Thomas Buelens Posted January 1, 2005 Share Posted January 1, 2005 Hi, I'm a big fan of documentaries from the BBC and I'm wondering if someone's knows how in earth they make such stunning footage. I've been watching and observing their images for years know, and they keep impressing me ! Especially the docu's on the BBC programme: HORIZON. But also a programme about cars (not a docu), called TOP GEAR, the little clips they make for a car they are reviewing are always so damn cool! I think the cinematographers the BBC work with, have a patended lighting skill :) , because I've never seen interviews so amazingly lit and shot before than on the BBC. This is what I think that they use a lot: * They have a CCU on site, and go deep in the blacks * They work with pola's and ND GRAD's a lot on exteriors I also noticed 1 bizare thing over the years I've been watching them. They tend to use a sort of MASK over their shots that looks like vignetting !!! This works really well. It points your eye directly to the subject. First I though it was a kind of vingnetting because of filters on wide angle lensen or something, but I have second thoughts about that. I think it's done in post. Final Cut Pro has a function like this, I forgot the name, but I discovered it recently. Not that the BBC edits on Final Cut Pro :D I'm going to shoot a documentary in Europe on HD, the producer wanted to shoot a teaser first to get more money from sponsors. So we did, and I shot these images. It looks a little like the images they make @ the BBC, let me know if you have answers to my questions and what you think of my footage. NOTE: The teaser was shot on DVCAM. Thanx, Thomas Buelens @ Antwerp City, Belgium Aciné Productions Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Phil Rhodes Posted January 1, 2005 Premium Member Share Posted January 1, 2005 Hi, Top Gear is shot on Beta SX. All you're seeing is postproduction tweaking; anyone with access to After Effects can do it. The reason it's done is that otherwise the shots just become unwatchably boring in the overcast conditions. Use of polarisers and in-camera tweaking can get you part of the way there. Phil Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guy Meachin Posted January 7, 2005 Share Posted January 7, 2005 (edited) You can add these in post but I'm not sure it's as good quality as doin the real thing - you can do them in FCP HD also as custom gradients. As Phil said you can effectively make a flat shot look quite nice. Hence what they do in Top Gear. Edited January 7, 2005 by Meach Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ryan Heuser Posted January 12, 2005 Share Posted January 12, 2005 Fantastic shots. Any special process you went through to mimic the "BBC style"? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Phil Rhodes Posted January 12, 2005 Premium Member Share Posted January 12, 2005 Hi, Underexpose, gamma down to compensate in post, pump the saturation, lots of cheesy grads. Easy. Phil Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Elhanan Matos Posted January 12, 2005 Premium Member Share Posted January 12, 2005 I just finished working on a BBC documentary about Frank Sinatra today. All the shots I worked on were all slow motion, all shot at around 700 frames per second, but today we did have a Varicam on set and we shot a scene in a barber shop in Crenshaw (not a fun thing to do, walking around Crenshaw with a $170,000.00 camera!). Some of the scenes we shot looked amazing! The DP did all of his color correction in camera, and they used a clear filter and painted vasiline on it on the places they wanted diffused in the frame. I don't know the full name of the Doc, but its about Sinatra and it will air sometime in April, on BBC and on A&E here in the US. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Phil Rhodes Posted January 12, 2005 Premium Member Share Posted January 12, 2005 Hi, Ah, so Auntie Beeb is now shooting her documentaries in California. How considerate of her towards local workers... Phil Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Elhanan Matos Posted January 12, 2005 Premium Member Share Posted January 12, 2005 I'm assuming they wanted to film in the US for the locations. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simon Wyndham Posted January 21, 2005 Share Posted January 21, 2005 Hi, new here! We had this discussion in the past on some of the other forums. It was eventually found out through an camera operator for the Top Gear programme that they now use Digibeta with SDI cards installed for the majority of stuff, occasionally using HD900's. Apparently they do take their time however, and take a lot of care setting up shots. Another little tidbit was that they shoot interlace and then deinterlace in post, even with the HD900's. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Casper Leaver Posted April 6, 2006 Share Posted April 6, 2006 Hi, Top Gear is shot on Beta SX. All you're seeing is postproduction tweaking; anyone with access to After Effects can do it. The reason it's done is that otherwise the shots just become unwatchably boring in the overcast conditions. Use of polarisers and in-camera tweaking can get you part of the way there. Phil Got to correct you there Phil we shoot on digi-beta and have done for the last three years.Initially most of the vignette look wasgained using filtration but as the show progressed Joe who has the final say in the grade adopted and enhanced the "tunneling" vignette look.Much of the look is applied in camera depending on the shoot.Know this as have shot 50% of the shows inserts, cheers Casper. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Phil Rhodes Posted April 6, 2006 Premium Member Share Posted April 6, 2006 Hi, Either way, it looks very... current, I think is the word. Yes it is somewhat overblown and slightly cheesy, but then so's every Jerry Bruckheimer movie, and like his films, Top Gear sells around the world. This leads me ineluctibly to the conclusion that television programmes are like nachos, and taste better with more cheese. Phil Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simon Wyndham Posted April 6, 2006 Share Posted April 6, 2006 Hmm. I'm not sure if I find the Top Gear looks cheesey. Fifth Gear I find looks cheesey because they are now trying to copy the style of Top Gear, but they just don't have the polish in order to pull it off. Michael Bay is cheesey because his 'look' and editing style has almost become a self parody of himself. The Top Gear guys tend to mix things up a bit and have some fun with new ways of filming the car reports, so I think that stops their look from being cheesey in my eyes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Stephen Williams Posted April 6, 2006 Premium Member Share Posted April 6, 2006 Hmm. I'm not sure if I find the Top Gear looks cheesey. Fifth Gear I find looks cheesey because they are now trying to copy the style of Top Gear, but they just don't have the polish in order to pull it off. Michael Bay is cheesey because his 'look' and editing style has almost become a self parody of himself. The Top Gear guys tend to mix things up a bit and have some fun with new ways of filming the car reports, so I think that stops their look from being cheesey in my eyes. Hi, I get to see Top Gear in Switzerland, I think its very well made. I wish the video productions I get to work on looked half as slick. Stephen Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nathan coombs Posted April 7, 2006 Share Posted April 7, 2006 I agree that some programmes such as Planet Earth have beautiful cinematography, but the regular Beta output is getting more and more pumped up in post to disguise how mediocre the format is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Drysdale Posted April 7, 2006 Share Posted April 7, 2006 An editor friend of mine has been running tests on the Varicam & HDW 750, but the camera he really raved about was the DVW 970, the new progressive Digibeta camera. Unfortunately, the format hasn't had a new camera for some time, so had fallen behind and the DVW 970 may have arrived too late with the new disk based formats now on the scene. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Stephen Williams Posted April 7, 2006 Premium Member Share Posted April 7, 2006 An editor friend of mine has been running tests on the Varicam & HDW 750, but the camera he really raved about was the DVW 970, the new progressive Digibeta camera. Brian, I voiced the same opinion betwen a HDW 750 and DVW 970 a couple months ago, most people thought I was crazy! Stephen Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Drysdale Posted April 7, 2006 Share Posted April 7, 2006 Brian, I voiced the same opinion betwen a HDW 750 and DVW 970 a couple months ago, most people thought I was crazy! Stephen Stephen, I keep asking our local rental company when they're going get one. No luck so far. Brian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Phil Rhodes Posted April 8, 2006 Premium Member Share Posted April 8, 2006 Hi, Actually none of the disk based formats is capable of recording images with compression as low as digi. The deck mechanisms on things like P2 and XDCAM and presumably things like Infinity would be capable of it but most of them do low-rate MPEG or DV-style compression. Phil Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Drysdale Posted April 8, 2006 Share Posted April 8, 2006 Hi, Actually none of the disk based formats is capable of recording images with compression as low as digi. The deck mechanisms on things like P2 and XDCAM and presumably things like Infinity would be capable of it but most of them do low-rate MPEG or DV-style compression. Phil Phil, I was thinking of the PDW-530P, which can record MPEG IMX at up to 50 Mb/s. Looking around the compression seems to be 3.3:1 @ 50 Mb/s with this format - higher than Digital Beta. BTW I notice that there's now a MPEG IMX version of the DVW 970. Brian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Phil Rhodes Posted April 8, 2006 Premium Member Share Posted April 8, 2006 Hi, The comparison is a complex one. On one hand, we have grown so used to the truism that you don't get something for nothing that we're immediately suspicious of compression, which tries to do that - but of course you get better pictures with 50mbps of MPEG2 than you would with the same data rate of Huffman reduction. Again you get better pictures with IBP long-GOP MPEG2 than you would with 50mbps of straight DCT. This is the reason why HDV doesn't look like complete junk - the compression is very very clever, and you are in effect getting something for nothing, or more accurately you're getting something for some heat, complexity and battery power in the camera and therefore cost of purchase and ownership. On the other hand, the compression used by digital betacam is extremely low loss and it will not produce objectionable artifacts even when messed about with quite severely, which will never be the case for a complex DCT or long-GOP intra-frame codec. The question of whether data rate X with codec A is better than data rate Y with codec B is impossible to qualitatively answer, but in general for SD pictures I'd much rather have digibeta at 90 plus megabits over MPEG2 at 50. Phil Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Drysdale Posted April 8, 2006 Share Posted April 8, 2006 Hi, I've always found DigiBeta a good robust format. It suffered from a fashion point of view when people decided that DVCam was the format of choice for low budget features. One producer told me that DVCam looked more like film than DigiBeta. However, given how tight the budget was (British TV drama level) and they were down to counting the last hundred pounds by the end, saying they couldn't afford DigiBeta might have been more truthful. Brian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Stephen Williams Posted April 8, 2006 Premium Member Share Posted April 8, 2006 BTW I notice that there's now a MPEG IMX version of the DVW 970. Brian Brian, The IMX version I saw working at IBC last year. There was a DigiBeta around but not connected to a monitor. Sony refused to show me the camera working. Stephen Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Drysdale Posted April 8, 2006 Share Posted April 8, 2006 Brian, The IMX version I saw working at IBC last year. There was a DigiBeta around but not connected to a monitor. Sony refused to show me the camera working. Stephen Stephen, It took a while before you heard about the DigiBeta version being around. Could be they were announcing DVW 970 before they were ready. The DSR 450 seemed to be out a lot quicker. Could also be because it's a more mature market and also DigiBeta cameras tend to last longer, so don't get replaced so often. Brian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Stephen Williams Posted April 9, 2006 Premium Member Share Posted April 9, 2006 It took a while before you heard about the DigiBeta version being around. Could be they were announcing DVW 970 before they were ready. The DSR 450 seemed to be out a lot quicker. Brian Brian, There had been a press release around NAB last year that there would be a 970 PAL DigiBeta but Sony Europe was saying no such camera existed. At IBC I found the 970 myself, the Rep from Switzerland did not know what I was talking about when I wanted a demo! Stephen Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Drysdale Posted April 9, 2006 Share Posted April 9, 2006 Brian, There had been a press release around NAB last year that there would be a 970 PAL DigiBeta but Sony Europe was saying no such camera existed. At IBC I found the 970 myself, the Rep from Switzerland did not know what I was talking about when I wanted a demo! Stephen Stephen, I remember reading about the DVW 970 around that time, but heard no more until late last year. The Sony Europe site still doesn't have a DVW 970 operation manual to download, even through there are manuals for the other cameras announced last year. Brian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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