Mark Allen

The most interesting part of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire came during the previews and the Superman Returns trailer screened. I've now seen the ellusive superman returns footage on the big screen. Unfortunately I had the worst seats in the theater because my friend just had to eat a full meal before we headed to the theater - so I ended up sitting in the last row with a white emergency light blaring into my peripheral vision - so I really don't know what I thought. The audience certainly didn't notice. They were cheering from the moment they realized it was Superman. Basically everything I saw - the trailers, the Harry Potter movie - all had this issue of a washiness because that light was so freaking bright! I would have left and asked for my money back, but my friend really wanted to see the movie (though she agreed the light was ridiculously annoying... this was at Groman's Chinese Theater by the way - supposed to be the best Theater in LA! - Arclight is better.). So - what did you all think? People here must have seen it. I tried to find a thread talking about it, but nothing.

I'd hold off on buying anything until you'r about a month out from production. That will give you enough time to get familiar with it. There is a bit of a revolution happening with the consumer (prosumer?) cameras right now. Definitely want to check out the HDV generations of these cameras and the HVX200 may capture your fancy. If not thing else, the introduction of the HDV's will most likely lower the price of the others you are considering.

Coming from a family where most of my heritage has died of smoking related causes, I would say that one of the only things I'm more convinced about than the truly bad effects of smoking is the inability of the government (or anyone acting to appease them) to convey that message in a spot worth putting on a DVD.

It sounds like an incredible adventure. May you can just find the story in those 300 tapes and make a non-traditional movie. It sounds like there are a lot of different adventures and the one thing that they all have in common is that there is this guy who felt compelled to travel the world... on foot! Who is he? (I realize it's you...) But maybe through just editing the movie of your experiences, you can find a way of sharing (without narration even) what you learned. With clever editing you could even reveal these pieces of information for best dramatic impact - meaning in a way to create a paradigm shift - for example... suddenly discovering something about YOU which had we known in the prior 3 sequences would have totally made them seem different and now we re-evaluate everything. Or... if that really doesn't work... then you can add some added later dialogue or something that will help. I suppose you could shoot some "pickups" with the same camera in the same way. But... I think a nontraditional movie would be good for this. If it ends up beign like a hollywood style movie - all the DV stuff could have been staged anyway - so it would really not be nearly as dramatic.

That's a shame - Panasonic should code some obscure (or simple) key combination in the menu to access this capabilitty. If it does it on the turning of the LCD, it has the capability. What a great and simple and much appreciated hack that would be! There's still time.... Jan?? :)

Does the HVX200 have any option to flip i'ts lcd built in? I've seen this on other monitors before. I know some cameras do this automatically when you turned the viewer around.

Broken, the feature starring Heather Graham?

addendum: If you do use the dvx and you are wanting to get the ellusive depth of field of 35 film (which I think sometimes is more key for storytellling than most of the things we talk about in the video/film comparisons) checkout the guerilla35, the micro35, the mini35 adapters.

Shake has a pretty impressive time stretching feature as well.

I would agree. From a user experience point of view, I would say this: (and you've heard this part before) You are never going to pull additional lattitude out of the dvx100 that you will find in film. The DVX100 really impressed me, but it did not erradicate the effect video seems to have on skin where it 'cleans it up' as a nice way of saying it seems to "smudge it" a little irregardless of the settings. I think this is a direct result of the lattitude actually. There are many ways of describing the difference and many explanations - but there is a difference and the majority of the world thinks well shot film looks a little more aesthetically pleasing than well shot video. Everything you've read on these boards will be something you discover. The way to evaluate the decision I think is to decide 1) what matters most and 2) what is the end goal of the project? As for the 2nd question - if this is something you're shooting in the process of your education - think economy. It really does matter how many projects you can shoot and the finer details are not going to be as important as the overall education. Unless you specifically want to learn something related to the process of shooting film - I can't see any reason to shoot anything on film in order to help learn storytelling.

I shot something in dvx100 30p (Was 30p because my final output was for a 25 foot LCD screen playing back at 30fps). Was shot in 3 hours, didn't know what to expect when I got to the location. Brought 3 rented lights with me, used 2 of them. :) Was my first time using the camera (other than an hour testing it the night before). Used one of the cinema settings for balance. Intentially underexposed a little for aesthetic reasons and shot in telephoto most of the time. 90% of these shots have no color correcting on them. www.markallen.net/fandango_h264.mov (better quality, larger file, h264) or www.markallen.net/fandango_web.mov (lesser quality, smaller file, sorrenson3) Hope this helps.

I think the rumors come from that they are using video to shoot what ends up on the screens behid the actors whild driving sometimes and so people hear they are using video. There was some discussion about this, but it was a while ago and i am not sure if it was here or somewhere else.

My company requests that this is not done for greenscreen shoots unless it is totally justified by the the location lighting. Anything that breaks the true lighting of the BG is a problem. Anything that might enhance the edge is also a problem as we are trying to blend the actors into the background. The worst enemy of greenscreen shooting is not an uneven background and I don't think the half stop difference are even remotely in the range of one thing: spill. Blocking out all green (including from below!!!!!!!!!! :) ) except for the green which makes for the siloutte of the actor is going to help. Number two thing I worry about is motion and relative motion in the scene because motion blur is really hard - even harder when people are moving at different speeds though. It means you have to do a split roto and handle them separately. Usually for feature effects we are doing about 8 keys or so every shot (dividing the character into head, arms, body and then other whatever the shot needs). Number three thing... we sometimes have problems when green gets into dark areas.... but that would be a part of the spill issue.

If readers who have been following this forum would like to see uncompressed D20 images (tifs), I will be hosting them temporarily here: www.markallen.net/d20/ 3 individual frames. recorded to SR at 8bit 4:2:2, digitised at 8bit uncompressed via BM decklink HD. exported to tiff from FCP.

And just north of Sebastion Hair Products,

Jim, It's easy to find here: http://maps.google.com/maps?oi=map&q=6219+...dland+Hills,+CA It's exactly to the left of where the red pin indicator is. The front doors are in the middle of that building which looks like two buildings, one on top of the other.

I believe that come into my world was done by using motion control camera passes and a lot of rotoscoping. The hard rotoscoping only would happen while people crossed over people though as the set remains the same. If you're really curious about Gondry, rent or buy the DVD of his videos which contains lengthy autobiographical documentaries about him and his childhood.

Can I imagine it??? Jim, I've got the domain name registered already! ;)

Jim.... I think you just gave me an idea for my *new* career in movies!!! ;) All kidding aside, I've already met two people who do this in movies. Small fee for consulting on this, small fee on that... pretty soon... you can imagine.

My two cents... I have no problems at all with the memory card use. The motivations for it make perfect sense to me - bringing higher quality to us at a more affordable price... That's great for the consumer. I think the use of tape will be history long before the use of film. I have seen Jan at one of the showings of the HVX200 and was notably impressed with her knowledge of her product and attention to clarity when it was discussed. As for the multiple frame rates - when it was being shown these were not decided. If it is not totally variable, would highly highly lobby for 22 to be included. One migth pass it over as not being noticeable enough - but this is exactly why it's so great for shooting action scenes. All hong kong martial arts are shot at 22... (well, in actuality, they go nuts with frame rates and will go even fractions because they are so in tune with their actor's speeds - but 22 is the del facto standard). So, for the sake of action - consider 22.

Great analogy. If you speak to distributors who actually search for material they will tell you flat out that the submission rate has increased massively in the last few years and the quality of the submissions has dropped an incredible degree. They have begun to really value production quality. But... there will be some gems in there. I think the lower end market will very much turn into a niche market. The whole mustang verses the edsel analogy may come into play though. Mustange was designed very specifically for just a exactingly specific kind of person. Edsel was for everyone. Released in the same year, Mustang became the best selling car - Edsel... well... have you ever heard of an Edsel? Flopped.

I'd take a look at a few improv books as well to make sure you have a handle on the things which make improv work. The Spinal Tap Movie, all the Christopher Guest films - they are aall using improv and they are all using a handful of guidelines to make sure it works. (Things like not negating your scene partners, building on any idea that is introduced, not asking questions (unless your an interviewee), etc. etc. - on the next level there are things like status shifts which come into play.) Even if your actors know these rules, you should know them yourselves because it definitely applies to the overall picture as well - even in documentary form. If the movie focuses on a few central actors, then I would advise workshoping with them to build a story - but then having the ability to structure something. once you go to shoot, you can still remain open, but your actors will have a sense of where they need things to go which gives basic motivations which is always good. It sounds like you have a few things you want said - you can feed those - but if you want that true documetary feeling, you might want to leave the majority of the dialogue open for the actors to improvise lest it become overly staged.

And now back to our previously scheduled programming.... Keith - Any luck on getting those high rez files approved for uploading? As I said I could provide a temporary host for them if necessary.

My suggestion was that it would be a split between the two and there would be no middle ground (10 to 50 million dollar movies), but your points are well put and well taken. I will still hold the ground that there will be an increasing number of these breakout smaller films and an exponential increase in the number of people trying to make them (even at higher quality levels). I absolutely agree that it would be hard for production people to make a living on lower budget movies. I think the general public's increasing desire not to pay for entertainmentt will have a large effect on movies in the future as well. I wonder sometimes if the economics were shifted to simply be more affordable if that would encourage more sales or if there is simply a philisophical shift that art and entertainment should not something one must pay for. On that, I really have no predictions.

I think this is exactly the paradigm though which will emerge and the reason for it. The fact of the matter is that there WERE some cheaply made movies that got distribution and did gang busters. And what did it cost the studio to make it? Nothing - they bought it once it was done. That's a great deal for the studio. It's much easier for them to look at everything that is out there and then pick up about 10 of them at a reasonable price and then use their marketing powers to try to get people into the movies on those 10 movies. Now, there were probably 1000 movies that they reviewed to pick 10 from. Let's say the wow'd the indie producers by offering a million in upfront cash. They still only paid 10 million. Then they niche market these movies out at about 10 million each to see which catches fire. They've spent less than Harry Potter and have a chance at getting their big hit ten fold. As filmmaking becomes more affordable, there will be more people trying their hand at it. (Think of Primer - where the guy had never even made a short film before.) And most of these movies will be hurrendous - but some will be interesting to a niche if not to a wide audience. I'm using simple numbers just to emphasize the point that from where I stand - I could see this being where "things" could be heading. (In addition to the single huge massive marketing tie in extravaganza movie.) The interesting thing is this. One thing the studios have had which separates them from any random company with a notion for marketing and a big bank account is ties to the theaters. Once theatrical is not necessary - any company with enough cash could pick up movies and market the hell out of them to get their buyers. Right out of college I spent a few weeks at an ad agency and one of the interesting things I learned there was that basically if you advertise something - you will get your money back for that. This was the basic assumption. The goal was to see if you could get them to keep buying when you stopped advertising. But the power of suggestion alone was strong enough to cover the cost of your advertising. I suspect there is some truth to that in the film makreting world as well. Just know that I'm not saying any of this is good (or bad for that matter) - I'm just saying that it's my perceptioin of where the industry is headed for now.