plochmann

Remember film guys, do you.  You just shot things underexposed and it still looked great.  Remember how all the colours and exposure smoothly bled into each other when you shot 5217.  Blacks were blacks, whites were not overexposed but just a part of the image.  
 
Point being, people complain because digital still don't do it right!  I downloaded the original file, and I just won't be buying any camera.  To my eye, I could get these results with GH2 at a lower ISO and by adding more light.  Sure, there would be more banding and noise, but when it is at this level I find it distracting and why not add more of it.  If you want to know what irks me most about the image, it's the undulating banding on her finger tips, possibly from the light of a flame swaying in the faintest breeze.  Sure, it's great to capture this detail, but the codec just kinda hands it back to us in a distracting way.  
 
Some of the later shots look great.  They remind me of something from the 70s, maybe Altman using pre-flashed film.  This is the real crime, that some results make me forget it's digital, and then other shots make me wonder if it is an i-phone?  This is the newest challenge to being a DP, so many different cameras and each with their niche.  I think this camera has a vast potential for some projects, but you need to know that limit.  It's scary now getting called in for a job and they say they are using yadda yadda whatever camera and you haven't used it and you don't really know the limits.  You know of course, 8 or 10 bit, what codec, the workflow, but you can't say for sure how she'll ride.  If it's a real job they let you take her out and play, but most jobs aren't this professional and the whole shoot will put you in the hot seat.  
 
Some people have commented that this is a better demo video for the camera.  This is true, I am sick of landscape camera tests.  How many times are we working for any kind of job and the shot came down to a landscape and the dynamic range.  I don't think hardly any audience anywhere gave a flip about the dynamic range in the films landscape shot.  What, maybe the shot in NO Country for Old Men needed that range for artistic flare, but seriously, most videos I shoot it's about the actors face or clarity of image during events.  Test videos need to shoot real light situations (including what you would pull from your grip truck) and people's faces.  PEOPLE!!!  Cameras do more than landscapes and if you are going to buy a camera, that's why you need to pick the most flexible one. 

I was led on for almost a year to do this simple job.  The clients just kinda never committed to an idea :huh: , and finally when I came in to shoot they didn't want any people in their office.  They asked for a virtual tour.... so this is what I did.  I would love some advice from any veterans or creative types on what they would have done differently.  Thanks a lot.  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRP7FcDrEPchttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRP7FcDrEPc

Well, you can get very respectable looking grades with Magic Bullet.  You can even do it on the super-cheap with their Mojo version, but it's very much a black box with only a few options.  I won't ever not recommend Magic Bullet as long as Stu is getting something out of it, because I know he's largely responsible for there even being affordable color grading tools.  DV became not just a viable format for indie filmmakers but one with a meaningful aesthetic possibility mostly because of Magic Bullet.
 
That said, watch this:
 
http://vimeo.com/57325168

Your clients have no inkling of how persuasion works. People hesitating to undergo any of the advertised treatments need to feel the good vibrations, not fear to be led to the poison death penalty room (cause that was my first impression, and I bet I'm not too different from the rest, just look at the the beheaded skeleton between the beds: weight loss? Oh yeah!). The receipt for a good promotion is simple: Cut away the bad aspects, show only the positive results. Difficult without beautiful, happy people? Impossible.
 
But: I have done the exact same thing for a dentist. I showed him the clip, the rooms were more friendly, with a lot of modern art surrounding the instruments. I told him, I wouldn't recommend to put the video on his homepage, because it still was a torture chamber, and we needed really some relaxed faces to get this impression fixed, but he didn't give in. Next time, I promised myself, I wouldn't commit to anything of that kind.

Making the light and surfaces a little more pleasing and inviting can be done with a color correction pass.  It really needs that.  I'd maybe see how you like it with the motion text slightly sped up.  It seems like there's a lot of travel time before the letters come to rest.  I get that you want it to look elegant and professional but with so much "air time" there were times my eye was drawn over and watching the letters fall into place, spending processing working it out like a puzzle before the words were finally formed, rather than looking at the footage.  It's a careful balance.
 
It's kinda hard to add people to what you've already got though unless you're going for some really bizarre, stylized commercial with graphic "standee" versions of the therapists or something.  I could see that working in Japan maybe, but local businesses tend to not be very creative (all the while expecting the same-old-shit to bring in new customers).
 
When you know they're wrong and their decisions are going to hurt the final outcome, doing what you can to show them an alternate version can often un-fog their thinking, as long as you have "what they asked for" as well.  You gotta be pretty secure to just do what you know is the "right way" and disregard the client's input when you know it's bad.  That's taking a gamble on knowing, deep down, they just want it to be good and effective and hope they're the type that can put their own ego aside and not flip out because they were ignored, even if you proved them wrong (or in spite of their anger over being proven wrong).  

No!!! Please buy a descent tripod. Oh, I bought a cheap one before and it blew over in a breeze, smashed my lens. Get something that is really solid. Not to mention a good pan, not just smooth, but one that doesn't make clicking or poping noises. It seems everybody neglects the tripod. I've gone to no-budget films with old film school bodies and we always have 5 7Ds but no tripods. I personally believe a tripod is a better investment than a camera- it will last you a lot longer.