Vanessa Whyte

DS Williams put his work on the forum to start a discussion about grading C300 footage and Optefex filters. While it may not be to everyone's taste, DS Williams didn't direct the video and, regardless, I don't think his generous post demanded such a vitriolic and borderline racist response.

The reason is to provide VFX with another 'witness' camera (these are the EX3s) from a different angle to the main film camera, so that they can see another perspective from which to work from. I think the best solution is to either to mix the NTSC and PAL footage in the edit (which is only used for VFX and not for the final cinema projection), and just sync them up using the clap at the beginning of the take (in the edit) rather than bothering with synching the timecodes. Many thanks for your help.

Hi John. Thanks for your message. I'm not sure I'm making the problem clear. It's not the sound that is the concern but the exact synching between 35mm and XD footage. The VFX work will need to make sure that these two cameras will be at the exact same frame, and the 35mm camera will definitely be shot at 24fps. The problem we also have is that jamming a PAL timecode into the EX3 gives a 25fps timecode which won't sync up with the 35mm cameras, and ideally, the VFX team want to work at NTSC anyway. So, the EX3 could be shot at 1080/24p (NTSC), and the 35mm cameras at 24fps, but then the PAL timecode will be off, and we have a mix between PAL/NTSC... Is that at all clear? I feel like I'm confusing myself!

Unfortunately, we can't do that either and the film cameras will definitely be at 24fps... Will let you know if we find a solution!!

Thanks for your response Adrian. So, just to clarify, you think that if I run the 35mm at 24fps it will be ok to sync with the XD footage at 1080/24p (even though it's not 24 but 23.98)? And then we have this NTSC problem in that the PAL settings don't run at 24, only 25. However, as this XD footage is mainly for VFX use to add an extra camera in the sequence and not cinema projection, I think we might be ok to mix PAL and NTSC??

Hi. Does anyone know if there is a clever setting on the Sony EX3 Camera that will help to match the frame speed from a 35mm camera running at 24 fps? This is for shooting an extra camera for sequence mainly shot on 35mm. The extra camera is a Sony EX3 and needs to be in sync with the other cameras for the edit. We can jam a timecode into the EX3 but I'm worried about the framerate... In PAL (for UK), the settings are either 1080/50i or 108025p. You can get to 24p if you go into NTSC settings, but is this really 24 or is it 23.98? And then do we have a problem of PAL and NTSC mixing?? Many thanks if anyone has any tips...

I think what they did is set up the 50/50 mirror, so that one camera shoots straight on, and another, at 90 degrees to the first, shoots into a mirror at 45 degrees to the actor; thus the two cameras shoot exactly the same image. With the second (or 'B' camera), they used lens diopters in front of the camera lens to distort the image of Pinbacker at the end (such as when his arm stretches towards the camera). The benefit of the 50/50 system is that Boyle had two versions of the same takes to play with. One clean, and one with the distorted image. Hope that makes some sense!