周金亮-想說話的歌 | 預告版

一部關於馬來西亞資深音樂人－周金亮“想說話的歌”的短篇紀錄片。片里的歌曲“寂寞晚上”是由周金亮詞曲包辦，非常的動聽。
A short documentary about a renown composer/song writer in Malaysia - Chow Kam Leong. The song title "lonely night" was written and composed by himself.

希望有耳機的朋友可以用耳機靜靜聆聽周金亮，想說話的歌。
We hope you can watch this using your earphone, or at a quiet place.

Director: Dick Chua
Producer: Kahgiap Lee
Cinematographer: Dick Chua, Kahgiap Lee, Kahooi Lai
Sound recording: Xiang
Editor: Dick Chua
Production House: D1 Production

Some snapshots:

Canon 550D/Rebel T2i first test

Had my first test with 550D at one of the famous street in KL, Malaysia - Bintang Walk

Shot with EF50mm f1.8, 720p 50fps, ISO800-1600, Standard picture style, manual setting, edited and slowmo in FCP.

Just like the 7D, there are 2 settings for video in 550D, which is either fully auto, or fully manual. It also comes with the same frame size and frame rate with the 7D, which you can shoot from full HD 1080p, 720p, to SD 640x480. In addition, 550D came out with a new cropped frame for 640x480 which is just cropped pixel that made it like a zoom. Picture quality wise, I would say it is excellent, I can't really tell the different between 550D and 7D.

Things that I don't like about it compared to 7D, is the video mode have to switch from the dial on top, and it is located too far from the creative picture mode (AV, TV, M...), means that if I wanted to take picture with the AV mode (which I oftenly do), and instantly I want to switch to video, I have to rotate about a circle to reach the video mode.

Compared to 7D, the 550D's respond time is abit slow. There is a obvious delay when I record - stop - magnify - and record again. Sometimes I have to press a few times to do the magnifying focus. I think this due to the single processor in 550D, while the 7D has dual processor.

However, the good thing is I found it's more easier to focus compared to 7D, maybe because the LCD is slightly bigger, and the screen looks sharper.

550D is definitely a camera which "You get more from what you pay!". It's handy, light and easy to bring around, and is still hard to believe that with this size of camera, you get to produce such superb quality video!

I'm The One - Commercial Ad

Client: Justlife
Title: I'm The One

Cast:
Lim Shan Fei as Zheng Hao Sir
FiFi Leong as Wonton Mee lady boss
Li Hwa as girl in the cafe
Ahmad Murad Abd Rahman as the cafe boss

Crew:
Producer: Kahgiap Lee
Writer/Director: Dick Chua
DOP: Dick Chua
Location Sound: Kah Hooi
Music Composer: Singblass
Production Assistant: Xiang, Kah Hooi
Editor: Dick Chua
Motion graphic: Kahgiap Lee
Production House: D1 Production

Special thanks to: Wei Jan, Kai Yen, Raymond, Chong Hooi, Xiao Wei, Jhunnie, and everyone else who helped and contributed the photos.

Related link:
Youtube version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TASPS3mwT6M
Behind the scene: http://www.vimeo.com/10755247
Justlife facebook: http://www.facebook.com/justlifeshop

Snapshots:

Desmond + June | Wedding SDE

Congratulations to Desmond and June! This is the sde video screen during their wedding dinner, hope you enjoy! :)

'I'm The One' - Behind the scene

A 'Behind the scene' of a commercial shoot we did recently, thanks to Kahgiap who shot this.
A big thanks to Shan Fei, FiFi, Lihwa and everyone else who helped during the shoot. The final video will be out by the 20th this month. We will also share more about this production at that time.

Stay tuned. :)

WeiHan + WuiHa | Wedding SDE

Congratulation to this cute couple WeiHan and WuiHa!

It was a very hot day!!! and I couldn't stop sweating all day long, non-stop! But it was fun. Wei Han is friend since college time, and now I am so happy to be there to capture the moments of his big day!

The wedding ceremony was a happening one, Wei Han has a big family of relatives, some of them came all the way from Australia. The ceremony ended around 3pm, means until the dinner reception, I had only 3 hours for the SDE editing, including file transfering and output.
That's one, another challenging part was to use the Final Cut Pro to edit for the first time. I knew Avid would spend too much time on the transcoding during import, to overcome that problem, I recently bought a new MacBookPro to replace my old broken laptop, and also to use FCP for faster same day editing.

Everything went so rush, and we were still rendering the video while on our way to the dinner reception. Anyway, we were glad this video came out on time, and this was screened at their dinner reception. :)

HANDS Percussion - BTS

It is our pleasure to help the HANDS Percussion team (手集團) to produce video for their drum performance. We had great time working with a group of passionate and artistic people, including the lighting guys, sound guys and the drummers who are young and energetic!

We spent one day at the Actor Studio Lot10, from setting up lights and sounds, rehearsing, and filming for 2 pieces of their drum performance.

It was also our first time shooting with the combination of Canon 7D and 5Dmk2. We hope you enjoy this behind-the-scene while waiting the video to complete! :)

Choreographer: Bernard Goh
Cinematographer: Dick Chua, Ah Bak
Lighting: Ah Heng
Sound: John
Editor: Dick Chua

My new sound gadgets

Sounds and audios are very important in film making, yet they are always something not taken care by the independence film makers. From the previous videos I had made, I realized that the audio is a big issue with VDSLR camera - it's mono and doesn't allow any setting control for audio/sound, not even a AGC (Automatic gain control) built in it, so even when I plug in a external mic, the audio level can go too high and result a very bad audio.

So here's something I bought in recently, a ROBE Video Mic & a ZOOM H4N handy recorder.

ROBE Video Mic is a condenser microphone which made to mount on the DSLR's hot shoe. This directional condenser microphone focus on the sound coming from infront, and isolate the sound from the background. It is a very good mic for taking on-the-go dialogues, very useful when shooting documentary. The quality is almost as good as pointing a boom mic at the subject.

ZOOM H4N recorder is a combination of a high quality stereo microphone and a sound recorder. It can be taking up to 4 channels of audios, and you can control each sound level. It records in both wav and mp3 format, with the qualities up to 24bit/96kHz. Many more functions and setting you can play around... It works as an independence device, it's very handy and easy bring around, and I love that it supports XLR cable!

Here's a quick test of the stereo mic:

Now with these 2 gadgets, I can have good audios in my video! Yeah! :D