Mei Lewis

There's an episode of Film Riot might be helpul, it will at least give you the very basic of what might be involved:

Someone put together shots from a lot of 1970s movies on flickr: the firts thing I thought when I saw the page of thumbnails was that they have this orange/teal look. Was film ertain film stock actually designed that way?

What's the film about?

I've seen bound a few times, the color really emphasises the story in that. It feels like a very compact film.

The Man on Fire trailer on youtube looks interesting http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6s_-O4HglGI I'll have to watch the film. Bonus points for them using Nine Inch Nails in the trailer!

I'm looking for some movies to watch that have good examples of color correction so I was wondering what you all recommend. A few I like off the top of my head where the color work seems to have a big impact are Ameile, Saving Private Ryan and the Matrix.

How do you think it's best to specify colors scientifically? I used to think you could do it by just stating their frequency, but now I think it's more complicated than that. Would you want to specify entire frequency distributions?

I'm beginning to think this is the case, so the quality should be the same when exported from either AE or PP. The Rebel DV guide is a few years old now and could really do with an update, there's no mention of DSLRs for example which have had a big impact on budget film making. Even so I think the best way to go is to use PP to edit then take the whole project to AE to color correct/grade and add titles etc.

I never realised that film might not record certain colors or that there'd be such an argument over whether it does or not. It got me thinking that maybe this is all related to a phenomenon I've noticed shooting certain sorts of lights with a digital still camera. Violet colors can sometimes get really ugly when they blow out, and they seem to cause one channel (blue I think) to clip very much before the others and when otherwise the scene seems not very bright. See the lights above and around the face here: 100% crop: It only seems to happen with violet/purple colors. Other colors look like I'd expect, for example the orange/yellow lights here look fine: This usually happens at concerts and in nightclubs so there's a possibility that it's the black lights they use but I don't think it's that because in most cases they're not having that kind of effect to my eye. They lights aren't making UV paint, teeth etc glow. To my eye the lights just look like violet/purple lights. Another thought I had was that the lights are unintentionally emitting UV which I can't see but which the camera sensor does. I'd always assumed this was some artifact of how individual color channels clipped first, but maybe it's realtade to the current discussion. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

I'm new to shooting and editing video. At the moment I'm using a 5D2 and trying to figure out a workflow on PC. In particular I'm trying to understand the exact roles of Premiere Pro and After Effects. PP seems to be mainly for editing and AE for doing effects, titles etc. But there's a big overlap between the two programs. Most of the common effects in AE are also in PP, like color correction, levels controls etc. On the other hand it looks like AE can do editing. It seems like I'm _supposed_ to edit a sequence together in PP then transfer it to AE to do the effects work and grading. Stu Maschwitz's Rebel DV Guide (http://www.amazon.co.uk/DV-Rebels-Guide-All-digital-Approach/dp/0321413644) says you should never grade in PP because of something to do with bit depth and image quality, but that info may be out of date. Is there just a difference of emphasis between the two or something more fundamental?

640x480.

He doesn't sound like a very good teacher. Maybe you can engage him by asking about what his favourite films are, or his favourite techniques. He must have some interest in what he's teaching so maybe you can connect that way.

Completely true, they are, but increasingly they're watched on exactly the same screens.

True and that's why I specified objectively better not just better. There are still people who prefer the sound of crackly old mono '78 vinyl to pristine modern stereo recordings (analogue or digital), and the difference there is far more marked. I think a lot of personal preference is familiarity, and what you grew up with, and nowadays people grow up surrounded by digital images. Many youngsters will spend far, far more time looking at computer or video game screens than they ever do at the movies + television combined. The practicalities of film manufacture also weight against its continued use as a recording medium. There needs to be enough demand for it or production will just stop - this has already pretty much happened with analogue magnetic recording tape used in music recording studios, and to some extent with stills film.

If we'd had digital for 100 years before film was invented, no one would have even considered using film to make movies. ---- The reason film results in better looking movies right now is because that's what the better film makers tend to use when they have the budget. People starting out today don't have an emotional or time investment in film. They'll use digital because it's cheap, versatile and it lets them do what they want. If currently digital has lower resolution or dynamic range it doesn't matter to them - the effect is small and dwarfed by other considerations. In 10 years digital will be objectively better than film in every measurable way. In twenty years we'll have maturing film makers who've grown up with the constant freedom to shoot and experiment that cheap digital technology brings, and access to all the information and expert advice they could ask for.

As a stills shooter digital all the way. I *heart* pixles.

Good show, I don't know much about it though!

The NIL is what you usually try to avoid by flagging the rear lights. See the second image here: http://missionphotographic.com/five-point-lighting/

You could get a very similar look to that just by using an ordinary wide angle lens and cropping the top and bottom off the frame. The lens flares would look slightly different and maybe the bokeh too, but in this particular image the difference wouldn't be very big as there's no bokeh to speak of and the flares are very undefined. All the NIL (non-imaging light) surrounding the rear light sources could be exaggerated by using a cheap lens or putting a not too clean filter on which usually makes that artifact worse (like it is here).

So they figured not many people would be interested in what he had to say, but those that were could/would be willing to get very spendy to hear it?

Why is that Storaro thing so expensive?

Perhaps Paul means the x5 and x10 digital zoom mofe in live view, whic is intended solely for focussing?

As an outsider (I live in the UK) it's interesting to watch this thread because it feels like I'm seeing a debate Americans usually have in private, among themselves. One thing that surprises me is the strong sentiment some people seem to have that California and LA in particular should somehow be entitled to have a lot of film production based there. I don't know if that's how people really feel, that's just the impression I get reading this thread and I could be misunderstanding. It seems ironic that people in LA would complain about overseas production taking work from them when LA and the US in general has been accused of exactly the same thing in reverse all around the world for decades. Some countries even have laws requiring locally produced content because they're afraid of foreign and in particular US produced content, France is an example. Most of the films in the cinema and released on DVD here in Wales where I live are made in the US. It feels a little bit like the US is farming the rest of the world for money. I actually don't mind that. Some of my favourite bits of culture are American and I'm not at all nationalistic, I don't care if the people who make a film live 3000 miles away or in the next town. I think Avatar is an interesting case to look at, not least because it's one of the highests grossing films of all time and generally perceived as being American. http://www.boxofficeguru.com/intl.htm says Title International Domestic Worldwide as Of: % Foreign % Domestic Avatar 1982.0 748.5 2730.5 5/16/10 72.6% 27.4% So there an 'American' film that has taken nearly $2000,000,000 in non-us territories. That's a gross figure, so much of that money would have stayed locally with cinemas etc, but I'm sure it still made a lot for the company that made it. But Avatar isn't a purely American film. The lead visual effects company was Weta Digital in New Zealand. Clearly VFX were a huge part of why Avatar was successful. This goes against the idea that a lot of work is moved from the US overseas because it can be done cheaper albeit to a lower quality. As I understand it NZ has a great quality of life, and Avatar's effects aren't sub-par, Weta were probably chosen as they were the best in the world to do them, not because they were cheaper than a US company. And James Cameron is a Canadian!

Depends what you mean by 'resolution'.

Yes I know they're extreme but that doesn't matter. I'm not trying to prove the 5D2 is better (it's worse for most video things), I'm merely claiming the Red isn't _always_ better - in this case exceptions do prove a rule. Andrew seemed to be saying the Red _is_ always better than the 5D2 because only technical concerns matter. I'm saying that sometimes, mostly even, choices aren't made purely for technical reasons.