My BMCC experience and outcome so far...

I have to say that I am really excited about the Black Magic Company products and particularly their BMCC as a whole. It is really easy to do amazing things with this camera even for a total novice like me. Here's my story. It's odd and probably controversial (so I'm sorry if you are super conservative but it revolves around the BMCC, so please read the whole thing to understand it. Thank you!
I have a very good friend named Sean that owns an adult entertainment club (strip club) in Daytona Beach, Florida. He's quite a character and very inspiring to me, even though he is viewed as a "scumbag, strip club owner" by some people that hear of him. In 2008, after the economy collapsed, I was suddenly an under-employed, part time personal trainer. Sean graciously hired me to be his personal trainer (he was 450 pounds at the time) and also to help him as an assistant (really clean his house mostly). He also paid for me to go back to school and helped me through some tough times with my divorce. I had been married 15 years and have two teenagers that I took custody of at that time.
During my second semester back in school, in ENC1102 (college English), I wrote a descriptive paper about the scene at Sean's unique strip club for one of my assignments. The place is pretty hard to describe unless you've been there, but it's not like ANY other club I've ever seen. After reading the paper, Sean wanted me to write his life into an entertaining book. He is quite the character and worthy of the publicity, but I told him that a movie or reality show would be a lot cooler than a book. He said, "Ok, let's do it. Lets do it just for fun". That's how Sean is. That was in 2010 and we never mentioned it again for many months. Fast forward to 2012, last November, and after I had completed some schooling, we re-visited the idea of a reality show or docudrama. After much discussion, we agreed we could do this for a fairly small amount of money (overall) and I began my crash course in cinematography/all things cameras/audio/etc. I don't know what made me think I could do this... Keep in mind I had never even held a video camera in my hand and I'm 41 years old.
I wrote a business plan, formed a production company DBA about 10 weeks ago and acquired all the licenses and permits to film in Daytona Beach during Bike Week and Spring Break, had waivers and releases made and began researching what equipment I could get for our budget. I spent 30 days (and nights) learning about all the the different cameras, audio, lighting, codec, workflow, etc. I was still in college full time at Daytona State College and as I said, I have two teenagers, so time was limited and I spent every hour I could absorbing knowledge to try and do a real 7-10 day R&G style shoot for a docudrama or potential reality show concept. Almost everyone on several different forums said, "Oh you can't do ENG or R&G with BMCC's" and I was torn. I wanted the BMCC so bad, but I almost went with a Sony FS700 and FS100 as my two cameras. Then I even thought about DSLR (Canon Mark iii) too or possibly a Panasonic AF100 as camera A, but after seeing the comparison footage online from different sources, I concluded that the BMCC was revolutionary and the way to go to be ahead of the curve.
A friend of mine that is a successful videographer said I was nuts to use BMCC's to shoot ENG style in a dark strip club with no experience and on the streets during Bike Week in Daytona Beach. But I decided I HAD to have this camera. During the last week of February 2013, I ordered a BMCC off Ebay and paid $4,500 just so I could have it in time. I ordered all the necessary parts to rig it plus all audio, etc from B&H Photo. I rented a second BMCC from the good guys at "The Lens Depot" in Oviedo, Florida and matched the components closely to my camera and got two sets of lenses to match as well. We even bought two GoPro 3's and a DJI Phantom Quadcopter to fly around with the GoPro on it. Here's exactly what I bought...

Apple I-Mac 7 (3.4 GHZ)
G-Raid 6TB external HD
Blu Ray burner
Davinci Resolve (from BMCC box)
FCPX 10.0.8
BMCC EF (new)
(4) 512GB SSD cards
(4) 250 GB SSD cards
Tonika 11-16mm F2.8
N.D. filters and polarizer
Tilta 3 Rig/Matte Box/Follow Focus/Shoulder mount
Switronix Powerbase 70
Zacuto zwiss plate
Black Magic SDI to HDMI battery pack
Small HD DP4 monitor with view finder
(2) LED camera lights
(2) Pearstone Tripods
Tascam DR680 with shoulder bag
Rode NTG 2 microphone and boom pole
(3) Sony headphones
Many batteries and several chargers
(2) Azden 330 wireless lavs
3 light Lowel Lighting kit (for interviews, not R&G)
(2) GoPro3 Black cameras with EVERY possible accessory and mount
Handheld stabilizer for GoPro3
Pro mics for the GoPros
DJI Phantom quadcopter
and all the cases, etc. and I'm sure i'm forgetting something...

I also rented (from The Lens Depot in Oviedo, Florida) for 10 days:
(a second) BMCC with a Wooden cage
Redrock rig/matte box/follow focus/shoulder mount
A Tonika 11-16mm to match mine that I bought
(2) Canon 16-35mm's
(2) Canon 35mm T1.5
Anton Bauer Power Pack and mounting plate
Small HD DP4 with viewfinder
(2) Senheiser lav mics
N.D. Filters and polarizer

I also rented a Sony FS700 for 2 days from a drunk guy on a bicycle who rode up to me while I was carrying one of our cameras in front of the club. Seriously!!! I wanted to try the slow motion capabilities of the camera and this guy rode up and said he had one for rent. I was pretty shocked!

I hired two friends that were still photographers from my college to shoot and my sister and ex-wife were hired for audio. The camera guys had NEVER done anything like this and knew nothing about the BMCC's. I mean NOTHING. Nevertheless, I set up a schedule and did all the leg work and took care of the equipment each day so it was ready to shoot. We shot for a little over a week during Daytona Beach Bike Week and Spring Break as more than 300,000 people show up in our town. We followed several preselected characters in all kinds of situations including my friend Sean, some of his crazy entourage, and a few of the dancers at the club at night and around town/home during the day. We did interviews and tried to be creative all the while pretending that we knew what we were doing. We shot lots of B Roll club footage/beach footage/Bike Week and Spring Break craziness footage and hilarious out-takes as well. In fact, I have 5TB of 1080P ProRes footage that will be the base for my 6 episode Reality Show.
After the crazy week, my crew retired back to their lives, but I decided to pick up the camera myself and film on St. Patty's Day. This was the FIRST time I have ever filmed anything, since our gear had literally shown up the day before our first shoot I never had a chance to try it out. But I figured "how hard can it really be?" and I was on my way. I just so happen to stumble upon a popular local band called Orange Avenue getting ready to play a concert in downtown Daytona Beach and they saw my impressive camera and asked what I was up to. This was happening a lot, actually! Carrying a fully rigged cinema camera gets A LOT of attention and they thought I was a big production guy or something. They invited me to film them, so I did. Then I invited them to come hang out at the strip club afterwards and I filmed that too.
I sat through many hours of footage over the last few weeks and Sean and EVERYONE started "bugging" me about when I was going to show them something online... Anything! I thought I would just hire an editor to put together something to put on Youtube and give to Sean so he could play it at his home movie theater. In fact, I had a friend that works for a real production company ready to help for some decent $$$. But my heart said that I had to do this myself because it was my story and that it should be from the view of a friend, not a hired outsider. I decided that this should be an episodic show that I will produce for the internet with a promotional trailer/sizzle reel for now to satisfy my friends. I have PLENTY of footage now and It doesn't matter if it ever goes anywhere but online. I just wanted to see what I could come up with to honor all of my friends that put up with the cameras at the club. However, Lollipops Gentlemen's Club is a lot cooler than "Full Throttle Saloon" in Sturgis and they have a reality show on TV, so I guess anything is possible.
The problem was, I have never even opened an editing program before last week, but I decided to take the plunge and see if I could edit with no experience at all. I opened up my FCPX 10.0.8 and decided to come up with a creative sizzle reel I could be proud of. I got this, right? It took a few hours, but I figured out FCPX ok, but Davinci Resolve was way out of my league and I couldn't find anyone who knew anything about it except for a nice, quiet kid working at Best Buy. I hired the young man to do color correction over last weekend, but he could not use Resolve well enough. He could only color correct in FCP and it was his first time using FCPX. Still, that was the easy part in comparison to the upload process....
When we decided to upload this Pro Res 422 beast to YouTube for 1080P HD, it was a no go. Over and over it failed. We did it in lower h.264 encode and 720P and it looked like crap. I refused to put it up and we still can't get it up with good resolution. However, Vimeo did let it through and encode for 1080P HD (I joined the Plus subscription to get full HD uploads) and it looks good. It took about 10 tries and several warning messages and canceled uploads, but it finally worked.
We shot with the wrong ISO settings at times, wrong frame speeds at times, very poor light or no light, etc. I even thought I was shooting all day once and had the time lapse setting on instead, wasting the whole shoot. We tried RAW, but realized the files had to be rendered and got lost, it went on and on. Don't even get me started about audio... Sheesh... Basically, we made every mistake possible over and over, but even still, the BMCC's were the real stars of the show and captured some darn good footage anyway. Here's what I came up with so far. I hope you will view it and help me showcase what a novice with a BMCC can do. Imagine if we knew what we were doing... LOL

There is no graphic nudity, however it is mature in nature.

This is the web address on Vimeo for my BMCC footage/Sizzle Reel

A few pics to go with my story...

Congrats for the courage and hard work. Wish you all the best and of course big success to the show!

Cheers,

Milen

Awesome back story!:D You have balls for sure for trying everything out for the first time with this much spending on gear and time!:D Wishinh your docu drama all the success. You actually can hire an editor..and sit with him during the edit..so it'll still be your story, you'd be directing, but he does the gruntworkl of cutting the footages..so you can concentrate on building up the story rather than be distracted with the quirks of learning ht NLE.

What kind of Tilta rig you got there?

So generous of you to share your story.

I take my hat off to anyone like yourself that has the balls to go out and make something like this happen, even when you haven't done it before. It's form making mistakes that we learn the most.

I enjoyed your preview. I think it's an interesting world you've delved into and I think it would hold a lot of interest for people who are curious. People will have pre-concieved ideas and it would be fun to either confirm or flip them.

Also, shooting in a strip club I'm sure would present a lot of challenges. They hellishly dark for starters and then there's the punters....

I enjoyed Sean and he seems like he would be good talent. The fact you know him well should be your in. I can imagine that you will have access and he would be more candid with you. This is the documentary makers secret weapon.

I found the intercutting between the girls, the 'dudes" and the band got a little repetitious. I wasn't able to easily discern character differences between each introduced "dude" aside from their amusing names. That was the most differentiation I could get and I wanted to see more of what they were like as individuals and how they fitted in. I got a sense that Sean is a gregarious guy and spends a lot of time schmoozing. I'm going to guess that's what he does most of the time and I hope that makes interesting TV. I enjoyed seeing little snippets like when he motions for someone to join him in his VIP area.

I saw a lot of B roll and i wanted see more of the gritty detail of who these people are and what they think. I hope that's in there !

Again, totally awesome you backed yourself and went for it. It really takes a lot of courage to do that and true grit. It's certainly something that will get attention !

Best of luck with your show.

jb

What kind of Tilta rig you got there?

Tilta 3 DSLR 15mm rods with the cage and whole matte box/follow focus/handle grips,etc..

I like it, but it flexes a bit at the shoulder point where it meets the front part. Only 3 "hex screws" hold it together. That scares me a bit for long term ENG, but it seems totally fine on a tripod. It looks pretty cool too.

Good day!
Ryan

Congrats for the courage and hard work. Wish you all the best and of course big success to the show!

Cheers,

Milen

Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Awesome back story!:D You have balls for sure for trying everything out for the first time with this much spending on gear and time!:D Wishinh your docu drama all the success. You actually can hire an editor..and sit with him during the edit..so it'll still be your story, you'd be directing, but he does the gruntworkl of cutting the footages..so you can concentrate on building up the story rather than be distracted with the quirks of learning ht NLE.

Thanks, I am very humbled by these comments. If it progresses to a bigger project we will hire help for sure.

So generous of you to share your story.

I take my hat off to anyone like yourself that has the balls to go out and make something like this happen, even when you haven't done it before. It's form making mistakes that we learn the most.

I enjoyed your preview. I think it's an interesting world you've delved into and I think it would hold a lot of interest for people who are curious. People will have pre-concieved ideas and it would be fun to either confirm or flip them.

Also, shooting in a strip club I'm sure would present a lot of challenges. They hellishly dark for starters and then there's the punters....

I enjoyed Sean and he seems like he would be good talent. The fact you know him well should be your in. I can imagine that you will have access and he would be more candid with you. This is the documentary makers secret weapon.

I found the intercutting between the girls, the 'dudes" and the band got a little repetitious. I wasn't able to easily discern character differences between each introduced "dude" aside from their amusing names. That was the most differentiation I could get and I wanted to see more of what they were like as individuals and how they fitted in. I got a sense that Sean is a gregarious guy and spends a lot of time schmoozing. I'm going to guess that's what he does most of the time and I hope that makes interesting TV. I enjoyed seeing little snippets like when he motions for someone to join him in his VIP area.

I saw a lot of B roll and i wanted see more of the gritty detail of who these people are and what they think. I hope that's in there !

Again, totally awesome you backed yourself and went for it. It really takes a lot of courage to do that and true grit. It's certainly something that will get attention !

Best of luck with your show.

jb

Wow, I had to google you, because I recognized your name. Thank you Sir for even taking the time to read my story and view the video.

Let me explain my direction and reasoning for the "TRAILER"... Right... I had none really I have just winged it!!! But honestly, before I stumbled upon the band Orange Avenue playing right down the street from the club Lollipops, the trailer would have been mainly audio interviews and character development... Which we have a lot of footage of in storage and are going to use to develop the characters over 6-12 online episodes starting in June. However, the band has had mild success for that song "Just Refrain" and when they ok'd me to shoot it, I never realized we would party at the club later where they all became my facebook friends, etc. Anyway, their song had been in the Top 200 three years ago, but never quite pushed through. So last week after thinking about it, I decided to base the trailer around a music video and just let people quickly see the Lollipops experience from the dancer's perspective (Sammy), the customer's perspective (Zetti), and the owner's perspective (Sean) as he meets and greets all his employees and some friends, etc. Just a teaser... With it in this format they can play it in the club on the big screens as promotion video which wouldn't work if it was not a music video. I flashed their names so people associated them as a part of the "Lollipops Family". Honestly I had to throw a bone to everyone so they felt special. The main characters are...

Sean
RedNec
Sammy
Zetti
Haley
Destinee
DJ John

On a really positive note, I sent the band the finished product chopped to just the music length part and they are authorizing it as legit version of their song (a new music video). They were pretty stoked with this thing I did for them for free. I have edited down a video without subtitles and cut to length of music only. You see, I figured the song and band mixing into the story opens this up to exposure from both music (maybe MTV) and Reality TV exposure as well. Yeah I'm a dreamer The band, Orange Avenue is in the club in my video if you look and their current music video is on playing on the big screens all around club in those scenes!!! I tried to do small details to include everyone that helped me. I really hope the band gets a boost through Lollipops Over-Exposed and the concept for the show gets a look at because of the catchy song going back on the radio. The episodes of my show will not be music only though, obviously!

Thanks SO MUCH for your critique and advice. I am very humbled overall!

Here's Orange Avenues original 2009 authorized music video that is online now if you are interested in viewing.

A few more production pics..

What an interesting story! Thanks for sharing!

Thanks for reading it! I hope you guys watch our video on Vimeo. We are having a hard time getting a good upload to YouTube without massive loss of resolution. On Vimeo it looks great and was uploaded in ProRes422.

Thanks Again,
Ryan Raymond

Great story! And well done for your first video, too

Thank You... Appreciate it.

By the way, I ended up getting it on Youtube, but had to encode it in h.264 instead of proRes422. It looks good as long as you select the HD player setting, but nowhere near as good as the Vimeo version. I'm glad it worked on Vimeo, because we used the full ProRes422, (not the LT or h.264) and I think it looks really good. On Youtube, it's so..so.

You can compare....

By the way, I ended up getting it on Youtube, but had to encode it in h.264 instead of proRes422.

You were able to upload a ProRes file to Vimeo though? That's odd, I thought neither Vimeo nor YouTube could handle ProRes content?

By the way, I ended up getting it on Youtube, but had to encode it in h.264 instead of proRes422.

You were able to upload a ProRes file to Vimeo though? That's odd, I thought neither Vimeo nor YouTube could handle ProRes content?

I know with Vimeo and using Dropbox you can do ProRes but takes a LONG time.

JB.

By the way, I ended up getting it on Youtube, but had to encode it in h.264 instead of proRes422.

You were able to upload a ProRes file to Vimeo though? That's odd, I thought neither Vimeo nor YouTube could handle ProRes content?

I do have a Vimeo PLUS account, maybe that helps. But to answer your question, Yes. It took several hours and we got 2 messages saying something like "Our machines here at Vimeo don't like ProRes, we suggest converting it to an h.264 format. However, we will attempt to encode it..." or something very similar. I should have save the screen shot. But it also suggested that my bit depth (I think) was too big 12,500 (something I can't remember and should only be max of 5,000). Nevertheless it uploaded and then encoded for HD and that was that. MANY tries, though.
Also, I exported directly from the share option on FCPX 10.0.8. to Vimeo, not a master file from their end.
Youtube... It never worked. You can see a big difference between the two on a good monitor.

A few more pics from our production...

Hello All I am shooting tomorrow for my second time with the BM/EF 2.5 K and really miffed it went down in price by a thousand weeks later.

The Camera on day one over heated in LA and doesn't shut down properly when you hold down the power button SO beware!

I NOW shut it down and leave it out and see if it really is off.

I need help on the sound. For three days we have been testing microphones and we have the NT2 ROde Boom and several different Lavs and regular plug and play microphones and only one works intermittently but not the others.

The one that works is a cheap USB mic, WTF!

I am getting more and more dismayed at the purchase of this product and lack of Support from the team of people at BMC and even more so with Samy's DV in LA.

When a 200 dollar Panasonic can out perform a camera like this then it is time to take a real look at Customer satisfaction.

I am blinks away from going on a crusade against this product!

Not at all amused.

If anyone can help on this audio "recognize me" phatom with 'line in and mic' settings and what to do to get the audio mic to record sound that would be Stellar.

And Grant expect a visit online from our Company! I am not at all Amused!

By the Way far too many issues with the camera out of the box and getting it replaced ! not good!

I also had an ISSUE with it shutting down improperly . !

I put it in my tamrac camera bag the other day , and about an hour later i went to pull it out to take a quick shot and noticed the thing was HOTTER THAN A FRYING PAN ..

To the point it could burn you ... literally ... if you held on to it too long...


Seems like its working fine ... but i doubt these cameras wont live too long if they get into a habbit of doing this..

@Ryan Raymond

So I was wondering, since I saw the pictures of your rig,

you are using a C-bracket to mount the tilta handle?

And are 'all c-brackets created equal'? Do they have enough clearance around the body and do you find it carries the weight?

The Camera on day one over heated in LA and doesn't shut down properly when you hold down the power button SO beware!

I NOW shut it down and leave it out and see if it really is off.

How do you know it overheated ? Did the camera turn off ? Were the shots affected in some way ? Or did the body just get hot to touch ?

jb