Tenolian Bell

An interesting article about the HVX workflow. http://www.studiodaily.com/main/technique/...jects/6155.html In the accompanying video the author says the HVX optimum recording is at 720P and is not so great at 1080.

Not to continue to sound contradictory. But I've heard it from seveeral visual effects artists that most of the time its faster, easier, and costs less money to start with a real picture or real set piece and apply a visual effect over that. Than it is to have to create the entire element from scratch.

I think it can be done. Robert Richardson has been very good at casting hard shafts of light, segregating it to the actor and keeping it off of the background. The cinematographer was Robert Rodriguez. Many seem to disagree with me on this but in this type of movie its difficult at best and impossible at worst to tell the actual photogrpahy from post production. In this case in the behind the scenes still shots and video. You can clearly see the contrast on the actors is no where near as extreme as seen in the actual movie. You can see there is a bit of stronger key light coming from one side, but the fill side is not very dark at all. Many times the actors are interacting directly with greenscreen set peices and the lighting is totally flat. I saw a discussion about Sin City after it had not been invited to the bake off for Academy Award Nomination. From the discussion was discovered much of the look of Sin City was pretty basic color correction and sophisticated rotoscoping. Which was more than likely the reason this film was not thought of as excellent visual effects. What was said in the discussion is that this type of work flow is going to become used more and more, which may require a change in the definition of visual effects. Or an additional category for digital art direction, which would cover color correction and rotoscoping.

The article I listed is speaking more to consumer electronics. But I would in many ways include professional electronics, specifically video cameras, I do not believe that dizzying array of switches and dials is necessarily the most efficient and intuitive way to accomplish the task. Its obvious engineers have set that up and not people who have studied human interface. The current Betacam design seems to work fine for the videographer. So if that's what they like that's fine. The worst offenders certainly are the "prosumer" market of cameras. The clear motivation here is to make a camera that does as many things as possible to be marketable to as many people as possible. The problem isn't so much the need for less options, but feature over kill, mixed with bad design. But as video enters the film market most of that stuff is unnecessary. Example of the Arri D20 and Panavision Genesis. Arri seems to have been able to design a camera that required five buttons to accomplish its task. Panavision has done about the same. From what I remember the Genesis only had a few buttons to accompish what was needed. Simple efficient design that accomplishes what is needed.

Welcome to the Age of User Experience. One key aspect of modern digital devices is that technical specifications are easily copied and replicated: mega-pixel count in cameras, storage capacity in music players or processor speed in personal computers are the same everywhere. As a result, they provide only poor distinguishing factors for consumers when it comes to choosing between different brands. That's where the overall user experience comes in. As computing and digital devices move more and more into the consumer space, features and functionalities will increasingly take the back-seat as motivators for technology adoption: as the iPod abundantly shows, user experience (along with a strong brand, and clever marketing) is much more important for the success of a device then technical specifications. Web designers have grasped the importance of good user experience a long time ago; now it is time the big technology providers to understand where the industry is headed. 10 fundamental rules for the age of user experience technology: 1) More features isn't better, it's worse. Feature overload is becoming a real issue. The last thing a customer wants is confusion-and what's more confusing than comparing technical specifications, unless you are en expert? Only nerds get a kick out of reading feature lists. (I know - I'm one of them.) 2) You can't make things easier by adding to them. Simplicity means getting something done in a minimum number of simple steps. Practically anything could be simpler - but you don't get there by adding features. 3) Confusion is the ultimate deal-breaker. Confuse a customer, and you lose him. And nothing confuses more easily than complex features and unintuitive functionalities. 4) Style matters Despite what nerds may think, style isn't fluff. On the grand scale of things, style is as important as features-if not more so. Style and elegance can contribute significantly to a good user experience. But style isn't just looks, it's a global approach. Fancy packaging isn't enough. 5) Only features that provide a good user experience will be used. 6) Any feature that requires learning will only be adopted by a small fraction of users. Learning new features, even the ones that a user might find interesting or intriguing, is a real issue: nobody has time. Getting consumers to upgrade and adopt new features is one of the biggest problems software publishers face these days. 7) Unused features are not only useless, they can slow you down and diminish ease of use. Over time products become convoluted and increasingly complex to use. The frustration of not finding the one feature you need among a flurry of stuff you don't need, want or even understand, can be considerable. (Ever heard of program called Word?) 8) Users do not want to think about technology: what really counts is what it does for them. The best tool is the one you don't notice. Why do you think pen and paper remain vastly popular for brainstorming? Because you don't have to think about them. Pencils don't crash. 9) Forget about the killer feature. Welcome to the age of the killer user-experience. When technology achieves something desirable without being in your face, when it know how to integrate itself into you wishes and desires without distracting from them, that's when technology lives up to its potential. Unfortunately it's it's not that simple to get there. 10) Less is difficult, that's why less is more Let's face it: it's usually harder to do simple things exceedingly well, than to just pile up features. The 80/20 rule applies here too: do well what 80 percent of your users do all the time, and you create a good user experience. Andreas Pfeiffer (posted January 19, 2006) ©Pfeiffer Consulting 2006 http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/views/v7i07_pfeiffer.html This article perfectly illustrates the problem with professional video cameras. Too many switches and dials, difficult to use software menus. To add, all of these things are different on each camera.

The minimum of what can be called HD seems to keep dropping year after year. I'm not surprised about Panasonic specs. There is physical reciprocity in how many pixels you can squeeze on a 1/3 inch chip. The more you attempt to squeeze on there the lower the over all sensitivity. My expereince with the FX-1 I found it a bit more contrasty than most other prosumer cameras.

Are you saying all films shot in the 80's don't look as appealing as today? More than likely what you are seeing isn't so much the age of the film but the technology. Film technology has changed drastically over the past 20 years.

Yeah I don't think Apple intends for Quicktime to be equally competative with all encoders. I mostly use it to shrink movies for the internet, e-mail, and more recently to put on my iPod. Compressor is a better encoder than Quicktime. The problem is that there are so many variables and options in Compressor it takes a bit of trial and error to find the right combination of compression, data rate and file size. While Quicktime has only a few choices that are easy to use. If I'm making something small for the internet, Quicktime seems fine to me. When I want to shrink the data size of a movie that is expected to play at full screen, or encoding for a DVD, Compressor of course is much better. Also for saving movies from the internet. I mostly use Snapz Pro X which records anything on your monitor and saves it as a Quicktime movie. Seeing as Windows has thousands of applications there should be an equivalent.

I got to the open house a bit late in the day and couldn't stay too long. I wanted to speak to Rodrigo Prieto but their was always a crowd of people around him. I got to speak to Andrew Lesnie. When I first approached him he was discussing how he felt movies have been too focused on entertainment and not enough on social human issues. He felt it is the responsibility of filmmaking as a form of mass communication to inform and educate as well as entertain and make money. He spoke about a story he is interested in about when British colonial rule came to New Zealand and how that parallels what is happeneing today. I asked him about CGI, and how I marvel at the ability to keep perspective. How do you keep perspective in a close up of an actor with a 40 foot gorilla in the background, who really isn't there. Especially if the camera is moving or racking focus. He answers with Austrailian accent "yes that can be difficult". He essentially said you have to put something there to help keep perspective. He said they would often use a long pole with a colored ball on top, or they may use extra crew memebers to fill in, just to have something there. They may shoot one shot with a marker then shoot a clean shot with nothing for the CGI. I asked him if he saw a big difference between 2K, 4K, or 6K in a DI. He said yes obviously the quality increases as you scan at the higher resolutions. He said he would prefer to work at 4K but becasue of the VFX has to work at 2K. He replied that on King Kong he scanned the image at 4K which was reduced to 2K to match the visual effects. He laughed and said it used to be that the visual effects would be sharper than the live action, but today you have to bring down the live action to equal the visual effects. I asked about visual effects artist working at 4K. He said no they don't like it. He felt the process is made more difficult than it has to be. He felt at times the VFX artists are more concerned with making their work stand out than they are concerned with making it match the look of the live action. He replied that he spent a great deal of time keeping the look of the VFX to match the look of the rest of the film. I asked if his next film was going to be another big CGI film or a smaller more intimate film. He replied he hasn't chosen his next film yet, but that he needed a break from the big films, and wants to do a smaller film. I asked if he will always have a DI or would he go back to photochemical. With a chuckle he says in Austrialian accent "I like the DI, the DI can really save your ass." Especially on a huge film where you only have so much time to set up these huge shots with elements that don't yet exist. You have a lot of freedom with the DI. I also breifly spoke to Bruno Dubonnel. He said he is currently timing a film in New York. I asked was it difficult to swicth from the freedom of the DI back to the limitations of photochemical. He replied no. He said the DI was always used to create a specific look so he never used it as a crutch. No worries. I feel like we speak pretty often, I just wanted to say hi face to face.

Yes all of that does suck. I've heard similar complaints from other Windows users who download Quicktime. Quicktime and iTunes are well integrated into OS X, so Mac users don't have much problem with them. Perhaps part of the problem is Apple overzealous in drawing the massive number of Windows users toward Quicktime and iTunes. Which honestly has been successful with iTunes controlling about 75% of the music download market. As far as the software phoning home. There is a feature in iTunes called the mini store that does look at what music you have to suggest more to buy. The Mac version of iTunes this feature can be turned off. There is no way for this feature to know if you have stolen music on your hardrive or not. In the Mac version of iTunes you can disable connection to the iTunes music store altogether. I'm sure these features should be the same on the Windows version of iTunes. You don't have to buy music from the iTunes music store to use iTunes. 90% of the music in my iTunes and on my iPod have been ripped from my CD collection in the AIFF format. I've bought a few of singles from iTMS. Generally I just wanted that song and didn't want to buy the whole album. As far as pro features vs basic features. It is possible to download movies with basic Quicktime from websites that allow them to be downloaded. As far as I know its only Apple's website that won't allow you to download without the Pro feature. I can agree with Phil that this does nickle and dime the consumer. Full screen playback is the one I find confusing. Apple only allows full screen playback if you have Pro. I think that's nonesense. Fullscreen playback should be a basic feature. I do have the Pro version Quicktime because I have Final Cut Pro which automatically gives you a Pro Quicktime license. On the other hand the primary codecs used in Quicktime are open and not owned by Apple so you are free to choose an alternative media player. While Windows media codecs are proprietary and you have to use a Microsoft supported media player. This is true Quicktime 7.0.4 wiped out some Pro licenses. For Mac users that had the problem Apple provided away to revert back to QT 7.0.3. And provided no reprieve for Windows users, probably until the next update that fixes the bug. I don't think that's right, but it does seem both Apple and Microsoft only do the minimum necessary to support cross platform media players. To be fair though you have many options for encoding and decoding Quicktime's primay codecs, while you have few options for Windows Media Codec's.

In the AC article about Munich, Kaminiski says he loves Fuji stock but doesn't use it too often because most American labs are calibrated for Kodak stocks.

I agree that revisionist history can definitely make things in the past sound better than they actually were. But looking over the works as a whole I think its possible to judge one point in time better or worse than another. As far as music videos, the 80's for the most part were pretty bad. I think at that time those creating videos had not yet come to the full understanding of what videos could be, as well as record labels or recording artists were not yet consistently spending a lot of money on them. To me the early to mid 90's was the small bit of time I saw the most creative and inspirational work in music video. That also coincided with a time when the music itself was pretty experimental. That was the time that underground rock moved into the mainstream bringing its unconventional themes. As well as the time that mainstream began take notice of hip hop. Back then you actually had to be a good rapper who actually had something to say. That was still the time the audience was able to pick the top selling rappers and not the record labels. Back in the 90's I used to watch BET and MTV religiously. Now I can barely stand to sit through one video on either station. I hate the video as well as the music. I'm sure getting older can account for part of it, but I have a collection of videos from the 90's and I still find them inspirational. When you have a song and video named Laffy Taffy number one of the video count down. The song mostly consists of a guy singing "shake your laffy taffy." Me disliking that has nothing to do with my age, I would have found that stupid when I was 15.

Actually production in NY is booming. New York only ranks second behind Los Angeles in over all production days. In 2005 the number of television pilots shooting in the city tripled the number of features shooting has doubled. NY is different from LA in that filmmaking is one of many industries and not even one of the largest industries. Filmmaking is looked at as one of the several artforms and held to no higher regard than painting, writing, dancing, or architecture. Much of the commerce of the film industry is handled in LA as well as much of the decisions making. If you have aspirations of being hired as a department head (DP) to a large studio project, then it is imperative to be known in the Hollywood studio system. Other than that there are many people working outside of LA. What is considered an indie film in LA generally has one or two known actors, has been supported through the system by a powerful director or producer, and cost around 2.5 million to produce. In the NY indie scene that would be considered a very well funded and well positioned film for mainstream success. On the other side of that even though most indie films in NY are not as well funded, there is a much larger audience for them. A small film with no name actors and no name director based on its content has a better than average opportunity to gain an audience and find success in NY. From what I?ve seen in LA such a film has very little chance to receive the same type of audience.

Oliver Stone's conspiracy is just as viable as the official "magic bullet theory". A bullet fired from behind the car bouncing around entering and exiting people repeatedly in different directions.

True 24 frames per second is bellow the threshhold of persistent vision. Meaning the eye is no longer tricked into seeing motion and begins to see a flip book of still images. Which is why in display and projection you are not really viewing 24 fps.

Apocalypto may be that film. Directed by Mel Gibson, DP Dean Semler Looks like a serious big historic film that is generally shot on anamorphic. This may be one of the films HD has been awaiting to give it more legitimacy. The trailer http://www.apple.com/trailers/touchstone/apocalypto/hd/

If your barometer for what makes a good image is based on grain being bad. There is no reason to make a comparison because HD will win that every time. S16 and in many cases 35 will loose, because without grain there is no image. What is bad grain or too much grain is subjective for the viewer. You have to keep in mind that whenever you put an HD image and a S16 image side by side you are going to see grain in the S16 image. I don't think that makes the S16 image bad, its made from crystals and the HD image is not.

I have a few freinds in fashion photography. Honestly they don't have the depth of knowledge I do about lighting. They don't much study the nature or mechanics of light. They are generally working with large strobes long as they get a good burst they are happy. What they do well though is design. I would like to develop as good an eye for design and color schemes. Because they are only taking one picture they can often do some interesting composition that you generally cannot do in cinematography. Also their knowledge of film formats and chemistry. I don't often get to do much photochemical manipulation but my photo friends do it all the time. They know more than I do about development chemistry and technique.

I suppose lighting times are pretty subjective. But honestly unless you are doing something really complicated I can't see lighting taking 3 plus hours. Being in LA is actually the first time I've seen DP's taking 3 or more hours to light a simple scene. In New York low budget and student film's are generally not spending a significant portion of the budget on lights or camera toys. Plus we are usually shooting in real locations, so there isn't much room for large lights. And many buildings in NY are 80 to 100 years old have old electrical wiring, so you don't want to overwhelm the circuit breaker. All of this leads to having a small lean lighting package. When I first got to LA I visited low budget and student film sets with freinds of mine just to observe. I noticed low budget and student film sets in LA seem to generally have much larger lighting packages and many more camera toys. What seems to happen is these young DP's or their crew really don't have enough experience to deal with all of that equipment. One thing I noticed is they really have more equipment than they need, they want to use all of it to justify the producer paying for it. The other thing I noticed is they will often take a big light, spend hours softening or flagging it down to a smaller light. When a smaller light would have done the job in the first place and would have required less time to set up. All of this leads to inefficient use of time and lighting taking 3 to 5 hours. When I get hired for films in LA, producer is often shocked that I am not automatically asking for an expensive lighting package. Really it comes down to the needs to the production, organization, and planning. I do request to visit all locations (which doesn't always happen) when I look around the location I'm looking at the natural light of the space. What practiclas are there, how will practicals play in the shot, how large are the windows, where is the sun coming from. I ask the director to have a shot list prepared as soon as possible (which doesn't always happen) I use this to anticipate where my key light will come from, how large of a key do I need, and the number of small fill lights I may need. I've heard a young DP in LA tell a producer the only way they could get a shot was with an ArriSun 18K. When they could have used the natural sun, with a large diffusion frame. An LA producer once assumed I would want to use an expensive light for a shot, and I told her no I could get a cheap light from Home Depot that will do the same thing. I have shot short films with rather large budgets in contrast to their running times. I lit a house from its exterior using ArriSun HMI Par's s for a dolly shot from a bedroom to the adjacent living room. I lit a club scene with 50 extras using banks of Par Cans hung on speed rail frames. I've shot a large art gallery, admittedly the art gallery was already well lit, and had large windows with direct sun exposure, so I only had to use kino's to highlight faces. My point is none of that took 3 plus hours to do. Because I came prepared with a plan, or quickly made up a plan, I generally only have the equipment I need to the job so I feel no pressure to use unnecessary equipment to justify its rental.

Keep in mind that your computer monitor has far more pixels per inch than your standard def television. If you watch a DVD at full screen you are watching 640x480 pixels stretched across a much larger canvas. This will intensify artifacts and glitches. While the same image will appear fine on a television. To view a DVD on your computer monitor at the same resolution as your television. When you open DVD Player on the task bar is a Video drop menu, in that drop menu it gives you the option of half size, normal size, full size. Normal size is the actual 640x480 resolution as televison. Which of course is much smaller than your monitor.

I don't know if this is your situation. But one problem I've heard is that some PC DVD software don't use standard DVD files. They use proprietary files to help the encoding go faster. When the disc is played on another PC the disc downloads a small program that helps the computer decode the proprietary file. These files only work on Windows and not on Macs. Since you've tried different software sounds like the last link in the chain may be your DVD burner. Have you tried a different one? The DVD burner in my G5 tower is made by Pioneer. I also have an external Lacie DVD burner, the drive was made by NEC. Disc's burned from the Lacie (NEC) drive are able to play on more DVD players than DVD's burned from the Pioneer drive in my G5.

DVD Studio Pro is the most comprehensive DVD authoring tool on the Mac. If you've never done any DVD authoring before you will have a steep learning curve. I had to learn through consulting people and through trial and error. iDVD is a simpler and decent option. I've seen good results from it. The biggest drawback of iDVD is the compression scheme is not as good as for the pro apps. If there is a lot of movement or fine detail you may end up with some aliasing or fine detail loss. With DVD Studio Pro you get an entire compression application called Compressor. Compressor allows you to tweek many options and variables for how you want to compress and encode you video and audio. Compression is an art in itself and I've had to learn this through trial and error also. Nero is PC only. Toast Titanium is the Mac equivalent. Toast Titanium is an excellent CD/DVD media burning application. Its primary function is to organize and burn data files, create exact copy's of disc's, create music CD's, video encoding and DVD burning. Toast can do some basic DVD authoring, but not really its primary function. It would be better to create the DVD files and menus in iDVD or Studio Pro then burn them in Toast Titanium. This depends on the brand of drive in your Mac. To confirm what disc formats your burner can support, go to the blue apple in the task bar, click on About This Mac, click More Info button. In the column on the left under hardware click Disc Burning. That will tell you what brand burner you have and what formats it supports. If you want to burn a different format you can buy and install a new drive.

I see what you are saying, but that can also depend on who is footing the DVD bill. Disney pays for the current production of Scrubs. If home distribution is sold outright to another company, then said company has acquired the burden to send Scrubs through the whole post process again. Walt Disney as a whole is no longer financially responsible for the show and has more than likely negotiated some profit participation from DVD sales. If Scrubs is passed from Disney Television Enterprise to Disney Home Video. Technically Disney Television Enterprise has passed the DVD financial responsiblity to Disney Home Video. DTE has passed an even bigger bill to DHV, both are Disney divisions, in the end The Walt Disney parent company is paying for all of it.

No there is no Quicktime DV codec. DV25 is a standard video format that Quicktime supports. DVC-Pro is a professional DV format (seperate from miniDV) developed by Panasonic, which Quicktime also supports. Lossless and lossy deal with compression schemes such as MPEG, Sorenson, TIFF and so on.

Let me restate that. You don't want to edit MPEG because it is very compressed, and a pain to deal with. You want to edit DV which is a standard video format with real frames.