Mei Lewis

Thanks Travis. This is the original audio, I've not mixed it into the edit with other sounds yet. It's pretty quiet and is meant to get the viewer's attention so I'll probably have to boost it, but I really want to know _should_ the audio levels be higher. I got over 100 .wav files and they were all this quiet. My understanding is that they should get up much closer to 0db without clipping. Is that right? On this recording they were in a quiet interior with no one talking and little other sound so I don;t think it was recorded low to avoid noise. The recordist did mention that on the sections outside he was recording low because of wind noise, with the idea to boost the signal in post - but that makes no sense to me, if I boost the voices I'll also boost the wind noise so I'm back to where I started, with more noticeable self-noise and perhaps aliasing. Maybe there's some advantage to not clipping on the wind noise, but I don;t see that either. If the wind noise is loud enough to clip then it will surely mask the voices at that instant too? Thanks Travis. I think this clip is okay to use with boosting the level and maybe some noise reduction and some other of your advice. What I really want to know is should I have to do this? All the 100+ sound files I got are like this and I could do it to them all I suppose but is this normal?

I'm fairly new to film making and mainly concentrate on the visual side. A few weeks ago I shot a short film where the sound was recorded separately by someone else, and I now need to use it in the edit. All the audio seems like it was recorded at too low a level, but I've not got enough experience to be sure. I've been given the audio as mono .wav files. I don't know what the recording equipment was exactly, but it was a lower end recorder and boomed mic. Above is a screengrab of one of the files in Adobe Audition. This particular track is a best case scenario in the sense that it should have been the easiest to record. It's a reading of a monologue that will be used as a voice over and was recorded in a quiet room, direct to the mic with no camera around. The peak level is about 20db below zero on the audition scale. All the other audio I've received is similarly low-level, with only the slate clap and times when the mic has been physically knocked ever getting much above -20db on the Audition scale. Is this normal?

But lens flare makes films better!

There are many threads here asking about the best (your favorite) cinematography in a film, but I was wondering if that goes hand in hand with the best film. Is how a film looks the most important thing? Does anyone here have a favorite film that looks bad? This was prompted by listening to a podcast about screenwriting where story was said to be the most important thing, and if the story isn't good nor is the film. I disagree. I think story is just one elemnt and other things can make up for a bad story.

To do something like 'The 3rd and the Seventh' you'd also need to be good at cinematography, lighting, editing, drawing...

Thanks Stephen, very informative.

I have Canon 5d2 footage which I'm fairly sure is 0-255. I'm using Premiere but can;t work out how to convert the footage to 26-235 before premiere displays it. Any ideas? Do I have to transcode and lose all advantage of Adobe's no transcode workflow?

I haven't got anything useful to say, but it's great that people are referencing video games for looks.

http://www.zacuto.com/shootout-revenge-2012 What do people make of this? Not so much the camera comparison which I find a bit boring, but the comments those involve make generally.

Think you mean diffraction not refraction. It softens the image overall, how much that bothers you is a personal thing and depends on what you're shooting. I've gone to very narrow apertures to maximise DoF for a forced perspective shot. Moving image with its much lower resolution than stills I don;t think this is so much of an issue.

Red cameras crop to change resolution right? So does this mean Scarlet effectively has a smaller sensor than Epic, because only a smaller part of it is ever used at 24p?

Really like it! Both the song and the video.

It depends on the balance of image qualities and flexibilities you want, and film is quite different in this respect to digital. I'm sure there are people who'll buy and like this camera but most of them are the same people who buy the Leica snakeskin gold special editions. Is anyone here seriously considering getting one???? Leica is famous for being discreet, street photography, catching the moment etc rather than landscape photography where physical filters are more appropriate. I find it odd they're emphasising sharpness when by and large street photographers don't much care about it. And is a similarly priced DSLR, or even a color digital Leica really not sharp enough already?

Doing a conversion in post can take just as much thought, craft, and time as slotting the right piece of plastic in front of the lens. It's not just a matter of pressing a button. The time spent is just shifted from shooting to editing, freeing up more time during shooting for more important things like composition, interacting with your subject, catching the moment.

Good point, but still less flexible, more time consuming and all around clumsier than post conversion. I'm not convinced that this camera would be any better dealing with noise than say a 5Dmk3 or D800 downsampled to the same resolution. Will be interesting to see test results.

And it's much better to shoot color then convert to black and white because then _you_ not the camera has control over how colors get converted.

It's neither crazy nor genius, just shrewd business sense given Leica's typical customer.

This book will tell you exactly how to do it: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Light-Science-Magic-Introduction-Photographic/dp/0240812255/ref=dp_ob_image_bk

There's also the question of why it is that those who claim that film imagery is better than digital really do believe, if indeed they do, and if they do, they should seek to impose their choice (whether it be to record or project using film) on those who happen not to agree with them. Whether they really do believe what they say is raised into question by acknowledging that the search for a digital equivalent is know mostly reduced to a search for some poorly defined "quality of film". Perhaps this is the point at which the whole thing returns to the issue of cost, that is to say that those who claim that film imagery is better than digital do so because at a particular point and depending on what the relevant business interests are, it is more profitable. (If you can convince producers that film is no more expensive but that you are one of the few who has the skills to work with it you're more employable).

What's a 'maxi mattpoles'? I googled it but it comes back to this forum.

How do you mean Microsoft was built on piracy? Out of the two main OS vendors Apple would be the one that relied on piracy to succeed, their current survival stemming from the iPod which people bought to fill with pirated music.

That fits. I guess if it was only the candles actually in the shot the light would be a lot more spotty and flickery. I did find quite a bit of info on Barry Lyndon's candlight shots on the web but most of it amounted to "Wow! He had a really fast custom lens from NASA!" as if that would somehow account for the look on its own.

There's an interesting article on the finale of The Sopranos that discusses POV and meaning in depth: http://masterofsopranos.wordpress.com/the-sopranos-definitive-explanation-of-the-end/

I've just started to notice that some male characters in otherwise serious films are wearing slightly comical eyeliner. Two examples are Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia and the Uncle Joe Grandi character in Touch Of Evil Is there a reason for this? I realise most male actors are probably wearing makeup in most films, but it's usually quite subtle and there just to make things look better. This guyliner is so obvious and odd I don't know what to make of it.

Are those shots from Barry Lyndon lit with _just_ candlelight? Or is there more going on?