Video: Million Dollar Quartet. ZACH Theatre.

Gavin Talks about Million Dollar Quartet at ZACH THEATRE from Kirk Tuck on Vimeo.

(before you comment on technical issues can I ask you to go see the video at Vimeo and sidestep the additional compression that comes free of charge at Blogger? Thanks!)


This is part of a series of videos I've been doing for ZACH Theatre's newest production, Million Dollar Quartet.  It's the true story of an evening in 1956 when Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash all gathered together for an impromptu jam session at Sun Studios. The music in the production is almost a greatest hits compilation and the energy the actors/musicians bring to the show is pretty amazing.

I had done a couple of interviews for Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill, and for the recent LBJ plays at ZACH, and we found them to be a really good "soft" sell for the productions. People who are somewhat interested could hit the videos for more information while the still images from rehearsals provided another layer of texture and context for the plays. We had thousands of views of the videos and saw a commensurate uptick in ticket sales as a result.

I decided to do some videos again with Million Dollar Quartet and I had a lot of fun interviewing the four musicians.

Doing a set of videos is always more time consuming than you imagine it will be. Our interviews were pretty darn efficient; all done in the course of one long afternoon, but gathering enough material for b-roll required three more visits back to the theater. One for an early rehearsal where I was able to get good videos and good close-ups, as well as the Tech Rehearsal and the Final Dress Rehearsal.

I worked with Ben Tuck to get the interviews. We got to the theater an hour before our first interview appointment, selected our locations and our shooting angles and spent the rest of the time setting up lighting and prepping the room for better audio.

I used the Aputure LightStorm LED panels for our light sources and tried to light a little differently for each actor.

We shot with two cameras. I used the Panasonic FZ2500 running into an Atomos Ninja Flame video recorder as the "A" camera. I was excited to try generating ProRes 422 files and when I look at the original video on my monitor (pre-Vimeo and YouTube compression) I am very happy with the detail and sharpness of the HD footage. I tweaked Gavin's skin tones a bit... but not much. I shot too flat but made up for it with Nattress Curves (a "curves" plug-in for Final Cut Pro X).

Ben shot a second angle using a Sony RX10ii; also in HD, and he used a Sennheiser shotgun microphone on the camera to record scratch audio, which made it easier for me to sync up the two angles in editing.

I am anticipating my next project which will allow me to use the new GH5 as my primary shooting camera and will probably go right back to shooting in 4K again. It's fun to have files that you can crop in on when editing; it makes a difference in how flexible you can be in your editing approach.

I enjoy doing this kind of work and consider it in the same light as I do swim practice: the more often you put yourself out there the quicker and better you learn. But we'll talk about what I learned on this one in a future column. The list of new aspects of my "learning curve" is just too long.

The idea of the "personal" camera as opposed to the "business" camera.

Camera living on desk, currently. 

I've always enjoyed making delineations between the cameras I used for business and the cameras I used for the sheer joy of shooting and, looking back, I can see that I've always been wired this way; determined to use the "right" camera for the paying job at hand and then picking up the camera that feels best to me to take out onto the streets, into the coffee shops and out to the museums for the pure joy of documenting life. Sure, you can do both things with the same camera but really, if you do this for a living and a hobby wouldn't it be nice to mentally change gears between the two? And wouldn't a change in cameras help facilitate throwing that switch in your brain that let's you switch from making photographs that the clients like (and because they pay you...) to making photographs the likes of which you don't have to care if anyone likes? I know I'm happier this way. 

When I go out to shoot at corporate events I wear a suit and tie. It goes with the territory. But I can hardly wait to get home and, if it's Summer in Austin, change into a pair of well worn shorts, a cool, short sleeved technical shirt and a pair of flip-flops. 

When I go out to photograph the CEO for mega-corporation I'll take along a couple of Sony full frame camera bodies, most likely leading with the A7rii and 70-200mm f4.0 G lens. I'll supplement the camera gear with cases of electronic flash gear or LED panels. But when I'm off the clock I put away those huge file generators, stop weightlifting and trade the best in class for the most comfortable to carry. Today was a case in point. I'd spent last week shooting portraits of physicians in my studio. The camera was the A7Rii with the aforementioned lens and four lights. Since all the appointments were in my studio I traded the suit and tie for khakis and a dress shirt. Yes, I wore decent shoes. 

But when I decided I wanted to roam around Zilker Park today and possibly shoot a bit of 4K video I did not reach for the A7Rii or even the new GH5; I had my eyes firmly fixed on the Panasonic G85 and the lightweight/compact 12-60mm kit lens. At about a quarter the weight of the Sony rig and less than half the weight of the GH5 and the 12-100mm lens carrying the G85 in 105 degree heat, down a dusty path, was much less of a burden than those presented by the other choices. 

My shooting goal was to get a start on creating a stock, 4K video library of Austin attractions, monuments, notable landmarks and typical Austin pastimes. It can't be a bad idea to have good, color rich video of Barton Springs Pool thronged with swimmers in the heat of the Summer, or people sitting out, braving the heat to have coffee at Jo's Coffee on S. Congress Ave. because I am fairly certain that one or more clients will decide in the dead of winter that they need to create a new recruiting video and, Hey! wouldn't it be great if we had some Summer-y shots of people being casual all over the trails and pools and lakes of Austin!? And what about that Graffiti Wall I've heard so much about?....

Here's the thing about shooting popular landmarks in Austin when they are in full use. Peak demand. There's no such thing as adjacent/nearby/reasonably close parking. If you want to hit the big pool at 2 or 3 in the afternoon on a Summer weekend you'll need to get clear that you need to do some hiking to get there. Today I parked at Zach Theatre because I have a hangtag that I can use to access the lot. It's about a mile from the thousand meter long, spring fed pool. You just have to get to the hike and bike trail that runs around Lady Bird Lake and wend your way around on the crushed granite trail to get there. And I have to say that when it gets much over 105 degrees with a bit of humidity tossed in (because the Photo gods can be cruel and playful...) you'd have to be a bit daft to want to drag along more weight than you absolutely need to do your task. 

The Sony stuff and the Hasselblad stuff and the Panasonic GH5 with its new friend, the Heavy Lens, all stayed home in the air conditioning. I put on a pair of walking sandals, grabbed a hat with a brim, put a six stop neutral density filter over the 12-60mm kit lens (58mm) and put that lens on the G85 (cage temporarily discarded) and headed out the door. My one concession to overpacking? I put an extra battery in my left pocket.

Guess what? The little G85 is wonderful. The finder has better than average magnification and I actually used the touchscreen on the back of the camera from time to time. I was lucky with the ND filter and the prevailing light. With the harsh sun I was shooting 24 fps (1/50th shutter) and f5.6-7.1. At those apertures the lens is plenty sharp for video. The dual I.S., combined with the digital/video I.S. works extremely well and the only thing I had to re-learn was the optimum speed at which to pan in order not to create disorienting video. (has to be Kinda Slow). 

The camera seems to do well with subject motion and, since the video was ostensibly for stock, I didn't care about sound and didn't bring along a microphone and its attendant accessories. 

I find that the hotter it gets outside the more stupid I become. I really have to keep my menu choices simple and concentrate on doing things in a certain order when I shoot video. It goes like this: See scene to capture. Find best angle. Check exposure via zebras and eyeball. Make sure shutter speed didn't get accidentally changed. Focus manually. Focus again. Push "record" button. Check to make sure red "rec" light is flashing. Make sure to push "record" button again when I'm done. Do it all over again at a different focal length.  If I don't do the mental check list I often screw up one part or the other of the process. 

I've just reviewed today's footage and am happy with the color, tone and detail of the 4K footage. I'm hoping I can, over time, put together enough of my own footage to cover the b-roll/Austin needs of any of my clients, no matter which season we're in when the project gets signed off on. 

The small camera+kit lens was a joy to use and carry. I can't imagine doing the two mile roundtrip in this disgusting heat dragging along a giant camera bag filled with big bodies and every lens I own. Since this was self-assigned I used the casual camera that appealed to me in the moment. And it was much more comfortable than the "work" gear. 

Reminds me of the period in my life when I shot for clients with 4x5 inch view cameras and Hasselblads and did all of my personal work with a clutch of Leicas. It feels the same today.

 My second most used piece of studio gear. The diffuser holder. 

My most used piece of studio gear. The 50 inch diffuser.

Marvel towel on the left. Drying on a C-Stand. Not happy letting it out of my sight.

Can't take the chance that Ben will get his mitts on it and relocate it with him back to college.

A video interview with Dave Steakley, Artistic Director of Zach Theatre.

Dave Steakley interview from Kirk Tuck on Vimeo.

I've been working on my "One Man Movie" video chops for a while now and I'm getting comfortable doing spur of the moment interviews. A week or so ago I was at Zach Theatre shooting some photographs of the cast in rehearsal for Million Dollar Quartet, and I thought it would be a great idea to tape and interview with the director of the play, Dave Steakley. (Actually, I had planned the interview in advance and brought along the gear I might need if his schedule permitted...).

When the cast and crew went on their dinner break I set up a couple of lights, and a microphone on a boom, and asked Dave to step in and give me ten minutes of his time. We shot in the main theater and I knew I wouldn't have time to find electrical boxes, run extension cables, etc. so I lit him with two of the Aputure Amaran 672W lights, since they are battery powered; one through a 50 inch, circular diffuser and the other used directly (a stop or two down from the main light). I used the Samson C02 cardioid microphone that I've been writing about recently, running it into the Saramonic pre-amplifier/phantom power unit I've also mentioned.

My camera of choice was the Panasonic fz2500 since I'd used it as my main camera on the previous four Zach actor interviews and feel so comfortable with it. I use it set to manual in every mode. Manual focus, manual exposure, custom white balance, etc. I love touching the focus ring and having the camera punch in for fine focusing. I love the ease of setting the white balance. I love getting home and finding nothing has changed or shifted from clip to clip....

In retrospect I wish I had dropped the stage further out of focus. I'm so used to shooting and post processing still images, I guess I had in mind that I could easily select Dave and use a gaussian blur on the background area but it's not quite so easy to do in video. Better to do things like focus control while you are shooting.

I am fairly happy with the audio. If I remove the music bed and listen just to the dialogue with headphones, I am not really able to hear much noise. Also, with a less focused microphone (when compared to traditional shotgun microphones) placement is not as critical.

Since the interview will only be seen on social media I didn't feel compelled to shoot in 4K, archive in 4K and spend extra time in the edit, so I shot in 1080p, selecting a setting that gave me 100 mbs of information.

I'm getting faster and faster at editing and I believe that part of the credit needs to go to the amount of still photography I had at my fingertips. It makes very effective b-roll, though at one point in the edit process Ben dropped by the studio to see what I was working on. He looked at the piece twice and asked me if I had any other video footage to stick in as b-roll. I asked him why the stills weren't enough and he said, "We millenials really like it if everything is moving all the time." He was kidding about the association with millennials but serious that he feels audiences want more and more kinetic visual structures.

I'll keep practicing but at least I feel like I'm making decent progress...

Just wanted to share the culmination of yesterday's work with you.

On another note, it's too hot here now. It was into the 90s by 10 a.m. this morning. It hit 100 by noon and the thermometer is working its way up toward 108 degrees today. I swam in the early workout to avoid the extra sun exposure but now, after lunch, it feels smart to just stay still in the air conditioning and read something. Not a day to shoot exteriors. Not a day to go for an afternoon run. Not a day to park in a vast and tree-less parking lot. These are essentially our dog days of Summer. 

I can hardly wait until Monday morning; early. That's when I swim in Barton Springs Pool where the water is a constant 68 degrees. It'll keep your core temperature in the safety zone. 

Hope you are staying cool. Now I think I'll start on the next edit.

Two things I saw on my walk around downtown Austin this morning....

This one is just... funny. 

This one made me stop and consider the painful irony. 

This shop creates marketing that celebrates the differences in 

women's bodies. They are proud to offer fashions for 

both petite and "plus" size women. 

The goal being to avoid shaming people with different body types.

Why then is the dress on the right, clearly intended for a larger sized person,

styled with a giant ice cream cone attached? 

Was someone sending a subconscious message?

Seems odd to me. 

Maybe next time put the ice cream cone right in the middle. 

Retail marketing is certainly replete with social minefields.

Panasonic GH5+Olympus 12-100mm f4. A seriously good match.

Preliminary analysis from use tests indicates that the Olympus 10-100mm f4.0 lens is an excellent lens. When coupled with the GH5 camera from Panasonic I was able to get highly detailed images up to the resolution limits of the sensor. The combination is a heavy package that is not much different from the mass of a typical full frame DSLR with a (shorter zoom range) 24-70mm lens. It should be noted that our reasons for the acquisition of this equipment were strictly for the image performance in video from the combination of the specific camera and lens and were in no way motivated by a need or desire to obtain a "low mass" or "low weight" system.

The images shown here were taken early this morning and are all handheld and taken at the maximum aperture of the lens, or one stop down from maximum aperture. I shot the images as raw files and converted them to Jpegs with Adobe Lightroom. The default sharpening in Lightroom seems a tad high but is easily corrected by reducing the slider setting from +25 to +12. 

As I shot the photographs I used white balance settings which were a match for each scene. If I shot objects in full sun I set the WB to the pictogram of the sun. If I shot in open shade I shot using the WB as indicated by the icon of shade falling from a wall. I used aperture priority but used the 100% zebra setting to protect highlights. If the zebras showed in a light area or a white area with detail I used the exposure compensation control to lower the exposure until the zebras disappeared. I was careful though to ignore zebras nested in specular highlight areas. 

My overall impression of the lens is that it is very sharp and capable of convincing sharpness across the frame. The zoom ring turns in the opposite direction from what I expected it would but I'm reasonable sure I will get used to it in short order. Since the zoom ring is mechanical the direction of rotation cannot be reversed via software. The lens has a push-pull clutch which engages or disengages a true, mechanical manual focus setting. The allows for hard stops at the close focus distance as well as the infinity setting. It offers repeatable settings which makes manual focusing with this lens usable for video work. 

The camera and lens are both heavier and larger than most of the lenses designed for micro four thirds. With that being said the fact that both are bigger and heavier means, at least to me, that they are well matched, ergonomically, and feel very good in my hands. The lens makes the combination a bit front heavy but that's to be expected from a very high quality lens with such a long range of focal lengths. 

I have no idea if the camera's I.S. and the lens I.S. work in tandem but the results with I.S. engaged in both are very satisfactory. I was able to shoot down to 1/8th of a second with good results, even at the longer end of the lens.

As my own testing continues I look forward to setting up typical video interview situations and testing how well the lens renders skin tones. When I finish with that I'll share the results here. 

My last note is just an observation about exposure. I'm very pleased to find that the Panasonic GH5 does a very, very good job at setting exposure automatically. While I made "course corrections" from time to time with the exposure compensation control these we're always in situations that are widely known to fool most camera meters. I would trust the exposure control of the camera for just about any situation that falls into the realm of normal scene tonal structure. 

The combination of lens and camera cost approximately $3300 and provide exceptional value for anyone transitioning from shooting only stills to shooting a combination of stills and videos. A full frame, state of the art camera such as the Sony A7Rii will easily outperform the GH5 for still photography where sheer resolution and dynamic range are concerned. The GH5 will outperform the A7Rii in video, both in overall handling and also the quality of the video captured. While the Sony has advantages in still photography meant to be printed large the Panasonic has an equal advantage with its 10 bit video files. It also provides a more able combination of features for video with niceties such as a full sized HDMI connector, much longer battery life and a much bigger selection of file types/codecs. 

A well equipped visual content creation business would benefit from having both choices in their inventory to deliver optimum results across a wide use spectrum.

Additional blog note: The camera and lens were both purchased from a local retailer. 

I paid the prevailing retail price for both and received no special consideration or discount for 

my purchases other than a free, promotional water bottle. 

The water bottle is good and we'll have one of our "no nonsense" reviews of it up as soon as we put it through it's paces in its hydration implementation configuration. 

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