Jonny Brady

Does anybody know of a piece of software that accurately simulates the jitter that film has as it passes through the gate? Gives a really nice warm effect to titles and such..

Cheers

Just pulled out the DVX book and found some interesting numbers from resolution charts. I'm assuming these are from the NTSC model.

 

350 lines: in-camera squeeze mode

380 lines: letterbox mode

540 lines: anamorphic adapter

Woah, that's very interesting. Thing is, I use a 35mm adapter, so I doubt I could use an anamorphic adapter on that as well... unless you can get converters that fit onto that sort of setup... then I'd have to use my monitor rather than my viewfinder to squash the image (which wouldn't be a problem I guess)...

But that's not relevant anyway, thanks for that information, that's helped - I'm glad letterbox is better because of the fact that it also shaves off underscan!

Cheers for your help guys!

Blimey, trying to get my head round that...

So in a nutshell then, is there no difference between shooting anamorphic (NOT lens, digital)/letterboxed on the DVX?

Jonny

Not sure what forum this best fits into so I put it in General...

I have two main cameras - the Sony A1E and the Panasonic DVX.

I am Standard def. I'm trying to work out whether it's better for me to shoot anamorphic, or letterboxed. And when I say anamorphic, I mean without an anamorphic lens of course - I mean just choosing the 'Squeeze' setting in my cameras.

When shooting widescreen on the A1 it is native widescreen, and this resolution is of course afaik 720x576. As it's anamorphic I presume also that its pixel aspect ratio is 1.456. My first question with this is, when you switch it to 4:3, all it does is crop the sides instead of change the pixel aspect ratio to 1.09, because you can still see the image underneath the cropped area, just darker - so what's happening here? Is it getting rid of horizontal res? Or is it still 720x576? If it is still 720x576 how is it keeping the faded image under the pillarboxes?

With the DVX I prefer to shoot letterbox because it means I can use the viewfinder accurately, as when it letterboxes, it also shaves off the underscan area. If you shoot anamorphic with the DVX it has huge underscan in the viewfinder which makes it difficult to frame (rather annoyingly there is no 'safe zone' marker).

But I figure that if I shoot letterbox on the DVX, I'll be cropping 25% of the vertical 576 res, so I'll have 432 pixels of vertical resolution. If I shoot anamorphic though, you'd expect that you'd get the full 576 height. But surely this is only if you use an anarmorphic LENS? Because surely all the camera is doing is digitally stretching it, so you're losing res JUST as you would if you letterboxed? Basically, aren't letterboxing and digitally anamorphising (if that's even a word) exactly the same, and isn't true wide only achieved through anamorphic lenses?

Sorry if this is the wrong messageboard altogether for this question.

Any help much appreciated!

This is what really baffles me about the industry. Why is there no standard contract that is signed by the employer before the work is even done that says fee will be turned around in X number of days? I mean understandably every shoot is different, and every client is different - but there has to be a system in place, surely?

EDIT: This is probably the wrong thread for this, thinking about it..

I was quite proud of my showreel until I saw that. I am so jealous. You're my age and you've completely thwarted me...

What did you shoot on through that?? The bits with the rappers, like in the laundrette - what camera was that? Was it a 35mm HDV setup? If so how did you do it handheld? Did you use a shoulder-mount? If so what did you use for a viewfinder?

(Handheld is an issue for me with my 35mm rig and to see someone else use it effortlessly intrigues me)

Ahhh, very interesting... thanks a lot for your help!

Gotcha. Thanks guys!

Actually - I've just remembered the reason I was sceptical about it being because of the use of an anamorphic lens - surely an anamorphic lens would stretch out-of-focus blobs of light in the background horizontally, not vertically? 'Cause won't that mean on the negative, the the light blobs will be even narrower than when they are "anamorphed" (if that's even a word)? Shouldn't they be circular on the neg and horizontally oval on the 'anamorphed' projection? Or am I getting into complex optics here...

I THOUGHT it might be to do with anamorphic lenses, I mean it made sense that it would be - but since I'd never seen it before I thought maybe not...

Maybe I've watched a lot of films that weren't shot with anamorphic lenses...

Thanks a lot for your help!

Ahhh, I see, course - I never considered aspect ratios.

David - so the Sony F23 shoots in 4:3? Why, I never knew that - I thought HDCAM would be widescreen? I was told the F23 had a 16:9 chip...

Right... I've tried to work this out from various articles on the net and I enquired at a cinematographer's convention about it and got a different answer here and a different answer there...

Until recently I was under the impression that 1k meant 1080p (as 1080 is roughly... 1k, surprise surprise); 2k is... double that, and is the equivalent of the output resolution of the print that goes out to cinemas; and 4k is just a ridiculously high res version that is too high to edit with anyway so ends up getting compressed to 2k.

Until.

Somone at the British Society of Cinematographer's show at Elstree told me that the Sony CineAlta shoots 2k, which is apparently 2k HORIZONTAL (1920, sometimes 2048 or something and 1080 vertical). Hence it shooting to HDCAM (which rather shocked me)...

What! Is this true? So cinema projections are essentially 1080p?

But then the next day I read something that differentiated 1080p from 2k, which is what I originally thought. And if 2k IS 1080p, why isn't 1080p just called 2k then?

And elsewhere in this forum I've seen somebody compare 2k with 16mm and 4k with 35mm. I thought 35mm was hypothetically about 12 or 16k vertically (can't remember which) since it's negative, molecular!

Ever so confused. Can anybody iron this out for me?

Thanks!

Hi,

Watched Magnolia last night and noticed that the lens used produced a focus effect I've never seen before where everything that is out of focus is distorted vertically and as focus is pulled sharper the objects reduce in vertical size. For example glowing lights in the background will be vertically oval shaped and as focus is pulled they become circular again. Can anybody tell me what kind of lens is being used here and why this happens?

Many thanks!

JB

I seem to recall a different camera being destroyed in a different chase scene. I'd have to watch it again to point it out.

In what film?

Weird website for someone who's attempting to startup a production company. It almost seems as if they raided some studio's junk drawer and made a film with what was still working.

Hahahaha. I'd be put off ever hiring them purely because of the reference to their 'top of the range DV camcorder'.

A bit like saying "this F1 car makes my Nissan Micra seem like a lawnmower!"

(OT warning) Here's the last photo from that website (www.voicefilms.com). If a crew packed up my van by tossing gear in willy-nilly like this, I'd be having a major hissy fit.

 

 

If it's my gear I want to keep it looking good, if it's rental gear I want company to know that I take good care of their equipment, and if it's borrowed gear I'd be ashamed to return it with any new scrapes, scratches, or bruises.

Exactly what I thought. Students.

I had the same thought, Hal!

 

I once made a Direct Cinema documentary back in 1996 about a group of HFF Munich film students making their first serious private full-scale production, observing them from casting to screening.

Haha that's quite funny, for my uni project I'm making a film about students making a film for their uni project. Well, it's a mockumentary. Satirical. I love being me.

Back to the hyperlinked website in the OP, however: what I find particularly enlightening is the intrigueing perspective of quality increments that manifests in the author's comment that the Panaflex's "...picture [...] is absolutely phenomenal. When I saw the developed film I could hardly believe my eyes. This makes my top of the line DV camera look like a Hi-8 camcorder from 1987..."

 

What is this person implying? Look, 35mm is so good, it makes my consumer thingy look like a consumer thingy? At least we know that when we rent a Millennium or Elaine, we can expect better quality than from a Sony CCD-V 800 E.

Hahahahahah! Yeah that's what I thought, it sounded dead naive - it made me wonder how these people had even got round to using a Panavision...

Looking on this website now...

http://www.voicefilms.com/Voice_Films/crea...efequipment.htm

It says that "This camera is worth a whopping one million dollars." That's not true, is it?

Because I mean, an Arri 435 is something like 150-200,000 is it not? And I saw a video on Youtube of Panavision at some convention, and it was a demonstration of one of their cameras, just a standard 35mm - and in the description it mentioned the price "150-300,000 dollars" (even though you can't buy them)...

Just curious

:(

Right, I don't know if this is the right area to post this but *technically* it IS about a type of 35mm camera, or its housing, so. I put it here. Please move this if it's in the wrong place, obviously...

I've just been watching some of the raw footage to the 1994 film 'Speed' - the bit where the subway train is sliding along the road at the end of the film.

There were at least 8 cameras on this shoot, and in one of the shots you can see a few cameras unmanned in the road.

I was watching the footage from one of these cameras, as the subway train just glided towards the camera... closer.... closer... *crack*

The lens cracks and then it stops rolling. I think, "WHAT."

So I look from another angle and see that the train appears to be GUIDED into this camera, and when you see it hit, the camera just smashes into pieces.

I've NEVER seen this before, I've always seen cameras treated with such care, and rightly so, they're expensive - so what the heck happened here d'you think? Was this intentional? If so, what kind of camera/lens d'you reckon it was? Is there a 'cheap' 35mm camera that is built for smashing up?

Be interesting to know...