Kevin W Wilson

It depends on how bad the footage is shaking around. If we're talking Bourne style stuff then you may be out of luck, if it's just little bumps from a poorly set up dolly track or similar then there is hope. After Effects has some pretty decent tracking tools built into it that can do the job. If the footage isn't too bad you can dump the motion tile effect on and build false edges into your footage which depending on the shot may or may not be noticed too much. There's a phenomenal plug in called Mocha that does a great job of stabilizing shots, I believe they used it for basic stuff on Cloverfield.

Here's a rig I built last year for a documentary about drifting. The car is moving sideways at about 60mph. Very cool stuff. Photo by my friend Alexander Grant. http://www.flickr.com/photos/treefish/

Instead of chalk you could use phosphorescent paint for all the words and hit it with a UV light source. A Kino four bank with some UV bulbs in it would probably do the trick depending on the space. The idea of cutting all the words out would also work. One giant source behind the wall with some haze would give a very defined spread of light. Or you could use multiple smaller sources and have various "bursts" of light coming through the wall. Depends on the look you want. Kevin

I didn't make this but I figured everyone here could appreciate it. It covers all the usual stuff. http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/6823505/

I agree with Adrian, you need to get on a set and see what you're made of. We could all talk about the film school or not argument until we're blue in the face, set experience is set experience plain and simple. You may want to consider Atlanta, GA; where I am from and still reside. The film and television industry is booming here right now thanks to a 30% tax incentive that has supercharged the production machine in our state. There is dozens of major productions shooting here right now with hundreds of local technicians working on them. Currently we have The Vampire Diaries, Drop Dead Diva, The Walking Dead and Fast and Furious 5 shooting in and around the city. Last year we had Halloween 2, Zombieland, The Blind Side, Due Date, The Last Song, The Crazies, I Can Do Bad All By Myself and several more. That's not to mention the hundreds of commercials that are shot here every year for national broadcast. It's a happening place! Panavision is also opening a new branch here early next year and several new production stages have just been built. I've lived here my whole life and production wise I've never been busier even with the economy in the state that it is. The cost of living here is very reasonable, certainly cheaper than LA and there is an abundance of talented people with incredible skill sets. Is it LA? No, definitely not. Give it a little time though and anything is possible. It may be a good place to get your feet wet though and decide if this is really something you want to do. http://www.georgia.org/GeorgiaIndustries/Entertainment/Pages/default.aspx

Not sure why the double post happened there, apologies.

The movie Sunshine was shot with Hawk anamorphics. It was in 35mm not 16 but it may give you some ideas. It was also an FX heavy film made for not a lot of money.

The movie Sunshine was shot with Hawk anamorphics. It was in 35mm not 16 but it may give you some ideas. It was also an FX heavy film made for not a lot of money.

The warping effect you describe is known as a "rolling shutter." Also referred to as "jello cam." CMOS chip based cameras, like the 5dMkII, are susceptible to it because of the way they record images. CCD cameras are also capable of rolling shutter artifacts but not as much, smear tends to be a bigger issue. Barry Green has a detailed article on it and there are lots of posts here, cinematography.com, on rolling shutter issues, just do a search and you'll turn up several posts on the subject. It's a common annoyance amongst DP's. Barry Green Article: http://www.dvxuser.com/jason/CMOS-CCD/ The easiest way to avoid rolling shutter in whip pans is to not do them. Pan slowly or structure your shots so they don't use pans. Any vertical objects or lines in the frame will make the effect look worse than it is, so try to think about your blocking and shots to avoid these things.

They are 3D transitions. No different from the standard wipes and dissolves included with most NLE's. These look especially good though because of the symmetrical nature of the all the backgrounds and objects in the scenes. Notice there's not a lot of stuff on any complex angles. It's all very square and flat, this mostly comes down to planning ahead and having the art department and production design involved with the implementation of the look. That's all it is though, very clean 3D transitions. They can be done in any compositing program. You would lay your shots down in 3D space, create a 3D camera and simply spin the camera around from shot to shot within that space. The zooms look to be done the same way; by just pushing in on the image in 3D space. Here's similar video that uses the exact same principals: This one uses a bit edgier approach, largely accomplished through the more energetic use of the camera. It has the same type of 3D transitions as the other video but also uses straight cuts that are disguised under the whip pans and tilts of the camera. The cut disappears in the motion blur created but the camera move. It's so seamless most folks don't even notice. Cool stuff, all hidden in plain view.

Yeah pretty sure this stuff is illegal now. It's unbelievably hazardous to human lungs. I saw some interviews with the cast of Aliens and all of them at some point or another had to be treated for breathing problems during the making of the film because so much AB smoke was pumped into the set and it's tight spaces.

The smoke and rain gags are done typically with a black background instead of green, although I've seen it done successfully with green too so you could use either. Black tends to provide a better key with natural elements like smoke, fog, rain, sand blasts, etc. I would use a black backdrop for the smoke and rain and put a strong backlight on both elements. Rain can be completely invisible on camera without a good backlight, same goes for the smoke. www.detonationfilms.com has an assortment of stock elements that may give you some ideas. Almost all of their rain and smoke footage is shot on black and keys pretty well. Do the glasses with water in them have to be clear? Using an opaque glass would solve a lot of the transparency and warping issues of seeing the green through the glass. This happens a lot when interviews are done in front of green screens with people wearing glasses. Looking closely can reveal un-keyed parts of the screen through the lenses on the individuals glasses. The key can be difficult to pull around those areas without intensive rotoscoping or clean up, simply removing the glasses though can solve the problem.

I agree, a green screen would be easier and probably a bit less of a headache. Not to mention giving you more control in post over what your final background will look like. With rear projection you will need to shoot your background plates first and reverse them for projection through a two way screen. Lighting for rear projection tends to involve a little more thought because the more light that spills to the screen the more washed out your background will look. There's several older issues of Cinefex that have articles with breakdowns on how this effect is accomplished, research goes a long way into the success of any effect. James Cameron's films would also be a good place to reference, The Abyss, Aliens and Terminator 2 all used rear projection pretty extensively. Andrew Lazlo's book, Every Frame A Rembrandt, has a pretty good explanation of how he had to scrape together a scene for the first Rambo film very last minute, and I believe he used rear screen projection and some simple rotating canvas paintings to do it. It's also a wonderful book from a veteran of the craft, highly recommended.

You're not going to get really outstanding results since you locked your shot in at 24 fps. The best you can do to slow it down by half is generate a clip that runs at 12 fps, which will produce rather jittery slow motion. For slow motion you need more frames than you intend to project at. If you wanted to slow your subject down by half and your final projection rate is 24 fps, you need to shoot at 48 fps to produce a smooth result. Sometimes you can get away with slowing down clips a little bit, say a 24 fps shot to something like 20 fps, but it still won't be smooth. There are plug ins like Twixtor that can do it, but they cost an arm and a leg and still will only produce okay results at best. Instead of having an actual frame of motion to pull from, these plug ins generate an inbetween frame to make up for what isn't there. Usually they merge the previous and following frame together by adding lots of motion blur, which is still unflattering; in my opinion. I would recommend just reshooting at the proper frame rate to get the result you want. Unless of course you are okay with the jitter added by the non present frames, perhaps it fits with your story? There's several famous editors who slow clips down in post that were never intended to be used as slow motion clips, Conrad Buff, Michael Kamen and James Symons to name a few. So it happens all the time, you just need to decide if it's right for your story or not.

The best way I've ever seen it done was on Charlie Wilson's War. They replaced so many television screens in the film with archival footage and news reports, all of it seamless. All the screens in the film were removed from their housings and green/blue chroma was placed inside behind the glass of the tube. This allowed for realistic reflections and highlights from the on set lighting to be seen on the screen and did not have to be added in post. Really sold the keys I thought, it's a simple thing but it made all the difference. They also placed a track marker on each TV to make moving shots easier to fix. Pulling the effect off really lies in the skill of the compositor who is replacing the screen. I've seen horrendous hand held shots replaced really well and static shots that weren't so hot. If you really want to take the easy route, lock off your camera and don't have anything crossing the screen, but if you want to move your camera or have actors in the shot the difficulty in pulling the key will go up. Good luck.

The horizontal, anamorphic style flares that appear early in the video look an awful lot like a preset flare that's built into Knoll Light Factory, an After Effects plug-in made by Red Giant Software. http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/products/c...ht-factory-pro/

Hi Ken. Ideally you would want a rain slicker for the camera or a weatherproof housing, they aren't cheap though. I've seen camera ops do everything from Saran Wrap to plastic trash bags. Sometimes it works well, sometimes just sort of. A friend of mine is a severe weather photographer and he doesn't use anything, he keeps the lens cap on until he's ready to fire and he always has plenty of lens tissues handy. His photos are gorgeous and rarely require any touch up. At the very least the camera body and lens needs to be covered with some sort of water repelling material. Electronics and water don't tend to be friendly with one another. You could have someone run along side you with a large 4x4 flag, I've seen this work rather well before. Mount the flag to the end of a grip arm and have an assistant run next to you with the flag out over the lens. Depending on how wide your lens is you will need to adjust and figure out the dance but it can work. A tarp is another option but it can be quite loud so if sound is an issue then maybe not. Also, keeping a hood on the lens will help and adding a mattebox will aid further. Running backwards with a camera and maintaining a specific shot is not the easiest thing in the world, but it can be done. There's a reason Stedicam ops practice with heavy rigs and workout so much! Always have someone behind you to guide you, this is non-negotiable on any production with valuable equipment, safety is a must with people first and equipment a close second. Walking is a different story but if you are running through a forest, in the rain, with a fully mocked up HPX, all of it backwards, you need a guide and possibly a guide for your guide! Practice the shot several times without the rain machine on, rehearse with the actor and dial everything in so you move as one unit. When you think you've got it, fire everything up and make some magic. Good luck, be safe out there. Kevin Wilson

Shooting in cold weather is a pain, plain and simple. Last year (2008), I DP'd a documentary for about two weeks where most of the shooting consisted of nighttime exteriors in Atlanta, GA. It rained pretty continuously and the temperature rarely climbed above 30 at night. The F900 we shot with experienced some difficulty turning the tape heads when the temp went way down and I ended up attaching HeatMax brand hand warmers to the outside of the camera near the tape mechanisms. Worked well enough that the tape heads cued up problem free from that point on. You can buy them at any major retailer that sells camping gear. I get mine at Home Depot and just rubber band them to the camera. It worked well for the sound guy too as his lav mics were having issues as well. A hand warmer on each mic pac solved the problem and we we finished the shoot with no technical issues otherwise. Be safe out there. Kevin Wilson