Mei Lewis

I can;t figure out what that means. The video camera was poiting in a different direction?

Similar problem http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?showtopic=55878&pid=370201&st=0entry370201 Still not found a solution!

It's complicated enough to shoot that it may be good to do an animatic of it to work out everything you'll need to shoot.

I know that's going to be brilliant without even watching it.

I find learning about artificial light helps me understand natural and ambient light better. In a simple setup using just artificial lights (eg a 3 point interview setup) it can be clear what each light is doing, and then I can recognise what the sun, streetlights etc are doing when they're doing something similar. The light in say an ordinary street may be very complicated, light coming from the sun, sky and various reflections. I find being able to break that down in terms of what the equivalent softbox, umbrella, hard light etc. would be very useful for visualising what's going on.

˙uoıʇsǝnb ǝɥʇ uı sı ɹǝʍsuɐ ǝɥʇ

Pretty sure you don't, all the manuals are online as pdfs, you could check there.

Here's a good starting point: http://prolost.com/flat

What sort of films do you shoot/want to shoot?

My Canon 50mm f1.4 lens has a similar look in the highlights wide open. One way to recreate that if you ever wanted to!

Thanks Manny. I think you're correct that it may be the codec that's the problem. The shot posted is from a Canon 5d2 .mov file which I think is h.264, but I also have it on files I export from Premiere - again using h.264. Googling 'quicktime gamma bug' brings up a lot of results including this claimed fix from video copilot: http://www.videocopilot.net/blog/2008/06/fix-quicktime-gamma-shift/ I tried that and checked the results. The 'fixed' file looks no different to the original in VLC or Windows Media player, but the gamma and colors are changed in quicktime player: So it's better but still not the same as VLC or Premiere. I think the solution is to save in another format, what would you recommend?

I want to network with other film makers and a friend has recommended http://shootingpeople.org Does anyone here use that site? Is it any good? There's a monthly fee and not a lot of information unless you pay it.

Thanks Chris. Learning enough matlab and other various bits of coding to connect it to something that can work on video files would take a biiiiiit more time than I have right now. I'm only trying to get this effect for fun, nothing serious. AE has motion blur but the filter closest to what I want seems to be one called "wide time". The results aren't great though, I think maybe because of the limited precision being used. I thought of doing similar to your suggestion of mixing down, but in after effects using precomposition.I/'m going to shoot something at 4fps and see can I get that to work before I got up to 30.

I want to make videos where each frame looks like a long exposure photograph. I want to see if I can get the "light trails in the dark "effect that's easy in stills using a long shutter time. I figure if I shoot video at 1/30s shutter time at 30 frames per second the shutter is always open, and I should be able to get a different 1 second long exposure every 30th of a second by combing frames like this: new frame 1 = original frames 1 to 30 new frame 2 = original frames 2 to 31 new frame 3 = original frames 3 to 32 ... new frame x = original frames x to (x+29) ... I planned to combine frames in after effects by overlaying multiple copies offset 1/30s and reducing the opacity of the upper frames. I think the opacity of the bottom layer should be 100%, the next one up 50%, then next 25%, the next 12.5% and so on so that each layer contributes equally to the final image. Problem is the higher frames require very low opacities, the 30th should be 1.86265 x 10^(-7)%, and that doesn't work even with the project set to 32 bits per pixel. Does anyone know how to do what I'm asking?

Red claim 18 stops for HDRx, at the cost of more postproduction. Anyone want to disagree with them?

If the slowest shutter on your camera is 1/60 then it can't do that sort of night blur. The streaks of light are from objects in the scene moving while the shutter is open. 1/60 isn;t long enough for the objects to move that far.

The video shot at night is done at slow shutter speed, maybe 1/4 second or something like that, much longer than the usual 1/50s used for video. It's probably done with a still camera and converted into a video just by playing the still frames quickly after each other. The other video is a combination of two shots with the exact same camera angle and position, one sped up and the other of the guy walking normally. The person who made it will have masked around the walking man in every frame and overlaid that onto the fast moving background, probably in After Effects or similar software. This composite image can be very convincing because the high speed and normal speed videos were shot in the exact same place and at nearly the same time so the lighting etc. will match very well. You'd need to do the same. I'd suggest use a DSLR because it can shoot stills and video and can have very good high ISO performance. Set the camera on a tripod and don't move it. First shoot the moving person in video. You'll probably need a high ISO for this, and maybe some extra lighting. Then do the time lapse sequence. Then lots of masking!

I tried un-color-correcting two of those shots to see what the room really looked like: Don't know how well I did but it looks a lot more normal now. I think the colors chosen for the sets and costumes have a really big impact on this film.

The Pixelvision is a digital camera, maybe that was the earliest used for a movie? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PXL-2000 "It was also used by Michael Almereyda for three of his films: the 1992 film Another Girl Another Planet, which was entirely shot with a PXL-2000... "

What's she got painted on her forehead and are those fake freckles???

If the sun is out (ie it's not totally overcast) you can often avoid blown out skies by shooting with the sun behind you, so the subject is lit by the sun and is bright enough to keep in the range of the camera with the sky.

Thanks Will. I've just looked at the same video on my hackinitosh Dell Mini 10 running OSX. It's hard to compare to my PC laptop because the screen is very different. I have Quicktime player and VLC on there and the video once again looks different in them. Neither has the super washed out flat look of windows quicktime, they both have the middling washed out look I expect, but the colors are slighty different, again most noticeably in the redds, and the VLC image is slightly warmer.

Loved this film, the soundtrack was superb.

I hope this post is a joke, cos if not you are.

There's some analysis of Cinestyle at fxphd here http://www.fxphd.com/blog/squeezing-the-most-out-of-a-5d-mk-ii-or-alexa-signal/ It's an interesting read but some of it seems unjustified - do cameras actually have unused blocked off pixels specifically just for noise subtraction? Does software make use of this, or know about subtracting off the average? In the few test I've done make me think that the neutral picture style suggested on this thread is the way to go. I've discovered a bunch of people are referring to it as 'prolost flat' http://prolost.com/flat