date May 2005
type music video / live event
client Josie Sundt
format Super-16mm & HDV
camera 2 x Arri SR3 & 2 x Sony Z1
my roles co-produce, co-direct the film, organise the post-production, edit & grade
description DVD documenting the summer collection of fashion designer Josie Sundt.

summer maypole image

Brief

Record a live dance event whilst keeping as low a profile as possible. Make sure the film shows the clothes in as much detail as possible.

The video

Workflow

Aim: Shoot, edit and finish as HD. Produce a dual-mode DVD (“video partition” contains an SD video; the “data partition” contains a WM9-encoded HD version). Shoot on super-16mm so we can have smooth slow-motion and so we have the latitude to capture the glistening fabrics.

Camera setup:

  • 2 x Sony HDV cameras
  • 2 x Super 16mm Arri SR3s with 1.78:1 ground glass

Post-production

  • Scan the 1000 foot of Super-16mm at 2k on Midnight Transfer’s Spirit4k (25fps).
  • Transfer these DPX files from Midnight Transfer to my HD workstation on LaCie 250GB hard disks (450GB of files in total)
  • Copy the DPX files from the LaCie hard disks onto our HD workstation’s RAID-5 array
  • Import the DPX files into After Effects
  • crop the 1.66:1 frames down to 1.78:1
  • apply some basic grading (crush the blacks, warm it up a little)
  • apply grain reduction
  • render as a Cineform HD AVI (the render took about 20hrs on my 2.4Ghz Athlon64 with 1GB of RAM)
  • Import all the HDV and s16mm footage into Premiere Pro 1.5.1 with Cineform Aspect HD installed
  • Edit in Premiere Pro 1.5.1
  • Grade in Premiere Pro
  • Import 5.1 surround sound into Premiere Pro
  • Encode twice: once as MPEG-2 SD and once as WM9 HD
  • Burn onto DVD using Encore 1.5

Challenges (you mean “problems”, right?):

  • Not all the files DPX copied correctly onto my LaCie. Midnight Transfer were very kind and let me go back to copy the files again. I wrote a little UNIX script to supervise the copying.
  • Our super-16mm footage looked very grainy next to the HDV footage (we shot on 500asa Fuji stock so grain was to be expected). Next time I think we’ll shoot on Vision2 500T

Film credits

(credits just for the Summer Maypole film - the DVD we produced contained two other excellent videos made by Nick Clinch)
  • Clothes designed and made by Josie Sundt
  • Super-16mm camera operators: Ollie Downey and Ginnie Bridgstock
  • HDV camera operators: Nick Clinch and Daniel Kelly
  • Edited and Graded by Jack Kelly
  • Music by Martyn Ware
ollie downey