Me @ NAB

Here’s where I’ll be in Vegas, baby:

On Monday, 4/20, I’ll be speaking at the Independent Filmmaking—A Million Dollar Look on a Thousand Dollar Budget: 2009 Edition panel. 11:30am–12:30pm in Room S222/S223.

That afternoon I will be signing copies of The DV Rebel’s Guide at the NAB Bookstore in the Central Lobby. 3–3:30pm. Copies will be on sale at the store at 15% off retail.

That night I will be at the fxphd party, so if you are enrolled, look for me there.

Tuesday (4/21) afternoon I’ll be signing and even giving away a few copies of The Guide at the Red Giant Software booth. 1:00 pm, booth SL2529.

That’s it for scheduled appearances. The rest of the time I’ll be watching Twitter for recommendations for cool gear to check out.

One spot you’re sure to see me is at the Redrock Micro booth. I’ve been playing with a new DSLR rig from them that combines light weight with single-operator follow-focus capability. Here’s a sneak peek:

It’s hard to see in this shot, but my left hand is wrapped around a horizontal grip that matches the vertical one on the right. I can cradle the grip and operate focus at the same time. Schweet!

If this rig looks weird to you, blame me, not Redrock. Look for more information on that in an announcement from them soon! Redrock is at booth C9544.

Update on Friday, June 12, 2009 at 3:35PM by Stu

That rig, called the “Captain Stu-bling,” is not available directly from Redrock. It may look weird, but it’s a joy to use, and quite affordable as this stuff goes.

Color correcting the Stunt People short

…using the DV Rebel Tools.

The Bourne Inspiration

In response to the subway short trend, Eric Escobar blogged about a scene in The Bourne Supremacy that he finds rebelliously inspirational. That struck a chord with me, as I too have a Bourne scene that inspires me. It’s the Waterloo Station scene in The Bourne Ultimatum.

In this scene, Bourne outwits CIA operatives while guiding a reporter to safety. It was shot in London’s busiest train station without disrupting thousands of commuters and travelers. That’s right, it’s the ultimate subway short!

What’s amazing about this scene is that it follows the DV Rebel rulebook to the letter. They used a minimal crew and natural light. When out among the general public, the only props we see are cell phones and a syringe. It’s only when the action moves to a stairwell that the guns come out. A sniper gets involved, and his footage too is shot separately from the actual station (a wee bit of greenscreen work connects the two). All of this is intercut with people in a room full of monitors. There’s nothing in this scene you couldn’t do yourself, without permits.

For The DV Rebel’s Guide my editors went to great effort to secure the rights to use the kitchen scene in La Femme Nikita as an example of an approachable DV Rebel action scene. But as the Bourne films show us, such scenes are abundant. For every Bond chase with flipping cars and helicopter shots, there’s a gritty, tense mano a mano battle that requires nothing more than hard work and great choreography.

I think this guy’s got a power window on his face.

And color correction. The Bourne sequels are great examples of the hidden gift to the DV Rebel that lurks in many a DVD—the supplemental materials feature deleted and alternate scenes prior to their DI color correction (see Color Makes the Movie). It’s easy to see how the vérité footage, often shot without immaculate control over lighting, becomes more cinematic and pointed thanks to the DI. Color correction adds style, but it also helps tell the story by subtly altering the lighting. Again, this is 100% Rebel-compatible—with readily available tools such as Magic Bullet Looks, Colorista, Apple Color and Adobe After Effects (plus the DV Rebel Tools), you can often color-correct your way to high production value—and you’ll be in good company doing so.

A pre-DI shot from the deleted scenes

That same shot is in the film, color corrected

Panalog Pipelines

I mentioned that Panalog images from the Panavision Genesis camera can be used easily in either video or film grading workflows. Here's what I mean by that.

Here's an image in Panalog color space:

You can treat this image as a video source, and many do. I just finished three commercials this way. You can just load in the Panalog source, and color correct it to taste. No fuss, no LUTs. As an example, here's that same Panalog image corrected with Colorista:

You can also load the Panalog footage directly into a film grading pipeline. Here's how that same uncorrected Panalog shot would appear under a standard Kodak Vision preview LUT:

It's a bit dark and crunchy, but no matter—Colorista can take care of that. Here's the image color corrected underneath the Vision preview LUT:

Here are the Colorista settings used on the video version:

And here are the settings for the film version:

In either a film or video post environment, a colorist can take Panalog footage into his or her existing workflow and start working with it immediately, color correcting to taste. That's pretty cool.

The big difference between the two is that the film version has that nice soft highlight rolloff. The white t-shirt reaches almost 600% scene illuminance in this image, and that detail is preserved in Panalog. It gets crushed out in the video correction, but on film that detail is preserved, albeit compacted into the soft, sloping shoulder of the print stock.

Note that the sample image used here was not shot with a Genesis. It was shot with a DSLR and converted to Panalog (accurately) from raw. I don't have any good Genesis sample images that I'm free to use just now.