Cinevate Meets Bollywood

[Dennis Wood]

Kevin Shahinian's Pacific Pictures has been getting a lot of attention over the past month as a result of a stunning wedding concept video he masterminded. Kevin had our jaws dropping when we saw what he'd done with the Brevis MP.1 adapter. Not only has it seen many plays over at Vimeo, but it also landed Kevin on the cover of EventDV's January 2009 issue. The article is an excellent read with respect to the piece.

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[Dennis Wood]

And today, you'll find a nice little behind the of Tum Hi Ho which is apparently kicking off EventDV's new webTV feed. http://www.eventdv.net/

Enjoy

[Kevin Shahinian]

Thanks for the kind words, Dennis. I wanted to give your forum readers a bit more of a technical scoop on the making of our Bollywood short and our experience working with the MP.1.

The film was shot primarily on the Canon XHA1. We mounted an HV30 on a few of the jib shots, but stuck with the A1 for the most part. For our Brevis set-up, we paired Canon FD primes with the CF1Le and were really pleased with the results. My go-to lenses were a 1.8/85mm and a 1.4/50mm, both purchased used online. I am continually amazed at the selection of high quality second-hand glass available online at affordable prices. We tested our lenses for sharpness in various lighting conditions during pre-production and settled on specific shots that would require the use of our MP.1.

Two things I learned quickly were the importance of proper collimation and checking our unit for dust before getting to set. The rack at 1:42 in the film is an example of what happens when you don't have time for proper collimation. Never the less, these were some very tight quarters in a particularly challenging low-light set-up and the Brevis held up beautifully.

Dust was another issue that required attention in some of the harsher outdoor locations. We had plenty of compressed air on-hand and made sure peaking was engaged to spot any errant particulates. All in all our unit performed well in quite a gauntlet. With a schedule spanning several weekends & significant down-time in between shooting days, we figured it wasn't safe to assume our unit would perform dust-free as it had during the last shoot and made sure to check before starting a new day. This is my best advice for Brevis users to avoid any on-set frustration. We were also lucky to have a least two XHA1s - a bare camera and dedicated Brevis set-up - on set on any given day and this really saved time between set-ups.

We look forward to incorporating more of our Brevis and Pegasus system in upcoming projects and are excited to share the end result with you and your users.

-Kevin