TBT

4:13 PM Unknown 0 Comments

I was takin a look back into all the projects I've done since I've started doing videography. 
I thought about how far I've come and everyone that has been involved or helped me transition to who I am now. 

I want to truly thank them for that. I really couldn't get anywhere without them. 

So I'm going to share my first school project that I had to do. It was for my media production class with Jeff Palmer. 
It's called "Possible Stalker," I'm featured in it. 
Bravo to my terrible acing skills. 

We kind of did this on the fly as a final project. And I spent like 60 hours on the video. 

So check it out. 

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Some DIY Stuffs

1:12 PM Unknown 0 Comments

DIY

I've been struggling with getting steady shots on the fly, for a while now. setting up on a tripod while moving has been difficult. 
Even free handing the camera was worse. Everything was shaky. 

Nothing works unless you buy high quality products like iGlideCam, Merlin Steadicam.
Or even higher end gear like DJI Ronin or the Freefly MOVI. 
All those things cost no less than 200 to 3000 dollars. 

So I started to look for the cheaper alternative. Started doing research and came up with a video of a DO-IT-YOURSELF video of a Merlin steadicam. 
Took about $20-$45 worth of tools plus borrowing some equipment but me and my buddy Quit, yes his name is QUIT, finished it. 

The finished product is below.



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Cyber Mondays Can Suck It

10:45 AM Unknown 0 Comments

Deals? Yeah Right.

Like most Americans in this country, we all rush online to buy products that are on sale for CYBER MONDAY!!
I made the mistake of believing that I was gonna get great deals on great equipment this year. 
Okay, anything in general. 

As I am scrolling through the websites; Amazon, BestBuy, eBay, BHPhoto you name it.
I see these "deals." And I am thinking, "wow, that is just bloody amazing." $200 off on this, $150 off on that. They all look like good deals.

NO

If you carefully navigate from Amazon to eBay or BH, then the deal you see isn't a deal at all on another website. It is all a trick. 
I almost bought gear that wasn't really on sale and I would've been none the wiser.

Never trust the internet. THEY LIE.

-Timothy

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C R E E D

11:48 PM Unknown 0 Comments

Holy Crap.



This past weekend I got the chance to catch the movie CREED.
Can I say bravo to Michael B. Jordan for putting an amazing performance on.

 This movie is probably one of the greatest installments of the Rocky Franchise. It works just as well as a sequel to the original Rocky movie.


With CREED, Ryan Coogler takes an existing mythology and lovingly turns it into something new and very real, while Jordan takes a character who could easily be seen as unsympathetic, and turns him into someone exceedingly relatable.

 Jordan plays Adonis Creed, a kid that liked to fight, and was brought up by his father's wife. 
His father, Apollo Creed, died before he was born. Fighting Ivan Drago in the ring as we remember in Rocky IV. 

 Adonis quits his job in a business firm and moves to Philly to find Rocky Balboa, Sylvester Stallone, to train him. There, he meets Bianca, an up-n-coming singer with a degenerative hearing disorder who he also falls in love with. 

 Creed isn’t complicated. It’s a simple story with just enough humanity sprinkled throughout to capture the hearts and minds of audiences who -- trust me when I say this -- will be cheering at the end of a movie that’s not nearly as predictable as you might think. You may love Stallone as Rambo, but Rambo’s the action star anti-hero. Rocky Balboa is Stallone’s heart and soul: the character that made him a star nearly 40 years ago, and still brings out his best.

 Unlike the previous "Rocky" movies, however, Stallone wasn’t necessarily best suited to write this story. Instead, he chose Coogler, a filmmaker who’s still in touch with the struggle of becoming a professional filmmaker, and then some. 

 That is what makes "Creed," the seventh "Rocky" movie, one of the best "Rocky" movies.

 Just some thoughts I had about this amazing film I saw. 

 -Timothy

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Small Time Rap Game - NATSOUND

11:28 PM Unknown 0 Comments

"I Rap"

I made a natural sound piece, that my professor asked us to for my final in one of his classes.

It's about two rappers, BTodd and Tommy Flow, that I know personally and their producer.

We had to make it where my voice track is not anywhere on the video. So I laid BTodd's track, MIND, under the entire video.


 Check it out below.

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Victim's Impact

11:05 AM Unknown 0 Comments

I have been working on a class project with the Victim's Impact group.
They are a non-profit organization that does public speaking against Drinking and Driving.
We are creating their memorium video to remember the victims.
We just interviewed our first family for the video, and the mother broke down mid interview. It was crazy.

But our next interview is Thursday, so I'll update soon.

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MV Update

11:00 AM Unknown 0 Comments

On Saturday, I shot the music video I was talking about in my last post. Honestly, I had a blast. We did a bunch of different shots and I'm currently in the process of editing the video now.

I'll share what I'm not using below. Enjoy!
-Timothy


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BTodd Monkey

10:33 AM Unknown 0 Comments

I am starting on my first music video this week!
My friend, Brandon, turns out to be a rapper. So after he released a couple songs now, he called me and asked if I wanted to collaborate with him on making an MV.
How could I say no, when his music is that good.

I'll be shooting this Saturday, and it'll be the goofiest video I've ever made. 

Check out BTodd on his soundcloud. He is honest to god, real talent.


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I have some... Konica Minolta?!?!

11:15 AM Unknown 0 Comments

What is this mysterious brand name?

Konica Minolta is what you would call the old school retro version cameras and lenses of today.
The Japanese brand was first formed when the two companies, Konica and Minolta, decided to merge in 2003. 
Unfortunately, sales were not good. In 2006, the company decided to quit the camera business and sold it to Sony. 


Why am I talking about them you ask?

Well, for a project I did a ways back. {Check my last post} I was given these three lenses as a form of payment.

Konica Minolta 50mm f/1.4 manual focus lens.
Konica Minolta 135mm f/3.5 manual focus lens.
Konica Minolta 24mm f/3.5 manual focus lens. 
 

I had to buy an adapter to get them to fit onto my GH4, but that was so cheap it didn't even matter. 
Now these lenses aren't like amazing. (except for the 50mm)
They are old, and everything is manual. I can't use these for any run and gun projects. I'd have to keep with my Olympus 12-40mm lens. 

But, I was able to test out the 50mm, and it was great. It was sharp. I could set my own aperture with the aperture ring on the lens itself. If you check my facebook at the link on the top of my page. Then my profile video will be of use from the 50mm Konica lens.

Warning!!!

My profile video is me and my girlfriend. And it is hilariously creepy. 

-Timothy Nguyen

0 comments:

Get Lost!

10:59 AM Unknown 0 Comments

Get Lost! Look Book

I went camping a couple weeks ago!
Tree & Leaf's Dusty Gilpin invited me and a bunch of strangers to go camping for our buddy Quit Nguyen to snap pics of us being campers. 

We did all sorts of things like hiking, longboard, campfires and beer. 

 A small link to the blog post from Tree & Leaf about the camping trip and photos is below.

 http://www.treeandleafclothing.com/blog//tree-leaf-get-lost

 Now also with that, I made a small BTS video of the photoshoot. 

 It starts out pretty rocky, unfortunately my lens and my camera body don't have image stabilization. So it looks really shaky during the hiking. But when we are all back at the campsite, I got a tripod out and the shots look gorgeous. 

CHECK OUT THE VIDEO BELOW!


Tree+Leaf Camp Out 2015 from Tree & Leaf Clothing.

-Timothy Nguyen

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The finished product

10:47 AM Unknown 0 Comments

Tree+Leaf State Fair Graffiti Jam from Tree & Leaf Clothing.

So I finally finished my video for Tree & Leaf Clothing Co.
Took me a lot longer than I expected. Overall, I was pretty proud of what I was able to accomplish. I rarely get the chance to work for a client, so I had to seize the opportunity that was given to me.

I made a 3 1/2 minute video on Art Graffiti, as I mentioned in my other post, with the background song by Tyler Trombley - Birds.

Personally, I felt I made it too long. You can only watch so much footage of guys tagging a wall.
I was shooting in 4k, but the downscaling brought it back to 1080p. That's where most of my problems were cause I couldn't properly eye the downscale. That left me with some bad footage and making the best of those bad footage was worse.

Let me know what you think about it in the comments.

-Timothy

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Formatting mishap

10:52 AM Unknown 0 Comments


Vaporium


 I was working on a news package on the Oklahoma Asian Basketball Association and I went to grab footage and interviews last week for it. I had clean shots and great soundbites from my subjects.

But, me being the idiot I am. I go on a camping trip this last weekend and forgot to upload everything onto my laptop. So I forget about the whole thing and ended up FORMATTING my card. 

What a fail.

I was sourly disappointed in myself for being unprofessional, so I had to come up with a new news package story. That is how I ended up with my Vape Lyfe PKG. 

A couple of my buddies work at a vape shop, and me myself as a vapor decided to interview them about the growing lifestyle and culture that comes with it. 

The link to the video is below. 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rdcqu4va43ai85t/vapelyfe.mp4?dl=0



Tip: Always backup everything or you will be pissed and won't get paid. 

0 comments:

Olympus 12-40mm f/2.8 Len

11:21 AM Unknown 0 Comments

That really expensive stuff people can't afford. 

I recently purchased the Olympus M.ZUIKO Digital 12-40,, f/2.8 Pro Lens. It is a weather-sealed professional standard zoom lens for the micro four thirds system. It offers a 35mm equivalent focal range of 24-80mm.
It's max aperture is at a fast 2.8 throughout it's zoom. 

The darn thing was like seven bills!

It has a customizable L-Fn button to suspend autofocus during recording when something gets in the way. The lens itself doesn't have image stabilization and is relying on the camera body itself to do that. Olympus cameras have that function, but Panasonic's line of cameras (except the GX7) don't. So Panasonic owners might want to consider grabbing a different lens. 

Focal Range

The lens has a versatile focal range. At the 12mm end, the diagonal angle of view is 84°, i.e. the same as that of a 24mm lens in a 35mm system.

Field of view at 12mm
At the 40mm end, the angle of view is 30°, i.e. the same as that of an 80mm lens in a 35mm system.
Field of view at 40mm
Overall, this Lens is awesome. I've only used cheap lens before this and I did not like them. But now most of my shots look cleaner and beautiful. This is honestly the lens I wanted the most other than the Sigma 12-35mm f/1.8 with a metabones speedbooster. 
-Tim

0 comments:

Tree & Leaf

10:45 AM Unknown 0 Comments

I recently did a shoot where I had to make a three to five minute video for a local clothing store, Tree & Leaf.
 The shoot took place on the second day of the Oklahoma State Fair. 
Shot in 3 different places around the fair as well. 
Graffiti artists took their place on the wall that was given to them and began painting and spraying from 10am - 7pm. There were 18 artists working that day. I liked that there was so much talent in OKC that surprisingly not a lot of people know about. The things these people created were simply amazing. 

 I was using my Benro S4 Monopod and GH4 with my Olympus 12-40mm lens for the shoot. 
I had a lot of fun doing this job, because it was basically my first real job doing anything like this.

 Right now, I am trying to finish editing the clips together. I am kind of stumped right now. But I got to finish this before I don't get paid.

 I will be posting the video soon. 

 www.treeandleafclothing.com

 Tips: Carry light when you have a lot of distance to travel or you are gonna wear yourself out.

 -Tim

0 comments:

The Benro Legs

11:22 AM Unknown 0 Comments

Legs For Days

I recently purchased two Benro products that I thought were a necessity for making videos. 
I'l start with the..
  • Benro A2573FS4 S4 Video Head and AL Flip Lock Legs Kit
I bought this tripod for a hefty price around $250. Honestly, probably did not need one that expensive. Could've got one for a buck fifty. But, in the end, I did anyways. 

  • It has aluminum alloy legs with an S4 Video Head [The mid-size of 3 // S2 S4 S6]
  • 69.7" Maximum Height
  • 8.8 lb Load Capacity
  • Weighs 5.8 lb
  • QR6 Quick-Release Plate Included [which is the same size as the S6's plate but bigger than the S2's]
  • Pan Bar Handle
  • Integral Leveling Platform
  • Anti-Rotation Leg System
  • Three Adjustable Leg Angles
  • Separate Pan and Tilt Drag Lock Levers

I enjoyed using this tripod because of one feature, the leveling bowl. It is blue on the tripod right under the head. What is great about this is that it can be loosened to rotate 15 degrees in any direction for easy leveling. 
WHICH MEANS.. I can use this simple leveling bowl to level my tripod on the leveling meter instead of adjusting all my legs to the right height for the current geographic slants I am experiencing. 

The S4 Fluid head is also great. It pans and tilts great for my GH4 camera. I read reviews where they had problems with it due to weight. Considering my Camera is half the size of a full frame DSLR, it isn't really a problem. Unless I'm going to be adding the GH4's output unit, microphone, external monitor, etc, etc.. I shouldn't have any real problems. 
If so I would save for the S6 head.. 

My other purchase was for the.. 


  • Benro A48FDS4 Series 4 Aluminum Monopod with 3-Leg Locking Base and S4 Video Head
I did a lot of research on this monopod cause I thought, "Why would I need to buy this when I have a my tripod that also has legs??"
Well, after watching a few video reviews on this product. I came to the conclusion that it was definitely necessary. I recently did some work where 18 graffiti artist were creating their work at the fair. I had to run to three different locations at the fair and circle each spot getting pans and tilts and close ups.
With this monopod it helped tremendously. It also has the S4 video head as my tripod, so I was able to do all that cool stuff with it.
I loved the fact that I can go run and gun with it. I'd shoot for like 10 seconds, take two steps forward, then to the side. Got a bunch of different shots without worrying about stabilizing.

Great product, everyone should consider purchasing if they want to shoot events and need to move around quickly.

-Teem

0 comments:

Silent Film

10:45 AM Unknown 0 Comments

>>MY VIDEO<<

So in my class I was told to make a minute and a half silent film, which deal in continuity and sequencing. So I had my two, buddies Chris and Peter help me for a bit. The short is about Peter in the car minding his own business on his phone, when Chris pops up and tries to steal his car. But the tint is so dark he doesn't realize that Peter is inside of the vehicle. 

 It was a lot of fun to make this with my friends, but if I had to do this with actual actors and actresses, I can only imagine how awesome that would be to work with talent that are seasoned and could improve films I decide to make. 

My problems with my own film is that I didn't record more scenes. Because when I edited the video, it peaked at 1:10. I had to add useless cuts like the second one after the establishing shot. 
  • It was shaky.
  • It wasn't necessary.
  • It didn't make sense

 I ended up stretching the whole thing to about 1:25 and regretted it the entire time. 

And in the picture there is a Rode microphone, cause I made an all natural sound version as well. 

0 comments:

Panasonic GH4

8:34 AM Unknown 0 Comments

When I first bought my camera, a Nikon D3200, I had barely any experience in anything that had to do with cameras. After a year or so in dabbling in all of it, I finally upgraded to the Panasonic GH4.


I got these specs from the guide that came in the box.

  • 16.05 MP Digital Live MOS Sensor
  • DCI 4K 4096×2160 at 24p
  • UHD 4K 3840×2160 at 30p/24p
  • Full HD up to 60p
  • 3.0″ 1,036k-Dot OLED Touchscreen Monitor
  • 2,359K-Dot OLED Live View Finder
  • Support for 59.94p, 23.98p, 50p, & 24p
  • 4:2:2 8-Bit or 10-Bit HDMI Output
  • High-Speed 49-Point Autofocus
  • Magnesium Alloy, Weather-Sealed Body

 The GH4 looks like an entry-level DSLR, but looks can be deceiving. 
Panasonic's GH series of Micro Four Third sensor cameras was always a leader in filmmaking. It is shaped like a DSLR but smaller than a Canon Rebel. It has a very simplistic look when you see it from the front. 
The button layout of the GH4 is placed to where it is easier to use and no difficulty understanding each function. At the top, you'll notice a drive wheel, hot shoe, mode dial with locking button, ISO control and white balance. You'll notice on the back that it has a flip out LCD screen about 3 inches.  
I don't really use every single feature on the camera, only the ones that will benefit my filmmaking. In general, the GH4 is geared towards filmmakers. 

With the GH4, being a vast upgrade because of the 4k capabilities it has. I, personally, shoot in 4k and don't output to 4k so when I leave it in 1080, the quality of the image is better when I go into post and do a zoom in on a shot without losing any quality. 

I love this camera, when I got it. I'm glad I upgraded, considering the price was hefty. ($1,300 or so)

I'll have some test footage out this weekend to show you the quality. 

0 comments:

Blog Inspiration

8:33 PM Unknown 0 Comments

2015/08/27
www.quitnguyen.com
http://themovieblog.com/
http://barryfordvideo.blogspot.com/
http://videoproducerblog.com/
http://www.eoshd.com/
http://motionographer.com/
http://www.directorsnotes.com/
http://diyfilmmaker.blogspot.com/
http://cinematicfilmblog.com/
http://news.moviefone.com/
www.quitnguyen.com

This is a local photography blog that I've known about for a while. Although it isn't exactly cinematography, it is close to what I look for in a blog.
I like the fact that it is very bare and simple. It has the things that are posted only. Sidebar is on the left side and it is part of his website as well. It is well organized where he separates all the different kind of shoots he does for clients and puts the personal photos on it's own page.
I like the fact that it is simple and wish my blog will be like that as well. It mainly highlights the content rather than the blog itself.
My only thing is the button to switch between photos is small and put in a corner. I didn't catch it at first.

0 comments:

First Post

11:32 AM Unknown 0 Comments

2015/08/25
My name is Timothy Nguyen. Last year at UCO.
This is my Behind-The-Scenes-ish Cinematography/Review/Movie blog.

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