Creative type that has been involved in pro audio, photography and custom multimedia projects for about twenty years or so. Just bought a new canon 5D Mark3 and am excited to undertake some film making for multimedia projects, maybe a documentary or two... and of course some high end family video ;) Glad to have come across this site. Cheers!

I grew up surfing in Florida. Joined the US Army Airborne when I was 21. Served with 82nd Airborne, 1st Special Forces Group and SOCOM. Spent 8 months in Baghdad in 03. Got out and went to school for Interior Design as everyone does once they get out of the Airborne. It's an old story. You've probably heard it before. Met a girl there who convinced me to move to LA to become an actor. I figured I'd give it a shot since not too many people do that. Seemed really easy. (sarcasm) Spent a few years on HGTV as a Design Assistant and Carpenter. Did some small films here and there. Did the Soap Opera round as all actors do. Got pulled into Precision Driving for movies, tv and commercials. Actually make a living as an actor now, took 7 years to do that. Waited tables one day at Elephant Bar in Burbank and walked out. That was 7 years ago :) All along people told me I should be behind the camera so I finally took that advice a couple years ago and picked up an HVX200. Started a production company with my girlfriend who is a writer called FIGMO films. Any vets out there might get a kick out of that. The past year or so I've really put all of my effort and energy into production. I've been lucky with commercials and driving gigs to have the time and money to really concentrate on the craft.

Hopefully I can continue to do this and earn some what of a living from it.

My name is Todd, I am from just north of Seattle Washington. I have also lived in Oregon, Hawaii, Mexico, Nevada, California, Alaska, and I currently live in Japan working as an English teacher. I acted all throughout school, and into college, but took most pleasure in writing classes and film study. I sorta got stuck in a town with no prospects for way too long, though the life experience there was immeasurable, and I did land a role as an extra working with Jennifer Love Hewitt back when she was a tender teen, and even shared a moment with her before being shooshed by the casting director. She also attended my school, and as crazy as it sounds/was half the saved by the bell cast (the men only) showed up to my homecoming dance to hit on the way to young for them miss Hewitt.. Moving on...

I never really stopped creating, and documenting ideas. I bought a panasonic DV cam about 5 years ago, and filmed what I could, whether it be my mad talented musician brother, drunkeness, nature hikes, or short skits... I continued writing, and upon moving to Japan decided I should do my best to take things to a new level. I knew my camera and skills were lacking, so I did as much research as possible for a professional entry level camera, and it led me to the GH2, which has exceeded all of my expectations thanks to VK and the many Patch creators. I think I am more of a right brained filmer. I have studied the basics and understand framing, and some of the basic rules, and try to use it all, but I suspect I see things a bit different than many, and I try to capture a feeling more than a technically correct look, or maybe that is normal, I really don't know. I am now at the level where I believe at the very least I can start reaching out for paying gigs (other than the very low pay stuff I was doing for one of my English schools). It is a bit difficult being that I after nearly 2 years my Japanese is not very good at all. However I am slowly meeting others with similar interests. I have connected with one other GH2 user recently, and have begun helping him out with a project.

My ultimate goal is feature films, Documentaries, and perhaps some Snowboard (I am pretty good on a stick), and Scuba footage, I have ideas written on scraps of paper going back nearly 10 years, some are terrible, but some I truly believe are great. Now the trick is really writing them out and taping into my long idle/somewhat forgotten script writing skills.

I am very grateful for this forum, and all of the experienced people here. I have learned more through posts on this forums or links from members than any other resource. Thanks to all !

Hi, mates. It is fun to be part of this interesting community where knowledge is shared so generous way. I really like that and that's the reason why this site is always open in my browser. I'm glad to have discovered its existence quite from the very beginning. Vitaliy's hacking work has made many people all over the world more happy with their hacked cameras, but it also opened opportunity for many talented but low-budget (or no budget) film makers to do something on technically high level with little cheap cameras like GHx's.

My age now is somewhere between 40 and 50, I'm university teacher and kind of well-known artist. On my life road, I've lived in plenty of different countries so as logical result of it I speak fluently more languages than most of people do. My private life is not for sharing via internet, so I'll gladly skip that part and go directly to the area of our collective interests:

Videography: hobby, advanced level. Indeed some years of experience with S-VHS cameras behind me, but this area wasn't really fun until beginning of existence of High Definition. I still have to learn a lot here, it is very complicated. My first BD production was done in 2012, release as comercial BlueRay disc 2014 expected. Subject: classical music, multicam recording of dress rehearsal and concert under tungsten lighting. In PP synced audio & video editing for the final choice will be in stereo and surround audio. My equipment is listed in the next text passage.

Still photography: hobby, semi-pro level. Meanwhile 30 years of experience - in nature, portraits, macro (mainly flowers) and city night photography (long exp). Equipped with SLRs: Nikon F, Kiev 4, Canon T90 / DSLR: Nikon D800 / EVILs: several GH1s, GH2 and Sony Nex-7. Many, many lenses (friends, family and wife start to think I'm bit mad), mainly vintage Nikkor primes, but also few cool quite new ones, many Canon FDs, some Rokkors and Jupiters and some 3rd party brands. Some of my pics shot in very high mountains were sporadically published in the mountaineering magazines (I was quite freeky alpinist before). I otherwise made some money with my still pics only in one situation: still as student, when I sold quite many Ilford negatives to various magazines and newspapers. They were shot mainly in the nights on the streets of the city where I happened to live and study during revolutional changes which happened there. I accidentally lived in that city during turbulent time of its history. That money helped me to finance my study until my degree, few more years.

PA: About 7 years of gigs experience, mainly ampliflying smaller rock concerts (with 1000-8000 visitors). I don't do it anymore since long time, I never did big concerts on stadiums or so, my father didn't own so much equipment. It's not my hobby, just helped family with money earned on those gigs- I don't really like rock music and life attitudes of most rock musicians I knew is disappointing.

Accoustical audio recordings: semi-pro activity, on quite high pro quality level. Only classical music (chamber music prefered) and natural sounds samples for PP editing for film effects. Equipped with MOTU firewire interfaces (up to 20 tracks), some 20 microphones, mainly Schoeps and Neumann, several BayerDynamic and Rode mics. My recordings had several comercial CD releases, some were released by the top labels. I don't do it often, for lack of time and I also never wanted to rip away gigs from freelance guys who badly needed such gigs to survive, and some of them are damn good.

PP & editing: for audio I use mainly Magix's editing software, simply because I know it well after years of using it, so I can work very fast with them. Interesting, how few people here seem to know and use their video editing software. I've started using it just out of habit, but didn't have to deal with most of PP issues people here seem to struggle with. Having that said, I don't make comercials as I know also Magix' weaknesses.... well, nobody and nothing is perfect.

Sorry everybody, my text got much longer than I wanted.

Hi - I am working as a camera producer for european companies. Most of them are agencies oder industrial concerns. We are located close to München in the heart of bavaria. Our spectrum has a wide range - what the customer wants we shoot.

Hello all. I first discovered this forum about 18 months ago and I owe virtually every thing I have learned about film making to this forum. The different areas of expertise and the interest from so many allows questions to be quickly answered. Well done VK and all who contribute.

So a wee bit about what we do, we are a Husband and Wife team doing wedding films for people in the North East of Scotland, based in a small fishing town of Peterhead. I'm the technical part of the team, my wife is the creationist and she puts all our footage together. We started out filming School Balls and Proms and a couple managed to persuade us to do their wedding video. Reluctantly we agreed and armed with two Panasonic SD900s we managed to make a pretty good go for our first wedding video. They were delighted with the result and so were we. Two years later we have to turn people away because we are too busy and we like to take our time with each film that we do.

We now work with two GH3s and one GH2 as B cam for ceremonies. The best move we ever made equipment wise was downsizing to M 4/3rds and our work has definitely bettered and benefited from it.

Wedding work is tough, you have one moment to get it right. You are the director, the sound guy and the camera man in one and sometimes customers can make the day a breeze or very challenging. Anybody looking to get into event style or wedding related film work needs to always be mindful that its not about you and your work, its about them and what they want and expect from you. If you meet that and produce something that you are happy with then you are doing well.

Looking forward to potential GH3 hack, then GH2 will be replaced with GH3 to allow +30 minute recording!

Hi All, I own a cinematic video production company and also started the meetup group DSLR-Cinematography. We use serveral 60Ds, 7D, 5Dmk2, with bunch of lens and gears. We would like to do more short commercials and even a tv channel on youtube.

Hello to all at Personal-View, My name is Richard, I am 30 years old, fascinated by film/movies. Since 1998 when I got my first panasonic DV camcorder, I have been trying to emulate my heroes of Cinema with Video. I love video because it has always been there for me. Film is not easily accesible and for a hobbyist like me, the affordability of video is perfect. I got married and had kids and so a long time passed without having practiced the videomaking craft, It wasn't until I heard about this new camera called the "Gh1" and how it was being hacked that I realized how much I liked the "look" of video and what a good tool it was for telling a story now. So this is what I want to do now with my life, I want to be a videomaker.

Hi all,
my name is Michael and together with my brother and a friend I produce image films as well as wedding films and photography (http://www.hollywedd.de). We are seated near Stuttgart / Germany and also produce sports livestreams (mainly in pool billiards, check our channel http://www.youtube.com/poolstage) which we started 4 years ago. But since the creative part is not that much in sports we launched our image and wedding film business a couple of months ago. We film with Canon DSLR (5D Mark III and 60D with Magic Lantern) and Sony EX1R (mainly for live productions). We got in contact with this forum when we tested the GH2 hack. We like it very much because the people here are so creative and post contructive ideas.
Kind regards to all of you,
Michael

I'm Miko, i'm freelance documentarist and colorist, living now in South America. I've done some documentary: the one I prefere is about bolivian wrestling, shooted with a Sony PDX1 and a RedRock Micro, you can watch here

__//vimeo.com/40460784, please no videos here, VK

I like this site and the incredible hacks for the Panasonic cameras!

Hi Everyone!

I was born in Spain ( Granada ), I was freelance photographer for about ten years. Now I am editor and documentarist in Think Image Association based in the Université Paris-Est de Créteil ( Île de France ). I've done some documentary and reportage photographic in India, Morocco, Syria, France and Spain.

http://vimeo.com/thinkimage

Cheers Francis

( Awesome blog and people here!, thanks Mr. Kiselev )

Hey all! My name is Maury Jacks, and I live in Austin, Texas. After graduation from the University of Texas with a bachelors degree in Architectural Engineering in 1987, I spent just one year as an engineer. Hated it. Went back to UT and spent a year taking more undergraduate classes in preperation for entering the graduate film program. Well, the summer before entering graduate school, I got an unpaid internship in the sound department on a film called "The Hot Spot". Goodbye school. One thing led to another, and I moved to Los Angeles and joined the sound/video/projectionist union, IASTE Local 695. After spending seven years as a cableman/cableperson, I got a job as a video assist operator and have never looked back since. Been doing it for seventeen years and still enjoy it. The last, released film that I worked on was "Flight".

The formats have changed over the years. Tape based: U-Matic, VHS, S-VHS, 8mm, Digital8, MiniDV. Hard disc based capture: DV25, MJPEG, DNXHD, ProRes. Hard disc based editing: D-Vision, Discreet Logic Edit, Avid Xpress DV, Avid Xpress HD, Avid Xpress Pro HD, Avid Media Composer. Cameras: Bell & Howell Eyemo, Panavision, Arriflex, Moviecam, Paramount VistaVision, Thompson Viper...

After living in LA for ten years, I realized that most of the people I cared about lived back in Austin. So I moved back and bought a house. Best decision of my life. I now make short, fun films with my friends between travelling to distant locations for my day job. I dabble in DIY, 3D filmmaking which lead me to learn open source methods for Digital Cinema Package creation so I could project them on theater screens. This lead to DCP consulting for the Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas based here in Austin.

I am in the process of putting together a full set of Minolta lenses for my GH2s. It is quite fun learning how to disassemble, clean and lightly re-grease them for easy use with follow focus. If you want to know how to involuntarily de-click a lens, just start taking it apart and watch the ball bearing roll away!

Thanks to all on this site. I have learned so much from y'all! Special thanks go to Vitaliy!

Hi everone! My name is Jon and I live in Sweden with my wife and two kids.

Ah geez, where to begin? After an unfinished science major in biochemistry and four years of art school in France (geule d'atmosphère!) I had a smallish carrier as a portait painter in the late 90-ies.

At heart I'm actually a musician with a soft spot for electronica. I used to work in a recording studio with some other musicians in the early 00-ies mostly producing pop/dance stuff. We never had that hit track but at least we had loads of fun and I learned much about sound design, arrangement and mixing and I still produce my own tracks for fun in Reason and Ableton Live.

Oscillian has been my nick since 2000 and comes from being a analogue synth geek :)

Skip ahead to the 10-ies and to make things even more bi-polar I now work as a Microsoft Excel trainer/instructor for industrial companies such as Siemens, SSAB, and Toyota! Didn't see that one coming in art school, for sure ;) This is my main source of income right now.

Oh yeah! I nearly forgot: Ever since the 80-ies I'm a huge film buff with a penchant for sci-fi and my childhood was very much forged by Spielberg and Lucas and later on Scott and Cameron. As a teenager I always borrowed my fathers VHS camcorder and got my friends together to shoot some action/sci-fi stuff in the woods (where else when you grow up in the midst of pine trees).

This interest contiuned somewhat in art school with mini-DV and "artsy" stuff (very high brow and pretencious crap) but my interest in filmmaking reignited when I got my first pocket camera with HD-recording: the Panasonic TZ-7. At the same time a friend of mine with a 550D introduced me to Vimeo and the DSLR video revolution: I was blown away!

I got very impressed with some wedding highlight reels from the US (mostly 5Dkm2 stuff) and how one could tell a story in 3-4 minutes about two people getting married in very creative ways.

I contiuned to shoot some shorts about bushes and leaves (very original!) and learned the art mostly from the internet and especially DVXUSER forums where I stumbled upon... the Panny hacks and Vitaliys meme from Firefly (I actually thought he looked like that!). The TZ7 turned into a GF1 and then into a GH1 and finally into a GH2 and I was hooked!

Once Vitaliy left the DVX scene I migrated to Personal-view and I have since then enjoyed the very creative atmosphere here!

One thing lead to another and suddenly I found myself shooting weddings on the weekends during the warm season and teaching Excel the rest of the year.

Right now I'm busy teaching and preparing the upcoming wedding season.

Cheers! /Jon