Torben Greve
Cinematographer
...and small time rental house in Copenhagen.
Another of those guys where you can't really find any of their actual work that would give them merit to give advice about this gear to others.
Falls in the same category as Peter McKinnon and Travel Feels.
Hi Alex... I'm taking my hat off. Considering it's a microbudget feat, it looks like you got pretty far. I couldn't play it with sound do to my current location, but some of the shots had nice lighting and it looked like you did think about composition and so on.
The range of the dark haired actor felt a bit short, and a little like a theatre actor. But since I couldn't hear sound I couldn't really tell if it suited the movie :)
I saw an old thread of yours here... from back in 2015 :o This makes me want to ask a few direct questions I hope you could answer:
- How did you managed to keep steam for all those years?
- Can you ballpark the costs for this feature, when you term it "microbudget"... I'm just curious, because it seems like you got very far with what you had when I think microbudget. Are you below 10.000 gbp? Even lower? I don't need specifics, just approx.'s :)
- How long did you engage the actors for and what did you do to keep them engaged in the story / production?
Sponsored by Aputure?
Seriously... this felt more like a "how does it feel" review than a technical review.
Very few things matters when it comes to light;
- Quality / CRI
- Wattage
- Output, not meassured in lumen or stated by comparison by the manufacturer, but in how much actual light hits the talent at fx 6 feet with a soft modifier in front of it.
- How much noise it makes at that distance when your boomer is also 6 feet from the light.
These are things that boil down to concrete numbers, not feels.
The 120D felt like a disappointment to me. I tested it at native ISO 2.000 and the output was appalling with the dome on. Imagine having a camera with native iso 800.
Then 300D tests came on YT... on some of them, you can actually hear the fans....... come on. When was it ever ok to hear the fans of your light? I don't want to compromise the quality of the audio, potentially endangering vocal ranges that also mix with the fan frequency. It's never ok.... never.
Audio is more important than light.
Great audio can save a mediocre cinematography, but great cinematography can't save bad audio.
The life of the light... if I was indeed planning to be satisfied with 5-10 years, that makes me question even more the price of the light. Especially if you factor in the massive increased cost to make it functionally mobile.
You dont' just need 2 v-lock batteries.... you need 4.... add dual charger to that.
Even more weight and packaging to log around.
Honestly... The next LED I'll buy, I'd expect to last a looooong time. We still use 2K open faces on studio... like you said, units that are past 20 years. Because they work, without issues and have been paid off for 19 years. That's ROI un-rivalled.
5 years of 300D and then have to buy a new one? Ouch...
It crashed because after we were done shooting the drone shots, the still photographer took over for a small session. I decided to push the tempo and experiement a bit.
So... enabled Atti mode and went full speed across our scene, but at the return point I hadn't checked what was ahead of me (camera was tilted down), so I went full speed into a slope, then the drone tumbled down into a limestone lake.... oh well...
I owned a P4P+ until recently... it's a great drone for the price. For the moment I can't seem to justify spending 5 times as much to get a somewhat operational Inspire2 with the x7 camera.
But...I crashed my P4P+ a month ago. I haven't bothered to replace it because I dawned on me that the DJI has placed the P4 line in End Of Life.
With the already appalling customer service from DJI, End Of Life is not something I would want to add on top.
So I'm holding out for the next product in the Phantom family. Dunno when it will come tbh, but hopefully it will be worth the wait. I mean, the P4P does great video and decent photos, so the next will be just fine.
The shirt strings aren't moving....
Jib the light from above to below him, rotate the composition afterwards. Glover adds slight slight sideways tilt to sell it.