Hey everyone,

I just finished shooting a music video for my band and wanted to see what kind of feedback it got. We shot on Sony VX-2000, color corrected it and edited on Premiere 6.0, we we're able to use a Fisher 10 dolly (a heavenly experience) and a couple of good light kits. I know I shouldnt link videos from external sources, but in all fairness, I do have a bunch of films already on studentfilms, and I'm planning to submit this one as well. Oh and I know your all going to bash the music, which is OK I guess. It's more the video I'm concerned about.

Check it out!

Thanks,
Gaelan Connell

Hey hey not bad. It looked professional and that dolly really paid off, although I did think you used it just a tiny biut too much (just my opinion). I loved the overall look of the piece, great work on the colour grade and the lighting in the abandoned house was nice. Good work.

Good work! Most of your shots were very well conceived, and the editing was flawless! Again, great work. Im curious to know what types of camera rigs you were using (it looked like you had a few crane and dolly shots...) were they homemade?

Its interesting that most of your wide and developing shots were had excellent coloring and framing, but your closeups on faces were a little washed out and not at great...

Here's a few shots from the rigs we had. We used the jib arm on the Fisher 10 mostly, and an array of track setups.

you put a vx-2000 on a fisher 10? Good god.

Impressive...

That camera in the second picture really looks like a GL2...I was about to be really impressed if you captured the quality of footage you did on that. Then I re-read the first post and saw that it was a vx2000 and everything made a whole lot more sense...

How much did the rigs cost you to hire? I know the cost will be different due to the fact you are in the US and I'm in Aus, but I was wondering if it was similar to what we would pay over here.

I didn't think the music was that bad and the vid looked very professional, although sometimes when the camera went really wide things got a little under lit.

The actual equipment rental wasn't too bad, around 700 dollars for lights, tracks (a full circular track as well as straight pieces) and the fisher and sachtler head for the whole weekend. We also had to get a van (around $40 a day) and pay the cast, crew. What kicked us in the butt was getting an insurance policy, because no rental house will dish out a $100,000 fisher dolly without it being fully insured. There are many companies that do short film or film shoot insurance plans, which include insuring the rental equipment as well as liability for the cast, crew and land you are shooting on. The liability part is real key if your shooting in a location that isn't yours, and will help convince the owners of the location that whatever harm the film shoot might do to the place, they will be covered. Oh, and a basic week long short film insurance policy, covering up to $200,000 rental and $1 million liability was about $800. I hope this helps, but don't be too freaked out, insurance isn't something most of you will have to worry about when renting smaller stuff like doorway dollies and 3-piece light kits.

What made you decide to crop it to 2.35 aspect? Music videos are typically shot 1.85, and for the marjority of them they end up cropped 4:3 for MTV, although nowadays they're left at 16:9 for HD. But 2.35...am I missing something?

It was just difficult to watch on Youtube since the screen is so small already, and 2.35 is usually for feature films.

And braininabox, don't hate the GL2. It's image quality is just as good if not better than what I've seen here.

quote:

Originally posted by jdunn555:
you put a vx-2000 on a fisher 10? Good god.

Haha. My thoughts exactly.

Funkbomb, you're right, the 2.35 ratio is a bit harsh for the standard music video, although I have seen it done. The band saw the video more as a short film than an chance to film themselves playing the full song, so we sorta took that "feature film" approach to the project. Back me up on this, but I'm pretty sure Jared Leto has shot some cinema scope type music videos with his band, where the cinematography looks more out of a hollywood flick that a normal music video.

quote:

Originally posted by OptimalFilms:
Back me up on this, but I'm pretty sure Jared Leto has shot some cinema scope type music videos with his band, where the cinematography looks more out of a hollywood flick that a normal music video.

He might've, but "The Kill" and "From Yesterday," the two I know of that he directed, are 1.85.

By the way I see you're in Maryland--what area? I'm in Ellicott City.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: funkbomb,

Ellicott City? That's not too far away at all...I'm down in Silver Spring, just outside of DC. Hit me up sometime if you need anyone to help out : gaelanconnell@gmail.com