[Blaise Douros]

Not only does it have to be .mov, but the codec (not just the wrapper) needs to support alpha. ProRes 4444, for example, or Animation.

[Blaise Douros]

Okay, a few things:

Maybe consider doing a Modify > Interpret Footage to your 23.976 media so it plays nice with your 24p media? That would eliminate one source of headache.

As far as 59.94 media goes, if Frame Sampling is set as your time interpolation setting, you’re going to see some stutter in the footage as it samples roughly every 1.5 frames–essentially, it’s kind of like using a faster shutter on your 24p media. You might need to try using Frame Blending on a shot-by-shot basis; shots with lots of movement may benefit from Frame Blending, but not so much stationary stuff.

Now, this is the craziest idea of all, but stay with me.

What if you edited your timeline to account for the 24p to 25p conversion, and then conformed your 24p timeline to 25p after exporting at 24p? Thereby limiting the amount of interpolation artifacts, and allowing for a cleaner end result.

You can calculate the ideal sequence length using: https://toolstud.io/video/framerate.php For example, a 60-second sequence contains 1440 frames at 24p; convert to 25p, and 1440 frames becomes 57.60 seconds. So if you go the other way, you find that 1500 frames in 24p, or 62.5 seconds, conforms to 60 seconds at 25p.

Anyway, maybe it’s too late for all that. But it’s a thought.

[Blaise Douros]

Your Canon lenses (assuming they’re EF and not EF-S lenses) will work considerably better with the Sony cameras; the focal lengths (at the wide end, anyway) just won’t work well for the 2x crop of the M43 sensor, even with a Speedbooster.

However, the 10-bit 4:2:2 color available on the GH5s would give me considerable pause. That alone might be worth switching to a complete M43 system if this is going to be your primary camera. 10-bit 4:2:2 gives you so much more color data it’s not even funny–grading it is totally different from 8-bit 4:2:0 footage.

If you’re absolutely unwilling to give up your Canon lenses, then Sony is the right choice for you–who knows, maybe the A7sIII will also have 10-bit 4:2:2 color? But if you need the most flexibility in your post-production, and you need it NOW, then the GH5s and a new stable of lenses will be the best bet.

[Blaise Douros]

Go into the motion track, and delete some of the tracked keyframes–specifically the ones where an undesirable jump occurs. After Effects will interpolate the motion between them, smoothly. I do this all the time when I get a little bit of undesirable jitter in a point track.

[Blaise Douros]

Shoot Slog2 or Slog3. Make sure your white balance settings are the same. ISO settings are never going to match exactly between two different camera models, but if you pay attention and do a few tests beforehand to figure out what ISO on the A7sII matches the FS7’s native ISO of 2000, you should be fine.

In post, use the same LUT to start your color grade, and make adjustments accordingly. When you make large-scale exposure adjustments, it’s best to do them pre-LUT. So add one layer of Lumetri, adjust the macro exposure values, and then add a second layer of Lumetri for the LUT and any fine-tuning of the post-LUT image.

You’re not going to have the color depth on the A7sII that you will on the FS7, so your best bet will be to make minor adjustments to the A7sII image, and then use the FS7’s latitude to make larger-scale adjustments to match. This isn’t ideal, but it’s better than trying to squeeze too much out of the A7sII’s 8-bit 4:2:0 codec to try to match the FS7’s 10-bit 4:2:2.

[Blaise Douros]

You could use Mocha to do a planar track of the whole arm, and then apply the planar track to a solid. Then you create and tweak the mask on the solid over the vein on frame 1. Now you’ve got a tracked mask on the vein that should allow you to do whatever alterations you want to do.

[Blaise Douros]

For real pros, I’ve seen day rates anywhere from $500 to $1200/day depending on experience, and it can go higher, no problem. If you want to translate that hourly, $50-$120/hr, based on a 10-hour day.

[Blaise Douros]

If I had to guess, I’d say Turbulent Displace and the Wiggle expression.

[Blaise Douros]

All I want in my career is to be better than Vince–I know it well ☺

I get it–but here’s what you’re not hearing from my end: I WANT to create the sense of a live presentation. I do it on purpose, to facilitate that feel, in the cases that I use it. Whether there’s a real audience or not, I shoot it as though there is because in these cases, the company I do these for is addressing their customers as a tribe, collectively, not like Vince, who’s trying to hustle you one-on-one.

[Blaise Douros]

Somebody figured out how to do this punk-rock-style for the FS7 using the Hirose connection: https://community.sony.com/t5/FS7/REC-status-indicator/td-p/481663/page/2

I assume you could probably do it with a bigger light.

As an FS7 shooter myself, I don’t know of an off-the-shelf solution, though.