Wherin I Demand Global Shutter, and Then Don't

You know, the need for sensors any larger than the ones we have seems to have disappated. Back in the olden days (10 years ago) distributors and buyers would complain about folks not shooting on 35mm because (among other things) the depth of field is so much greater on a small-sensor video camera than on the "big sensor" of 35mm motion picture film.
We used the equivalent of a 35mm sensor on Angry Planet and Alien Insurrection using a Letus camera adapter. Oh, and Clonehunter.
But starting with Day II we've been using a micro 4/3rds format camera. At first it was the GH1 and now the GH3. We save a lot of weight on the camera rig by not having that Letus adapter (although that adapter does look nice, I kinda like everything Letus does.)
The micro 4/3rds is bigger than Super-16 but not as big as 35. But you know what? It's big enough. You open that puppy all the way to f2.8 with a long lens and you have some nice softness in your background. And also it isn't a bear to focus. It's kind of the best of both worlds.

Gratuitous armor.

Thing is, with the micro 4/3rds cameras we now have to contend with rolling shutter.
You see a bunch of tests on the Internet showing the skewing that rolling shutter does. And, for instance, on my brother's camera footage from his quad copter you can see the propellers "bend" from the rolling shutter.
But for most practical situations you just never see the rolling shutter. Even in hand-held fight scenes with whip pans the issue of the rolling shutter seldom makes itself apparent to the naked eye. Yeah, if you freeze a frame you can see that vertical lines are bendy. But other than that, who really cares?
Well, I'll tell ya, you care when you go to do a composite with a handheld camera. On the GH1 we learned (after struggling in post with the GH1) to be very careful when compositing in a background on a handheld shot. So we started being very religious about locking down the camera when we were going to be compositing (say) giant robots in the background.
When I realized this I started jonesing for a (somewhat) large-sensor camera with a global shutter.
The other significant issue with the GH1 was the way the blacks got very noisy in low-contrast environments. This causes these obnoxious horizontal bands across the screen that are impossible to get rid of.
So we moved up to the GH3 with a single f2.8 zoom (uh, 14mm to 35?) The GH3 has improved on that noise in the blacks (which was dinging us in QC) but also behaves better as far as rolling shutter artifacts are concerned. I have no idea what magic the engineers at Panasonic are doing but it's rather magical.
In any case, it seems we have a much easier time doing composites with handheld shots. And that's really almost all I care about.
Here's a video of footage from the GH4. The GH4 is a 4K camera. I don't really care about 4K. Nobody else does either.
But there's a lot of nice motion without (what I can see at least) a lot of rolling shutter artifacts.

Just some notes

We have two more official days of principal photography on Steve Niles' Dead Residents. I'm enjoying the way this picture looks. I don't want to say that it looks good because we're shooting on a GH3 instead of a GH1 but the GH3 certainly helps. 

I find that in post I'm lifting up the tones which are just above the black levels. The image below is a bad example because there's so much black in it to start with. But yeah, basically, we've been lifting the bottom part of the image. Note that we're just blending Magic Bullet Looks with the un-color-corrected image (about 64% color-correction in the "power mask" in the Magic Bullet Looks controller in Final Cut Pro).  

This scene where we fight the robot has been the one scene which has stressed me out the most. I've been worried about getting it to look right. 

My super has been extremely awesome about letting us use the basement of my building. I mean, it's really really nice. Every room down there looks art directed. We have one or maybe two more scenes to shoot there. We'll have to see. 

So far we're behind schedule by one scene. Which, you know, isn't too shabby for being 10 days into a 12-day shoot. 

Virginia Logan shoots robots in Dead Residents.

We did our first shooting with CO2 cartridges. The handguns offer very little kick when they're belting out CO2 actually. In that shot above we've put baby powder in the barrel and we get one frame of floof coming out of the gun. That's kind of funny because we're muzzle-loading. But I don't feel scared about crossing in front of a charged paintball gun. I mean if there were a paintball inside and if I were shot at close range it would hurt. But my eyes are protected by the camera itself (the lens would not be a world of happy if a paintball were shot into it point-blank).
The only charged and loaded paintball gun is the one we use to shoot at actors. Ha! No. We don't actually shoot at the actors. We shoot near them, sure, but not actually at them... er... all the time.
If you hit the right surface with the dust pellets you can kick up some nice fun stuff on walls and such without being nearly as dangerous as using something crazy like squibs. Yes, I do sound cavalier about the gun safety on our sets but we're actually sort of particular and we take some time making sure we're not going to get hurt.

Shoot the Robot Day

Jeff Wills came by, and he totally brought bagels. Because of his intrinsic awesomeness.

You're asking "Hey, isn't that the robot hand Brian Schiavo made for Angela Funk in Clonehunter?" The answer is yes. Yes it is.

Our location has some interesting geography which we'll have to use in order to shoot the picture.

 Jeff and I both wore our "Kill 'Em All!" t-shirts because we were dorking out anyway.

Jeff's physicality is perfect for this character, isn't he?

This is not color-corrected. I really can't imagine what sort of cc we'd want to do to this image? Desaturate it very slightly? I don't know. I think this just might be how the movie looks. 5300K color balance on the GH3.

Blind in one eye is worth the look of the awesome backlighting of the right eye.

 We're all adults here (or not). We know that I invited Jeff over to play robots with me.

The last thing you will ever see.

It may end up being better to put a radio inside the helmet so that it's easier to talk to the actor inside. That's a thing we learned today.

DR D3

Today we had Sarah Schoofs and Kate Britton on set. We were helped by Jim Boyett. Maya Graffagna designed costumes. On this day she did Sarah's costume, Kate brought her own.
We shot a very short day, as we have for all three of the first days of shooting this picture. I like shooting a short day. Can we double the length of this shoot but only do short days?

Sarah Schoofs and Kate Britton. 

These parts (Vinnie and Cheyenne) were originally written by the brilliant Steven J. Niles for a man and a woman. Something happened when I cast Vinnie and Cheyenne. And something happened where they don't even have a bedroom anymore but have to live in the basement. 

I hadn't even met the awesome Sarah Schoofs (Cheyenne) before today. We cast her based on Mandira's recommendation (which is totally the way to do it). 

Kate didn't have time to find a costume so she just wore what she was wearing today. 

My brother David lent us the electronic cigarette we have here (in Kate's hands). He custom - filled it with a vegetable glycerin so there's no nicotine and it just blows some pretty white smoke.

We're starting to really like the look of the GH3. I've got it set to a 5300K color balance and it just looks... well it looks like this. Even un-color corrected it just has this sweet unsaturated look. The mids in the lighting get punched up a bit -- which has meant that we haven't been as concerned about key light as we typically would. This continually surprises us. But in a good way.
I suspect that for a lot of DP's the "finished" look of the GH3 would be frustrating as it doesn't take to color-correction as easy as a flat, low-contrast image would. But I kind of like making a decision about how things are going to look right there on set.
Man, those engineers at Panasonic do know how to make skin tones work, don't they?

The Queen of Mars reminded me to take mug shots. We totally need to do that with every character on every movie. There are so many reasons to do that -- including having a reference for makeup.