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Sunday 11 January 2009

Muse - The Full Film

Its finally done! I've been working on my first ever short film called "Muse" and its now finished.
Filming took three nights to finish and editing well over a week.
The film was shot on a Canon 5D MkII DSLR using Canon lenses:
EF 16-35mm f2.8L II, EF 35mm f1.4L, TS-E 45mm f2.8, EF 50mm f2.5 Macro, EF 85mm f1.2L II and the EF 135mm f2L.
Editing was done on a Mac Pro using Final Cut Studio (Final Cut Pro, Soundtrack Pro, Compressor and Motion).
I have posted a 720 HD version on Vimeo and a 1080 HD version on SmugMug.

I've been testing the 5D MkII for the BJP (British Journal of Photography) and the film was shot as a way of exploring the camera's video abilities. There will be a full article on my experiences and thoughts, so keep an eye out for the magazine.

8 comments:

  1. Very nicely done mate...

    On a technical note, I'm continuously impressed at the streaming quality of the Vimeo site - so much better than most other video-hosting services, I wonder what compression method they are using...

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  2. Thanks Ben. Most kind.
    There's some info here:
    http://www.vimeo.com/help/compression

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  3. Lovely quality....v nice! Well done.
    Did you have any probs editing in FCP?
    I have heard others saying that in the 'raw' H.264 format (straight from the 5D) that thae files don't play too well....
    Some are converting to ProRes first then morting to FCP. Intresting to get your take on it...

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  4. Thanks Simon.
    I didn't try editing the files straight, but followed the conventional wisdom of those in the know and converted the clips into Pro Res 422 first, using Compressor. Then editing was a cinch.

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  5. Ah, Ok thanks. I imagine that made them much bigger? Did the conversion take long?

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  6. It does make them bigger. It took a fair time as I converted all the clips (around 31 Gb) in large batches. The end Pro Res 422 files were 168Gb.

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  7. Hi,
    Love the short! I was wondering about another technical note as well. How did you grade this piece and how did you get around the gamma shift bug in quicktime? (did you compress with H.264?)

    Thanks!

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  8. Hi Stephen,
    Thanks :-)
    All you see is straight from the camera. I don't know how to grade! The only conversion was that I converted all the files from the camera to Pro Res 422 before importing them into FInal Cut Pro.

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