The main story:
I composed this video as a gift for a friend’s 50th birthday. I wanted it to reflect a Jewish influence and have a violin reference, because she is Jewish and plays the violin semi-professionally. I was able to accomplish both with the visuals and the music (with its Klezmer tone). I shot the video, edited it, color-graded it and created the music, in 4 days.
The technical story:
On a clear day by Lake Zürich, I shot it with the Blackmagic Cinema Camera, in the RAW format, using a Sigma 50-150 mm, f 2.8, lens. I did a one-light pass in Davinci Resolve 9 before editing it in FCPX 10.0.9. I sent it back to Resolve for a multi-nodal grade, and some editing fine-tuning, and then rendered it out to HD. I gave myself 5-frame handles which proved very helpful to do a few 1-frame trims in FCPX.
Working with a 2400 × 1350 frame to deliver at 1920 x 1080 allowed me to edit inside the frame by panning and zooming (all in Resolve) to re-compose, without losing quality. Most folks talk about the wonderful image virtues of shooting in UHD, but the editing capabilities it provides are equally, or perhaps more important.
Enjoy the video! It’s only 1:30 minutes long.