Gene Sung

My bad, I meant Digital Negative.

Hey AJ, what was the resolution of the negative? I'm assuming if the negative was more than 4K it was a Red?

Yeah, it's really weird. All of my better network and commercial jobs are HD finishes. I've only had two 4K finishes in the last year. The "help your friends on passion projects / no money projects," they want a 4K finish, LOL. Oh... the irony.

No luck on trying to Google it, but does anyone know the actual percentage of content that are finished / delivered in 4K / UHD vs. 2K / HD? Ex. = Movies? TV Shows? Web spots? I'm assuming that most films finish in 2K / HD still, since many are shot on Alexa which is not a 4K camera? What do Marvel block busters finish in vs. Indie films? At this point, a very slim percentage of my professional / paid jobs finish in 4K, but I work mainly in TV and web delivery, not Netflix (a boy can dream). I always capture in at least 4K to 6.5K. I personally believe you have a huge advantage by capturing more resolution than your finish, ie… capture 4K for a 2K finish. What have your experiences been? Are you guys finishing more in 4K these days? Are you primarily capturing in 4K or more resolution? Even for HD finishes? Mainly, I’m wondering if you’re finishing more in 4K these days? The reason I ask is because I’m contemplating selling my 8K Red Epic-W (Usually shoot in 6.5K Super 35mm FOV or 6K APS-C FOV) and switching to a 5K Red Gemini (Will mainly shoot in 4K Super 35mm) which resolution aside, appears to have a better image, higher frame rates and big low light advantage.

Hi Friends, I don't shoot a lot of comedy, usually more artsy and dramatic type stuff where I usually use 14mm to 25mm for wide shots and up to 85mm or more for closeups. I tend to really vary the focal lengths. However, I have a shoot a short comedy spot and was wondering if I should stick to more wide angle lenses, even for the closeups? I know wide tends to be "Funnier." Shooting in Super 35mm FOV, I was thinking of sticking between 20mm to 25mm. What are your thoughts on focal lengths for comedy? For example, what focal lengths did they use on Seinfeld?

I have no idea. I asked my accountant about it and he says that it's legal for LA to do that and he was hit by the same "unsecured property tax" for some office equipment he bought. Total BS as it's double taxation. Moral of the story, avoid financing and get the 0% credit card. Probably going to sell that camera soon anyways.

My experience on my horrible financing experience. Cut and pasted from another forum. 0% 12 month credit cards are better than lender financing IMO. Warning on Financing if you live in Los Angeles When I got my FS7, I did the 0% 12 month promotion through Sony who uses DeLage Landen as the finance company. I bought it locally through Samy's Camera. DeLage Landen reported my financing to the Los Angeles Business Office who then hit me with a "Unsecured Business Tax" which is total B.S. because I already paid sales tax on it. So now, the city of Los Angeles wants $130 "tax" a year for the duration of my FS7 ownership. Huge extortion on the part of the city since sales tax was already paid. For my Scarlet-W, I got a 0% for 12 months credit card to avoid the hassle of dealing with Los Angeles.

Sorry if my question is not well worded. For example, when outside shooting a sunny day, Medium shot portrait of a person where there's a good bit of blue sky still, would you leave the polarizer on to help make the sky pop? Or does polarizer effect the talent skin enough at this point to remove it? Are polarizers generally consider bad when the talent takes up considerable framing in the shot?

Obviously, for wide, sunny exteriors a Polarizer is a nice thing to have. But when talent / humans are involved on said exteriors, at what point do you guys ditch the Polarizer as I know they can kill the specularity on faces (medium, medium wide, etc...)?? I have my theories, but want to see what others think. Thanks

Hi Friends, The stills below are from a location scout the other day. I usually avoid facing the talent directly into the sun, but lets say for whatever reason I needed talent to face into near direct sun and I wanted to diffuse the subject to soften shadows. In this case, we just quickly held a Matthews Yellow Frame Silk (1.6 stop light loss) in front of the sun and it takes aways the harsh shadows. However, the subject is now 1.6 stops darker than the background which is brightly lit. What is the best way to bring the subject back up 1.6 stops so he’s diffused / softer shadows, but matches the background? Frame #3, I made a Photoshop mock up where I masked out the subject and brought up the levels. Would like to simulate this in real life / non post. I’ve thought a few ways, but not sure if they’d work. I will test in a few days when I free up, but would love some suggestions. 1) Use a white Ultra Bounce to get some light reflected back onto the subject, but our angles might be limited. 2) Use several V-Mount 1 x 1 foot LEDs, which could very well bring the subject up since he’s technically “shaded” at this point 3) We have a 1200w HMI which we could bounce off a white card which might do it since subject is in the shade. But I’d like to avoid any lights other than battery power due to rugged location 4) Use a 1/4 silk which won’t soften the shadows nearly as much as Matthews Yellow frame Silk (1.6 stops), but would require less bounce or LED to bring subject back up. What do you guys suggest? Thanks

Personally, I would avoid a GoPro. I recently shot a spot with Ninjas for Disney. Main camera was a Red and at the last moment due to tricky rigging, the client threw in a GoPro at 60fps. Honestly, the footage looked terrible compared to the Red. I wish we had rigged an A7s for those shots, since it's at least comparable to the Red.

Hi Brian, At this point, I'm just trying to figure out the split between myself and my partner. First thing is just to shoot the pilot. If it does get to the point of possible finders and potential investors, I'd be thrilled, but not looking that far ahead yet. Thanks, Gene

Hello Friends, I’ve created an episodic series and wrote the pilot which will be shot in the next month or two. However, I feel like I need to bring on a partner (I have several people in mind) because I feel that this project has a bit of legs and would need someone to help produce and more importantly, promote it once its done (I’m terrible at the business end of things). So it basically goes, I wrote it, co-producing the pilot, I’m going to DP and do all the post. My partner to be will direct the shoot, co-produce and probably do more of the business legwork. My question are: 1) How do we go about splitting potential profits, IF something comes out of it? A producer friend suggested that I get a little more since I created the project. I know these things should be established up front to avoid any conflicts down the road. I was thinking either: 55% to 45% or 60% to 40%. Or should I just do 50% to 50%? 2) At what point should we bring up the contract? The thing is, I want to make sure my partner will pull his weight so I was thinking of stipulating a 3 month trial period to see how things go; and if all is well then sign a contract? Does this seem fair? Thanks

For an FS7, you can get about $200 a day, maybe $250 on doc jobs so just subtract that from the rate. I camera operate for another company WITHOUT gear (They shoot on older ENG Panasonics, FS700s and C300s) and I get about $500 a day for that. But these guys also generally have lower budgets than my other sports doc company. I do feel like on Doc jobs and lower end type jobs that I often get, having a camera is a plus. Producers often don't have the time or budget to spend a day sourcing cameras and sending out PAs (if they have one) to pick up and return cameras. Renting takes quite a bit of time and producers on these type of jobs want it available and ready.

I don't know about feature docs, but I do shoot very regularly for a sport documentary company (mainly short form) and from the same company, I get $550 for their cheapest jobs (usually 3 - 4 hours), $750 for mid range jobs and quite often $1000 a day for their better budgets. This is with my FS7 and fortunately, more often than not it's the $1000 and $750 jobs vs. the lowest budgets. The clients are generally bigger name sports brands - NFL, Nike, NBA, MLB, etc... so the docs have decent budgets. My doc jobs are generally lower budgets than my TV Network DP jobs, which are a good bit higher in pay. Doc jobs can pay well as long as the client is legit - Nike, NFL, NBA, etc... However, many indie docs budgets are probably really low, so be careful unless you really want to do it.