From NAB 2009: Stu Maschwitz, Short Film Shot with the Canon 5D Mark II
Posted on: April 20, 2009
Posted in: Cinematography, Filmmakers, Independents, Tools, Video, Visual Effects
Director, Stu Maschwitz, founder of legendary VFX shop, The Orphanage, creator of the Magic Bullet software suite and author of the DV Rebel’s Guide, spoke on a panel this morning at NAB entitled, Independent Filmmaking — A Million Dollar Look on a Thousand Dollar Budget: 2009 Edition. He was joined by Rodney Charters, director of photographty on Fox’s, 24 and Charles Papert of Instant Films.
Recently, Stu directed a short film, more of a camera test as he describes it, with a Canon 5D Mark II HD camera. I thought it would be fun to show you what someone with some talent can do with this amazing new camera. Take a look and be sure to check out Stu’s new blog, ProLost.
April 20th, 2009 at 7:11 pm
No doubt the Mark II takes a great image, and the Redrock DSLR package (which they apparently used) is gorgeous. I think the main thing holding it back from acceptance is the lack of professional sound acquisition.
Most indie shooters of the digital age aren’t set up to comfortably shoot double system sound. For those who haven’t done it before, the idea of having to post-sync scares the hell out of them, or at the very least the extra steps of slates and jamming/slaving timecode are a deal breaker.
I love this new development, but after the RED/EX-3 generation of camcorders, I think you’ll see the prosumer video market adopt 35mm DoF and lens support (without an adapter) before the 35mm DSLR market is widely adopted for professional video.
And then, of course, they’ll converge and ten years from now (less?) there won’t be a difference between a video camera and a digital still camera, except at the highest of professional price points.
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May 10th, 2009 at 11:04 am
The MarkII definitely delivers good pictures.
This is a well produced, high energy action piece with great audio. In my opinion, its main shortcoming is the proper use of focus / rack focus.
There are several places in which the subject is out of focus (e.g. the shot starting at 1:28 is completely out of focus, same at 1:41), as well as situations where rack focus would have been more powerful to convey the action (e.g. at 0:43 and 0:57 new opponents are introduced out of focus).
Also I have the feeling the blacks are crushed a bit too much, reducing detail, but this could well be an artistic choice or the effect of YouTube compression.