watch Solidarity (3 minutes)

[WhiteOpus]

Hey guys, just finished my first real production and would love some feedback! It is only 3 minutes long (created for a 3-minute film festival format) but it I believe it still carries a story, however open to interpretation that story may be. Let me know what you guys think, I'd really appreciate it!

Solidarity

 

[HIFF]

Some pretty damn impressive visuals there.

And shot on just a Canon T2i. Nicely done.

Can you recall the aperture and ISO settings you used? That was surprisingly good low light performance for a budget DSLR (T2i) and your lenses: Canon 40mm 2.8 lens, Tamron 10-24mm lens

Well done.

 

[WhiteOpus]

Some pretty damn impressive visuals there.

And shot on just a Canon T2i. Nicely done.

Can you recall the aperture and ISO settings you used? That was surprisingly good low light performance for a budget DSLR (T2i) and your lenses: Canon 40mm 2.8 lens, Tamron 10-24mm lens

Well done.

Thank you, I appreciate the feedback immensely! I shot at f/2.8 for most of it with an ISO of 160 or 320 (multiples of 160) and never exceeding 400. I hate grainy images so I did a lot of research on how to get the best performance out of my camera and lenses (thank you, indietalk!). Another thing that helped a lot was using plenty of light and having crew members literally shake a gel (made from an orange binder divider) in front of the lights to simulate a "flickering" effect. In post I simply graded it to look darker than it actually was in the raw footage. I appreciate the compliment!

 

[HIFF]

Thank you, I appreciate the feedback immensely! I shot at f/2.8 for most of it with an ISO of 160 or 320 (multiples of 160) and never exceeding 400. I hate grainy images so I did a lot of research on how to get the best performance out of my camera and lenses (thank you, indietalk!). Another thing that helped a lot was using plenty of light and having crew members literally shake a gel (made from an orange binder divider) in front of the lights to simulate a "flickering" effect. In post I simply graded it to look darker than it actually was in the raw footage. I appreciate the compliment!

Thanks for the reply. Got to say, you did great with the visuals. And all with a T2i - very nice indeed.

Smart move doing the pre-shoot tests. Too many first time directors go straight into shooting - with little or no prep.

You have talent, looking forward to seeing other work of yours.

 

[WhiteOpus]

I truly appreciate the comments, HIFF. With your blessing I shall move forward into the realm of (near) greatness!

 

[TwinCities]

Fuckin a, on a T2i? You should put out a tutorial or give me some details on how you managed such little noise! I shoot dark films and shorts on a T3i and always come up with a lot of noise that I'm not sure how to rid! Can you help?

 

[WhiteOpus]

Fuckin a, on a T2i? You should put out a tutorial or give me some details on how you managed such little noise! I shoot dark films and shorts on a T3i and always come up with a lot of noise that I'm not sure how to rid! Can you help?

Hey TwinCities, to answer your question:

Always shoot in multiples of 160 ISO, try to avoid exceeding 400 ISO.
Shoot in 24p.
Make your shutter speed twice your framerate (24p = 1/50 shutter speed)
Shoot as wide open as possible (for me, f/2.8).

That's pretty much all I did as far as camera settings...
the real magic is in the lighting (and making sure you have enough of it to maintain an ISO below 400). we used at least one light for every scene, some areas we used three lights. additionally, we had literally 70 candles on the middle table, which added a lot of light. to be frank, what you see in the final edit is quite a bit darker than the raw footage. much of the mood and lighting was done in post.

one of the key practices that helped me was to make sure that i was lighting the subject and none of the background so it really had the appearance of being "candlelit". another difficult part of simulating candlelight was getting the light to look like it was coming from the candles alone, even though we were only physically able to position the lights around the table and cast. there was a lot of relocating going on with the lights, crew, cast and props in order to properly light every shot. do more research and do a lot, A LOT of low light tests in the actual location at which you plan on shooting (the best way to learn is by doing). that way you can take the test footage back to your computer and see what settings work best for you (and the situation) to get the highest quality footage out of your camera. it should be made a point that there is no "one size fits all" when it comes to camera settings and it just depends on the situation and your available equipment.

i am happy i did this film because it shows people that you don't need a huge budget to make something interesting and of high quality (this cost us about $250 total - not factoring in the lights and camera).

it's not the camera, it's the person using it!
happy shooting!