Tim Sewell

I bought FilmConvert years ago but balked at paying for Dehancer. And yes, of course you could do subtractive sat before now, but nowhere near as easily as slices and FLC make it.

Scared the shit outta me! Well done.

When I did the music video for that band a couple of months ago - it was a nightmare, but at the same time had me thinking - this just feels so right and so much what I want to spend my time doing. If only I didn't have to make a living!

I was avoiding thinking about that having recently paid £50 for NeuralMix, which basically does that! And yeah, FLC doesn't do it all, but it sure does get you a lot of the way there. Native subtractive saturation is a major win too, given the relatively high cost of the better DCTLs people have developed to do it.

Film Look Creator all day long! Slices seem cool too. Only trouble is that render cache seems a bit borked in the beta - where I was previously getting real-time playback it seems to be falling over a bit. You?

So there's a guy who lives near me - young guy, good looking - who 2 years ago gave up a film-making degree at a London university (can't remember which one - but a good one, I can remember thinking when he told me) to go on the tools with his dad, because he couldn't see any way that an expensive 3 year course was ever gong to wash its face. Was talking to his sister this evening and she reckons he'd be totally up for getting involved in my short. Which could mean I've either got talent that isn't me, or a camera op that isn't me. Either way, it suddenly makes this project a whole lot easier. (Not to mention Resolve 19 - which changes the space entirely!)

Actually unreservedly loved it. I'm finding that I'm gradually getting further and further away from preferring verite/realistic looks and getting into the wilder end of things!

I watched this yesterday and it inspired me to watch the first film (only 5 years late!). It's unusual to see Waqas quite so excited about something but it was an excellent view into the art, rather than the technique, in top-end colour grading.

There are *some* advantages to being both crew and talent myself! Obviously this is a passion/learning project, though, so reshoots aren't a problem, except for getting the time to do them. In terms of movement - I'm not missing it too much. There is one point in one shot where a subtle push-in would really help to sell the moment. I can do it in post, but that it won't have the (very mild) parallax that a 'real' push-in would give me.

So an update, if anyone's interested. I shot the first scene, which was made up of 5 distinct shots. They came out OK. They were... competent, but only that. The lighting was good - nice contrast, nice colours, well-motivated, but that's all. Can you tell I'm dissatisfied? I was so focussed on getting everything 'right' that I didn't pay enough attention to getting it good or interesting. So I'm going to reshoot and one of the things I'm going to do is lean in to the limitations I have - first among which is that I'm doing this almost completely alone. I am both crew and talent! The biggest limitation caused by that is that camera movement while I'm on screen is not going to happen, which means that to create interest I need to make my angles and composition more interesting. Also, the lighting as I did it the other night looked, basically, like a commercial, not a movie, so now I'm happy with my ability to get decent levels etc, I'm going to really try to push the envelope with ratios and temperatures and try to have some fun with it. Once I've reshot I may post both versions for comment before I continue with the remaining scenes (it's going to take a while to complete the whole project given that I work full-time and my main set is our kitchen, which is in near-constant use as my 3 children attempt to bankrupt me purely through food costs!).

I've had some great bits of luck recently by using search terms that reflect what a person who didn't know what they had would use as a listing title - 'camera light' and so on... then sorting by Ending Soonest.

I've owned many cameras (too many) and i think I've only ever bought 2 from new. Thing is, there are so few moving parts on cameras these days that there's not a huge amount that can go wrong in normal use. That said, unless an eBay or similar deal is just too good to pass up, you are safer doing it through a dealer, as @ac6000cw says.

Reasonably well thanks - will write it up soon!

My intention is to document this journey here and I’m doing it for the entirely selfish reason of keeping myself on it!

Script and partial shortlist written. Ready for action tomorrow night when wife is out, so hopefully no interruptions!

Thanks for watching! I've wanted to get into anamorphic right from the get-go for precisely the reasons you mention. One thing I like about this adapter is that the flares are pretty subtle.

Missed critical focus a couple of times as I was working off the camera's screen, but generally quite happy with how the adapter renders etc.

Picked this up second hand at a good price as my introduction to anamorphics. Here's some tests shot last night.

On my FS7 I set a ND filter that is reasonably correct then ride the aperture to fine-tune. A stop either way in aperture isn't going to significantly affect one's artistic intent.

Absolutely. They have a place though as not everybody can justify having a bunch of single density NDs and the trade-off (if you're not doing absolutely colour-critical work) is worth it. But definitely one has to be careful when using them to avoid the issues you mention.

K&F Concept are pretty good at a lowish price. For a bit more, SLR Magic certainly used to have some nice ones.

The biggest thing for me, using it, is the realisation that a huge proportion of the features we pay extra for in hybrid cameras are really just workarounds for the problems caused by using a completely inappropriate form factor for shooting video.

London Camera Exchange. I’m still kinda thinking they accidentally put it up at the wrong price! The ones on MPB at that price were a lot shabbier.

I had clamps galore but there wasn’t a single thing to clamp to! 140 hours, perfect cosmetic condition with Shape arm, 6 batteries and V mount adapter for GBP695 (all but GBP50 of which I covered with trade in). Pretty much my dream camera!

Heh - yeah, not too sure I want to do it for money TBH. But your points about the actual shoot make sense. That's why I mentioned that a lesson learned was that I should have got there for the soundcheck and ensured that they ran through the chosen song at least once, with proper lighting (at this venue in particular the lighting was controlled by the sound guy, so would have been possible) in order to get some different angles. I had intended to set my A6600 up as a static long shot for the same reason, but when I got there I found a room where there was literally nothing I could secure either a tripod or monopod to, so I couldn't, unfortunately.