Hey guys, I'm new here, and new to Vimeo (as an uploader at least, I've been lurking for over a year!) I basically got my education about what equipment to buy by reading these pages (although I've been learning my craft on my trusty old VX2100 for the past 7 years). I've had a few positive remarks about this video I uploaded, my first time using the camera actually, and I thought I'd share it here. All my other videos are also filmed with the FS700. I hope you enjoy it, and I'd love to hear what you think. Here's a screen grab:
I'm sorry if I posted this in the wrong forum, I just noticed a "share your work" forum. Perhaps this is the right place, as it is mainly to showcase FS700 footage? Feel free to move post if need be
Nice work James. Well exposed. Good control of the highlights. What picture profile did you use? I like the grade too. Love the soft pastel blues of the sky. Nice clean tones. Would you share your process?
Thanks. I don't have the exact picture profile, I was really just playing around with options. But I do remember I used cinegamma4, and I raised the sharpness a little. But the look is mostly achieved in the grading. Even the grading is pretty simple - RGB curves, saturation, colour balance, and playing around with these variables for each shot until each looked "right" Sorry I can't be more technical in my explanation, but I'm self taught and rely mainly on instinct when doing this stuff
CineGamma 3 & 4 produce great results for highlights! I've opted to 'pretend' that 100% is it, so I expose accordingly, then have an extra bit in the highlights once we hit the grade - the CineGammas help the shadow details so long as we protect the highlights. One thought is to save the sharpening for the final grade. Sharpening in-camera is often aggressive and overbaked. Sharpening is better done in the edit where a good job can be done without the real-time constraints. The film-look crew often decry sharpening - however, in corporate, what mostly sells is sharp, colourful pictures. BTW - big shout out to Adam - nice to meet you at the Sony gig!
I know what you mean about the film-look crew decrying sharpening! I'll be attempting a short narrative soon, so the grade would probably look a lot different to these behind the scenes fashion clips. But as you said, I think sharp, crisp images are suited to corporate/fashion films. Will keep in mind what you said about in-camera sharpening - thanks!
Thanks for sharing James. Always good to hear how others approach things. Matt, was good meeting you.
aha I saw this video and I liked it on Vimeo when looking at footage of the FS700 before seeing it here! Cool to see your work, it is nice! How are you liking the FS700? I am seriously considering buying one. How much colour grading can you do in post? ALSO what lens(es) did you use for that?
Very nice grade! Great skintones and colors in general. I wonder how much of the look is Zeiss lenses... Would you be willing to let us see a raw image? Especially the reds look great and not too bright or blocky as I'm used to with the cam on some shots.
Hey James, cheers on your great video. I've used your work in particular to reference a certain (like you describe, very "commercial") look the FS700 can achieve. Been a lurker on this video for long enough so just wanted to drop in an say thanks for the inspiration.
