The Season Of The Ghouls

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• published: 17 Feb 2016
• views: 1026

Shot this back in fall of last year, but never got around to posting until now. Wanted to make an entirely Halloween-themed video, but never really got the time to shoot the parade and people in costumes right around the actual holiday, so a lot of it is just moody scenes from around the city, but I did fit in the obligatory pumpkins, corn mazes and window displays. Was hoping to post and get it featured somewhere for Halloween itself, but alas that timeline didn't work out :) Anyhow, I like the look I came up with for it and wanted to share for those that might be interested. Got my a7S II midway through shooting it, so I mixed in some slow motion shots from that camera, mostly just at 60fps, but a few in the noisier crop-mode you get with 120fps. I also shot a few scenes at 24fps in 4K on a7S II under extremely low-light (some of the street decorations towards the beginning). This is the second video I shot in a 1.66:1 aspect ratio. I usually shoot 2.35:1, but like to mix it up from time to time, and I like shooting in Super 16mm aspect ratio when I do. Tried to use 16mm-esque grain for some shots too. Overall, I went for a lower contrast (for me at least) and desaturated look on this video, and I really like how it turned out. Also, after shooting a lot of 4K stuff on GH4 and a little on a7S II, I have to say that I go back and forth on whether I want to shoot such high resolution. It certainly has it's place and even big benefits for downsampling to 1080p, but if I have to choose color or resolution, I think I pick color every time. I love shooting RAW, even for the simple convenience of being able to white balance after the fact. I don't have time in the field to nail white balance in my footage on the fly, and I am no expert at color grading, so having RAW with a nice WB slider makes it SO much easier to get the WB where I want it. The case can definitely be made that 5DIII raw is soft, even by normal 1080p standards due to the pretty heavy OLPF filter, but I really feel like it's just the right mix between organic/nostalgic and modern/sharp. On my 4K UHD TV it up-rezzes great and looks plenty sharp (to my eyes anyway). Music: "Gypsy Shoegazer" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Everything was shot handheld with IS lenses (or in case of 85mm, I used IBIS built into a7S II). Side note, a lot of people are crazy about IBIS, and if you own non-IS lenses, I totally get that as it allows you to get decent stabilization with ANY lens regardless of age or mount. But being that I already own several optically stabilized Canon lenses, I can definitely say the in-lens stabilization is always better from my experience. Especially on wide shots or really long telephoto shots. IBIS seems to do good in the middle for me, but struggles on both extreme ends of spectrum. I shoot handheld following people with my 24-105mm at 24mm all the time, and yeah it looks like bouncy handheld, but I think it looks very stabile for the set-up. With IBIS, I tried shooting the same style and felt there was a lot more distortion to the background, etc. I've also seen others say IBIS + in-lens stabilization is the best combo of all, but when I tried using both at once I got weird issues and the footage was less stable than if I just kept IBIS off. This could've just been because I was using a Commlite instead of a Metabones adapter. Canon 5DIII running ML RAW (90% of the 24fps footage) Sony a7S II w/ Commlite EF-to-E adapter (all slow-motion shots and a few shots at 24fps mixed in) Canon 24-105mm f4 L IS Canon 35mm f2 USM IS Canon 85mm f1.8 USM Canon 300mm f4 USM IS Graded using FilmConvert for color and various types of Gorilla Grain and CineGrain depending on the shot. I actually used a weird variation on the BMDFilm LUT for FilmConvert rather than Canon specific LUT and I raised the blacks a bit on footage to give it a milkier look, which I really think makes it more filmic without being super low-contrast.