Chapter 12: After the Subway
Monday, April 20, 2009 at 9:16AM As seen this morning on my NAB panel. My contribution to the emerging Subway Short genre of camera tests, with a twist—what happens after all the furtive subway hopping and phone dialing?
To see it in HD, you’ll have to go to YouTube (and please do). Why no HD on Vimeo? Vimeo only serves HD at 24p, and as lovely as that sounds, this short was shot on the Canon 5D Mark II, and therefore is at 30fps. Vimeo does a sloppy convesion to 24p, which is not cool.
Stu
Thanks for all the comments below guys! Here’s a bit more about the short.
First of all, I knew going into this that the look would be that heartbreaking amalgamation of cinematic depth of field and video-like motion. But I didn’t want to send this camera back to Vincent without shooting something. I still consider this a “camera test” more than anything—but really, the best thing to come of the shoot was meeting The Stunt People, who are both the stars and co-creators of this peice. I can’t wait to work with Eric and the guys again.
I won’t shoot anything else at 30p, ever, unless I plan on slowing it down to 24 for a slight overcrank effect. I’ve seen entire TV commercials shot 30 for 24 though, so it could happen. I harassed the Canon reps at NAB today about 24p and manual control until they were afraid of me.
As devastating as the frame rate is, the lack of shutter control is worse. Most of the nasty video-like look is due to the camera’s frequent use of a shutter speed slower than 1/60. There’s plenty of 1/30 in there, which is the equivalent of a 360 degree shutter on a film camera—an impossibility, and a dead giveaway of video origination (even at 24p).
There are people out there enjoying some luck converting 5D Mark II footage to 24p using tools such as Twixtor and the built-in retiming in After Effects, but that only works on relatively sedate subjects (of which this short has very few), and even then, there are often nasty artifacts to contend with. Didn’t we choose this camera for image quality?
I had two big dropouts, which I fixed using that After Effects retiming feature. I immediately bought some Extreme IV CF cards to avoid that problem in the future.
I shot with only one lens, the slow-but-lovely 24–105mm f/4 L lens that comes with the camera. We were mostly at f/4.0, although I can’t be sure we always were. I stopped doing the half-twist trick after I realized how much I and the camera would be moving around. So as shallow as the DOF is, it’s nothing compared to what we could have had if I’d used primes. That’s a big leg up the 5D could have over the Panasonic GH1—even with slow glass, the Canon can make DOF that can be used as a storytelling aide, such as the moment where our guy sees the two adversaries in the distance. They appear as blurry blobs, just the way I like ‘em.
I had access to the full Redrock Micro DSLR bundle, but wound up stripping it way, way down to something I could be agile with and still pull focus as a solo operator. This stripped-down rig became the inspiration for the rig I blogged about recently.
I used my HV20 for one shot. Can you guess which one?
Editor Gregory Nussbaum (The Spirit) cut with Final Cut Pro, using half-res proxies that I rendered out of After Effects. When we locked the cut, I exported XML from Final Cut and imported that into Premiere Pro CS4. I then loaded that Premiere project into After Effects. From there, I could create precomps for each clip and swap in the full-res originals.
I color corrected entirely using Magic Bullet Colorista, sometimes several layers per shot. Many Power Masks to sculpt lighting and lift faces, as well as to unite the various colors of light present in the location. I used no lighting or bounce of any kind during the shoot.
I used the DV Rebel Tools to add new color correction layers and to preview my work using a configurable thumbnail view. The result is a deep, but very organized After Effects timeline.
And I will post more about most of these things!
Reader Comments (70)
Wou that was verily great, the images, the fights, the shots, just every thing
Anders
Yeah! Very cool. Pretty pictures, nice action. I'm not so sure about the CMOS, though. Or the framerate.
Yo Stu. Solid, as expected.
Because I knew you made it, I was interested throughout. But what if I didn't know it was yours, and what if I hadn't read your blog/site during the process?
I watched it again, and...
My immediate reaction was 'without danger, there is no action', so until I saw the girl, I didn't really care if he lived or died. Other than that, it was strong. I really like that you didn't go over the top with camera movement and placement during the action.
And as I lose sleep and work on my own short, I am continually impressed that people actually finish stuff.
So, congratulations.
The fight scene looked great, sound great, felt great. What did the foley artist use for those arm breaks? They were brutal. On the 5d footage, for $2,700 bucks + lens rental, I'm impressed. Has any digital ever looked that good? There were a few horizontal splits in the footage as I watched it on Youtube HD and SD, is that just my playback or something that was actually recorded? What do you think about converting the footage in 24p?
Nice shoots and edit - I guess cutting those action scenes where not that easy. The guys look like real actors. But the 30 fps are really disturbing...
Anyway, thanks for doing this short!
Very clever way to open up a short film, as though it exists amongst a bigger film, or does it?
Good work.
Was this done all with available light? Looks nice. Overall, I liked it, though I did find some of the crosscutting of the action to be a little confusing. Nice work, though.
Love the direction and stunts, but that 30fps motion is really distracting. It look sso much like video. I don't know why canon always has to tie your hands like that with cool gadgets. The lack of shutter control and 24p is beyond annoying.
Other than that, it looks fantastic. Especially the shallow focus.
-Ayz
i didn't notice, but dId you do any 30 for 24 (mini slow-mo)?
BTW love the 'skewed' credits.
Thanks for sharing Stu. Did you get a chance to talk to Canon about the 5D at the show? I am curious what the response at the booth has been.
Good work! Looks great!
BTW, Vimeo re-encodes HD in 25 fps as maximum now, not 24 as it used to be. However, your video was not re-encoded in HD by Vimeo (you didn't upload a 720p file maybe?), so what you see there it's the SD version at 30 fps. Vimeo didn't mess with your frame rate in SD mode.
Great, the day I finally finish my subway short, you have something for after the subway haha.
Looks good, the shorter cuts make the 30fps less noticeable.
Nice.
This short sums up the pros and cons of the camera nicely. An the cons sadly outweighs the pros by a fair amount.
Stu-
Can you please start a 720p torrent so we can all enjoy this in its full glory!
Thanks!
Would love more info. Like, which lenses did you use? What were your overall impressions of the 5D??? Likes and dislikes? Are you going to run out and buy one, or keep using Laforet's? :)
I was just about to recommend shooting with a smaller shutter angle, say 150 deg or so because the video motion blur always looks bad to my eye - but then I remembered the 5D doesn't let you control it! Who knows it may have been doing a 360 deg shutter for all we know. 30fps wouldn't look so bad with a bit less of that video motion blur.
I alway prefer to shoot video at a bit less than the usually recommended 180 deg shutter for this reason. Anyone else agree?
Looks great. Why people are distracted by the 30fps, I don't know. I didn't notice. I was *watching* the action and the story. This looks GREAT for a still camera. Any vfx in this? I didn't notice anything, or the compositing was immaculate.
Thanks for the post. Nice job on directing, blocking, shooting, color and especially sound work - sound to me is what really sets this off more than the excellent image quality.
Ditto on the 30p - handheld action aka Bourne series just works so much better. Rolling shutter does not bother me, in someways I think it be used expressively but the 24fps "settles" handheld better. This camera with 24fps and full manual controls would be awesome. Hopefully the GH1 or something from someone else arrives soon in Rebel price range - it's the Holy Grail for sure.
Way cool....this was zero budget.. bunch of guys "playin" around? Sweet. I have seen Matthew Bennett doing great stuff Twixtoring his MKII stuff to 24fps @ cinema5d.com... I just hate the idea of the workaround with the Nikon lens to get manual aperture/shutter control... Is that still the deal?
You just convinced me to ignore all of the 5D's issues and go buy the damn thing...
Seriously. I mean I could tell it was video still (as much as I try to deny it), but if the film is interesting, it really doesn't seem to matter. Maybe that's just me.
Ok, I'm not really gonna go buy the 5D, but only because I'm waiting for the 1D MkIV whenever that comes out. I need an upgrade to my current 1D MKIII and I hear the 5D struggles in low-light, which I badly need for weddings.
If it weren't for that though, I'd be ignoring all the warning signs (no 24p, no manual controls, etc) and just go get it.
Like it, but the 30p looks so bad. Hope the GH1 will work like thought and give me a good amount of manual controls.
But all in all this one really looks good. besides the Motion Blur and the 30p...
Pretty nice, I shoot with a 5dmk2 too and like it but for this type of short, the slow shutter speed seems very distracting in a short with so much action. I think i would have made sure to shoot at 1/60th or faster shutter at all times even if it meant underexposing a bit and correcting in post, it wouldnt seem that tough to do in the environment where the short took place. if anything, 180degrees or faster shutter would look nice for that kind of action content.
also it didnt look too bad but the color seemed overdone, blacks too crushed and too blue, kinda just looks like an mb looks preset that is too agressive. was there something weird about the volumetric lighting effect at 0:29? were any lights used?
overall cool test shoot idea, but seems like the lack of lighting and use of slow shutter, occasional focus issue, and high contrast color grade dont really show off the 5dmk2 in the best light. my fear is that the 5d mk2 will get a bad reputation if people see its incredible low light perfomance as excuse not to light and dont take manual focusing or shutter speed control seriously as is the case with 99% of videos i have seen online shot with the 5dmk2. i like to see that this video has a cool looking location and great fight choreography, but it seems like it might have looked better on a real video camera like an ex1 or a dvx/hvx. i would love to start seeing videos online shot with the 5dmk2 camera that look like serious productions. this video is absolutely more so than most, but still has its issues.
noahyv, how exactly would you propose that I should have forced a 1/60 shutter? I was wide open on my lens.
I like how you added the jello effect to the credits..... kept you in the moment.
What was the response from the Canon reps when you asked for manual control and 24p? Any hint of a firmware upgrade?
Thanks for the update Stu.
I have the same question as Jon. Did the Canon folks mention anything about a firmware upgrade?
Stu,
I've posted a 30p to 24p workflow using the tools already found in Final Cut Studio 2, it does of course utilize interpolation but you might find it yields better results than twixtor and after effects. I've detailed it here on the cinema5d forum:
http://cinema5d.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=594&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=10
To give you a short briefing of the process, the timebase of the footage is conformed in cinema tools to 23.98, thus creating a 6 fps overcrank, footage is then sped back up using retiming controls in compressor and re synced with audio. The concept is to keep all the information and mash frames as opposed to stripping away frames then interpolating the missing information. Please let me know if this useful, I'm a big fan and appreciate what you do for the digital cinema community everyday.
Cheers,
Denver Riddle
I don't understand how comments like this one can come up:
"You guys are a bunch of peons. If you did not know this was 30p you couldn't even tell." (It's on YouTube)
Aside from being offending, one can't beat the math:
30 fps is 6 fps more than 24 fps, meaning 20% more frames. And you do notice it when things run 20% faster than they should, our eyes are just too accustomed to 24 fps. Just the way things work.
If I just said something totally wrong, then beat me up. I tend to mix up things Oo
Michelle Stock? ;)
I just read all of the 29 previous comments, and as a filmmaker, got a bit irked at some of the tone. Obviously, nobody expects every comment to be positive, but it would be nice if the comments were specific, researched, and useful.
What if one was required to post a link to one's own short film before submitting?
I'm sure there would be very few posts, and even less 'Like it, but the 30p looks so bad'
Yo.
Stu, Sadly, after a long, long committee meeting, it has been decided that your short is disqualified from the Subway Short category. You may wish to re-enter in the Elevated Train category. For clarification, a subway short requires any three of these four: (i) an underground public rail system tunnel; (ii) a public transit bus or subway car door opening and closing; (iii) same in motion: and (iv) creepy electrical lighting from whatever source or location. In addition, the filmmaker's affidavit that the shoot was completed without a permit is necessary.
Good luck!
Mindless Rules Committee
Stu, I could only see it until today. I loved all the handheld work. And it looks like film, very very cool.
it is possible to force a 1/60th shutter (some tests suggest it actually uses something more like 1/80th-1/100th sec when the camera reads 1/60th) by doing exposure lock and then using exposure compensation. of course this requires that your lens and environment allows you to be reasonably well exposed at iso200 (with highlight tone priority, iso100 without). ive also played around with making picture styles that push the exposure (basically software gain not totally unlike RED but done destructively during recording instead just metadata) before the image is converted and compressed to 8bit h264. this can allow you to get a well-exposed video while operating at -1 or -2 ev basically rating the camera at iso400 which might make achieving faster shutters more likely. of course latitude takes a hit to some extent, but given that the picture style is applied between a 14bit->8bit conversion i think a 1 or 2 stop push isnt totally unreasonable as long as it is implemented well and noise levels are handled well in the picture style. i havent had time to do extensive testing and shooting like this though, and creating such a picture style while maintaining the same look as a default style is a bit of a challenge but certainly not impossible. id be interested to hear what you think about this method.
Is the HV20 shot the opening shot of the BART train?
I think people are getting too hung up on the 30p framerate. It's not THAT much faster than 24p. The continuous, 1/30 shutter though? In my opinion, that's the thing that subtracts from the "film-look" most of us are striving for. I have the same issue watching Micahel Mann do 1/24 shutters on the Viper. It's still 24p, but I can't turn off the "Birthday Part Home Video" reflex in my mind when motion appears that smooth, be it an continuous shutter or a 60i.
That said, this came out EXCELLENT all things considering. That garage has an absurdly low level of light, and I'm surprised how much of that the camera could pick up.
I agree with Shaun, I realize there is the whole DV Rebel code of operating and it mandates 24p. But nothing comes close to the image coming out of this camera. 24p with no dof looks like video plain and simple and I don't care what camera it comes out of (Crank High Voltage Deep focus 24f=video=well done video but video). When I put well blocked/well produced and well lit productions from this camera on my ps3 on the 50inch lcd you can't tell the difference between it an the best adapter monstrosities shot at 24p. You can hold a code to a fault so regardless of how you feel about 30p Stu this shit looks good and that's all an audience of non-geek film boys cares about.
Hey Stu, i came across this a couple weeks back. I think it's what Noah is referring to. Let me know if you find it useful, i haven't tested it yet but will soon.
http://www.vimeo.com/2590318
Thx for that link Cyrus, will test it out later.
Just noticed, that I forgot something. Stu your video rocks =)
@ Greg: It isn't only the "DV Rebel code" but also the "code" of the academy. You need 24 fps for a nomination for Best Short Film. Now you could say, that the academy itself isn't very important, but consider film students buying this camera, thinking they could break through with it. Well they can't. Also some festivals require 24 fps.
Hope this comment did not seem to aggressive or so, it wasnt meant that way :)
Yeah. Looks good for video. But where's the story, Stu?
You are absolutely one of the most talented guys around, Stu, but your story is boring, made up of nothing but rehashed action cliches.
Yeas, it is impressive that it was done on a dslr, and your cc work can't be beat.
But GEEZ, Stu. Push yourself in the story department for once!!!
stu, please tell me the HV20 shot is at 00:13--where the actor is walking into the open garage door. i THINK i nailed it, but i might also be completely wrong. :)
Yes have to agree with Cy, there are any number of camera test shorts out there but very few good shorts with a story. A good story will grab the viewer and they will quickly forget whether it is shot in HD, 35mm Film or using the video mode in a cell phone.
I also take issue with all the I 'hate 30fps' comments, come on, you are probably watching with on a computer monitor with 60 or 75Hz refresh. The thing that makes this look 'video' is the wide open shutter and all the motion blur.
That said I love this blog, it is the first thing I look at when I fire up my laptop!
All I can add to this comments section is:
This is chapter 12! Did no one else realize this!? I saw the sweet DVD menu... I want to see the rest of this project! Was it ALL shot on a dSLR, or only this little "chapter 12"? Or perhaps you're just messing with us Stu, and made up the other little selections on the menu with leftover footage to make us think there was more. Ehhh?? What's the word buddy?
Nice. I would love to read more about the editing process. Like how/why you edited in half res and how you export the files back into AE...
I read the Rebel Guide but this part still confuse me!
man , what I would have twixtored some action bits :), great work
some garage samples from this weekend
http://vimeo.com/4271854
Steve: The "Subway Short" has been the new test for cameras. Mostly unplanned shorts, usually shot in a subway, that tests the low light, DOF, focus, and stealth abilities of new cameras. Stu has taken this "test" one step further. Instead of the unplanned subway short, he planned and choreographed a short that takes the camera beyond the "subway". Beyond the random focus, low light, DOF, stealth test and instead tested the camera in a real action film situation. This test, going beyond the others is After the subway.
Being the creative, witty fellow he is, he made it look like it was but a mere chapter in a full film. If you'll notice, Chapter 11 is "End of the Line" and the "preview" of that chapter shows the typical "Subway Short" type shots.
Chapter 12: After the Subway.
Leonard Part 6. Only different.
Stu, how are you going from Premiere Pro to After Effects? Is that something new in CS4?
Brian: Yea, I'm aware of subway shorts, and understood how Stu was "taking the next step" by making his 'after the subway'... guess his great creativeness just suckered me in! After I posted that comment, the more I thought about it, the more I realized the latter part of my comment made the most sense: the menu is for fun and made with spare shots.
Don't mind me... just got carried away with myself. I really like the idea of doing that though: makes a short project feel like it's part of something bigger. Could work great for pitching an idea for a longer project, to give a feel what a full film would be like.
Movie making is all smoke and mirrors, except this time instead of "man, that really looked like his arm got chopped off!!" it was, "that really looked like it was a scene from a full length project."
It's pretty sad, when I knew all along that this was Stu's little version of the "subway short" for the dSLR.
The trick to making a stand alone short feel like it's part of something bigger is to not box it in so much. Have your short be "complete" on it's own, but lead into it as if it came from somewhere an end it as if it's going somewhere. If you write just for the sake of "telling this story", then there is no depth or meaning behind it all. If you tell your story from the standpoint that your characters had a life BEFORE your short and have one AFTER your short, then write your short in the context of a real, breathing person(s), then it will not only have depth, but will feel like it's part of something greater, even it's just a stand alone 5 minutes.
I'm just bugged by the fact that, as a short, this is just meaningless, stylistic violence for meaningless, stylistic violence's sake. Grow up, Stu!
You are so talented. Why make meaningless movies?
I challenge Stu to tell a story without any action. Use your shallow DOF, great editing and fantastic post work to put your audience in a world with characters they care about.
Maybe it is just me and maybe I'm just frustrated because I've been following your work for so long.
I know you have carved your niche from making Hollywood style action movies on no budget. I guess I feel that is ultimately keeping you back!
Die Hard wasn't good because they blew up a building. Die Hard was good because we cared about the characters!
Stu! You have the skills! You have the platform!
Build characters not stunts!!!