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Filippo Giani

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Everything posted by Filippo Giani

  1. Good afternoon everyone, I have a run & gun gig coming up in the foreseeable future for which I'd like to give the new BMPCC 4K a shot (I don't technically own one yet, but hopefully will reasonably soon). Due to the job's specific nature, I will require an extremely lightweight and portable setup. I've done similar work in the past and always suffered from having to work with primes (both in terms of weight and overall practicality), so this time I decided I'd rather stick with a single zoom for the entirety of the shoot. On a full-frame camera I would probably just opt for the Sigma 18-35 f1.8, but being the new BM Pocket M4/3, I don't think that would give me enough range to handle a broad enough variety of situations. I've done a little bit of research for suitable options and found that quite a few people seem to be praising the Olympus 12-40 f2.8 M.Zuiko PRO as a good one for video. Has anyone here had any experience with it? Or would you know of any interesting alternative covering the same/similar range (24-80 equivalent)? I've also read that a few people appear to be very happy with C-mount vintage options, such as the Angenieux 12-120mm f2/2 (amazing range and constant aperture) but it weights a ton and the whole point is to retain flexibility while shooting. Also another set of issues that I've had with vintage Angenieux in the past has included very noticeable chromatic aberrations, heavy breathing and vignetting (all things that I would want to avoid for this project). However, if you're aware of any vintage lens that might fit the bill I'd be more than open to consider it. Please let me know if you have any recommendations for me, as I could gladly use some. Wish you all a lovely rest of your day and thank you for having taken the time Best, Filippo
  2. Hi David, I already replied to you on the Deakins blog about this. I managed to get a hold of both a better lens and a faster camera. I think now I should be in a better place, at least slightly, but will get back in touch in case anything else came up. Thank you very much again for your advice.
  3. Hi Sean, thank you very much for your reply. I evaluated the option of changing lights vs. getting a faster lens. I wasn't able to get a hold of any of the panels you suggested, so I eventually settled for a faster lens. Would you please enlighten me on how to calculate my middle grey the way you did? Also, I managed to get a hold of a Dragon, which performs much better in low light compared to the MX. I reckon that, with a low-light OLPF, I'll potentially be able to get a fairly clean image at ISO 800. Thank you very much for the advice, I will get back in touch in case something else came up.
  4. Dear all, I once again need your advice on how to approach several night scenes that I'll be shooting in a week's time. The idea is to successfully construct a solid, uniform and believable nighttime ambience for the backgrounds (underexposed deep blue tones) and have dark silhouettes (or partially rimmed subjects) moving against them. In terms of providing a realistic, feasible reference, I guess I should mention the interior night scenes in Amour. The ideal result, however, would be something closer to the Skyfall fight scene in concept, but adjusted to the reality of the circumstances in which my story is going to take place (a family home without any big practical screens as backdrops). In terms of lighting, I was considering using daylight Kinos to construct the soft ambience, as mainly seen in the Amour stills. However, one possible issue that I might be having has to do with the camera + lens set-up. The MX sensor is notoriously underperforming in low light, and the only way to keep the shadows deep and noise-free is to shoot at ISO 320. Not only that, but being the space extremely tight we'll have to use a rectilinear 14mm lens at basically all times. Now, the only option I was given is a first generation 14mm Canon USM F2.8. I had a look at some tests, and optimal sharpness is achieved at around f8. How much light do you reckon I'll need? Are x2 Kinos for ambience + x1 575 HMI + occasional tungsten practicals going to be enough to light the interiors? Also, on a related note, are any of you guys aware of any way I could potentially battery-power fluorescent light tubes? In my head, it would make sense if a battery unit connectable to this mount existed. However, I can't seem to find anything of sorts on the internet. Let me know your thoughts, and as always, thank you very much for your time. Best, Filippo
  5. **Questions marked in bold** **Attachment was too dark and compressed, a better one with the correct contrast can be found here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=16205F-smKu5lcB0M3lOmPKfVdkCIG_yp** Dear all, I am currently working on a short project with an extremely tight budget and minimal crew. About half of it will be taking place at nighttime (roughly 15 extremely still wides and a couple of close-ups with some tilting/panning involved). Due to the limited resources available, I started considering a day4night approach pretty early on. I bought a variety of filters and gradient ND's of sorts, experimenting with different combinations in order to try and manipulate the ambient light sources in-camera (I understand this approach would normally be impractical, but due to the extreme stillness of all the locked-off wides, I assumed it might work out as long as the character did not cross such sources). The results haven't honestly been that bad, but not mind-blowing either. I attached a frame to this post, shot at T2.8, 1/50 shutter with a Tiffen Cool D4N (used for its LowCon properties, as the film will be achromatic) and two .6 gradient ND's stacked on top of each other. Now it's evident that if perfected, such technique could ideally bring me the result I'm looking for, but at the same time necessitates some improvements & has some evident limitations. Such limitations would include: subject and light source always having to be placed as antipodes & subject being unable to move within frame unrestrictedly. It's basically like shooting split-screen for those movies in which the same actor plays two different roles (I'm assuming Adaptation was shot like that, potentially even The Social Network). I attached a picture in which such technique is used down below, illustrating exactly what I mean. My question is: do you guys think this is going anywhere? How would you approach a nighttime scene with no gaffers and only you on set as a DP/Operator? Finally, one last detail I should mention is that originally, an infrared implementation to the technique described above was also considered. This is mainly because of the fact that we were going to shoot the thing in August, with potentially clear skies. The idea was to turn those clear skies black using infrared filters, adding an extra touch of nighttime to the whole thing. For this purpose, I non-permanently converted my RED to full spectrum (so going back to the original OLPF is always an option). However, the camera is still not with me at the moment and I won't be able to run tests with it until mid-January. Preventively, do you guys think that shooting infrared will achieve the effect I'm looking for? Or would you say that simply implementing the technique with a gradient red filter would achieve the same, black-sky effect? Thank you all in advance for the time you took to read this, it's extremely appreciated. Best, Filippo
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