Mei Lewis

I play games too, far less than I used to. But I prefer films without a lot of (visible) CG and I prefer filming 'real stuff' too. At some point though, not very far off, even 100% 'real stuff' will be pre-vized in the computer before it's filmed for real. Unless cinematographers are involved in that pre-viz they won't have as much of a say when it's actually filmed.

The more I look into this, the more I realise that it's going to be a fundamental part of *all* cinematography in future. We all need to understand some elements of it, or get left behind. In a few years directors will be able to make their whole film, in a draft CG form, using their laptop, as easily as using an NLE, without ever needing a real life cinematographer. And by the point they come to make the 'real' film, most of the artistic decisions cinematographers like to make will have already been made without them.

I've been to that part of London and both those shots would be easy now with a drone. Might look into the legality of flying over the river, it should be far enough from people to be safe. Having a ride in a helicopter is on my bucket list. I nearly talked the police in South Wales into taking me up in theirs once, but it didn't happen.

Wow, would never have guessed a helicopter. I guess the camera was handheld, pointing out of the side?

Is this the same sort of thing? https://www.provideocoalition.com/go_craaaaazy_fill_from_the_key_side/

Your lecturer is a plonker. He probably doesn’t know the answer and is saying that as an excuse.

How was this done? Seems to get too close to the bridge and the the people to be helicopter, and the camera is very shakey

"Total Video Duration: 16 hours 38 minutes" - this might take a while!

I'm trying to figure out the best way for myself to approach the whole topic of virtual production. My starting point is, I have some skills as a real life DoP, including camera movement, lighting, shooting etc. I'm also a very techy person, having been a programmer in a past life and having played loads of games, including some of the early Unreal games that lead to Unreal Engine. I loved The Mandalorian, and that plus the fact that Unreal Engine/ realtime production is on the cusp of being technically possible, now seems like the time to explore all this. So where to start... for me it's going to be learning as much about this whole area as possible. There's no way for me to get access to the sort of screen volume that the Mandalorian etc. used, but I have cameras, lights and computers, and much of the software involved is free. So first step for me is to learn Unreal Engine! I'm already part way through a couple of courses about it on Udemy. Now I've found this which seems like a better place to start: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/onlinelearning-courses/virtual-production-primer?sessionInvalidated=true

I'm fairly flexible. Shall we do this by calendar month starting with January? Now how do we choose a film?

People hate variable focal length lenses that much that we can't even say the word?

What's "Sz'euum"? So how do we get this started? I guess someone needs to recommend a film and then set a date to have watched it by.

Very cool.

Are data dvds being used just as a way of getting the files to you? That seems a bit odd nowadays. Most people would use file transfer for the sort of data sizes dvds can hold. If the videos are being burned as playable video dvds then I think that whatever format the videos originate in (eg h264 or dnxhd) would be transcoded to the standard dvd format (mpeg2?) and then you’d have to re-rip then into something else to make use of.

Similarly, consider a big budget film that costs $100,000,000- 200,000,000. Sounds like a lot of money already, but break it down a bit further. It’s $1,000,000 per minute. Over $15,000 per second.

There’s a documentary about Vogue called “The September Issue” and based on various comments by different people in the film it’s possible to work out that their budget at the time (over ten years ago) was roughly $10,000 per page. Some of those pages only have a single photo on. It’s possible to buy a lot of talent for that amount of money.

Not sure if this should go here or in ‘On Screen’. And sorry if this is an old/bad idea. Perhaps we could nominate a film each month that we all (whoever wants to) watch and discuss? This would be good now as there’s a lot less communal cinema-going because of covid and probably fewer new releases too. —- Any takers? I don’t have any particular films in mind to start with.

Thanks Tomasz! That makes it a lot clearer to me.

Also Tomasz, am I understanding this correctly? You are getting the girl to play Beat Sabre, and filming her on greenscreen as you do so, then when you superimpose her on the computer image her motions are automatically in synch with the motion of the game because she was actually playing it?

Tomasz, would you be able to go through what kit you use in a bit more detail? A lot of people are using the vive tracker right, but but the thing on your camera isn't that? https://www.vive.com/uk/accessory/vive-tracker/ I really want to try some of this, but don't know where to start. Is there a step by step guide somewhere?

Thanks Guy.

Could anyone recommend a good book where I can start to learn whatever electrical skills would be practically useful on set? I’m in the UK but I assumed electricity is mostly the same around the world.

"what's outside of the frame is just as important as what's inside of the frame" I've not heard that exact wording before, but it may have the same intention as the phrase: "What you choose to leave out of the frame is as important as what you choose to include" and the meaning of that is much clearer to me. If documenting reality, you can change the apparent meaning of an image by including or leaving things out. In fiction where things are much more constructed you have even more control.

Is the need for an electrician (or not) inherently a safety thing? No special expertise is needed to plug in a vacuum cleaner or a lawnmower at home, but if a house needs rewiring most people would definitely get an electrician in. Is similar true here?

Making a while video is too involved a process to be ‘fun’ for me. Photos are fun.