Olivier Vanaschen

Hello everybody! A couple of months ago, we went to the UK to shoot a supernatural/horror short film called "Bloodties". It was written and directed by Jimmy Cheng, produced by Aspect Ratio Productions (producer: Rob Fairhurst) and financed by B3Media/UKFC. It was our first shoot outside of Belgium so we were pretty excited about it. Interesting fact also, the film is part in Chinese part in English. We knew from the very beginning that it's was going to be a big challenge, especially as we didn't have that much experience shooting fiction. The story is about revenge and takes place mostly in an appartment. We really wanted it to look "asian" in terms of lighting and framing. We went for a soft pastel look with different kinds of atmosphere. The film opens with a scene in a restaurant where the main character had to look very weak and fragile. In front of her, her uncle had to look mysterious and strong. We tried hard to somehow hide his face. As the story progress, she starts to discover her family's past and the film ends with her meeting her uncle again. In this scene, there's a swith of balance, now she's seems to be the strong one and he's looking like a small child. We tried to make him look very small and weak. Budget was extremely low so we had to use only the equipment we own and had about no crew (we were 3 to 4 to do it all). We build two homemade mini35 adapters for this shoot so we could shoot with our sony fx1 and the productions's z1. We knew it wouldn't be technicaly perfect (our adapter has grain, hot spot,...) but it could fit the look we had in mind pretty well, a bit like shooting with very old lenses :-) Our lighting equipment was pretty limited: 4 homemade 4-banks, 1 redhead, 1 omni, 1 blonde, 1 homemade "beauty light", 1 chinese lantern and a couple bulb sockets. The set was build in an old bunker from the british army which was pretty cold and humid. We only had a 14kva generator for the whole set (catering included) so we couldn't use that much power anyway. Another problem we did have is that our uk-continental plug adapters did constantly melt if we used more than 2000w on the line so we had to split the lines a lot. We left the cameras on 3200k setting and shot mostly with a shutter of 1/25 or 1/50, never used the gain but did play with severe underexpose. We knew we could get away with a bit of grain but sometimes it was a bit scary (we laughed about the fact that this was our "panic room"). The rooms were pretty small and the ceilings couldn't be removed (which was really a bad idea for a build set). In order to get a really soft look, we bounced diffused 4-banks (at 5600k mostly) to the walls and ceilings. For some scenes we did add a bit of plus-green or pale-green to the daylight 4-banks to get a more greenish-sick light. The "warm" sources were tungsten 4-banks or redhead with a mix of CTO and CTS (sometimes a bit of pale-green also). We used the 2k blonde for the moonlight with a mix of diffusion and CTB. We also used a lot of practicals in which we placed painted bulbs to get a warmer light. This special paint can be bought in many colors in art shops and it works really well. We worked with the director to stage the scenes so we could use the two cameras all the time. It was sometimes difficult because of mirrors but it worked well even if we knew some shots were not going to be used at the end but still could help some editing problems. Most of the shots were on a fluid-head tripod or handheld. We had a small crane which we used for a top-shot. The homemade dolly the production had was really not good, so we used it for one shot and decided to avoid it because we did loose too much time using it. Our lens kit is a mix of Nikon AF-D/AI-S lenses (35-50-85mm), Sigma (20mm) and some russian lenses (8-16mm). We only used the 16mm for a couple of shots because it's more a fish-eye lens. The 8mm was used a lot by our lovely set photographer (Anaelle Snoeck) to get some pretty stupid pictures of us, we can post some if you want, probably the stupiest set pictures ever :-) Focus was more than tricky, no follow-focus on slr lenses at f2.0 (our adapter has a gate close to 36x24). It's hard but you somehow get used to it. It was a hard shoot, especially because it was a night shoot. The bunker was in the middle of the woods so during the day, it was nearly impossible to get clean sound because of birds. We shot for about a week at night with a long long schedule but it was a great experience. We hope we'll be able to shoot another fiction really soon. We edited a small reel from excerpts of the film. We did the color-correction also on this. Unfortunately, we couldn't make it on the actual short which bothers us a lot. When shooting video, even if most of the look is done in-camera, color-correction is really a major part of the cinematography. It's as important as the lab for film. Here's the link to the video: Bloodties excerpts If you have any questions, we'll be happy to answer them :-) Olivier Vanaschen & Olan Bowland Here are some pictures of the camera setup: that's a lot of empty filter rings :-) the end part is a nikon F to M42 mount adapter Some set pictures: Some stills:

Hello Ken, this is correct. I must say I never really use the timecode for editing so for me it's not really an issue but it all depends of which kind of projects you need to edit.

It's way easier to start with 50i. Take 50i in post, deinterlace to 25p, slow everything down to 24p (correct the audio pitch) and you'll have a pretty good result. Many many movies shot on video were done this way: Anniversary Party, 28 Days Later, Dancer in the Dark,... DVFilm has a good FAQ on their site.

Hello Ken, we bought the FX1 when it came out (the Z1 wasn't released yet) and there are really not many differences. The only "picture" option that the Z1 has and the FX1 doesn't is the black strech (which is just an on/off switch in the menu, no other settings). The Z1 has XLR inputs but aren't that good, for about 250$ you can get an beachtek adapter for the FX1 which works more than fine. The great thing about the Z1 is that it's PAL and NTSC, you can switch from 50i to 60i which can be really useful if you have to shoot in/for different countries. As the Z1 is pro equipment and the FX1 is prosumer, you may have better support service from Sony if you have the Z1. Both camera offer exactly the same picture quality, no difference at all. You can buy an FX1 and a HC1 for the same price as a Z1 or buy a FX1 with many accessories (matte box, batteries, beachtek, bag, tripod,...). Here's a good link to more informations: SonyHDVinfo

Hello Steve, thanks a lot, it was a pretty ankward setup, really not easy to use, it did affect our way of operating the camera a lot. The picture was flipped horizontaly (left/right) which made it quite difficult. We wouldn't redo it this way. In fact, we only shot this short with this system. We were so excited about the picture that we didn't think that much about making it more easy to use, we just went straight shooting something :) To make it easier you can use a so-called "Sports Viewfinder", I think the reference for the Nikon F2 is DA-1 and for the F3 it's DA-2. It gives you the same "picture size" as if you would shoot the GG directly as we did but the picture is not flipped anymore and it's way easier to build an horizontal setup. I must give credit to the first DP who did invent and build that kind of system. It's a german DP called Matthias Fleischer, here's his website with some infos on it: DV35k. He was really the first one ever to build a homemade 35mm adapter. Cheers, Olivier Vanaschen the black sheep

Hello, I shot a short called "Marla." about two years ago using a Canon XM2 (PAL version of the GL2) with a homemade mini35 adapter. Here's the movie website: http://www.marlathemovie.com It's a great little camera, the fake progressive mode (frame mode) works really well. They shot 28 days later in that mode. Olivier Vanaschen the black sheep

Thank you very much Paul! Yes, flags and diffusion often make the difference between good and great, we'll think more about this on the next project (and then probably won't have the time as always :D ). We may have pushed the color separation a bit too far on some shots during the grading but we did like it when we did it. The editing and grading were a rush, I don't know if it's a normal schedule but we had like 4 1/2 days for the whole post-production (from capturing to digibeta copies). We found it pretty short especially on a desktop computer so there are some grading decisions we'd probably changed our mind about with a second look at it. Thanks again for taking the time to watch our work and post a comment, it's always a great pleasure to have a feedback. Olivier&Olan the black sheep

Thank you all so much for the nice words. It really means a lot to us, it pushes us to work even harder. The shadow on the girl is a camera shadow, wasn't intentional. We should maybe cut that shot sooner in the outtakes edit. We had like 15min to shoot the scene, the sun was already rising, still had a couple of shots to get. The two dances did completely improvise the choregraphy, we prefered to just let it go, knowing we wouldn't need that much for the music video. We're operating the camera trying not to make it too obvious but still it's there. For the slow-motion, we started by shooting in 50i (1/50 shutter, we prefered a slower shutter rather than putting gain or underexpose even more). The key to have proper slow motion from 50i or 60i is too avoid using frame-blending and simply deinterlace the 50 "half images" to full progressive images (50p). This is really simple in After Effects. Import the file in AE, check if the properties are right (in "Interpret footage"). DV should lower-field first, HDV upper-field first (check the best quality setting). Put the file in the comp, timestrech it to 200% and deactive frame-blending in the rendering option. If you edit in Premiere, you can even do it there, slow-down to 50%, check the "Field Properties" (right-click). Deactive frame-blending and import the whole project in AE, you're done. It was the first time we did shoot with the XL-H1 and we just loved it. If we had the money we would probably buy it. For the same budget, we could have shot with a Varicam or HDCAM but we had to shoot in a format we could simply edit at home for budget and schedule reasons, otherwise it would have meant doing an offline in a studio or get a DV dub,... HDV was the best solution for us. We always underexpose quite frankly when we work on video, it does help the look because what we really don't like about video is the way it handles the highlights. We often put the zebra at 90% and just don't let anything go above it as much as possible. We read in ASC Mag that Ed Lachman did also underexpose by at least a stop while shooting "A Prairie Home Companion" because he did prefer the look. We do grade video a lot and we always about the same system. We're used to doing it in AE but it could be done in any compositing program, it's not based on a plugin. What we do is we do duplicate the picture's layer and put the copy in black and white. Then we change the transformation mode of the top layer to "soft light". It adds the top layer to the bottom layer. It's a kind of bleach-bypass simulation, that's why we need a low-con underexposed picture to start with. Then we tweak contrast by using curves on the two layers, add color to the top b/w layer,... You can also try to put the b/w layer under the color layer, so the color layer is in "soft light" mode. The effect is much stronger. It's not that we want a bleach-bypass look on every project we shoot but this method also changes the colors gradation,...kind of hard to explain. You can play by testing different b/w layer, choosing the green layer or the red layer as b/w, mixing them,... It affects more than just contrast and saturation. It's really different than grading just on one layer, takes a bit of time to make it subtle enough. We never go against the original look during the grading, most is done in-camera, if it's blue at the beginning, it will stay blue at the end, maybe a different blue. We had a lot of masks on this project because we had to make the background darker, the sun was already rising is many shots. Also, we wanted to really separate the singer from the extras by the light. We tried to do as much as possible on set but we had to enhance this during the grading, making the space around her darker and less warm. We tried all we could to get a beta G35 but couldn't manage to get one. We must say we're quite disappointed because we shoot with 35mm adapters for years now and could have tested it in real-life production a lot. We saw the different projects shot by Macgregror and Norm Li using this adapter and we're convinced it's probably the best out there with the Movietube. The ground glass (Microcrytalline Wax) seems superb. The bokeh seems good and basicaly the picture has a nice natural look. It seems to affect contrast a lot more than other adapters, it really has a look to it. Because of it's static GG, it's really close to the movietube. There might be issues with grain but from what I've seen it's not that bad even in HD. I know they are working on a vibrating version of the G35 which should be amazing. For now, this is the adapter we're waiting for, we hope they'll make a relay lens for the Canon XL cameras (shouldn't be too hard to make one from a nikon/canon macro lens on an mount adapter). If it's sells for 1500$ and has PL mount also, it's probably the best choice. We tested the Micro35 at a rental company here, we're not impressed at all but I must say it might be because we only had the small old macro (55mm) and an old GG. We tested it on a Sony Z1 and the picture was quite good but the bokeh was too soft. For our taste, this adapter has about no look, it looks like basic video with shallow depth of field. The last tests we saw with this adapter and the HVX200 did show a huge improvement, the picture was sharper. They do change the GG quite often so it's hard to judge which one was used in which test,... We didn't found it really solid, the rod system is nice but it's just parts from Bogen/Manfrotto put together and with the system we tested, we tried everything but on a tripod the picture showed a strange waving due to the rotating GG. We should test the latest version to be able to really judge the quality of the system. The P+S MINI35 is really good, the picture is not perfect (we do prefer the look of the G35 or Movietube, good bokeh but still could be better) but it works flawlessly, really nice handheld with H1 too. It's really solid, relay lens is good, it's pro equipment. Wouldn't recommend the old 300 serie. Too bad it's that expensive. Haven't tested the Letus, SGPro, Brevis35,... but the Go35 seems really nice, excellent bokeh. Our adapter is technicaly not that good, we use the Optosigma GG and condenser. It's really simple and cheap (about 200$ to make). For the moment, we cannot afford to buy any adapter and if we could, it would be the G35. Our adapter is static and does show a bit of grain which isn't that bad if you shoot HDV for SD finish. We use it on a FX1/Z1 and do like it's look. The bokeh is soft, there is some vignetting,...but it has a kind of organic look. If the G35 is 35mm then our adapter is more like reg 16mm :-) We'll post pictures of a short we shot with two of these adapters in extreme low-light/underexposure really soon. Thanks again everybody!!! Olivier Vanaschen & Olan Bowland the black sheep

Thanks a lot Mark! we're really used to work with really low to no budget, we know many people have to struggle with those kind of productions, so we hope this will somehow help by showing it's still possible to get things done. We use a lot of DIY equipement (35mm adapters, 4-banks, chinese lanterns,...). We started doing this a while ago on a short film called Marla. Back then, we published a small guide ( http://www.marlathemovie.com/bonus/justfacts.pdf ) where we did explain everything we could. We hope to write another guide really soon. We recently shot a short film for a UK director using two Sony HDV with two homemade MINI35 adapters. We're currently editing a small reel from it. We're going to post it as soon as possible. We'd love to have steadycam shots! Who knows, we may move to the States one day or another. Here there's really not much work, especially for young directors/DPs like us. Yeah, it's all fine if the client did like it :-) They did look at us strangely during the shoot buy they were really happy at the online, it's always like this, we're pretty young so there's always a bit of a lack of trust at the beginning. Thanks again, Olivier Vanaschen & Olan Bowland the black sheep

Hello everybody, we recently directed and shot a music video for a belgian band called "milk inc.". We won't really comment the music (you'll hear by yourself...). It was low budget as always but this time we had a production so we had to leave our homemade mini35 adapter at home this time which was more than fine for us. We could use proper equipment for a change :-) For budget reasons, it was obvious we had to shoot on video. We don't have enough experience in film anyway (we come from still photography and just started experimenting with a K3). We really wanted to try the canon h1 with the p+s technick mini35 adapter despite the bad feedback we read on many forums and it worked quite well. We went for cooke s4 lenses (first time we even saw cine lenses, wow what a change from our nikon lens set) We used a triangle jib to give the shot some movement without the hassle of putting a dolly in the middle of the woods. All the other shots were handheld. The camera setup got pretty big and heavy, especially if you ad IDX batteries, scorpio wireless follow-focus (+ batteries, didn't got the cable to plug it to the IDX), 4x4 matte-box,.. The batteries on the back made it a bit easier to balance but still it was really front heavy. We knew from the very beginning focus was going to be tricky so we took a 9'' hd monitor which was connected to the HD-SDI output of the camera. Our AC (Johan Legraie) did a great job at pulling focus at f2.0, especially on a 135mm at 5am on the second night with about any marks. We didn't have the time to test the camera setup because we had to go all the way to Köln in Germany to get the adapter just before the shoot so we read everything we could on the web. We left the camera on 3200k preset and tweaked the settings a bit, nothing too special: sharpness somewhere in the middle (we didn't turn it all the way down because the adapter already softens the picture), color-level a bit down. We did use the NR2 function which is a kind of in-camera noise reduction. It works a bit like the "Remove Grain" effect in After Effects but in real-time. It smoothes the image in a nice way, works really well on skin texture, gives a nice glamourous look. It does take away a bit of resolution but it was for SD finish anyway and the camera is pretty sharp, wouldn't probably use it for HD finish. We rated the setup at 120asa, must admit we only used our lightmeter at the beginning of the shoot to get and idea of what was needed and did the rest by looking at the HD monitor. It was the biggest set we ever had to light. We had a night of pre-light that didn't went as planned. None of the props were there so we couldn't really light a scene that wasn't there so we did everything we could knowing we had to tweak the setups the nights after (2 nights shoot). It was also the first time we could work with a gaffer (Jean-Francois Metz) and he was just amazing. We wanted to play a blue overall atmosphere whith touches of warm light on the different characters (warmer on the singer than on the extras). We didn't have that much power (35kva for the whole set including catering) so we took a couple fresnel HMIs (6k, two 2.5k, three 1.2k), two 2k arri tungsten fresnel, a couple 1k pars and four homemade 4-banks. We often had to light two scenes at the same time so we knew we had to play it smart, put on overall "blue" level by putting the HMI at different key positions and just turning them in one direction or another. We used the 2k tungsten (full CTS+diffusion) to create the warm key, also used the 4-banks, both 3200k and 5600k. We left the HMIs uncorrected, just used diffusion. We knew we could adapt the level of blue in post and wanted that strong color separation. The lights in the tree are fifteen 18w 4000k neon tubes (640). We ended up not putting that much light, we were often more than a stop underexposed. This camera holds up underexposure really well, the blacks are really clean and the HDV compression is really good (red petals on dark background is a good test). We shot in 1080 50i because we had to do many slow-motions in post. We simply converted the 50i to 50p in After Effects, it's an easy and effective method, you do loose some vertical resolution but in a SD finish it's impossible to see the difference (even in HD, you have to check frame by frame to actually see the loss). Color-correction was also done in After Effects. We must say we don't have that much trouble grading HDV especially with this camera. We hear many complains about artefacts and stuff but it all depends of what you actually have to do and which tools you use. If the picture is all red and you want to shift it to blue then you are in trouble (but why shoot it red then) but otherwise it's easier than grading DV in our opinion, you just have to be sublte and find the best "clean" method of doing the modifications. We graded the project in full uncompressed HD at 16bit to avoid creating new artefacts and use some great plugins from DFT (55mm) to tweak saturation, contrast,... We must say we don't like the end result that much, let's be honest. The shoot was really intense, we didn't have enough time/crew/... to be able to really work the light as much as we wanted to. We lacked of flags to cut the light, not enough diffusion frame,... The crane operator had to leave early on the first night, not enough budget to get him the second night so the whole second night was handheld, heavy back pain at the end. We did learn a lot on this project, we're still happy we made it. Label and production did like the result so it's all good but we had to make many compromises during the editing so we thought we should edit the outtakes and make something out of it just for fun. We do like the outtakes edit more than the music video actually even if it's purely visual (the music video has no narration anyway...). If you have any questions, please just ask, we'll try our best to answer. Here are some stills taken from this outtakes edit: Here are some stills from the set And some before/after color-correction Here's a link to the video: milk inc. - tainted love outtakes We would also to thank the many members of the forum, we did learn a lot of things by reading your posts. Special thanks to M. David Mullen, Adam Frisch, Stephen Williams, Eric Steelberg,... for taking the time and having the patience to answer many many questions. It's really amazing to see such great cinematographers sharing their knowledge, thanks very very much, it's the best film school ever :-) cheers, take care Olivier&Olan the black sheep

Hello Neil, my name is Olivier Vanaschen, I'm part of DP team called "the black sheep". We worked a lot with MINI35 adapters, we shot a short about two years ago with one of the first homemade MINI35 adapters, the short is called "Marla." ( http://www.marlathemovie.com ). We've since then continued to develop our own adapter and tested about every possible camera/adapter configuration. I personaly wouldn't recommend the JVC because I really dislike its look but that's maybe just a matter of taste. The HVX200 is a great camera but I do prefer the Canon H1. The sharpness, color and overall resolution is just superb. It's also easier to use this camera handheld. I used the PAL version and the 25p mode was very convincing. The HD-SDI output is just amazing, I really would like to test recording to the Wafian uncompressed recorder ( http://www.cineform.com ). Here's a link to a music video with directed and shot with a Canon H1/P+S MINI35/CookeS4 lenses: http://www.theblacksheep.be/temp/taintedlove.mov Nikon lenses would be really good, we use a set with our homemade adapters. It's fully possible to gear them so you can use a standard follow-focus,... The new Zeiss in Nikon mount should be amazing too. The best is to test the configuration you have in mind in some kind of real-life production setup because a MINI35 adapter system can quickly become big/heavy and quite difficult to operate. If you have any questions, I'll do my best to answer them. Cheers, Olivier www.theblacksheep.be

Hello, I'm selling 10 x 400ft (120m) of 16/S16mm Kodak 7212 VISION2 100T, factory sealed, properly stored in fridge. I'm selling it because I won't use it in the near future. Make offer please (shipping not included). Tel: 0032 (0)477 84 78 65 E-Mail: olivier@theblacksheep.be

Hello, didn't know that, thanks for the info! Olivier Vanaschen www.theblacksheep.be

Hello, you should also have a look at the music video "Criminal" for Fiona Apple directed by Mark Romanek and shot by Harry Savides. They wanted that "flash photography" effect in motion (red eyes included) and got it very nicely. From what I remember they tried different work lights on the camera, they finaly used the smallest lights they did found. Here's a link: http://www.markromanek.com/video/05.html Cheers, Olivier Vanaschen creative film video & photography www.theblacksheep.be

thank you very much andres!! olivier&olan www.theblacksheep.be

Hello Kitao, thank you very very much for your post, it did makes us very happy. We watched your reel quite a few times with great pleasure, your work is amazing! Our equipment is far from being perfect, we worked hard on getting it better but for this one, we've chosen to rather play with its flaws. We did quite everything in camera, the vignetting and edge bluring are caused by the bad macro and we did like it too. We didn't do much about the look in post, just curves and levels, some "power windows" on some scenes. We did add some colors in the highlight and a bit in the shadows and added some grain at HD resolution so when we did downsize it to SD, the grain seemed to be more part of the picture. It was our first try at shooting a music video almost completely hand-held, our setup is quite heavy and moves a bit but it was great fun :-) Thanks again Kitao for the nice comments, we'll continue working hard. Best luck with your projects!! hmm...LondonFilmMan...thanks a lot for the in-depth analysis...don't know what so say... Riku, we use a static adapter. We found the moving adapters do soften the picture a bit too much. Thanks again everybody, Olivier Vanaschen & Olan Bowland www.theblacksheep.be

I worked a lot with Canon DV cameras (mostly XM2 and XL1). The thing is to treat the camera like a film camera. Your DP should try using a tungsten white balance on the camera, giving the whole picture a blue-ish tone (a bit like using tungsten film outside uncorrected). Then using Tungsten Work-lights (500w-1000w) with a bit of CTO and diffusion on it on your talents, so the skintone are correct and even a bit warm. If you don't have CTO, just use a gold reflector and bounce the worklights into it. By doing this, you'll have a better color separation between background and talents. On DV, it's always easier to nicely warm up the picture (remove a bit of blue or adding a bit of green) than making it colder. Those ads are a lot about framing and look, try zoom close-ups to get a shallow DOF (use ND to shoot almost wide-open) on the talents faces (long lenses do help make people look good most of the time). Shooting 50i or 60i should give nice slow-mos. Best luck with your project! Olivier www.theblacksheep.be

The shoot went great, there were two horse trainers on set, we shot in a manege, the singer is used to horses, we got insurance,... We did everything we could with a 5k budget! What the hell is illegal with this? Maybe in the US, but here in Belgium, it's surely not! We posted a lot of infos about the shoot on this forum, here's a link to it Thanks again to everybody who did take the time to give us advices. Olivier & Olan www.theblacksheep.be

Thanks a lot Trevor! Our system is not perfectly stable yet, the edges of the picture are still a bit soft (because of the not-so-good macro), GG is still a bit grainy...it looks good for something homemade but the G35 is a commercial product using new patented GG system, perfect macro lens,... Have a look at the beta tests on their website, it's gorgeous. We would not use our system if it was not good enough. Our clients watched the stuff on TV and loved the picture but we know it could be better. We have to do a lot of post-production to polish the picture but it's worth it :-) It's going to be easier for us in the future. Thanks again for the support and nice comments. Olivier&Olan www.theblacksheep.be

We used a 50mm Convex Condenser from Optosigma (see link on our second post). We used a below to get the right flange distance, the GG and condenser are held in a filter ring. The macro is on the camera, we used a lot of empty filter rings to make a tube to link the two. You can see a picture of the camera in our first post (picture3.jpg I think). It's not a perfect system, we highly recommend you to have a look at G35 from www.cinemek.com , it's going to be THE ultimate MINI35 system, cheaper than the P+S Technick MINI35 and way better in terms of image quality. Olivier&Olan www.theblacksheep.be

Hello! thanks for your advices, we just finished this project. If you are interested, we posted some infos and the link here. Thanks again for everything. Olivier Vanaschen & Olan Bowland www.theblacksheep.be

Hello Trevor, thanks for the nice comments!! - For our homemade 35 we use a ground glass from Optosigma (50mm diameter, grade 1500). The condenser also comes from them. Here are some links to the pages: GG / Condenser. On the Sony FX1, we use a +8 macro (77mm with step up from 72mm) that comes from some asian seller on ebay. Not the best one but it's always better than the two +4 macro from Cokin we used before. - We have a prime lens set of mixed Nikon and Sigma lenses: 20/1.8, 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 105/2.5 . - The artefacts were present mostly on quick pans (it was even worse when we used smoke). Heavy smoke creates a kind of slow moving pattern that seems to give the codec a hard time. They were not that apparent on the rushes but once we started to grade the shots, it became difficult to avoid them even in a uncompressed 10bit workflow. We had to find a compromise between look and noise in many shots. That said, we did the grading at 1920x1080 so when we downsized it to PAL SD, it did reduce the problem a lot. Thanks again, Olivier & Olan www.theblacksheep.be

Hello everybody! First, we would like to thank everybody on this forum, we check it a least every day and did learn a lot from it! We're sorry we do not contribute more but we really don't feel we have enough experience yet so we prefer to listen to others :-) We're a team of two young directors/DPs based in Brussels, Belgium. We just completed two new music videos that we produced, directed, shot and edited with the help of good friend. Both are extreme low budgets (take the day salary of a top DP in L.A. and you got our whole budget basicaly). To be able to handle such low budgets (and pay everybody on the set and have a great catering), we bought some basic equipment and use a lot of homemade stuff (4-banks, MINI35 adapter,...). Both videos are shot with our homemade MINI35 adapter. Sure, it's not perfect yet, not that stable but it seems to work ok for now. We can't wait to get a G35 by Cinemek (www.cinemek.com). It'll be way better. The first one is "Everyday" for a local pop artist called Raian Shedy. It was a hell of a shoot, rock&roll to the end. We had the really bad idea to start with the car sequence that did put us way behind schedule from the very beginning. We used a Mini-Flo kit to light the car which was ok but not that great. Our main problem was the size of the camera. We did put it on a Cinekinetic Saddlecam bag which did help a bit getting a stable picture but it was still really tricky. The cars were really small, a nightmare to shoot. We will never do it again like that. We shot the dance sequence in front of the cars right after on a small closed road. We used a small 3KVA generator and used all the lights we could (800w redheads and a lot of single flos). The next days went way better. We wanted to get something pretty smooth so we used the dolly a lot (Cobra dolly), sometimes rigging 2 36w single flos directly to the dolly. We also used smoke a lot which did cause some problems with the heavy compression of the Sony FX1 (movement+smoke+mpeg2=bad bad blocky artefacts). It was really not our cup of tea style-wise, we really went in the direction the artist wanted but we're really happy about the experience. We had limited unexperienced crew, some of them are still students, a lot of different locations,... but it went smoothly. We don't have any set pictures, so here's the link to the video (Quicktime 6 required): Raian Shedy - Everyday The second one is "Piments de lune" for pop-rock singer Vincent Venet. It was something completely different. Short one day shoot (8AM-6PM), one location, the singer and a horse. We chose to put work lights around the manege (around 5000w) to get some kind of backlight and be able to play with flares. We went for a handheld approach which was quite difficult with our camera system. It was needed because we couldn't afford any grip equipment and had to move fast. We knew from the beginning focus would be hard (we don't have a follow focus) so we decided to also play with it, shooting wide open and just praying it would work. We did light the singer using two handheld homemade 4 banks whenever we could. We decided to shoot b/w in camera to minimize compression artefacts which did work quite well. We did most of the slow-mo using different techniques in After Effects, it didn't always work that well because of the edge detection problems on b/w footage. We shot with a shutter of 1/300 on some shots to help but there's not much you can do when you got 50i to start with. Yes you can see some artefacts when you look closely but we thought with the editing and all the rest,...it's still watchable. Here are some set pictures: picture 01 picture 02 picture 03 picture 04 picture 05 Here's the link to the video (Quicktime 6 required): Vincent Venet - Piments de lune If you have any questions, feel free to ask, we're pleased to answer. Thanks for taking some time to watch this, we hope you'll like some things. We know it's not perfect but we're working hard on getting better at it. There are not many projects over here so we have to handle many things which doesn't always help but we hope it will show to others that it's still possible to get something out of extreme low budgets. We just bought an old Eclair NPR and some filmstock on Ebay, we can't wait to find a budget to be able to shoot the next one on film really really soon :-) Kind regards, Olivier Vanaschen & Olan Bowland the black sheep

I forgot to mention it will be in b/w (in-camera to minimize compression artifacts). Olivier & Olan

Hello everybody, We're directing and shooting a small low budget music video involving a trained horse inside a equitation manege indoors. (don't know if you said it like this in english, sorry). The horse is basicaly "acting" with the singer who's trying to catch its attention and let him get back on him (in very very short). We'd love to have some advices on how you to handle a horse on the set, lighting advices,... We want to treat it really well, don't know how much light we can use,... It's a one day shoot, shooting format will be HDV with our homemade MINI35 adapter. We have a Nikon lens set (8-16-20-35-50-85-105). Unfortunately we don't have access to a longer lens, it wouldn't work on our system anyway (too heavy, too much vignetting). We have a fluid head tripod and a cobra crane. The camera is a bit heavy for the crane and we don't have a follow focus,... We'll use the crane as a support for some kind of nice assisted handheld shots and to do top shots. So yes it's guerilla style :-) We have 4000w of work lights, 4 homemade 4-Banks, 800w redhead, lowell omni and tota. We thought of putting the 8 work lights in circle to get some backlight, flares,... and use the 4-banks for the shots with the singer. We'd maybe use the redhead for some additional hard light in medium-close shots. Thanks very very much for any advices you could give us. We're shooting this friday, we'll post grabs and the video on our website. Best regards, Olivier & Olan creative film, video & photography www.theblacksheep.be