Afolayan Dammy

Hello, I have been a long time canon and panasonic gh shooter. Of recent I have been eyeing the serious buzz about 4K and how my brain subconsiously says maybe I am out of date with shooting 1080p, everbody shoots 4K now. Of recent, I got a phantom 4pro drone and I have been shooting on it with 4K. However editing the clips has been hell for me. My system somehow cant handle it which leads me to two questions 1. Is 4K really a must? Am I out of date for choosing to continually shoot in 1080p? 2. I use a Hp Elitebook 8560w portable workstation with 16Gb of RAM, 1TB Harddisk, Core i7, quadcore(I think), 2.7GHz processor speed. And my premiere pro editing suite could not play the 4K shots from the drone smoothly making editing the shots a bad experience for me.My system that I use to be very confident of is now beginning to look not capable to me. Is there a budget friendly option you can suggest that is not expensive for 4K editing. Thanks. Hoping to get as many reply as possible on the two questions.

What kind of Ronin are you using. Are you using the Ronin M, Ronin Mx or the Original Ronin. If you plan on using a full rig and a whole bunch of stuffs that add weight to your camera in total, my advice would be for you to go for a steadicam instead. It will save you a loy of headache. If you cant use a steadicam, why not remove the weights

I have shot quite a number of shortfilm which have gotten positive reviews from many people who watched it ranging from my picture quality to set design to other aspects of the production. However like 2 to 3 people have come around to ask me they would like to invest in my productions. I am new to the idea of "an investor wanting to invest you". I know investors want something in return and I don't want to tell them I have no idea about it works. Are there any books or materials you can direct me to read on this matter. I have tried searching online but all I keep seeing is advice on how to get investors to invest in your work. This time around, I am not the one looking for them, they are the one looking for me. I need cogent information about this before I jump blindly into this offer..... Besides I am not sure I am very ready for big projects yet, I still want to make more short films before considering something bigger although some of them have told me they want to invest in my short films as well which I consider good for me, but I don't want to jump into this without knowing much about the subject matter of "investing in film", before I have myself to blame later. Any materials? Any advice from you? What and what do I need to know? Are there books on this strictly talking about film business not just any business investmnt. Thanks

Thanks guys. Let me start by answering Hartman first. The picture above is exactly the type of generator I use 70% of the time. As regards the second question of, "Are the sockets tight.... Well an honest answer is, No! They are not. Infact they sometimes shake". And this is the reason. When I pass the wire to the generator, as you can see from the generator. It has only 2 outs to plug in. And I have three lights. So to improvise most times, this is what I do. I cut the later end of my wire,(which I av attached in picture) twist two together and send those two into one of the outs of the generator, then I send the third light which I have also cut the lower end to the second out. So at the end of the day, the wire enters into the generator but not very tight but that doesn't usually affect the light. If I decide to use the socket to connect the wire to the generator, I ll only be able to connect two lights. So I usually don't use that, I cut the wire, and join them together to be able to get two light to enter at the same time. So instead of connecting the wire to the generator like Picture B, which will be a tight connection, I connect it like Picture A. (I don't know if that is what you mean by if the connection is tight). Although sometimes, it shake. There is no corrosion however. Could that be the cause of my problem? John E. Clark, The bulbs are 800W and like I said earlier the generators I use are usually within the range of 3.2KW to 6KW since the three bulbs together is 2.4KW

There is usually no electrician around most times

He is a picture of one

Here is an example of the generator I use

I am not an electronics specialist and might not be able to give you all the specs. But I know the following. The generators I use are Petrol powered. Most times the lights are usually the only load on the generator since they consume much power. The generators I use are between 3.2KW to 6KW. When I use a generator of say 6KW, some other loads might be added on the generator since the three lights are only taking 2.4KW. Like I said earlier, I am not an electronics expert and so I don't know how to meter an output. I also don't know what is 100A or 250 A and I don't know if they have provision for manual voltage adjustment(although I do know of some generators where you turn a knob and the output is increased when too low or decreased when too high)

It is always 220V. Mind you, it is not one generator I'v been using for the lights. I have used various generators. The generator is usually provided by the owner of the event I am covering so I have use quite a number of generators. If it's a single generator I have been using all this while, I would have guessed and say it is the generator that is faulty

It is always 220V. Mind you, it is not one generator I'v been using for the lights. I have used various generators. The generator is usually provided by the owner of the event I am covering so I have use quite a number of generators. If it's a single generator I have been using all this while, I would have guessed and say it is the generator that is faulty

I hope to really get help and put and end to this. Let me start by saying electricity supply here in Africa isn't quite stable. We, most time depend on using generator. I have 3 Red head lights. I have bought 1 for close to a year and half now and I just got 2 more. But there is this issue I have. Before I got the other 2 redheads, my first redhead, I power it virtually with generator all the time. I use it most times for Night events that I cover but I have changed the bulbs for close to 5 times. I am always frying it. Normally when I use the light for not too long a shoot, say an interview, I usually don't have this problem. But when I am shooting for say, 3, 4, 5 hours, the bulb just suddenly goes off.(it doesn't explode, it just goes off). I would have to replace the bulb. Which I have done over 5times. I purchased two more red head and the first time I am using it to cover a night event, the two bulbs got fried that very night about 1 or 2 hours into the shoot. My question is, what is responsible for this???? The generator??? The Long hour of shooting??? Bad bulb???? What KW of generator should I be using to power the three lights? Is there something wrong somewhere??? I am tired of buying bulbs for every shoot. I am already saving to switch to using Kino flo very soon because of its ability to conserve power. But I know the Red head is quite very powerful especially as stage light because it produces very strong light as opposed to Kino flo that produces soft light. What am I doing that is burning my bulb

Oh.... David it worked. U just saved me from a big headache. To start with, I shot in Log, that saved me some details in the shadows and highlights. Then I got a reflector and had somone sit in the front side to fill in lights on the driver from side. Then I sat at the back. It worked. Thankz for the knowledge. If I may ask... What is color negative film? Brian, thanks for your input as well but that won't work for a low budget film like mine. I can't afford riggin and calling too much attention

This is the look I am aiming for. Correct exposure for all elements in the scene

Everytime I have a car shot, I am always having the headache of exposure. While trying to get my actors in proper exposure, I blow out my background. And when I try to correct this by bringing the exposure down, I underexpose my actors. Gives me so much headache. I have tried so many things to correct this, none is working. I saw this and I would really like to know how to achieve this look. Correct exposure for both the person inside the car and the elements outside the car(the background)

This is my first short film. It has no story line really. I just shot it to practise shot composition, editing, focusing and audio. Its my first time of shooting following a script. I shot, edited and worked on the audio all myself and its my first time. I also did a little ADR which is also my first time as well. Kindly help me check the picture, the editing, the frame composition and the audio.... Are there some things I did not do well or could improve on. I couldnt do any color correction. I shot in the neutral style using Canon 60D. I had planned doing color correction in post, shooting with cinestyle but focusing using cinestyle was very challenging so i decided to stick with the neutral picture style.(Do you like the color or would you have prefered a color corrected version). Shot on Canon 60D, Lens Canon 50mm F1.8, Canon 18-55mm F3.5-5.6. Used just one light(red head) and in some parts, like the room where the girl was making a phone call, I used only natural light and reflector, no artificial light. Kindly check and state your observations. Did the work with some college mates who helped me in booming my mic and recording the audio directly to Adobe Audition with my mic connected to my Laptop

This is my first short film. It has no story line really. I just shot it to practise shot composition, editing, focusing and audio. Its my first time of shooting following a script. I shot, edited and worked on the audio all myself and its my first time. I also did a little ADR which is also my first time as well. Kindly help me check the picture, the editing, the frame composition and the audio.... Are there some things I did not do well or could improve on. I couldnt do any color correction. I shot in the neutral style using Canon 60D. I had planned doing color correction in post, shooting with cinestyle but focusing using cinestyle was very challenging so i decided to stick with the neutral picture style.(Do you like the color or would you have prefered a color corrected version). Shot on Canon 60D, Lens Canon 50mm F1.8, Canon 18-55mm F3.5-5.6. Used just one light(red head) and in some parts, like the room where the girl was making a phone call, I used only natural light and reflector, no artificial light. Kindly check and state your observations. Did the work with some college mates who helped me in booming my mic and recording the audio directly to Adobe Audition with my mic connected to my Laptop

I am about to shoot a music video on a canon 5D or canon 7D the final edit on the music video may have lots of slow motion. The confusion now is frame rate and resolution. I know to get super smooth slow motion i need a higher frame rate. And to get 60fps on canon 7D you can only shoot at 720p while you can only get 24 or 25fps on 1080p. Should I go with the 720p just to be able to get 60fps or should i go with full HD 1080p. Will slow motion go well on it. Which would you advice me to go for.

Berker, I read through the comments and your reply to them and I discovered you still have a lot to learn about sensor size and crop factors. Try to google that..."Camera sensor size and crop factors". Its very simple and its the last thing I expect would confuse anybody. That aside, I think you are concentrating so much on technical aspects, camera, lens, gear, technology etc but then you are beginning to forget that this things no matter how good you handle them wouldn't make your film appealing to the audience than the story itself. You can shoot with a very expensive cinema camera with very expensive lens and end up annoying your audience who feels what you just shot is crap and you have wasted their time watching your film and you could shoot on just Canon T2i and your audience get so in love with the movie... The secret is your story line and how you handle the very small tool you have. When I was starting out too, I have always thought too much about technical details ignorantly not knowing that that isn't what makes the film. Check out Philip Bloom website. He has many written articles about this. There is this article too on the site... "Working with little gear". Really can't find the link but its on the sight,

I have seen tutorials about how to get the 2.35 aspect ratio look in my editing suite. Mostly masking the top and button with a black rectangle. But then, when I am editing, it is really frustrating. Most of my shots are cut off both head and button and when i try to cut and reframe, I either get a jump cut or the lower parts get really really cut off. So I thought, perhaps there is an external monitor that has built in line which can be made visible on the screen when filming so that when i need to shoot for 2.35 aspect ratio i already know how to frame my shots to avoid any cutoff when i am faking the 2.35 in post. I dont want to glue anything on my external monitor just like the "rule of thirds" line that is virtually built in with most camera. Any idea if there is an external monitor like that? Link to such would be appreciated

Would love to but I don't have the budget. Any advice as to how to do it myself

I really don't know why this is a big problem for me as lame as it might sound, I always have big ideas(not in terms of expensive ideas) and lovely concept to shoot. But then, I really don't know how to go out and scout for location. I am either thinking "oh, had it been I have a car, I would just drive around town and get that location I need" or how I wish I know people that have access to beautiful looking locations that would just give me a call and say, we found a location for you, come and shoot your story here". This has always crippled me. There are sometimes, a big picture might just come to my mind and I am like, I must shoot this, this is beautiful ,but then getting that location becomes a problem. Not like am thinking of super high location like President's Obama's office, no, sometimes the picture am painting is just a small lovely location but then going out to scout for that location just becomes a problem for me. And its kind of suppressing the amount of things i probably could have done. The amount of videos I could have shot. Anybody else once had this silly problem? Please don't read and leave without helping out with a little advice... Please! Any advice for me.

I don't expect a phone to shoot like normal camera, just experimenting with things

You can aswell check this out. http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cfBZD0fjuG8&client=mv-google&gl=NG&guid=&hl=en-GB So the idea of saying the "creative side of lighting is just been lost" is a total misconception. Think out of the box

Check this short series. Shot with an iphone4 http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hsKxeUfIh6A&hl=en-GB&gl=NG&guid=&client=mv-google

David, thanks I have noted everything you said. Will follow them. John, I think you are getting things mixed up here.I shoot my videos with a standard camera and standard light, just trying to show people you don't have to have $100,000 dollars with you for gadget to tell a good story. Don't mix things up. Somtimes we break rules to explore our creative side. You never can tell what will come out of it so saying light creativity is goin down is like misinterpreting the whole idea and concept