtime collaborator (and member of this forum) @Mr. Macgregor are able to tell a pretty interesting and original story (which is A LOT nowadays) and they do so in a very tasteful way without forgetting about their European roots (I personally think so!). The mix between sci fi, horror and their backgrounds creates a movie that stands out in the middle of superhero movies and remakes because it does have a lot of subtext! The script is fantastic and it introduces you in the world where everything is going to happen within 5 minutes and no complications. Jesse Eisenberg and Imogen Poots are splendid in their roles BUT the character which steals the show is Eanna Hardwicke, his portray of "old boy" is superb! I had the chance to work with him on a Tv Series last Summer and he is very very good!, better than the two main characters in my opinion! Really good movie to watch if you're at home, and if you're not at home, you should! ? Have a lovely day!

Wonderful!

I think that you've achieved it!

Thanks for sharing them Marcel!!! Love them! The colours and grain in the Mono Lake ones are fabulous! That series and the one in Shanghai are my favourites! I need to get a scanner! ?

It is a very good one. Here is the direct link: https://www.hurlbutacademy.com/illumination-experience-workshop/

Shane Hurlbut has made his Illumination Course free for the next 90 days! https://www.hurlbutacademy.com/illumination-experience-workshop/ Worth watching it!

Amazing analysis Phil! I'd love to read more of your thoughts on every tv show or movie you watch! Thanks for sharing it!

Not a photographer but a super interesting painter. Shaun Downey https://www.shaundowney.com

Hi Anders and welcome to the forum. Will you need to light just the car from a wide shot or the car and the interior of the car with people in it? Thanks!! Have a lovely evening!

Looks great Tiago! Congratulations!!!

Hi Shawn! Many thanks for your post and feedback!!! Jota and myself always work with the same people (production designer, editor and sound designer, the 3 of them did an amazing job!) and we were all super excited about this ? I do think that you can feel that in the piece (hopefully! ?) We shot 90% of the video on steadicam with a super good steadicam operator called Andres Lopez-Herce, the other 10% was me operating hand-held. Thanks again!!! ?

Last Summer I had the chance to work with my friend Jota on a really really really small project that was going to have a bit of narrative in it. I was absolutely delighted when Jota gave me a call and told me that he wanted me to shoot it because I had wanted to work with him on something with no client / agency since we started working together (we have only worked together on narrative commercials yet still commercials). When I first met him he had finished directing his first movie, IRA, which I thought that was extraordinary and having seen how he directs, the way he blocks actions and how he likes moving the camera to add dynamism I jumped onto the wagon and said: yeah!. The video was going to be for a dance teacher friend of him and, obviously, the budget was pretty thin (kind of around 4K if I remember correctly). They had the money to pay for the location, we made a deal with a camera rental place and a lighting rental place in Madrid that I'm friends with and we shot for one day. We shot on the Sony Venice at various ASA (from 2500 to 10000) with a couple of Zeiss Supreme Prime lenses, and we had a lot of fun! My lighting package was: 2 mirrors, 1 china ball and 1 x 2.5K. Colour grading was done in El Colorado with my usual colour grader Noemi Lallave, who did an amazing job with the little time that she had available for us. And here it is! Expulsive Thanks for watching it and hopefully you like it! ?

It looks like a fantastic movie! And the framing doesn't seem very unusual to me, probably because I like that kind of framing and I feel like they wanted to be able to see the world where the characters live in the way that large format photography shows it when you shoot a portrait with a large format camera in a wide shot. Looking forward to watching it when it is released over here. Also, you might want to watch "Homecoming" from Mr. Robot's director! ? Have a good day.

Thanks John!!! I appreciate that you liked it! ? Thanks Gregg! I hope that some day at some stage we can all work on things where there is no pressure of any kind! But I don't think that that will happen ever ha!

Last December I was super fortunate to work on a passion project / short-film about teenager's vulnerability with a director, Steve Kenny, that I had wanted to work with since I saw his previous short-films. Steve and myself had met last year and we instantly discovered that we liked the same types of cinema and stories, so with similar tastes we kept meeting from time to time to talk about different movies / tv series that we saw and we developed a friendship that led to this project that I lensed last year. We shot for one day in several locations around Dublin with the support of a wonderful production company called "Banjoman" that we had both worked with before. Through the different months that the project was imagined we talked about camera movement, framing, lighting and something super important, aspect ratio. When Steve sent the script to me I kept thinking that it would be great if we could see more of the actor while he was acting so he could emphasise the things that he is going through not only with the look but also with gestures since a teenager's body is changing constantly. These nuances in the body that I wanted to capture led me to a 1.66:1 aspect ratio because I also thought that it could be great if we could see a bit of the places where he is at. Regarding camera movement, we wanted to shoot the whole short-film on steadicam, with very fluid movements all the way through.. but on the recce our producer told us that due to budget issues and operator's availabilities (we had €6000 to make the whole project) we weren't going to be able to use steadicam. Even though we thought that steadicam was a fundamental part of the piece we quickly changed our plan and decided that we were going to keep the camera locked when the actor was not moving and hand-held when our character was going through some internal conflicts or was moving. On the lighting side I lit it in a very simple way, I just augmented the natural and available light that was there on the day but we were very lucky because the locations were fantastic and totally fit the story that we wanted to tell. And that's pretty much it, we shot on an Alexa Mini @3200ASA while underexposing by 2 or 3 stops sometimes and I think that I should have used less diffusion on the lens ? (I had a Glimmerglass 2 and a Black Diffusion FX 3 at all times) but I wanted to break the images even more. I asked our colour grader (Peter Oppersdorff from MPC in London) to keep the noise and he gave me even more so I'm in love with that. He was also super respectful with the images and they look like he didn't do anything at all (which I like!) Anyways! I hope you like it! ? Have a lovely day!

180º most of the time although I had to shoot at 360º at one stage because I had the 2x extender and I had, literally, no image in the monitor ?, hopefully they won't use that take ? We actually shot a lot of movement with ambulances and jeeps going from a to b and everything looked superb!

Those images I posted are stills from the camera, ungraded, shot at 8000ASA. I shot some tests before going to Sierra Leone (the ones I posted in another FX9 post from Robyn :D) and in order to break the image from the camera you have to shoot at 16000ASA, 2K and underexpose at least 3 stops. If you do that, you don't have any bright points and you try to recover the image, you've A LOT of noise.. that I don't really like, but as long as you have a bright point you're absolutely fine. It is an absolutely wonderful camera! By the way, do you know that a lot of the TV Series that you watched over the years were shot in 2K Prores 444? not raw at all ?, such as Vikings, Game Of Thrones and Penny Dreadful to name a few!

We were actually looking for that accessory that you have but it wasn't available in Spain and the different vendors didn't have a delivery date available so we went to Sierra Leone with 12 sony batteries with dtap and we powered everything off just one battery. Surprisingly it wasn't consuming a lot of power! We put a Sony Venice plate on top of the camera to attach all the things that we needed to attach to it. And the files are really lightweight! We shot around 21 hours of footage in the highest codec available in 6KFF at 25fps and we only filled 1.3Tb!!! Ah, I'm sure that you've already forgotten about the F5.. other than when you look at the menus in the FX9 ? ?

I've just finished that short documentary in Sierra Leone with the FX9.. and I'm truly amazed. We kitted it out with a Teradek, WCU4 and a 5.6" minimonitor for me (instead of the one that the camera has) and it has all gone really really well. We shot almost in darkness since it was a documentary about the lack of electricity in hospitals in Sierra Leone at night and how the people there perform difficult surgeries with just the light of a phone.. and shooting at 4000ASA / 8000ASA has been absolutely eye opening. There were moments where I couldn't see anything but the camera picked the light from the phone super well. Definitely a great companion for a Sony Venice as a B cam or even to shoot commercials or features if there is no money for a Venice / Alexa. @Robin R Probyn we tested anamorphic lenses as well and it is not that difficult to make it work as of now ? I'm looking forward to working with it again.

No worries Varuj. As you can see from the frames, there is no clipping, just white under 100% because I covered the litemats with diffusion and depron. On top of that I put the sheets to make everything a bit more natural. I lit that kitchen to shoot 360º at any time so if you want to make the windows less white you can always light the close ups ? Have a good one!

Beautifully lit and blocked, I'm enjoying it a lot!

@Varuj Chapan, I lit this kitchen (twice because there were two different sequences in it with different tones) with 8 litemats on each window from the top to the bottom (there were 3 windows). It was on a 4th floor with no access to balconies, scissor lifts, cherry pickers, etc, etc. There is nothing else inside the kitchen other than a 8 x 8 net behind the camera on the wide shot and on the right side of the camera on the close up of the girl. The stills are ungraded by the way!

Thanks for the tips!! I'll keep an eye on the Gamma Assist thingy! So far I think that it can become a Mini Venice. I was surprised by how robust the codec is in terms of colour grading and how well it handles underexposure and overexposure. Definitely a really well thought out camera! By the way, any LUT that you have made for the Venice works on the Sony FX9 footage straight away and with no problems. Fascinating! I have a 35mm in my Sony A7s2 that I might be using on the FX9 after reading what you said about the focus ha! Have a lovely day!

Brilliant one @Justin Hayward!!

That's great news! I'm shooting a documentary with it and the Supreme Primes next week and we went through a lot of testing yesterday. There are 3 things that I don't like that I'm sure that future firmwares will correct: 1) It can't shoot 50fps in 6K Full Frame although it can shoot 50fps in 2K Full Frame. 2) That would be amazing if you could see the LUT that you have in the monitor while shooting in 50fps 2K Full Frame!!! at the moment you can only see the Slog image ? 3) It doesn't have false colour! 4) I can't load a LUT in the camera. 5) It is quite annoying that the cebras only work if you have the handle and the mini mini monitor that comes with the camera! Other than that is a wonderful camera!!!! We shot a lot of the tests at 16000 ASA underexposed by 2 stops and the images were gorgeous. I love the noise! Looking forward to your impressions @Robin R Probyn!!