film quality frm DV

[Guest Christopher Wedding]

Another trick is to seperate off the highlights, blur them slightly and add them back on in post. This makes the highlights more flarey and organic, rather than the razor sharp whites you get from video.

 

How do you seperate the highlights? Thanks!

[Stephen Williams]

Not, exactly.. the one advantage to digital editing is that it's both cheap and easy. I mean, if your shooting low res DV, you can edit it on a fairly descent home computer. And theres always ways of getting hold of software for free, even if it's just to use and not keep.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

Daniel,

 

Computers may be cheap, but time is money.

 

 

Stephen

[David Cox]

How do you seperate the highlights? Thanks!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Hi,

 

You do a luminance key to attract only the highlights - for example everything over 95%. Blur that slightly and either key them or add them back on (the latter makes a "flary" look.) Doing this a little helps the razor sharp highlights that you get with burnt out video formats - especially miniDV. Doing it a lot creates a dreamier look.

[Sam Wells]

This is WAY OT but for sound design I'd prefer to be working in 24 bit, I do stuff in 32 bit, even.

 

Agree SR isn't everything by a long shot -- I used a high quality little known DAW called Microsound at one time, very good converters and 32K iin fact sounded fine.

 

I'm an agnostic on 96K -- not too practical in the film world. I talked to an engineer who claimed he was getting superior spatial imaging with 96K and higher sampling rates. OK I said, but what happens by the time I see the film at the 24 plex by the Mall :lol:

 

ie better to just do the mix right

 

-Sam

[Mike Donis]

I believe far to many people are concerned with getting a film look - but what really separates what many people CALL the *film look* from the video look is all that makes a cinematographer an expert in his craft: Lighting, composition, camera movement - the elements and principles of design.

 

Film is expensive - we all know that. DV is considerably cheaper. Because of this, in general, people who END UP using film have a lot more experience than those shooting in a cheaper format, like DV. Look at, for example, - and I know I'll be killed for this example - Lucas' latest Star Wars movies. They most definitely *do* look like video - they ARE video: video in 24 frames per second. But all other characteristics of the image are traditionally associated with *movies*. Movies that are shot on film. Compare this, now, to your average first-year-film-school-student's 16mm work, which obviously *is* film. Most people would insist that Lucas' movies are much more "filmic".

 

Many of the things that make a movie look like "film" are nothing to do with the medium with which it was captured - for the most part, you'll get a fantastic image regardless of what you do, if you do it RIGHT. As several people have said, embrace video for what it is. This, I think, is where the time and effort should be spent - I can guarantee you that Storaro shooting with a Panasonic DVX100 could make much more traditionally "filmic" images than a first-year student with an Arriflex and anamorphic primes. Sure, he'll have a much lower resolved picture, and the film student will be working from a fine-grained negative - but so what? Storaro's stuff will very likely use the medium to his advantage, and what he'll have will be INTERESTING for what it is. It'll be good video.

 

Forget the grain, forget the dust, forget the weave you'll add on a computer. Expose creatively, compose creatively, and tell your story visually - and do it *in front* of your lens. You'll have fantastic cinematography.

[Josh Hill]

Mike,

 

Very good point. And well said.

 

Later,

 

Josh

[Guest Robert Gvildys]

Very well said by many people. I especially liked the analogies of the painting and sculptures. People should pick the medium that best suits their piece. Some people unfortunately are stuck using certain mediums because of cost. Nice oil paints will cost you a heck of a lot more than acrylics. Is one better than the other? I would say not. It is simply a matter of how you use it to express yourself.

 

I've always gotten frustrated by people who constantly tweak their video to make it like film. Just tell the story right. Keep your vision true. If all you can afford to work with is DV, then use it! If you REALLY want film, shoot Super 8. It'll cost you near the same as a miniDV camera and tapes! You'll get the film look you want. Maybe the resolution will be a little soft, but who cares! You were going to shoot DV anyway! If you want to shoot miniDV, then do it! The medium is pretty negligable as far as quality of the work. Whether someone will look at it and say "I like that" or "that was awful" will not be because you shot it on film or video, but because the art itself was good or bad.

 

It reminds me of some short videos from highschool. While displaying the videos at an artshow I had several people watching on an old imac. This was shot with a 1 CCD sony handicam. The audience laughed and clapped at all the right points and in the end commended me for a job well done. People would've laughed if it was shot on film too, that really didn't affect the enjoyment of the piece.

 

Do the best with what you have. If you're talented, it'll come out, if you're not, then tough luck. No amount of technology is going to save you.

 

I find people who try to use technology or tricks to get something to look "more professional" are people who really don't have true artistic talent. They try to dress something that is sub-standard into something that looks like it could be good. Learning how to paint a work of art, and learning how to paint are two different things. Anyone can learn to use a paint-brush and paints. Using them to create a great work is something you can't teach. Those who learn how to paint compensate for the lack of art, with technical ability.

 

It's the reason there are few great directors, few great writers, few great cinematographers, but millions of people with the raw resources to do it.

[Guest Charlie Seper]

"It really is pointless to try to make something look like film that is video."

 

I think you just don't get it. Its not just TV sitcoms using video now. When Sony came out with 24p hi-def, it changed the way we look at video. People suddenly saw that Video could indeed look a LOT like film, especially on a standard def TV set. We're seeing more and more TV dramas going the hi-def route because no one can tell the difference. And if you tell me you could tell that Joan of Arcadia was shot on video I'll call you a liar. The only thing that would ever give it away is the lack of blur in the background now and then, and you'd have to be looking for it. And better optics on hi-def cams will make that a non-issue in the near future.

 

As far as I'm concerned, motion is the biggest thing that makes film look the way it does. Sure it has a ton more color, but most of it is something your eyes will never perceive. Shooting at 24p, or simulating it, goes a long way toward emulating film. I'm not in favor of adding grain either. It can work but I don't think its necessary. I spent the weekend shooting video in St. Louis. Here's a grab from something in which I "did" add some grain. In this case I thought it worked. But I seldom do anything like this:

 

 

Can you really tell this is a still from video instead of film?

 

 

And this is low-def stuff. Sure it?s a little soft (especially compressed at 50%-jpg) but I could show you samples from hi-def and film all day and you wouldn't be able to tell which is which in most cases. That tells me that it?s a speed issue we're dealing with more than anything. 24p goes a long way toward resolving it. I've never known anyone who thought twice about 28-Days or Joan of Arcadia being shot on video. No one noticed at all. And more importantly, no one cared. Video's here to stay, get used to it. You might as well because you won't be able to tell the difference.

 

"Everyone wants to be the next Richard Linklater, Kevin Smith or Robert Rodriguez... All three of those filmmakers focused their energies and money into one really good project."

 

I seriously hope you're kidding because "El Mariachi" was one of the most pathetic, amateurish things I've ever forced myself to sit through. Kevin Smith isn't much better. Linklater is different. I disagreed with 75% of the philosophy in "Waking Life", but it was done well. In fact it was superbly done.

 

"People today are using the cheap, affordable digital revolution to shoot crap and then say: "How do I make this like film?""

 

Then they would shoot crap if they had film too. 24p video nor film either one is an end-all. But when you learn to use the proper ND filters, polarizer, lighting, etc., then you can make a good film with either. But, 24p is essential for what we call a film look.

 

BTW, back in the 60's, a test was done with 65mm that was shot at a whopping 60 frames per second, and the results shown to an audience. They hated it! They said it was beautiful but that, it just didn't look like "film". It WAS film!

Edited May 11, 2005 by Charlie Seper

[Josh Hill]

Firstly, I think using the word "video" is not indicative of someone describing hi-def. Video, I believe, still brings to mind standard definition. But we are talking, here, about DV. These television shows you named are shooting hi-def, sure, but they are not shooting DV. When we say video in this thread, I think it is understood that we are all talking about DV (since that is in the title of the thread).

 

You may not like El Mariachi, and I may not like El Mariachi, but look where Robert Rodriguez is now based on that one film. You may not like Kevin Smith, but look where he is now based on that one film. They got there by putting their passions into one project, and had they been able to shoot DV I seriously doubt either of them would have made a project that would have garnered the same attention.

 

And there is something to shooting film that, I think, garners better results than shooting DV. It isn't in the medium itself, but rather in the process that you go through. Film is more expensive, and so you are less likely to have a young "filmmaker" slap something together over a weekend and pass it off as their master opus. When burning dollars as fast as you can burn them on a film shoot, it forces people to put a little bit more thought into what they're sending through the camera. Plus, the intimidation factor of film is more likely to have a young director have someone else come and shoot for them, rather than just grabbing the video camera and running off with it.

 

My generation of filmmakers (all of the ones I know anyway) don't want to go through the sweat and blood of the process, but rather they want to grab a camera and shoot. They see film, the medium, as a quality control matter and so they waste time and effort on attempting to get that film look.

 

You also selected quotes out of the context of my entire post. I didn't just say it was pointless to attempt to make video look like film, I also said that video is a medium, an aesthetic all its own and that one should attempt to use the medium to its fullest potential rather than spend your time making it look like something else. You also, as I mentioned before, brought hi-def into the mix, which was not a part of the original thread.

 

But everyone my age does seem to want to be the next Kevin Smith, Richard Linklater or Robert Rodriguez. Especially in Austin where I am currently residing (and there is still good independent film coming out of Austin, but because of UT film school and everyone trying to be one of those three people, there is still a lot of bad stuff coming from here as well).

 

Later,

 

Josh

 

PS: I don't know why you put did in quotation marks. Either you did add grain or didn't. That confused me.

[Achim Girnth]

Hi everybody,

 

A very simple statement from a guy, who has to do video since years and comes from 16mm(sometimes 35mm) film:

 

The most impotant missunderstanding in the discussion "filmlook on video" is, as already stated, the wish to make video look like film!

 

The first and really central point when shooting on any medium ist to try to get the most out of the equipment you have and therefore to try to capture the most impressing and adequate images. A lot of tricks and workarounds are available on all shooting platforms, but GOOD LIGHTING - GOOD USE OF DEPTH OF FIELD and GOOD OVERALL CAMERAWORK are the first things to look at.

 

(anyway: My personal problem with mini dv cams are the small image sensors which let you struggle a lot with depth of field (too sharp!) and, i hate the tiny little cassettes -)

 

argh!!!!

 

I shot for 3 Years on my Pana AJD 800 and achieved fine results for broadcasting, and now I shoot on my SDX900 and the I love the way this cam deals with contrast but:

 

There will be never ever something compared to film negative stock!

 

The Question is: does it matter?

The answer might be: NO, because the imges are the words in the grammer of filmmaking, and the paper i write to, comes in the second place...

 

(oups! this is somehow too philosophical *g*)

 

So think about lighting, lenses, filters and so on, not about Filmlook...

 

cu

 

Achim Girnth

MEDIENFRONT

Germany

[Guest Charlie Seper]

GOOD LIGHTING - GOOD USE OF DEPTH OF FIELD and GOOD OVERALL CAMERAWORK are the first things to look at.

 

(anyway: My personal problem with mini dv cams are the small image sensors which let you struggle a lot with depth of field (too sharp!) and, i hate the tiny little cassettes -)

 

There will be never ever something compared to film negative stock!

 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Achim,

 

I agree with a lot of what you've said. The depth of field issue is the biggest problem with video right now and only the Thomson Viper doesn't seem to have a problem with it, although I've never used one and am just going by what I've heard about it. But then, I'd expect to get great results from a $100,000 cam. But, the sensors will have to become larger in the future if HD and HDV are going to truly emulate film. I can get a great blur using miniDV only if the background is far in the distance. And yes, the tiny cassettes are purely idiotic. As is the tiny miniDV camera itself. This includes the new HDV units from Sony and last year's models from JVC. Now the new HD-100 from JVC looks to be a lot larger and is actually a shoulder mount. That and the XL2 are the only miniDV or HDV cams I've seen that look to have enough size and weight to use with a shoulder mount. There's been an absolutely silly trend in electronics in general, to make everything smaller and smaller, as if small equates to good. What it really equates to is "frustrating." If we simply went to a tape that was twice as wide, we could pack twice the bitrate onto a cassette, and get much better performance, not to mention a bigger cam housing, which would make for a much more professional shoulder mount. Any cam under 8LB's just doesn?t feel right on your shoulder. And if we went to a bigger cassette we could have HVD that didn't need to use mpeg compression, but could stay at DV?better all around.

 

I disagree that video will never rival film stock. I think a Viper already does and then some from what I've seen from them.

 

Josh,

 

Of course I added grain as you can see in the still. I don't know why you don't understand something stressed in quotation marks. People have been doing it for centuries. At any rate, sorry if it confused you.

 

The thread may be talking about miniDV but HD or HDV still has all the same characteristics, only with more clarity because of the bigger frame and amount of info in it. However, that has little or nothing to do with video looking like film. If hi-def can look like film then so can miniDV, only miniDV will look softer when blown up for big screen projection. Very few people are shooting miniDV with hopes of making a major motion picture anyway. They're shooting it for two reasons: To use for TV purposes, or to use as a calling card at film festivals. In case of the latter, its usually just shorts that they make to show the big boys what they can do. I don't see the harm in that. And more and more of these film festivals are using digital projection which allows them to bypass the film transfer, saving resolution and money. I think that's a good thing.

 

As far as TV work goes, no one is going to be able to tell the difference between HD and miniDV on a standard definition TV. Its like trying to tell the difference between two 4 x 6 photos, one shot on a 3-mg px camera, and the other on a 5-mg px cam. One looks as good as the other until you blow them up larger.

 

Now, you might be able to see more of a difference on a hi-def TV from a hi-def broadcast. Even then however, if the hi-def TV you're viewing has a small screen you may not see much of a difference. I've seen some stills from a Sony Z1U though that looked fantastic in their large frame size and I'm convinced that HDV will be fine for TV work, especially documentaries. This is where HDV will find a big audience. I also don't see why it shouldn't look okay on the big screen if a guy knows what he's doing. I didn't get to see 28-Days Later at the cinema but everyone I know who did said it looked fine. That being the case, I would think that an HDV cam like the Sony's even, with their sensors picking up 3-times more info and putting it on a much bigger frame should look fine on a 30-foot screen.

 

But on my standard def TV, I can't see where 28-Days Later looked any worse whatsoever than any other DVD I own. It looks exactly like film to me. When blown up bigger it should still look like film, but with less detail.

 

But really, do yourself a favor and look at all the frame grabs people have put up on the Internet, including this website, that were done with an DVX100-A and tell me they don't look exactly like frame grabs from film movies. You would never know which came from which. And that tells me that the frame rate and motion blur is the biggest part of what makes film look like film. Heck, I noticed years ago that taking 30-frame per second footage and decimating every other frame, then exporting it at 15-frames per second looked way more like film.

 

Personally, I think hi-def 24p looks amazingly like 16mm. And I think well shot miniDV at 24p looks a lot like 8mm. And on a standard def TV they all look pretty much the same.

[Achim Girnth]

I disagree that video will never rival film stock. I think a Viper already does and then some from what I've seen from them.

 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Charlie,

 

..ok, I think the viper and maybe some of the actual HD Cams can get very close to film stock.

 

And, of course, if you don't show on the big screen, the difference nearly can't be judged.

 

cu

 

Achim Girnth

[Josh Hill]

I think the did in quotation marks confused me because I didn't know you were creating emphasis, because quotation marks are not used for emphasis.

 

Other than that comment I'm bowing out. I still believe that there is no reason for someone to attempt to make video look like film. Don't attempt to make one medium look like the other, use the medium that best suits your project and push whatever medium that is to its very limits if need be.

[Alvin Pingol]

Can you really tell this is a still from video instead of film?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Absolutely.

 

Was scanning through the thread and noticed your images - especially the first one, where substantial edge enhancement is visible. And look how quickly the skin tone clips and blows out...

[Guest Charlie Seper]

I think the did in quotation marks confused me because I didn't know you were creating emphasis, because quotation marks are not used for emphasis.

 

Sure they are. The trouble is that you're a victim of the American school system. :)

 

We teach some amazingly silly things in America when it comes to English and Literature, which I think is why Twain is still the only great writer America has ever produced. As far as I'm concerned, Mark Twain, George MacDonald, C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, and Charles Williams are the only great literary masters since Edmund Spenser. Its no secret that most of the world's great literature for the past 500-years has come from the area of Great Britain. I've given a lot of thought to this. Pick up a book by any Oxford Prof and open it at random. Look for sentences starting with prepositions or conjunctions. You'll be hard pressed not to find one on the first page you look at, probably more than one. This is true of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien...anybody who ever wrote and taught at Oxford. We just have some incredibly silly rules we've developed in America to suit some idiot's whims in days gone by, no matter how silly those whims were. In fact, Lewis would have snickered at any of us for using italics, and told us that good writers have better means of communication (meaning?quotation marks). In fact, he said that very thing once.

 

I still believe that there is no reason for someone to attempt to make video look like film. Don't attempt to make one medium look like the other...."

 

Why not? That can be half the fun! Man, I remember when I was a young guy in the 1970's and got my first 4-track reel to reel deck. Everybody with a home studio was 4-tracking back then and it was a lot of fun to get the most you could out just 4-tracks. Some of us had it down to a fine science. I'd track drums, bass, and rhythm guitar to 3-tracks, bounce them down to the fourth, record a scratch lead vocal on one of the freed-up tracks, then two backup vocals on the remaining ones; bounce them down to the scratch vocal track (erasing it in the process); record a new lead vocal, and then a lead guitar to the remaining 2-tracks. You could go further than that but this was the most reliable way to go and gave me 7-good tracks. You had to know how to use drums to mask tape hiss, how much to boost highs on your bounced tracks because you always lose a tad bit of high end while bouncing, and so forth. It had limitations such as the drums being in mono, but it was satisfying beyond belief when you played your mix to someone and they said, "Wow! You did that with just 4-tracks?"

 

Telling someone to just go ahead and shoot with film is like telling someone to just rent an airplane and fly over the Appalachian Trail when they could have the fun of hiking it. Why take the easy way out? It?s the tough times that develop character. You'll learn a lot more by working with video and bringing the best out of it than you ever will by just jumping into film I think. And I think that even the most experienced DP's will tell you that video is a lot more fun to work with, especially once you bring it into an NLE, than film.

 

But also, please give this some thought: Would you tell a sketch artist not to bother trying to make his drawings look like 3-D? Why not just tell him to leave out all his delicate shading tricks and say, "Your crummy drawing tablet is never going to produce anything that looks remotely like three dimensions. The only way to produce 3-dimensional art is by sculpturing, so just buy some clay and forget this drawing stuff."

 

Does that really make sense?

 

Alvin,

 

I was referring to the second still. However, to get back to the original topic, I would say that if someone wants to produce a dramatic movie using miniDV and then wants to transfer that movie to film for 35mm blow-up, then the best thing he could do for himself would be to stick to a storyline that kept him indoors with close shots. This is where DV can look really great even on the big screen. For instance this is a still from some footage I shot under the St. Louis Arch last weekend. Even though I'm out of doors, I'm in fairly close on the girls here and it doesn't look too bad. And yes, I think it looks a lot like a film still.

 

 

And here's that same church I showed in the earlier still in a close-up shot.

 

 

This is what you want to do when trying to produce film via miniDV. You'll never produce an out of doors epic like "Mutiny On The Bounty", but there's no reason why you can't do a respectable rendition of "My Dinner With Andre" or "The Birdman of Alcatraz".

[drew_town]

I don't think anyone would say that you couldn?t shoot some really good footage on video. Right? And it does look a little bit like film. So what do you say to someone who asks how to make his or her video look like film? Do you say shoot at 24p? Or concentrate on lighting and composition? If that?s the answer then great. So you've got something that looks vaguely like film. Job done. But it?s called shooting good video not making video look like film. The 24p is an aesthetic choice. An option. DoF is not the big drawback to video. It?s latitude and resolution. To a professional those are the hardest things to work with. And those are things you can do little about. Those are the things that?ll make your great footage look like mud on the big screen. You could never pass those set of stills off as film. But that doesn?t mean they look bad. So by telling someone to avoid wide shots and work indoors you?re telling them how to work with video. You?re not telling them how to make video look like film. When you ask a professional how to make video look like film you get a laughable response. Because a professional knows the trick to shooting good video is also the trick to shooting good film. I can post some good looking stills I shot on video too. But I won?t say, ?look how they almost look like film.?

[Guest Charlie Seper]

"So you've got something that looks vaguely like film."

No, if you've done it right, you've got something that looks a lot like film to anyone that's not blind or stupid. Again I must ask the question: Who do you know that's ever seen an episode of "Joan of Arcadia" that had the vaguest notion they weren't seeing film? And this is just one of many new shows that are going the high-depth route. There's no way on earth you can tell which are which on a standard def TV, and I doubt that many of us (if any) could on an LED, DLP, or Plasma screen.

 

I challenge you to look a bit closer at that church window close-up still above. Do you honestly think you could tell a 35mm film still of the exact same shot from it? Here's a challenge for anyone: I'll be happy to go back downtown and shoot a 35mm photograph from the exact same location and let you tell me which is which. Since the shot above didn't have any panning or zooming involved, we shouldn't have to worry about motion blur from video looking any different from motion blur from film, so a 35mm still photo camera ought to work out just fine for this test. How bout it? Care to show what golden eyeballs you have?

 

Some things to contemplate about film: Film is cropped heavily in post to achieve a 1.85:1 ratio, bringing that 35mm, 12.75-megapixel frame down to about 9-megapixels. And color degrades with every analog dub you make. Now, if you drop down to 16mm you can cut the numbers in half again. And by the time you've done that you're in the area of high-depth.

 

But none of that amounts to a hill of beans when broadcasting on standard-def TV, or for DVD releases. Even on hi-def TV's most of 35mm film's extra color space is simply wasted and has no advantage to speak of over hi-def video. The only place any argument can be made in favor of 35mm film is on the big screen.

 

And I still say that if you keep to close shots such as the one of the window above, that it will look fine and even comparable to 35mm film on a 30-foot screen. Again, not one person I've ever met thought "10 Days Later" looked bad, or looked like video even when they watched it at the theatre. That's enough of an argument right there in my opinion.

 

"So by telling someone to avoid wide shots and work indoors you?re telling them how to work with video. You?re not telling them how to make video look like film."

I never said otherwise. I said that's how to keep miniDV video looking its best on a large theatrical screen. I said that the biggest thing that makes film look like what we normally associate a film look to be has to do with motion. And it does. Thus the test done in the 60's I mentioned. Is it not rather odd that a test audience viewing 65mm film running at 60fps thought it didn't look like film anymore?

 

"When you ask a professional how to make video look like film you get a laughable response."

Don't ask Scott Billups.

[Sean Morris]

Again, not one person I've ever met thought "10 Days Later" looked bad, or looked like video even when they watched it at the theatre. That's enough of an argument right there in my opinion.

 

Your have to be joking right... 28 Days Later???

 

I thought it looked mushy as hell, clipped, washy, and

hard to watch at times, it actually gave me a spitting headache..!

 

Cheers

Sean Morris

[Jay Gladwell]

I challenge you to look a bit closer at that church window close-up still above. Do you honestly think you could tell a 35mm film still of the exact same shot from it?

 

Yeah, Charlie, I think I could. Not to be critical of you or your work, but all of those images you posted are "soft" and they lack the resolution of film. Too, the lack latitude is obvious, especially in the shot of the girls sitting next to the water.

 

Here's a challenge for anyone: I'll be happy to go back downtown and shoot a 35mm photograph from the exact same location and let you tell me which is which. Since the shot above didn't have any panning or zooming involved, we shouldn't have to worry about motion blur from video looking any different from motion blur from film, so a 35mm still photo camera ought to work out just fine for this test. How bout it? Care to show what golden eyeballs you have?

 

Oh, what the heck. I'll take your challenge, not because I have "golden eyeballs," but because I think there is a difference and it would show in a side by side comparison between video and a 35mm still. In fact, I'll contribute an example myself--we both can!

 

I'll shoot some object around the house here, no need to go downtown, with video. I'll be using an Canon XL2, 16:9, 24p (2:3:3:2), unless you'd rather I use some other setting. Then I will shoot a still of the same object using a Nikon 35mm camera and Kodacolor negative film.

 

This might even be fun!

 

Jay

[drew_town]

Charlie,

 

Everyone's got an opinion on the acceptability of video, and it's cool that you're willing to vouch for it so much. I work solely with video, and there's been times when I'm shooting outside and the contrast is going nuts, and I really wish I was shooting on film just to smooth it out a bit. And I've seen my dv footage projected on a 35-foot screen and saw it fall apart because of the low resolution. But I enjoy the advantages of video.

 

BTW don't get brainwashed by Scott Billups books. They're full of good advice, but they're often too biased and really narrowminded.

In fact, I'll contribute an example myself--we both can!

Start another thread please. This thing is getting clunky.

[Guest Charlie Seper]

"Not to be critical of you or your work, but all of those images you posted are "soft" and they lack the resolution of film."

 

Well, two things to bear in mind though is that those are jpegs compressed at 50%, and I worked with them in a graphics program to try and make them look as good as I could on a typical 9300k color temp computer screen. They would look terrible on a computer monitor set-up to at 6500k and with the contrast etc., made to mimick the look of a TV.

 

But its the close-up of the church window that I'm concerned with. That looks very detailed even as a 50% compressed jpeg, and that's the type of thing a guy needs to do if he wants to project miniDV on a big screen. But, yeah, I'll be happy to look at what you shoot. I agree it should be fun.

 

Sorry Sean, but you're either not being honest or you saw the movie via a poor projection. And that happens all the time. Go around town to view the same movie on several theatre screens and you'll be amazed how different they can all look. This is even more true of digital projection since there doesn't seem to be any real standard for it yet. But, what the screen's made of, how well the projector is aligned and cleaned, bulbs used...all kinds of stuff and contribute to a bad viewing experience. I never got to see 28-Days Later (not much of a movie anyway) at the theatre and have had to trust what others have told me about it. But not one person that I know and trust has said anything negative at all.

 

Some kid who just had a movie digitally projected at a film festival said he was actually stunned how how good his footage looked up there. He shot it on a GL2 and cropped it in post, so he didn't expect much at all, but said it really looked beautiful. I was also just reading something about a filmmaker (I think it was Roberta Lautenschlager but I'm not sure) who used a Panny DVX100A on a film project a while back because she needed something small that she could hand-hold down low to film kids in a dance company (I think), and she too mentioned how great the test footage was that she got back from the lab that did the film tranfer.

 

Drew, Scott Billups will try to convince you to shoot with film. But he'll also show you how to make video "look" like film. I don't see anything the least bit biased in his books. Please give me an example of his narrowmindedness.

 

PS,

 

I can't get to the Internet very often, I've got a business to run and I'm just too busy, so while I want to view Jay's frame grabs, I may not be able to look at them for a few days. I'll definately be back though.

[Nate Downes]

Wait a sec, 12 megapixel for a 35mm frame? I've scanned Super8's at 8 megapixels before, so 35's got to be a heck of a lot more than 12.

[drew_town]

Please give me an example of his narrowmindedness.

From Digital Moviemaking:

 

"NIX THE ZOOM

 

One of the biggest tip-offs that you're watching video is a zoom. DON'T ZOOM! DON'T EVER ZOOM! It doesn't matter whether or not you think a zoom will enhance the end result, you are wrong! Go back and look at your top ten movies again. You can probably use the same sheet on your yellow pad. Not a "dolly" or a "truck" or a "push" where the camera actually moves closer to the subject, I'm talking a zoom. After viewing all ten of your favorite movies please notice how nice and clean your yellow pad is."

 

Discussion Thread

 

I enjoyed much of the book, but you have to watch out for stuff like that.

[Guest Dan Diaconu]

Sorry I have missed part of this debate.

I have some samples on my site and I need a second opinion on this "film look" burning issue. Stop on by and let me know what you think please. I am quite new on this forum and is going to take a while to get familiar with posts here, but... I?ll live through it.

I will attempt to attach a sample. Hope it works.

 

 

[Sean Morris]

Hi Dan,

 

Sorry I find it hard to understand your website.

 

I take it you mounted a Still Camera lens on what looks like a Sony BVP-7?

 

any more details?

Edited May 16, 2005 by Sean_Morris