Couple Things
Monday, July 19, 2010 at 3:34PM After my Fetishists post, I was invited by Mike Seymour to join he and Jason on Red Centre to discuss in greater detail the points I raised. It was a welcome opportunity both to drill down on each of the specific issues, and to clarify a few things that some of the many comments seemed to miss—namely, that I chose my “fetishists” out of respect (so please, those of you with the pitchforks, put ‘em away), and that as crowd-pleasing as a “shut up and shoot” post can be, this actually wan’t meant to be one. The truth is, all your favorite filmmakers are fetishists, and you should be one too if you want your films to be their best.
Technology and gear are not the first things I think about when I think about filmmaking, but they do tend to be the first things I blog about. If “none of the tech matters, just make a movie” was the end of the conversation then that would be the end of ProLost. Talking tech is great, and nobody does it better than Red Centre, so please subscribe if you haven’t already, and give a listen to episode 66.
If you’d like to play the home game while listening, here are full-size stills of the image of Mike from the post, before and after color correction. These stills are pulled from 5D Mark II footage I shot of Mike in the Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo, and you can decide for yourself if it’s compression, 8-bit-ness, or an insidious combination of the two that makes it tough to brighten Mike’s face.
;)
Click for full-res camera original image;)
Click for full-res, graded image
;)
Click for full-res, graded image with some preprocessing
On the show Mike also mentioned that he’s embarking on a new fxphd DSLR Video course as a follow-up to the popular-but-aging session that he and I shot in Japan. This time, Mike has nabbed someone who actually knows what he’s talking about, none other than Tyler Ginter of the 55th Combat Camera Company. I look at a helicopter and think, “how can I put this in my movie?” Tyler looks at one and says “I think I’ll jump out of that with 90 pounds of gear strapped to me (including a 5D Mark II). Check out Tyler’s videos on Vimeo and stay tuned to fxphd for more updates.
In my last post I made a barbed remark about the Sony NEX-VG10, based on early reports that it only shot 60i (NTSC) and 50i (PAL). Turns out it may actually have a progressive mode, which would make the PAL version an option for filmmakers in PAL countries, or those in the U.S. willing to jump through the 25/24 speed-change hoops like we old fogies once did with the first DV cameras. Personally, I’ll wait for real 24p, the importance of which Sony, unlike Canon, cannot pretend to be unaware. Now that so many camera manufacturers are fighting to give us DV Rebels exactly what we want, I won’t be expending any energy on cameras that don’t.
And last but not least, if you’re not on Twitter, this might be a good week to start.
Reader Comments (13)
Hey Stu, is your pre-processing just degraining?
Pretty much, but in 16bpc, so the new pixels are 16bpc. Graded output is dithered back down to 8.
So Stu, when you want to color correct your 5d video do you first convert it to ProRes444 or 16bit in order to generate added bit depth before doing any degrain or color correction? Or do you just stick with whatever Prores422 gives you and work from that? I do a lot of cc work in Color, AE and Nuke and fight banding in the footage a lot, especially in the defocused sections of the image and have always wondered if an uprez to a higher bit rate would actually help of just waste space.
In a system like After Effects (where I did this grading) the codec is not tied to the project bit-depth, so there's no benefit to pre-conversion.
NLEs tend to tie working bit-depth to source bit-depth unless you override that setting, which is why a lot of people insist that converting to a higher-bit-depth sprinkles magic fairy dust on your footage. It doesn't necessarily, but it's one way to force your NLE to work at a higher bit-depth.
What's with the twitter hints? I follow 5tu already and you dropped hints there too about being a fun week for followers.
I really bet there will be a fun week...
about pitchforks:
the article totally sounds like the mob actually paid a very nice visit to you...
about sony:
25p with uncompressed HDMI out sounds kind of nice, but I'll also pass, because with a kipro it's already out of my budget, and because...
about twitter...
I really, really want that to mean that the 60D is actually being presented tomorrow, as the latest rumors suggest
do you have used neatvideo?
do you also have tested 5dtorgb?
http://rarevision.com/5dtorgb
thanks
I think that it's not so much that people have no respect for the fetishists you listed, but that there really needs to be much more of an emphasis on story and acting. People, after all, are at the center of a good story, not all that tech. I've seen it on indie sets nowadays too... if an actor takes the job seriously and needs to concentrate or feels uncomfortable with an angle or a line in the script, it's almost like the people behind the camera get annoyed and THEY want to be the stars of the production. Absolutely ridiculous... disappear behind that camera, it's about the people in front. No matter what the tech, a bad story, acting, etc. kills a film. Audiences will deal with a lot of technical limitations (except bad sound) if the story is well told. The emphasis on the technical side has become all-encompassing and I honestly think we have nothing to show for it other than prettier pictures. How many times can we see random or themed images that showcase nothing more than the grading or the bokeh? The way many of those guys talk (except Cameron), it's as though these limitations would ruin a well told story. Yes, make us aware of them, but start encouraging people to shoot with what they have, not obsess over whether aliasing will ruin their story... often, I believe they wind up never telling the story, just moving from camera to camera, amassing more support equipment, and always hoping the next camera will be 'the one'.
¿al culere? No pensaba que stu fuera a revisar sus palabras tan fácilmente. Sigo pensando que llevaba razón en casi todo lo que proponía.
Enjoyed original post. Did not take it as criticism toward those mentioned. At the moment we are editing and indie film. It is amazing how little the camera/gear effects whether the shots are good. This indie shot all on a nice canon. Shots with better set dressing look more like a movie, shots that are scripted better makes it more like a movie, edits that are tighter make the actors look like better actors. Some shots look as though they were done with a low cost handycam - however every scene was shot with the same camera. We all agree better gear can help for an easier shoot and less work in post. But telling a great story seems to win out every time.
I can't tell who Jose is calling an asshole.
Do you use Neoscene to get 4:2:2 when color grading or it's not needed in this workflow