filmic look techniques when shooting 30p

[2mancrew]

hi,
When we are shooting "creative b-roll" with prime lenses.
We shoot on Canon C300 (original model)
Sometimes the client's want 1080/29.97p as a more filmic look even though when it is broadcast it is 720/60p on the network.
We will sometimes use a tripod & prime lenses for this "creative b-roll" and try to use f/2-f/2.8 and go with a 1/48th second shutter speed for motion artifacts similar to shooting 23.98fps with standard 1/48th shutter.
Sometimes we will lower the black gamma for more contrast and "crushed blacks". We choose our camera profile and bake it in with whites clipping at 100% IRE broadcast legal as The client doesn't want to do color correction/grading. Sometimes we reduce sharpness in the Custom Profile.
Sometimes we use Nikon stills vintage prime telephoto lenses like a 180mm and put some christmas lights in the background for huge globes of spherical highlights.

I was wondering do others do these things also?

Other than starting to use a slider for Left-Right trucking or forward-backward dolly in/out camera moves would you share any other tricks/techniques for a more filmic-look when you have to stick to the producer's format of 1080/30p using a Super-35mm sensor camera?

-Brian

 

[cameragod]

To me its more about lighting. Get that right and all else follows. As for sliders I see a lot of them used by those who have no idea what they are trying to achieve with slider shots. In movie language the main use of slow tracking shots while people are talking is to create a feeling of separation from the person talking and their environment, or reveal something... usually it creates a sense of detachment which I can't help thinking is the exact opposite of what a good interview should be convening.
The art of good film making is using techniques to help tell the story, too many grab all the toys they can think of and to hell with the story as long as the shot looks cool.
Sorry to be a downer

 

[MOShooter]

I think 1080/30p is naturally going to look like video. Lenses and lighting will help, but the missing element will be the native framerate. I don't shoot news anymore, but we shoot all our marketing videos in 4K 23.98 and output 1080/30.

 

[2mancrew]

on-set conversion from 23.98 to 30p or 720/60p

I think 1080/30p is naturally going to look like video. Lenses and lighting will help, but the missing element will be the native framerate.

Occasionally the client needs 720/60p which looks even more like video with the higher frame rate.
I was considering using a Datavideo DAC-70 up/down/cross converter
http://www.datavideo.com/us/product/DAC-70
shooting at 1080/23.98p
and using the DAC-70 to convert to 720/60p and recording the HDSDI output on the Sony PMW-RX50 SxS Card Recorder/Player . We have access to this equipment but haven't tested it to see how it looks as far as a high quality 3:2 pulldown of frames without major stutter from the conversion.

Yes I know this is a very convoluted way and unnecessarily complicated but for one-room tripod-only this is possible to get that ‘film look’ appearance of motion blur from motion artifacts similar to shooting 23.98fps with standard 180-degree shutter @ 1/48th second).
Alternatively we could also use it to convert to 1080/29.97p when the client wants the format as 1080/30p as my original post mentioned was the format preferred. Again we haven't tested this method yet to see how the 3:2 pulldown quality looks.