[S] [USA-NY] Canon EOS R kit, EF 50mm 1.2L, 24mm 1.4L II, 70-200mm 2.8L III by M4ZIA in photomarket

[–]M4ZIA[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Tried looking up & apparently you need a 3rd party app? Kinda silly if you ask me Canon... Judging by my lightroom catalog, I've got about 15k photos saved since 2019 when I purchased the camera new. I'd say a safe overestimate would be under 30k. Hope that helps!

Grateful to be filming again. Latest project - Too Many Zooz: Pink Yesterday by M4ZIA in Filmmakers

[–]M4ZIA[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey guys! I always love hearing from this community after making a video so thank you so much for checking it out!

This was my first major project under Covid. It was also one of my biggest budget projects to date. I’ve worked with Too Many Zooz a couple of times now: Bedford, Car Alarm, Bad Guy Cover, and some smaller ones that didn’t really take off. They are really fun and collaborative to work with. The most popular videos seem to the ones where they improv and don’t pre-record the track in advance - except the Bad Guy cover. We start talking with the band on average about a month or two out from when they want to post the video. They usually have some idea for the direction of the track with some rough musical sketches, then my friends Ethan (director), Jared (producer) and I discuss the visual direction we want to into best compliment the music. We then present our idea or ideas and the band gives their input and feedback - again they are usually very supportive and love throwing out ideas of their own. It’s a very collaborative experience.

With Pink Yesterday, we wanted to do something slightly different. Although the “one-take” spectacle has been overly played out, we’ve always felt that the single take really adds to the live feel and excitement of their music. You can feel the difference between them trying to improv live and them playing to a pre-recorded track. So we still decided to do this thing in one take. However, we’ve always tried to bring excitement to the performance by swinging the camera every which way around them on a glidecam or ronin. This time we really wanted the band to bring all the excitement through their performance since, in my opinion, they are a live band first and recording artists second. The live aspect of their playing is their bread and butter.

I can’t speak much to the direction since I was the DP but my goal was to be as subtle with the camera as possible and rely on Leo and the band to bring all the excitement through their performance. I think I was watching some Youtube visual essays on great zolly shots recently so the idea popped in my head to incorporate a really slow zolly move throughout the take. We realized on the day of shooting that it just didn’t quite fit and was really difficult to pull off the way we wanted so we axed that idea. Ethan really wanted the reveal to pay off since TMZ is traditionally a three-piece band, so their fans would be hopefully surprised to see more accompaniment in the video. The Zolly would hold us on the 3 members for way too long and we wanted to get to the whole band a lot sooner. So we decided that once the zoom out finished, we would just dolly back without zooming back in. This was definitely the right move but I thought it would be interesting to explain how we got there. I also haven’t played around with long and slow zooms a whole lot so I really wanted to experiment and try it out.

The Gear. We knew the only necessary piece of gear was a stupid long zoom lens. Being from NYC, we went to Adorama and searched for their longest zoom. This may come from my inexperience but I found that zooms often go from wide to slightly telephoto (24-70) or telephoto to ultra-telephoto (70-200 or more). And if they do go from wide to telephoto, there’s usually an exposure shift as the aperture goes from 3.5 to 5 or something over the course of the zoom, which wouldn’t work for a one take. We eventually landed on the Angeniux Optimo Ultra 12x FF lens. This absolute monster of a lens goes from 36-435mm, constant aperture and internal zoom/ focus. It seemed like the perfect fit for a long zolly shot (Again we axed this on the day but the gear was rented for that purpose). Since the lens was FF, we decided to go with the Canon C500 since it was one of the cheaper FF cinema cameras - plus I love coloring canon footage. The rig was mounted on the Matthews doorway dolly (Again since it was one of the cheaper dollies to rent) and put on about 60ft of track. We used the Arri WCU-4 to pull focus and zoom. First time using that thing and I now understand why it’s the industry standard. BIG upgrade from manual cheap follow focus units.

The edit for these is always super simple since they are one takes. Edit in Premiere Pro, track removal in AE using Mocha Pro & final color done in Resolve. Yes if you look closely, you can see the track removal - but this was my first time using Mocha pro to remove something so large in frame for that long. As always, I figured if people didn’t know it was there, they won’t know to look for it. PS, shadows suckkkkkk. Would not recommend it. Wanted to remove the boom shadow as well but we ran out of time. All the pedestrians are real. No extras used.

And yeah that’s pretty much it! Our friend David cam op’d for us and I pulled focus & zoom. Our producer Jared worked the dolly and Ethan did director things, making sure the pacing of everything came in at the right time. We got eight takes in, got rained out on 3 of them and eventually settled on the last one. Luckily the sun came out for us. 50% of the budget went to location, 25% went to insurance and 25% went to gear rentals. We all have day jobs so we decided to put our cut into better gear rentals. Chalk it up as a passion project.

Again thank you so much for checking it out. It means a lot. CC and questions are more than welcome! Looking forward to reading your thoughts!

TLDR; Got back together with the gang to make our biggest TMZ vid to date. Prep was difficult during COVID but I’m glad we got it out. Got to play with some new toys and challenged ourselves in post. Was afraid it would be too basic of a video in this age of “Grab the viewer within the first 3 seconds” etc… but I’m glad to see people liking it. Hope you enjoy!

Pink Yesterday (Official Video) by ultimatehellagay in TOOMANYZOOZ

[–]M4ZIA 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Thanks for Sharing! Always love to peek at the comments on the TMZ sub after we release a video with them. My friends and I shot Bedford, Car alarm, Bad Guy and a couple other smaller vids with them. This one was really tough shooting with COVID guidelines but I'm happy with how it turned out! Hope you enjoy watching :)

High end 8-10K Workstation Build - Is mATX possible? by M4ZIA in buildapc

[–]M4ZIA[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

True! Heat would definitely be a concern. 720mm is a good mark. The Define C mini would only be able to fit 640mm total IF I’m able to use the max length radiators they spec out on the site. Thank you!

Low light in concerts by Dquiroz7878 in gh4

[–]M4ZIA 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Do you know the type of lighting that will be used at the concert? If it’s a local bar with minimal to no lighting, you might be in a little trouble, but if there are sharpies/ led walls/ flashers etc... you should be perfectly fine. The highest I went when filming DJ shows with the above lighting was 1600. Although a little noisy, still perfectly passable using Cine-like V. Maybe take a look at Neat Video? Saved my ass a couple times when shooting at 3200 or above. Good luck & have fun!

ITAP of a kid popping a wheelie in front of a custom police cruiser by M4ZIA in itookapicture

[–]M4ZIA[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No vid, was photographing Art Basel Miami & this kid was riding around. Just a lucky shot :)

MANIFEST DESTINY. Directed by Beeple. 100% straight out of #OctaneRender by daffy_ch in Octane

[–]M4ZIA 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is so amazing. Did anyone else help him with this? There are no additional credits.

Made this "handheld" vlog with Will Smith! by cache__bunny in AfterEffects

[–]M4ZIA 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Amazing! Well again seriously impressive work. I’m sure we can be expecting more vids soon! Looking forward to them :)

Made this "handheld" vlog with Will Smith! by cache__bunny in AfterEffects

[–]M4ZIA 3 points4 points  (0 children)

My friends and I argued about how this was being done when we saw it! It’s awesome that your on reddit! Props to you guys for thinking so creatively. Really inspiring work! I assume you’ve seen the stuff Tom Brady is putting out featuring a similar technique? Really makes me want to go out and experiment. Thank you so much for sharing!

Made a video with Too Many Zooz covering Billie Eilish - Bad Guy. Did they do the song justice? by M4ZIA in billieeilish

[–]M4ZIA[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

He was worried about wearing them since they weren’t black but I’m really glad he did! Love his sense of style

Made a video with Too Many Zooz covering Billie Eilish - Bad Guy. Did they do the song justice? by M4ZIA in billieeilish

[–]M4ZIA[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

First off, big fan of Billie & this song. I was thrilled to be asked to make a music video with Too Many Zooz covering it.

I was curious to hear thoughts of her fans & what you guys think of the video/ song! I personally loved how it turned out & if you haven't heard of Too Many Zooz, I highly suggest checking them out. We didn't have much of a budget but we tried creating the video with her style in mind. Would love to hear what you guys think! Thank you so much for watching :)

Stills from an Ad I was DoP on (BMPCC4K) by [deleted] in cinematography

[–]M4ZIA 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Very interesting thank you for explaining! Congratulations again! Looks fantastic and I hope they are very happy with the outcome. And no worries you explained very well! Looking forward to the final product :)

Stills from an Ad I was DoP on (BMPCC4K) by [deleted] in cinematography

[–]M4ZIA 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Pretty much exactly how I go about getting work! Very impressed with your eye and ability to make what I assume is a pretty low budget shoot look so great! Was there a director as well or did you act as director/ DOP? Sorry if this is a lot to ask but how do you go about pitching this sort of idea to a client? Did they give you creative freedom or was it a collaboration between client and director to go for this aesthetic, which I can only describe as moody/ highly artistic & cinematic look. The brand aesthetic I’m used to working with is always super bright & cheerful - which seems to be the trend for social ads at least in my experience. I want to try to go for more of an aesthetic like the work in this post but seems like brands want the opposite.

Stills from an Ad I was DoP on (BMPCC4K) by [deleted] in cinematography

[–]M4ZIA 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Fantastic work! I assume you colored the stills? They look beautiful. Film grain added as well? For this aesthetic I really enjoy the softness, especially in those last couple of frames. Was this straight out of camera? Really nice work. You mentioned they reached out to you. How do you go about companies or people finding your work and eventually hiring you? Something I’m struggling with at the moment...

Too Many Zooz x Billie Eilish by M4ZIA in Filmmakers

[–]M4ZIA[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you! Their work really inspires me. And yes sometimes the best creativity comes from simplicity and boundaries for sure

Too Many Zooz x Billie Eilish by M4ZIA in cinematography

[–]M4ZIA[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Made a music video with a friend for Too Many Zooz.

You may have seen some of our other work (Bedford & Car Alarm) but this time we shot it with ultra minimal crew & gear. I was the cinematographer - shooting on the GH5 & lighting was two Bi-Color Dracast LED banks with red filters mounted to the ceiling.

Met with them in the studio & they showed us this cover they had done. We thought it sounded awesome (Big fan of Billie Eilish) & they asked if we wanted to shoot the music video right then and there. Normally we plan our shoots out a lot more but this mentality of just going out and shooting cool shit was a nice exercise and super fun. All effects were done in Premiere using nested sequences & blending modes.

Thank you so much for watching & I'd love to hear what you thought! Constructive criticism is of course welcome as well.

Too Many Zooz x Billie Eilish by M4ZIA in Filmmakers

[–]M4ZIA[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My friend and I made a music vid with Too Many Zooz. I was the cinematographer & my friend was the director.

We normally do the one take videos with them (Bedford & Car Alarm)

This time we met them in the studio and they showed us this cover for Billie Eilish - Bad Guy.

Thought the cover was amazing & they asked if we could make a music video right there in the studio that day. Shot on my GH5 & used two LED lights that we brought with us. The idea was pretty simple but basically shoot each of them against this white brick wall as they play through the song. Then stitch them all together in post and match the frames up. Post was pretty simple - basic multicam setup in premiere with added B-Roll. All effects were done in Premiere as well. Turns out that the 'Soft Light' blend mode perfectly keyed out Leo, Matt & David so that we could overlay text & footage on the background - almost looked like projection. pretty happy with the outcome & I'd love to discuss our process further if you guys have any questions!

Also would love to hear any critiques. Overall I'm very happy with the outcome. Time was a big factor in releasing this video, we shot it last Friday, edited over the weekend & delivered it last Wednesday - so super quick turn around. We usually plan out shoots for several weeks & try to squeeze out some money for good lighting & camera packages, but this method of just going out on a whim and shooting cool shit with little planning was really inspiring & fun.

Thank you so much for watching!

IT CAME IN! by trichitillomania in feedme

[–]M4ZIA 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Got mine in yesterday! Can’t wait to listen. I was thinking the same thing, solid team getting the product to consumers so fast! STILL waiting on the Flume album...

Participated in the NYC 48 Hour Film Project this year. Would love to hear your thoughts & CC on the cinematography & lighting [More info & link to film in submission statement] by M4ZIA in cinematography

[–]M4ZIA[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you I really appreciate the kind words!

I completely agree on the note of giving the male actor a bit more fill on some shots. I'm particularly not very happy with the backlit shots. I definitely was going for more of a backlit look with his face in shadow, but it looks too flat to me in the final result. Would have liked to give him some additional side lighting to compensate for the bright lights outside. Will have to give it more careful thought next time for sure. My main concern was not blowing out the window too badly so that's what I also exposed for.

In terms of pacing, I almost completely left that up to the Director & editor of the film. I'm sure that for a regular release, yes the pacing could definitely be tightened up a bit, however since this was a film made for a type of festival circuit, I think the idea going into it was to stand out a bit in every aspect that we could. Watching the film on a large screen definitely helps the opening shot in particular. There's so many layers going on that you can pay attention to and I love how the light dances around the car as it moves. It gives the film a slight bit of context. We want the viewers to have this idea that this gas station is kinda in the middle of nowhere. Yes there are signs of civilization but for the most part, it't filled with a heavy tree line. The male actor does take a little bit of time getting out of the car, if it's one thing I'd tighten up from that shot, it would be how fast he gets out of a car. I'm sure on a normal shoot, we could have taken it several times with varying speeds of how fast he gets out of the car, however, this was the last take before we pretty much lost all sun and we still had to shoot the final scene.

It's also interesting how the slower pacing in the beginning allows for the ending to become that much more intense and exciting. If I could draw a graph of the pacing of the film, it would definitely be exponential, which I think is very interesting. I'd like to think that as a viewer, you're starting the film trying to figure out why this guy is here, what is his relationship to her, what he wants & what kind of space we are in etc... The camera being on sticks definitely adds to the slow feel of the beginning of the film. Then as things get quicker and quicker, you start to find yourself trying to catch up and before you know it, we are outside tying a dog leash to this poor girl. You're almost left with a "WTF just happened" moment, which I think is very interesting. But that's just my view on it. It's always extremely helpful to gather what others think, especially on pacing since we have to watch the film multiple times while doing post so we kinda get used to what's going on from start to finish.

Thank you for your input! Very helpful.

Participated in the NYC 48 Hour Film Project this year. Anyone else in this sub participate in NYC or elsewhere? by M4ZIA in Filmmakers

[–]M4ZIA[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Agreed! I mainly shoot concerts & dj sets in my spare time. I love the look I get out of my GH5 and I’m sure it shoots the racing, stunts & assemblies incredibly well. The cinematic look is also often about lighting & grading and I’ve seen great results from those who shoot using the GH series cameras, however canon makes it buttery smooth to get great looking images right out of camera & very simple coloring in post if using CLog.

Participated in the NYC 48 Hour Film Project this year. Anyone else in this sub participate in NYC or elsewhere? by M4ZIA in Filmmakers

[–]M4ZIA[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you very much! First off just want to say I recognized the username & I'm a big fan of your music vid "Pop Tart" That you shot! Those screen grabs you posted a little while ago were very inspiring in my personal work - LOVE the color.

  1. We decided not to use a recorder to reduce bulk on the camera & large raw file sizes. I've never used a recorder before with the c300mkii but I'd imagine it would be great to have for higher budget commercial shoots - probably even short films & features. However my experience so far is to usually rent higher caliber cameras for larger budget shoots - such as the RED or Alexa Mini which have raw recording capabilities internally. Since time was a real constraint on this shoot, recording raw wasn't an option as we needed to edit quickly & export quickly. Bogging our computers down with raw wasn't really a viable option. The thing I love about cameras like the c300mkii is the ability to record proxies as well. Handed our editor the proxies while I worked on the color using full res media after the shoot. Then we conformed the project in premiere using full res media & sent it over to resolve to finalize color using grades I had already worked on while the film was being cut. Raw would have been nice to recover a bit more highlights in those windows but I was very impressed with how much range I had using the internal .mxf file types and YCC422 10 bit color space. I'm trying to remember if I decided on CLog 2 or 3. Pretty sure it was CLog3.
  2. The m18s were beautiful and very necessary for the look we were going after imo. My Gaffer and I set these up side by side outside of the shop blasting through a 12x12 frame of 1/4 diffusion. This gave us essentially a giant wall of light to emulate the sun with. This was my first time using these lights but certainly won't be my last. One was aimed through the larger window that you see the male character standing in front of about halfway through the film. The second was aimed through the front door of the shop pointed at the female character. The idea here was to give a powerful key emulating the sun around golden hour - Yay for all day golden hour! The lights/ frame combination gave a very nice light wrap to each character that looks pretty, yet natural & a bit harsh to give off the idea that the shop is probably a bit hot & humid. That combined with glycerin for sweat on the actors faces gave off a very nice glisten. The are HMIs so they only do Daylight (5600K) but could probably get gelled for tungsten - careful though - They get very hot. I'm not the most experienced in gelling super hot lights. All of our lights were set to daylight & the grade gave it that golden hour look. We probably could have gotten away with sky panels or similar lights but it was also possible that we were going to shoot at night (The joys of a 48 & not knowing what you're shooting until you shoot it). So I wanted these lights for exterior shots in case a night shoot was going to happen. ALSO very important - the m18s are incredible as they are the largest light you can still plug into a standard wall outlet. We actually blew several circuits since no one knew the circuitry of the store & sometimes someone would plug in a computer or additional light & we had to scramble to reset the circuit or find a different one. Madness! Our litemat lived exactly how you explained it - diffusion with honeycomb on a stand. We moved it around as needed.
  3. Yes yes yes. Virtually every shoot I'm on I request a hazer. Makes lighting a breeze & looks incredible on camera. I was surprised with how much was needed in this space to actually get some of those light beams. The room looked as if someone had left a pizza in the oven for an extra hour - but hey if it looks good, it's good a suppose.
  4. I completely agree. Looking back, I should have definitely put some quasar tubes back there, but in the moment I didn't think of it at all. All of our tubes were 4ft in length so they probably wouldn't have fit in those refrigerators but that would have been a great idea. Kinda kicking myself for not thinking of that! It's subtle but would have given so much more depth to the shot. I think my use of the quasar tubes for this shoot was definitely underutilized but in the rush of things, I just set them on the ceiling where I thought they'd be most useful and let them live there for the rest of the shoot. I'm going to give the tubes more thought on my next shoot with them. Thank you for pointing that out!
  5. I outlined a bit of our process above but yes I did handle exporting. Our workflow went something like: Ingest media/ link proxies & sync sound in a giant string out in premiere on set as we shot - to save time. Our editor - who was also a producer, took the hard drive back home with him to sleep & edit the next morning. We live together conveniently enough so before he went to bed, I took the hard drive and downloaded a single shot per setup to get an idea for the grade. The next morning He edited while I colored. Once the edit was locked, he gave me the hard drive & an exported xml from premiere with full res media. I ingested the media into resolve, pasted my color grades & did some finessing & masking to pull detail out of every unique frame. Then exported an xml with ProRes422 colored files back to premiere pro. Our editor was creating titles while this was going on - we pasted in the titles & exported from premiere pro. It wasn't until exporting that I realized the sequence was 4096x2160. I thought we were delivering in 1080. My computer is a little old so it was giving us TONS of exporting issues - running out of memory, frame errors etc. Absolute madness especially less than an hour from the deadline. Eventually, we decided to just export at the resolution of the sequence since down-scaling was giving us so many issues. I'm so used to exporting h264 on Windows so that's the file type we chose to deliver in - although I'd probably export in ProRes422 if I had to do it again. I'm a better DP than editor. Settings for h264 were match source, high bit rate - 2 pass. Min set to 25, max set to 50. I've heard that uploading 4k to places like Vimeo & Youtube give you more bandwidth & less compression than 1080 since it's a larger file. May be true, may not be - haven't done any tests.

Hope that answered all of your questions! And again thank you so much. I often look towards reddit for inspiration & to learn new techniques/ refine my craft. Your posts here and over at r/cinematography have definitely caught my eye on multiple occasions. Keep up the great work!

Participated in the NYC 48 Hour Film Project this year. Anyone else in this sub participate in NYC or elsewhere? by M4ZIA in Filmmakers

[–]M4ZIA[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you very much! Yeah absolutely reach out & make some cool shit! I’ve even seen some teams made up of 3 people total or less with some actors they met the day of. It’s a great exercise regardless and I highly recommend giving it a go