Zak Forsman

Hey, my production company made this! Thanks for posting.  The movie will be released this year on VOD. 

Hey, my production company made this! Thanks for posting.  The movie will be released this year on VOD. 

The GH5 being used to shoot 'serious movies' isn't so inconceivable to me. The 10 bit 4:2:2 4K make it a good option for very low budget films that are hoping to eventually get picked up by platforms that are seeking out or require 4K content. Yeah, it's no Alexa, but it's $2000. 

On that note, if you know what you're doing, pretty much any recent camera can be used to make decent theatrical content these days. This was shot on two GH4s: 
 

Metabones just wrote me that they have a GH5 since last week and will develop a new firmware for the XL, nice one.

It is only 720p, but the 7" SmallHD 701 Lite is available at B&H for the next 21 hours for $399.
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1224295-REG/smallhd_mon_701_lite_701_lite_7_hdmi.html
I've got the 502 and 702 Bright and love the functionality.

I'm more annoyed by a bad gimbal than handheld jitters

The young guy in the video makes a lot of sense - you have to give him credit for being uber-sensible. 
My mantra is: If there's noise in my shot, so be it. I got the shot. And it works.
Light, composition, lens choice, perspective, location, filming style, people.... all these things have way more impact than filming with a better camera. It's easy to kid yourself that you need a better camera, but SO MANY forget the bigger picture of having a camera in the first place. A better camera will have very little influence on making your stuff "cinematic" if you don't apply the key principles around it. 
Right now - I have the FS5 and the A6500. I have the FS5 to cover all my jobs as a great all-rounder - plus due to many requests for HFR, it does that too. The A6500 is used for gimbal work, B-roll and stills shots. For every job i do, I'm covered. New GH5? Ursa Mini Pro? Nice, but not needed. A waste of money. 
Have these Sony cameras had a dramatic impact on my overall content quality? No. It's the artistic choices like lighting, lens choice, grading and style. It's the casting choices (spending more on talent). It's using a location in creative ways. It's editing and rhythm. It's getting everything synchronised. It's publishing work to be proud of. 
The cameras are now at a point where we don't need to be concerned with them, or have to jump through hoops to work properly. We're in a content age where video is the biggest type of media on the planet, and to stand out, you have to wake up from the merry-go-round of camera obsessions and make some really engaging stuff.
I really couldn't think of any big reasons that I'd part with my cameras just now. There would be little benefit to upgrading them, just another hole in the wallet. 
Frankly, I'm done with the gear acquisition illness many of us have. It's incredibly distracting, time-wasting and not creative at all. Of course, it's part of my job to keep up to date with it. But losing time due to thinking about new cameras, not anymore. 
There's a lot of camera gear blogs now. Many of them are sponsored because people have to make a living. They are a good source of news. Opinion pieces are subjective. BUT...there is a gap in these blogs. There's barely a focus on the craft, experimentation and artistry of film making. Maybe because these topics are less hyped, monetised and clickable. 
 

@Oliver Daniel I strongly agree with all your points... but it is easier to say those things when you have an FS5, which is the most perfect all round video camera I can think of at the moment... and also out of a lot of people's budgets here. Most people here seem to be in the sub £1000 or £2000 category, so the long debates all revolve around your a6500's, g80's, BMPC's, etc - which all have their pros and cons. 

I'm with you on that. I won't need much else with an FS5 hanging around. 
However, whether your camera is $1000, $50000 or $10,000 - it's likely that all those cameras are more than enough to shoot quality footage with. 
Focus your energy on everything else - the camera is just a screwdriver in a toolbox when building a boat.  

Nothing major, so I can't think of any names. Mostly indie stuff I've seen online that looks+sounds good and mentioned having a budget. That and ads, lots of ads as a scroll my FB feed.
 
I have nothing against handheld. I like it when it works, and when it's physically done well. When it looks like a heavy camera that someone is doing a good job of holding pretty steady. Not the jittery, excessive I stuff i see often today. 

No, that's for the URSA (not-so-mini) owners to make up for the 4.6K turrets being way behind.

"What rolling shutter?" - Chantal Akerman

a haiku by @Ed_David
 
URSA Mini Pro
So good but Blackmagic tho
Ah, buyer's remorse

okay, amigo.

You did not enlighten me with a single argument pro or con anything. Just launched into ... melting snowmen or something.. ? Come on, keep it positive yoclay. And evidence please. 

I was wrong.
I was a fool.
I bought a Ursa Mini 4.6k EF mount.
A week before the Ursa Mini Pro came out.
Opps.
But, still, this camera is incredible.
I was an idiot for criticizing them.
And now with the pro, they have delivered an ideal camera - capable of Raw or log for only $6000.  That looks like an alexa.  That is built well.  That is small.  That seems to not overheat.  A really amazing camera.
Blackmagic has done what Red had dreamed of.

Yes...I understand...and it's really about getting the image to a place you can live with...so it 's not a distraction, but the camera just gets out of your way so you can tell the story...for me, I guess I'm lucky that I like the image LOL...just bought the Leica 12-60...never thought I'd spend that kind of money on a Panny lens!...anyway I saw the footage you shot at the Santa Monica Airport? with the Micro...you made that footage sing!

yeah, the BMMCC has faint vertical lines in the shadows that I figured out how to remove in post. So I just keep it as a preset and throw it on anything I shoot with it now. I wish I had been able to clean up the GH4's smudgy blocking problems but nothing I tried worked. And for me, it just became one of those things that once I was aware of it, I could see it in everything. And truthfully, I kinda enjoy the challenge of figuring out ways to fix a camera's issues in post. I've got presets to remove purple fringing, chromatic aberration from my Kowa anamorphic lens, etc. As long as I can fix it, it's not really an issue for me, you know?

yeah, the BMMCC has faint vertical lines in the shadows that I figured out how to remove in post. So I just keep it as a preset and throw it on anything I shoot with it now. I wish I had been able to clean up the GH4's smudgy blocking problems but nothing I tried worked. And for me, it just became one of those things that once I was aware of it, I could see it in everything. And truthfully, I kinda enjoy the challenge of figuring out ways to fix a camera's issues in post. I've got presets to remove purple fringing, chromatic aberration from my Kowa anamorphic lens, etc. As long as I can fix it, it's not really an issue for me, you know?

Really had my fingers firmly crossed for this, but I'm seeing the same cyan/magenta blocking in this video that lead me to sell my GH4. Guess, I will stick with my Blackmagics until something better comes along.



 

We shoot a lot of 360 video on movie sets now, to capture behind the scenes. Our workhorse is the Nikon KeyMission 360. it's two 4K cameras. the overlap isn't that great so stitchig them together can be imperfect. but it's a good simple solution. Next step up is the Nokia Ozo ($45k). And most of what's in between are custom built rigs. But stitching those cameras together can be a big pain in the ass -- at the same time, having more overlap let's you hide things like the camera operator, etc.

Here's a basic formula:
When possible, take away all the light and carefully add light tuned for the story and emotion of the scene. Look at how often everything is dark, or overall not very bright in classic films. Paint with light. There are tons of books on this subject. Shoot at night and wet down the street. Set the frame rate to 24 (or 23.976), shutter 1/48 (or 1/50). That's for normal shots, you can go all over the place for emotional effect of the scene. Protect highlights so they don't clip and pay careful attention to exposure to keep skin tones in the sweet spot for your camera. Study film behavior for highlights and adjust your look in post to match the highlight and color response of film. Film generally never gets super white. Use a diffusion filter of some kind. Blur a little in post if necessary and add full resolution film grain (blur may not be needed if diffusion is used). Make sure there are no digital artifacts such as aliasing or Moire. Use depth of field to help tell the story by helping the viewer focus on what's important in the scene. If your camera has rolling shutter, make sure to move the camera in a way to minimize it. Try to make the scene a little 'unreal', in a way you would not see in normal everyday life. Like in a dream.

I agree with the previous two post.
Basically you have the Samsung gear 360 and the Nikon KeyMission 360 as consumers and easy to use solution. You can create okish quality content that can still generate the wow effect if the subject/story is great but technically the result is far away from pro quality that we are used on video today. The potential is there but is just too early at this price point (200-500 USD). I have and use quite a bit the Samsung 360 and for the price is good for learning and producing some experiment.
Next is the Gopro OMNI that produce better quality video but there is a much more work in the process. Cost around 5k USD
Then Nokia Ozo that is probably today the best quality but is very expensive at 45k USD
First thing to do IMO is to grab a google cardboard and look at many YouTube 360 videos available done with these cameras to get an idea. You need a phone with a great screen and remember to set the quality of the YouTube video to 4k before putting it in to the cardboard. Normally it defaults to a lower resolution.
This is a good one to start watching (cardboard required to get a real feeling of the potential of 360 videos) this one was done with 6 Gopro's similar to the Gopro OMNI rig:
 
 

It's like you invite someone over to a prescreening of a movie that hasn't been audio mastered, and instead of telling you that there were issues with audio and hearing what you have to say about it, they publish an article to the world saying the movie is unwatchable.  Then they make assumptions and state that the audio issues probably can't be fixed.  Should anyone ever let this guy prescreen movies ever?