Tuesday 30 October 2012

Memphis Stomp - The One Man Blues Trio

Wow! My first serious project!

I worked on this with my director-friend Andreas from Immediate Art Ltd. It's a music video featuring our friend Johan playing his version of Memphis Stomp, a jazzy composition by Dave Grusin. I was the DP and the colourist on this project, while Andreas was directing and editing. I'll outline our workflow below, for those interested: 
  • Shot on my Canon KissX5 (600D/T3i), using the EF 50mm f/1.4 UMS and EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS II lenses with Magic Lantern, Technicolor CineStyle picture profile and a battery grip 
  • Takes were supported by a Velbon VideoMate II tripod and a DIY table-top PVC dolly, inspired by the Frugal Filmmaker 
  • Edited on a Mac in FCPX and exported to an Uncompressed 422 10-bit file (~37GB) 
  • Imported to Premiere CS6 on Win7 and CineStyle LUT applied using RedGiant's free plugin LUT Buddy 
  • Color correction and grading applied using RedGiant Magic Bullet Looks II 
  • Exported to uncompressed AVI (~55GB) - not sure why FCPX uncompressed was smaller there! 
  • Imported back to FCPX for final titles and media export (FCPX only offers 16mbit h264 1080p, but that is more than enough for YouTube) 
Things we learnt: 
  • MacDrive is extremely useful when working in cross-platform workflow (allows read/write to OSX formatted HDDs) 
  • FCPX on its own is not good enough to release beyond YouTube: no control over bitrate without external application called Compressor and no ability to import uncompressed AVI easily (MPEG StreamClip software to the rescue!) 
  • take, re-take - rinse repeat - until you have much more footage than you think you need 
  • shot-list planned to the second is a blessing (thanks Andreas) 
Enjoy the video and please do offer any feedback that comes to mind - we would appreciate it greatly! :)