Thoughts on Student Short-Film shot on Nikon Zr R3D RAW
On August I decided to buy a Nikon Zr as my first cinema camera. On september I got the chance to try it out on the field for a student short film in Spain. Here is the result: https://youtu.be/05kAwXHxyYc?si=_x-mUk-QMr9htcPm
A two day shoot, outdoors in the heat of the Spanish sun and high-key lighting and indoors with more of a low light scenario.
We shot it with DZO Arles lens for the exterior and Blazar Mantis for the interior (it is an imagination sequence so I thought the change from spherical and anamorphic would help. For the interiors, I was worried about the latitude on this camera, but using its 6400 base ISO and from that base crank it down all the day to 800 worked perfectly for the detail in darker zones.
It was a very fast paced shoot for the exteriors (we shot more than it is shown on the final cut and we needed to run against the sun clock) so everything out there was lit bouncing the sun light and adding negative fill for some shots.
For the interiors we didn't have a lot of money for lighting but enough for a Aputure 400x and a Swit flexible panel which ended up being really useful when filtered with muselin or silk to break the color patern of the led panel.
In general I think we did a good job on the cinematography for the project but there are a few things I now see that would have done differently, mainly on the color correction and controlling the shadows that fall on the character's face a bit more.
Also, for future projects I'm going to try to convince the director and myself to shoot less shots so both of us can be focused on what we are actually doing and not just follow the planned schedule. Some things I feel didn't work on the day and could have been changed just a bit if only we took the time to look around us and make those changes instead of just following the plan.
Anyways, lmk what you guys think, any feedback is apreciated. Here are some stills.