Alter Ego new video

The band....our band....

We had pretty good times back then playing concerts and the peruvian musical circuit.
I still meet and talk with some fellow members and some months ago, because of my new adquisition (the HD camera), we came up with the idea of shooting another videoclip for a song we wanted to have one for, so we chose "Utopia".

So far, Rodolfo Carreño, Toño valero, Israel Beltran "Putre" and Israel "Doom" Medina are on board. We tried to contact Miguel Flores but he is lost somewhere not returning calls. He doesnt even know why he is called so I don't think it's personal. He is just into his own stuff.

Not only "Utopia" has that dark/gothic sound to it but it is very majestic and gives a lot of imaginery to my mind. Besides testing the HD camera, getting back together for the day at least would be a very good thing to do and to remember.

Letus Extreme 35mm adapter

So now, this thing is quite heavy!

Weighing like a medium size rock, Hyen from Letus sure made this thing quite solid and professional: Sharp look, black matte finish, battery compartment inside with a magnet door (very clever), vibrating Ground Glass, rotating interchangeable lens mount (for Canon, Nikon, Minolta, Olympus and even Zeiss PL mounts for 35mm lens), allen screws for tightening parts and included is an achromat for your specific camera, so I ordered the HVX200 Optimization Kit.

The HVX200 is known for sometimes not having a truly dead-center CCD chip so in some units, the ground glass screen will not be totally centered when attached to the camera. Mine has that small issue as I noticed, so I called Hyen at Letus Corp. He was very helpful in telling me the options (which included sending the camera back to Panasonic for fixing that which of course I declined....to much time), so I came back with my own solution: rotating the adapter 180* so it would be on the upper side (the Letus has this L-shaped kinda form) and then....the focusing screen was sharp center and framed! But that also arouse other problems: the adapter was now a bit high for the bracket support that holds the Letus in place with the rods, so I had to make my own in a metal workshop. Aluminum of course not to put more weigh on the already heavy kit. I had it the next day and problem solved!

Now, once the adapter was attached to the camera, the next step is to achieve sharp focus on the ground glass inside the Letus. This is achieved by zooming out all the way to the "wide" position (Z00 in the HVX200). What we get to see is the focusing screen way far inside a "dark room" and to the sides we can notice the prism system mirrors. Then zoom in more until we fill up all the viewfinder screen (and a little bit more to avoid vignetting depending on the lens used). We point at something bright and we focus until we get to see the grain in the ground glass. When that is achieved it's a good idea to write down the focus number and never touch the focusing ring again. Mine is at focus 0.95 and the screen is filled up by Z22.7 but it could differ a bit on some other camera units. You can see that sharp focus is achieved when you get to see the grain in the ground glass. In the picture to the left you can see the grain in the ground glass. The overexposed white spot top right is a bright lamp that I turned down with the dimmer after the pic. The Letus needs to be off by the way. Only turn it on when fully focused to make the grain go away but leave it off for now. Now attach the lens. For this test I used a two lenses: the Canon AF 22-55 f/4.0 and the Canon EF 35mm f/2.0 Prime lens. I chose those two different lens because of the difference in speed and see how the Letus handled range of apertures. Now, the focus chart helps to detect unevenness in sharpness or any fall-off on the sides. So far, so good. I don't see any side blurriness too much and it seems fine .

A Day at the Park

I love Nebraska!
Besides being the home of my beloved gorgeous woman, the wide vast plains and landscapes offer such a cornucopia of views for the filmmaker or any director of photography. I've seen online work of others in Oregon and Washington and really their landscapes help a lot with such a beautiful scenery (not to mention their great eye for beauty of course!).

I took the cam out in one of my free days to a park near Chalco in Omaha. The day couldn't be more perfect than it was. It started with a sunny warm-toned day, turning to a blueish cold cast as sunset approached and then the sky turned bright red (as the Atlanta sky in "Gone with the Wind") and....boom!! thunderstorms, lightning and rain. Being a tornado area it wasn't a good idea to be outside as those little-big fuckers could happen in any moment as it did those weeks I was there.

I just took some shots and played a little role in it to improvise a simple story of me in the park.

I used the HVX200, the Letus Extreme, Canon EF 35mm f/2.0 Prime lens and Canon EF 28-135mm f3.5-5.6 IS USM lens for the tight long shots.
Shot it in 1080 at 24p, used Premiere CS3 to edit it, color graded in After Effects and finished with our Proceso Cinematico Digital.
And below is what came out.
Enjoy!

An Evening at the Park


AN EVENING AT THE PARK from Juan Carlos Oganes on Vimeo.

IndiSystem and cam rails

I had the good fortune of using a couple of rail and follow focus systems around and most of them have been on the pro range as the Chrosziel and others for cinema and big Zeiss lenses. When shooting Super 16mm my sweet film cam of choice was the silent Arri 16 BL. I used it with two videos I did with some clients years ago and also with my band when shooting the "Sirenia" and "What's the Fire" videos. You can click here
to watch the behind the scenes.

Usually, in situation that required more control, a follow focus came in handy but the need for a separate focus assistant was necessary, specially for hand-held camera moves. But to do be doing that around is quite a hassle itself so not only the follow focus needs to be good or decent but also the shoulder support for it to be comfortable.

Like I said, there are many rails and FF around but for the rest of us, a good and not-so-expensive one is for the call. I researched a bit and stumbled on the Indisystem company. Not only was I pleased with the price which compared to many around is a bit less but also the tech support si quite friendly. Tim Ovel runs the show there and he is a person you can call a nice "human being" or a friend. He is a very welcoming easy going guy who always goes out of his way to help customers and offer a helping hand. Not to complain about other companies but I had my share of odd moments with tech support, specially with big software companies who decided since some time ago to hire (or maybe outsource) it's client-dealing department with Hindu's. India has not only populated the motel or hotel business in the US but also many companies consider a cheaper option to use Indian people for those affairs. Me, your regular average-english-speaking-or-understanding person has sometimes a bit of trouble understanding some fast words of any american joe around, so, if you add an Indian person talking english with a heavy "bollywood" accent then....Houston, we have a problem! I have nothing against other nationalities (I'm not an american myself), but there's something going on there that needs some attention I think...but thats another topic that doesn't belong here.

Back to Tim Ovel. His IndiRail system is quite appealing and serves a lot of indie filmmakers with a budget and what made me happy with the purchase was not only the options of bettering the configurations but his helpfulness...things you really don't get around here lately. Whats the use of purchasing an expensive piece of equipment that when you find is not getting along with your camera accessories nobody is REALLY there to assist you?

Once it was all set and coupled with the Letus, the IndiMatte and the HVX200 this was the result: now this thing is all dressed up like the big boys and ready to dance.

Guerrilla shooting

I loved the results!
The HVX200 is awesome. I checked the video on the LCD widescreen at my editing bay and its looks sharp and clear. The only thing lacking is the so fought-after depth of field. Im almost clear that the 35mm adapter that I'm purchasing now is the Letus Extreme. I had worked with the other brands before (Redrock M2, Brevis) but the flipped image is the issue there. I find very annoying having to turn the image in post or turn the monitor upside-down while shooting.

Doesn't work for me that...but I'll cover that in another post.

I did another "test drive" a while back and now in a more "guerrilla" way, more "run-and-gun" scenario to see the 24p motion in action. This time I used the 720p resolution but on NATIVE mode to have more room in the 16GB P2 card that came with the camera.
Those little cards fill up fast! Im waiting for the market prices to drop on those (almost $900 the 16GB, $1500 the 32GB) as paying almost a grand for 17 minutes on 1080 resolution is way too little. Now with 720p in Native mode I get 40 minutes apart from being able to shoot slow-mo too. It's also a good thing that the camera has two P2 slots so one one fills up completly it automatically jumps to the other and continues recording without gaps or losing frames.



Too bad I cant do "speed ramping" like on film cams but...I dont want to be too exquisite. Im happy with what I got.
Here below is a video of quads in action. The shooting of this was so fun.
Loved the fast-paced results and I loved to see them so happy doing what they love. It was such a great day!

HVX200 test drive

Today I took the HVX200 out for a "test drive".
I have always been keen about film motion. The characteristic move of 24fps transfered to 30fps (or 60i) is very unique. When I was shopping around months back I happened to read all articles about the new 24p cameras out there....some were convincing and some weren't.


Like the film veteran Scott Billups said once in his book Digital Moviemaking 3.0, many of those articles are written by people who have little or no real world experience and who are simply "transcribing" or reformatting in their own words what the manufacturers give them in a press-release, and of course, much of that is just hype, commercially motivated fibbing. You only know the performance of something on the field, on a real project who's main finale is the big screen or prime time TV where all quality is tested. No question asked.

So, just for starters, I took the cam out and shot simple stuff around the neighborhood, streets, cars passing by, the sun thru the trees (to see how it manages high-contrast light) , slow motion in-camera and finally its time-lapse capability with a beautiful sunset.

The excuse to do it was to have a motive and chose to make video for my lovely girl that I wanted to make so bad since time ago.
And here is the result.

Solace of a Statue - a Video Poem

SD to HD test

I was doing some tests of turning Standard Definition video to High Definition. There are many ways to do this thing but most of them aren't acurate and the video turns out looking pixelated or jagged.

For this one I used After Effects and also PhotoZoom Pro 2 (the professional one). There is another plug-in that works in After and I'm checking it right now. So far the results are awesome!

Used a short clip of me here warming up for a music videoclip I did last year.
I'm playing "My Melancholy Blues" by Queen.


SD to HD test from Juan Carlos Oganes on Vimeo.

The waiting is over....the HVX200 is here.

The new HVX200 has now arrived. After doing research thoroughly for months which HD cam to purchase, the Panasonic one won by far my votes.

The JVC ProHD was a close contender together with the Canon XL-H1 (despite its steep price). In fact this last one was a strong choice for me in the beggining as I have not only owned but worked for the past eight years with the XL-1 and it's following models. The interchangeable lenses is definetly a plus for film work.

The JVC GY-HD110E has that same feature, but both latter models are just HDV which to my taste (and many) has proven not quite good to handle in post (the long GOP makes it diffuclt to edit)....so that left me with HV200.

But the HVX200 didnt just win because of price. It makes a filmmaker reluctant to choose a camera with no interchangeable lens but its has other premium features that is the non-plus-ultra of any person coming from a film background: more than a dozen frame rates, four video formats (SD and HD), 24p, 30p, 1080i/p, the pristine DVCPRO-HD codec (not the faulty HDV one) solid-state P2 memory card recording option and of course... being the big brother of the popular DVX100 it comes loaded with those beautiful gamma curves that simulates film latitude very well as it's big brother: the VARICAM.

It will be a true complement to our Cinematic Digital Process, saving us one step in post of simulating 24fps.

I was happy to notice that in the box came the excellent HVX BOOK written by the well-known Barry Green. We happened to email back and forth about some workflow topics with this cam and also ordered his popular HVX Bootcamp DVD which explains in detail what the book shows also.

Im happy with this investment.

After buying the XL-1 years back I felt the same and was happy to see that that cam was so good, all manufacturers began making accesories for it....now, the same is happening with this little-big cam.

The HVX200 is here to make history.

Cubano, the videoclip

Shooting the videoclip has been awesome. Great people and hilarious Cheito Quiñones. Also the Arturo and Patty Lavalle, mexican producers and professional people I loved working with.
I also met Alain Pastrana, author and mastermind of all these. Great gentle guy. He wrote that song as a tribute to his fellow cuban countrymen. His new single called "Cubano" talks about the struggle cubans go thru in search for a new and better life outside the island. The shooting was very curious as we were form many different countries all together in one single production.
We all know Miami is more latin than american (actually, we are americans too...I personally don't know who decided to call citizens of the United States americans when americans are all who live in the American continent, all inlcuding central and south america....but well, that's another topic). The different accents all around was the funny thing: light technicians and the gaffer were mexicans, the grip was from Dominican Republic, the producers were from Mexico, the drummer and guitarists were from Cuba and Cheito is from Puerto Rico.

We got to shoot three versions in the end (came out as a surprise for me actually): the salsa version, the reggaeton one making a duo with Joselito and a rap version with Knight. The official one is the salsa version to be promoted as a single.

I then took the material to Nebraska for editing and finished the post-production back in Lima applying our Proceso Cinemático Digital.

Here is the final video and below the behind-the-scenes.

Alain Band - "Cubano"


ALAIN BAND - "Cubano" from Juan Carlos Oganes on Vimeo.




Cubano - Behind the scenes

Shooting day

Here is the behind-the-scenes of the SuperMovida Intro.
It's in two parts below.

La SuperMovida -Behind the scenes Part I





La SuperMovida -Behind the scenes Part II

La SuperMovida

So, I got a call from Nilver Huarac and Jeanet some days ago. It came out of the blue as I haven't heard from them since four years ago when we worked together on her TV show.

Since I've been away most of 2007 I didn't get to pay attention to local TV and that she was back since september.

We had a meeting and they wanted me to work with them to improve the show. I was reluctant at first as the prior experience working for Panamericana TV (where they air from) was rocky and they still owe me some cash (Panamericana is known for not paying clients and employees) but they were handling the show independently so that was good to hear. I was introduced to the producers of each sequence so we could share ways to make things better. It was a bit odd to decide as I'm flying back n forth and didnt want to attach myself to it. Ive done TV before and it's very frenzy, very demanding in time and mind.

The ratings were going down and they wanted to polish up their TV show with a new look and content. I suggested first to change their show Intro as it would be the inmediate thing people would see before the show began....so off we did, made a script idea, shot it yesterday and this is the result. This time it was done using the Canon XL-1 with four lenses: the 16x, a Tokina AF 19-35mm f/4, a Canon 13x and a Canon EF 35mm f/2 Prime Lens.

After editing I applied our Digital Cinematic Process-PCD to make it look like film but didn't use the 3:2 pulldown cadence as I wanted to keep it more 60i. This time just took a break on that move.

A behind-the-scenes was made also. I will put it in the next post.

Take a look at the final intro below.

Intro "La SuperMovida"

INTRO "LA SUPERMOVIDA" from Juan Carlos Oganes on Vimeo.

Filming confirmed....off to Miami

Now the filming of the videoclip is confirmed!
Will be flying in some days to Miami. Will arrive just a couple of days prior to catch up with pre-production.

Will post more later.

An interesting call

My good friend Ursula Mifflin called from Miami telling that a cuban-american band wants me to direct their new video single. They are called Alain Band and they are formed by some of the fine latin musicians in the city. The singer of the single is the one and only Cheito Quiñonez, known trompet player of Miami Sound Machine.

It's gonna be a nice experience. Good salsa band as she told me.

Let's hear it then....I'd like to hear the song to picture some ideas in mind.

They asked to be recorded in SD so I'm taking the Canon with me. The Canon lens adaptor will be used for the other lenses. I saw a nice Nikon 50mm prime lens on a store there online that's be good for my kit but that adaptor doesnt allow me that brand. I really need to get me one 35mm adaptor. I just tested the Brevis and I like it but I have read some articles about the Letus that has me interested. No more inverted clips.

It will be a nice opportunity to get my hands on one over there.

Festival de la Música 2007

The Festival de La Música 2007.

An event of events sponsored by E.Wong and run by the Patronato Conservatorio Nacional De Música lead by Wong's CEO, Erasmo Wong.

It's main idea was to gather good tasteful music and take it to the masses in different places around Lima. This time they chose the main circle in Miraflores-Lima. Together with their Gran Corzo de Wong held each year around our national holiday, I think this is their main event and showed with much of their pomposity they have all us acustomed to.

I was asked to direct the visual performance of the show as to direct live-show camera work.

Like always, the frenziness starts early and raises in adrenaline as the hours get close to the opening act. I remember Erasmo Wong himself coming several times into the van suggesting things for their sponsors who were gonna have a copy of the show (it was gonna be recorded live). He wanted their logos to be shown as much as possible. Marketing reasons of course.

It went on nice after a long sound and video check.

Here below are two videos of the making of the show.

A Busy Day...



A Busy Day...part II

Chaska Ñawi -Film Festival days

The festival is done.

It was quite interesting to see such work of young students taking their first shots at this beautiful career.

Many were quite hilarious and some were capturing. Was nice to see some familiar faces on screen and I must admit it's a bit of an effort to see your freind actors perform in diferent roles that the media has "encapsuled" them in.

There was one film in particular which captured my attention and not because of it's story (it was well written) but because of it's neatness. It was so well handled that it didnt look an amateur job or a student film. That one belonged elsewhere. At the end -when reading the credits- I saw some familiar names and knew inmediatly that it got some "help" of major players in this field. So that kinda disqualified to our jury eyes it's true intention in accordance to the meaning of the festival.

A new born filmmaker not only needs that boost in esteem for they are trying to achieve but also it needs to be boosted with a sense of justice and justification. Having help of almost 50% in crew of experienced people make their starting efforts a bit of a "rush" into their desire of "perfection", getting lost many times in the true meaning of their primal efforts: earn experience and not just jump directly to conclusions.

To my believe, too much help from more experienced eyes makes a young filmmaker a type of puppet or "excuse" of the first one more than a "learning process" of the latter.

It is an obstacle in their path to grow as a professional filmmaker.

In the end, there was a similar score after the prior film was dismissed, leaving the decision on my lap to make the call and incline the weigh to one of the lasting two. Finally, I chose the one with more dramatic appealing and spoke our jury decisions to the public.

It was a good night indeed.

Chaska Ñawi Film Festival in Lima

I was called early today invited to be a Jury at the 3rd Chaska Ñawi Film Festival here in Lima. It's sponsored by the Film Comission of Cinematographers of Perú - CONACINE, Radio A, Radio Z Rock n Pop and the Institute of Communications Diseño.
It is such an honor to be invited. The films include work from universities like Universidad de Lima, Universidad Tecnológica del Perú, Universidad Antenor Orrego, Charles Chaplin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Instituto Superior Tecnológico Publico Diseño and others.

It is gonna be on the 5th, 6th and 7th of November. They are emailing what they require me to do and who the nominees are.
I'll post after the event.

Cruz del Sur TV Spots

After a long time of hurdles, finally the two TV commercials were done.
This client has been one of the hardest to work with as it seemed like a battle of opinions and power issues inside the company and nobody seemed to approve each other's views....and we got to be in between that back-n-forth stabbings. We have been involved with them since late January and apporved my idea on February.
Principal shooting only took place in July and then in August.

Im happy with the results though and it was a fun experience.
One of the hardest anecdotes was the Marketing Manager wanting to change the main actor at the last minute and I having to face it was something very unconfortable. Very... you name it.
There was a second choice which they picked and thank God he was available at the moment. But, anyway, those things should not be done to an actor, and above all...to a human being.
Nothing personal here....just a mere thought of decency and professional respect for the talent in front of the camera, and they or no one of us should be responsible for any company's cravings or inside-battles.

This two were shot in SD for budgeting purposes and the lenses used were a Canon EF 35mm f/3.5 Prime, Canon 16x II 39-624mm f/1.6 and Canon 3x II 24-72mm f/1.8 with a 35mm adapter.

The TV LCD screens, surveillance/monitors and the sattelite were done CG and motion tracked for live footage coupling. The night shots were done with a day-for-night technique and the lights and lens flares were done CG also.

The whole spots were then color graded and timed with our Proceso Cinematico Digital.

We all were quite happy to endure and wrap up the project to the standards needed.
Below are the two spots.


TV SPOT "CRUZ DEL SUR" from Juan Carlos Oganes on Vimeo.


TV SPOT II "CRUZ DEL SUR" from Juan Carlos Oganes on Vimeo.

Police TV spot

We were in pre-production for a film to be shot in the highlands that involved the cooperation of the the police and navy forces (there's navy presence in the lake Titicaca as it's so huge it is like an ocean when deep off-shore), so we approached the Ministry of Interior who runs the police here in Peru and after briefing them and explaining our motives for the film, they agreed happily.

While giving them examples of our work, they asked us to join their selection of audiovisual production company as they were about to make a TV spot for the Police Forces's 15th anniversary (in 1988 they were spread inot three ramifications). We won their selection and were asked for an idea to promote their values and heroism.

The police forces here -as in many countries- isn't well appreciated as there is lots of bribes, corruption, authority abuse and so forth. Their image has been heavily bruised but countless news of cops not acting on the best behalf of their institution, so I came with the idea of promoting their values as human beings and showing their daily sacrifice as a common citizen of this country instead of the formal one about recruiting new men with images of cop operations and guns and street combat scenes (very typical of army recruiting TV spots here). I explained the idea of making a normal police officer on the beat doing its duty like the rest of us with the only difference that his is dangerous as we know and also more risky.
To show more of its human side so to speak.

So the idea and the budget needed was approved.
This is the spot and we were happy to over exceed their expectations.
My good old friends Havier Arboleda and Analí Cabrera were so kind to have roles here as the cop and his wife.
Regardless of how we all see a policeman and the preconceived concept we have, the brief study of their duty and all made me see them in a different light this time.
Too bad many of them go down in the public's eye for just a few who doesn't put in high respect the institution's values for our country.

This one is shot Standard Definition with the Canon XL-1S, 24fps, timed in After Effects and color graded with the Proceso Cinematico Digital. Lenses used were the Canon 16x IS II 39-624mm f/1.6, Canon EF 22-55mm f/3.5 and 13x 24-72mm f/1.8.

PNP TV commercial Peru from Juan Carlos Oganes on Vimeo.