Onyx Cinema talks to CEO Jesse Gant as well as HR professional Aurelio Cerdas about how the concept of Recmnd.Me will change the referral process for professionals within all industries.

Featured on TechCrunch and SF Chronicle, linked below:

Recmnd.Me on TechCrunch
Recmnd.Me on SF Chronicle

The website already features talented professionals from IBM, Google, Oakly, Microsoft, Amazon and more!

Tech specs:
Shot on the Canon 7D and 5D on the Technicolor Cinestyle picture style. Audio recorded with sennheiser G2 lavalier and azden shotgun mic. Lit with a Kinoflo Diva light and Arri 650 Fresnel matched with the natural daylight coming into our location. Shot in Anaheim.

A sneak peek into the dark world within the laundromat in a film starring Edward Rowley, Alice Wen and Luca Rodrigues. The teaser trailer features original music from talented film composer Chanda Dancy!

The film will be premiering at the Visual Communications “Digital Posse Ver. 2012″ program on May 13th, 2012 at 7PM at the Director’s Guild of America Theater 1.

Click Here for Tickets!

This is the first narrative production for Onyx Cinema’s beloved Red Scarlet-X “Rockwell” camera, and it performed admirably. Andy Chen, Nick Bianchi and Joseph Vu were inseparable as a camera team as Yasu Tsuji transferred like a madman as DIT. Everybody enjoyed working with the Scarlet-X. Much much less glitchy than the Epic, so they were happy campers.

The film is premiering on May 13th at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific American Film Festival at the Directors Guild of America!

Special thanks to Onyx Cinema’s photographer/cinematographer Georgia Yeh, who was behind the camera through the entire filmmaking process.

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Presented here is a 1 minute web-friendly highlight reel of the footage we shot.

Michael and Anthony were on board to shoot video and Georgia directed photo in an intense single day shoot that featured a total of 6 locations and 6-7 wardrobe/style changes. Everybody was on their toes, and hair/makeup/stylists worked in unison with our photo/video team to make the day.

At first, with the time constraints we were originally thinking that the safe way to go was DSLR, with a little bit of Scarlet-X thrown in. After seeing the amount of latitude the Scarlet-X gave us at the first location, the Scarlet-X became our main camera… we went the other way around!

Michael had just finished his film production “Unmentionables” with the Scarlet-X, so this was a major switch from narrative film production camera-build to fully run/gun usage, and the camera performed admirably through some tough conditions.

Especially when jumping through the hoops with harsh light, stark shadow, and lighting color temperatures that were all over the place, we had little to no time to perfect our white balance and ISO settings. This is where the redcode really shined. During the post process, we were able to tweak the shot’s shooting settings to perfection, after the fact!

Here’s a challenge for you viewers out there. Can you tell the difference between DSLR footage (shot on technicolor cinestyle) and Red Scarlet-X footage?

Georgia’s photos can be seen on her photography website at www.georgiayeh.com

Onyx Cinema's video playing before doors open!

Ya Los Angeles Website: www.yalosangeles.com
Makeup by KC Witkamp www.makeupbykc.com
Stylist Eddie Cook
Models: Stevie Scott and Tiffany Michelle
Special thanks to Ya Los Angeles’s Alex Conners

The production was a test of run and gun fusion cinema/photo teamwork within time the time constraints. The Red Scarlet-X was impressive as a run and gun Red Digital Cinema camera.

Our web version of the video coming soon!

For more stunning photography, check out Georgia Yeh Photography

Check out Ya Los Angeles!

What resulted was a fun journey into the company, with new experiences of running around air hangars, jumping into airplanes and putting on cool anti-static lab coats.

This was the first time the company had a video crew running around their offices and asking questions in interviews, and we can tell how the production started to bring everybody together for the sake of cheering on their second family – Otto.

This film was completed around when Onyx Cinema acquired its Red Scarlet-X camera. So while the vast majority of the film was shot run & gun DSLR, we snuck a few bonus shots of our first field run of the nifty new camera into the final edit.

Filming in a location that was a natural bounce board made it so a lighting setup was unnecessary, but also put the dynamic range of the camera to the test.

Even with us just learning how to operate “Rockwell”, the Red footage impressed us with its flexibility, but also showed us the behavior of the footage when there are beams of sunlight, clipping the highlights. The flexibility of the R3D files allowed us to tweak to our heart’s content, in Redcine-X Pro, to make a couple of clipped shots work well. Redcine-X pro is definitely a BIG improvement over Redcine-X and I can’t go back.

Along with balancing the package to the steadicam, it was a great overall learning experience made easy due to the subject matter of course.

We took our R3D into Red Cine X Pro and transcoded out to Apple Pro Res 422 at 2k. Edited in Final Cut Pro. So nothing fancy in terms of 4k workflow. We still love the footage at 2k. Typography was done in After Effects.

Alice Wen and Edward Rowley in the opening scene of "Unmentionables"

Penned by Owen Andrade, “Unmentionables” brings our hero into the dark pasts of others where he is faced with a decision of changing history. The 68 Degrees Films group – who Onyx Cinema’s Michael, Joseph Vu and Georgia Yeh are founding members of – teams up to make this film a reality.

Director of Photography Andy Chen and Director Michael Shu strike a pose as Sound Mixer Jakob Beetem does.. something

The first overnight day of shooting not only includes the main cast of Edward Rowley, Alice Wen and Luca Rodrigues, but also guest stars the 5 year old Anabelle Vu, who lit up the set with her adorable screen presence.

Director of Photography Andy Chen commands the camera, lighting and grip crew, utilizing Onyx Cinema’s new Red Scarlet-X camera. This one of the very first film productions in the world to be shot with the new model camera, and it has performed admirably as a very flexible and lightweight camera for its class.

Michael stands in as 1st AC Nick Bianchi preps Onyx Cinema

Also on the crew are 68 Degrees Films’ Elaine Shengya Hu, Jakob Beetem, Joseph Vu and Georgia Yeh.

More updates on the shoots as they come! Special thanks to Georgia Yeh of Georgia Yeh Photography for her behind the scenes work!

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Onyx Cinema’s Michael Shu, Anthony Vu and Georgia Yeh join forces to create the beautiful and sexy imagery that our cameras can capture.

The RED SCARLET-X is flown on the Steadicam Zephyr and given a slider treatment thanks to Midas Mount’s skate-rail dolly.

The RED SCARLET-X is equipped with View Factor’s APU-IDX V-mount battery plate and is powered by VL batteries, mounted on a Zacuto Universal Baseplate joined with the Redrock Micro Shoulder Mount and microMattebox. We have the microMattebox on 15mm rails, so in order to get the mattebox to the correct height, we added the microLink3.

Here is the footage:

We try to make helpful tools for people out there who want to learn more about filmmaking. With the purchase of the RED SCARLET, we needed to familiarize ourselves with the R3D workflow. So we created a simple graphic we wanted to share to help guide the process.