This is the first in a three film series on graduates of the Evangelical Theological Seminary of Cairo. Red Futon Films partnered with Overseas Council to produce these as part of an effort to promote and raise awareness for student scholarships online and at events around the world.

This was shot over a two day period in June with the Si-2K Mini tethered to a Cinedeck Extreme and a Canon T2i. The following lenses were used: Canon 17-55mm f/2.8; Zeiss 50mm f/1.4; Canon 70-200mm f/2.8; Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5.

Post was done in three days. Edited in Premiere Pro CS5, visual post in After Effects CS5 using Color Finesse, Optical Flares, and Twitch. The final Cineform master was given a looks pass in First Light before distribution copies were made. Audio post in Nuendo 4. Music from the Free Music Archive.

Tags: after effects, cairo, cinedeck, cineform, color correction, hdslr, nuendo, premiere, SI2K, video

This morning, on behalf of Red Futon Films, I released the new short doc for the new documentary Unheralded coming out this fall. The Vimeo’s embedded below. Workflow/tech stuff?

Shot on Z7U at 1080p/24
.M2t files transcoded to Cineform .MOVs via ReMaster
Files imported in Avid MC4 for cutting.
AAF from Avid imported into Premiere CS4
Pr project imported into After Effects for finishing
FX, titles and transitions done in AE
Coloring done in First Light, Color Finesse and Colorista
Audio exported to Nuendo 4 for post mix
Vox, FX, Zak tracks imported back into AE
Final render to a Cineform master file from AE

Vimeo Link

Tags: avid, bangladesh, cineform, dnxhd, documentary, nuendo, premiere, unheralded, video

I put a new green screen up in my office and while I can get nice even lighting across the screen, my control room is almost too small to get good separation between the screen lighting and my subject. He was standing about 5′ from the the screen. I have it lit with $8 Home Depot work lights and bouncing off some panels. I need to work on the lower bounce, it hits the subjects shoulders and creates some really harsh back lighting. I don’t actually have anywhere else I can set this up either. And I haven’t pulled many keys…this and then one back in 2007. I used Adobe’s guide with the Key Light plugin. Need to keep working on this and then master motion tracking/rotoscoping.

I shot this uncompressed out of my Z7U via Matrox MXO2 mini…it was really a noisy, crappy image in my opinion.
Edited in Premiere and After Effects, keyed in AE, audio posted in Nuendo.
I just used a simply YouTube HD preset in Media Encoder for the final build.

Tags: after effects, nuendo, premiere, video