Short Promo Video for Film Contest

[kawasakiguy37]

This year I ran my universities annual 24 hour film competition (Mad Film Dash at UC Irvine) and we (the staff running the contest) had to make a short promotional video to show at the awards ceremony. All of the actors are also the coordinators of the competition.

edit: Forgot to mention that this is an inception "parody" (of the trailer)
heres the link to the trailer we parodied:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66TuSJo4dZM

And our version
http://www.vimeo.com/24244730

Comments appreciated!

All of this was shot on Nikon DSLR's, namely the D3s and D300s. We used a dolly with a super clamp to tripod head mount for the tracking shots. All of the scenes (with the exception of a few from san francsico) were shot on or very close to UC Irvine campus.

Lenses used: Nikkor 50 1.4 AIS
Nikkor 105 2.0D (not MF, but I can tell you that the MF ring on these are quite nice!)
Nikkor 35 2.0 (both D and AIS - dont even try the D with manual....the ring sucks)
Nikkor 180 2.8
Nikkor 5.0 1.8G
Zeiss Jena Flek 50 4.0 (P6 mount) with tilt adapter to Nikon-F

Mic was an azden SGMX, which I will be soon looking to upgrade. Good quality but simply not "tight" enough of a spread for what I want out of a shotgun

edit: Forgot to mention that we did this with $0 budget - with the exception of our own, personal equipment and some borrowed from friends

edit: forgot to mention that the slowmo scenes were filmed on a Canon T2i since my D3s sadly only does 24P (no higher framerates). We used twixtor to slow it down even further (AE plugin)

[Geoff C. Bassett]

Great vid. Especially considering these cams have no shutter speed control. Some great pan/tilting and dolly shots. What did you use to stabilize for the circular pan around the table?

Also +1000 for the Don Hertzfelt reference

[kawasakiguy37]

[IAZA]

cool, That's very inspiring, thanks for share

[Geoff C. Bassett]

"Actaully the D3s does have manual control"

Well great, as if I didn't already want that camera enough.

Warp stabilzer seems to work pretty well for you here. Thinking about switching to premiere from final cut because of Final Cut Pro X's idiotic lack of tape support and other problems.

[kawasakiguy37]

Final Cut X sucks. In fact, I really dont know why people talked so much shit about premiere and loved FCP pro so much. For my work premiere has always been superior (but Ive only used it since CS2). At this point theres no question - Premiere destroys final cut.

In addition, premiere integrates REALLY well with After Effects and Audition, which is super helpful. AE is basically the industry standard, and audition, while not up to par with something like protools, is decent for quick audio editing.

I have always hated how FCP 'pro' tries to dumb down so many settings for you. If its a pro app, why have these stupid presets and shit made for consumers? Premiere automatically gives you manual control over everything (export, etc) while still allowing you to create all your own presets.

In addition, premiere has been doing real time rendering of most filetypes since CS3 (using your graphics card). I think FCP X first started to do this with h264....quite late to the game. Seems apple has decided to just focus on the consumer market.

On another note though I really need to start learning media composer......THATS the real industry standard

edit: Get a D3s - its an amazing camera. If your intent is solely video, however, your much better off with a 5D MKII (or whatever canon and Nikon comeup with next)

[Geoff C. Bassett]

Well the reason I enjoyed final cut so much is because of it's tape handling and it's what I was trained on. I use After Effect extensively and that integration is a major selling point for me for Premiere. The reason I stuck with Final Cut for awhile is while Premiere was getting better, final cut releases were more spaced out so I thought the update would catch up. This last Final Cut update was the nail in the coffin for me for that program.

As for camera's, I'm waiting to see what Canon and nikon do next for there full frames and I will be purchasing one of them. I really hope Nikon steps up there game for the next round, because I love how they handle noise compared to Canon cameras and I love pro Nikon glass more than Pro Canon.