Jump to content

Mark Allen

Basic Member
  • Posts

    592
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Mark Allen

  1. Not out of place at all, in my opinion. Safety is huge and always comes into play when you're pushing the norm a bit.
  2. Since these are all real locations, have you considered just going out and taking photos of them? Generally this is how digital matte painters begin, but they enhance them for some architectural purpose. like building an entire city. But seems like you could go out with a digital SLR and match your onset camera's setting and just shoot these at the matching time of day, drop them in, no? Or maybe you'll find someone. You can try vfxpro.com as well, lots more painters there. deviantart.com too.
  3. Probably clamp them and light the seems. Don't add tape - you're just adding more variation - also it might mess up the screen's surface. I'm confused by the discussion of moving the band around to match the screen. In my experience these screens are pretty easiy to move around. I would shift the main screen around to fit most of your shots and then just use the double one for the extra wide shots where the seem if well lit would be small enough to be shrunk into oblivion during the keying process. If you move the screen you need to move it and the lights for it. If you move the band, you have to move the band and the lights for them. So, seems like it would be better to keep the screen mobile.
  4. Telecine is done by hour, but scanning is generally done by frame even in the US. In telecine you're spending time color correcting with an operator and with scanning it's not a process with creative input, thus the rate can be standardized.
  5. Welcome to Cinematography.com. Just so you know all the Videos shot by you on your site are broken links. I realize that the links you just sent were with an HVX, but is there anything technically lost when using the 82-72 step down ring? Do you feel, personally, that any one particular camera combined with your adapter producer the most superior pictures? (Just curious on that one.)
  6. No cameras exist at the moment and they designs are changing. No one has even seen the current design. But, in theory, you would need to add a lense and capture medium which presumably will be a custom hardware solution. I am hoping it comes together successfully and the sooner the better, but I absolutely would not remotely make any production scheduling decision based on it at this point.
  7. Interesting... found a few more: http://www.cinevate.com/index.php?page=demo - this one seems intriguing. http://www.sgpro.co.uk/pages/examplefootag...geframeset.html not sure what happened to www.cinemek.com though - the G35 was all a buzz and then nothin'. No forums, I'm on the mailing list and have heard nothing.
  8. I have shot a couple things with the HVX200 now but I've never had the chance to see it projected on a theatrical sized screen. How does it hold up? Even on SD it leans towards a little gain it seems... but sometimes I find that HDcam does as well. Anyone have experience with it?
  9. Can I ask why you're selling it without ever having used it?
  10. Depends on the equipment. Different telecine machines will cost different amounts. If it's a da vincci + spirit - sounds like a good deal to me. curious to hear what others would say.
  11. I'm going to be shooting an indie feature and it seems that the HVX would be the right candidate for our current budget. But I want to get that "35 DOF." Can anyone tell me all the options for lenses that could be purchased or rented in Los Angeles in November? (meaning something which will be in release by then.) So far I have: Movietube Sony Redrock Micro M2 Next, and less important, question would be are either of these feasible for use with a single operator? Thank you!
  12. Similar to what David said, what you're main enemy is going to be is the compression. Can you shoot straight to drive? otherwise, maybe rent an HVX200 shoot at 1080 (therefor getting 4 times the data rate as the FX1). You can key that.
  13. Oddly enough I went to college with Jack Black (same thaater program, same years).
  14. When talking about Corman, you have to keep a perspective on era. He started making movies with his "Palo Alto Pictures" banner when no one was making movies independently. Then, he was just really clever continually as a business man. In fact, if you ever spoke to him, you would know quickly that this is where his "genuis" rested and what, frankly, seemed to interest him most. By the time more and more people were maknig the lower budget films, Rodget had devised such a machine that he could make 19 movies a year and the era had changed - but home video was released and he was all over it. Suddenly studios needed more content than they could make and he was all ready for them. So, here was this guy who could make 19 movies at 1.2 million each - what a deal! Of course, the all he spent was around 300 to 600 thousand and he pocketed the rest and kept certain rights. But the thing with Rodger is that you every little detail was about cutting the cost down. Movies could only be as long as all the reels would fit into ONE shipping box. I think that's like 83 minutes. Yes, that level of detail of cutting costs. I once had a chance to speak to their head of marketing. I saw a poster of a movie I'd never seen on the wall and asked him about the tagline - something like "Voted Best Sci-Fi movie of the year!" by the sci-fi writers club. When pressed, it turned out that the story the movie was based on had been called "one of the best short stories of the last 10 years." or something - but he said, "But no one will look that up." (Nightfall was the name of that movie.) Not being a very politically adept fellow I asked him, "Since you guys are spending all the money on making these movies - why don't you actually just make the better script - make better choices. Surely you realize that most of the choices made in the creation of these movies are not pushing them into the realm of quality. There are lots of good directors out there who could make much classier movies." He said, "Our audience doesn't want to be intimidated. They don't want to see a movie and have to think about it. They want to know that they can walk away and come back and not have missed anything and they want to know for sure they're going to see some breasts - no questions asked." Anyway - he became head of production a couple years later. But the machine itself reminds me of Andy Warhol's factory in someway. Ironically the Troma guy is doing this as well now - very intentionally. He is finding troublemakers to make movies with and creating his own celebrities out of them. Again, very interesting. But both of these seem like metafilmmaking where the focus is on the process. The interesting thing that is happening right now is that the trick isn't to be able to produce a LOT of material. The trick is finding an audience through all the noise.
  15. If you've been producing long enough, you've eventually come across a moment where the script said, "they sing happy birthday" and your legal department (or someone) says "we can't afford that." And you sit back and think.... "We can't afford to have them sing happy freaking birthday?????" But it happens a lot... So! As my generous gesture the world of filmmaking, I've decided to provide a solution. I hope it serves of some use - especially to the indies... who could never afford the song... The New Happy Birthday Song - Royalty Free for Producers! There is a NEW Happy Birthday Song. www.thenewhappybirthdaysong.com Film, Television, Theatrical, and Show Producers as well as Restaurant Owners and Event Managers will find this of particular interest because the new song is ROYALTY FREE. Yes, it's true the old song was prohibitively expensive to use in productions - the new song is FREE. Please share it with everyone you know - after all, you don't want your friends singing the OLD song ILLEGALLY! Videotape yourself singing it and get it posted. Musicians, make your own arrangement of it and send it in to be posted. And, of course, tell everyone! For those of you who aren't aware of how music royalties work, this may seem unbelievably random. But for the Producer's among you, help the world to embrace the idea of a free birthday song and share it with anyone who could use it. www.thenewhappybirthdaysong.com It's yours, a GIFT. A Happy Birthday Gift... albiet early or late, but for about 1/3rd of a percent of you, a gift on the acutal day!
  16. Just going to keep it simple in my notes. Something you might want to do with your actors (even those who are first time or non-actors) is to make sure they are living the moment as much as possible. This is true in both the subtle moments as well as the more dramatic moments. I'll pick two moments. First something subtle. The mother leaving the house. When she leaves, it is very clear that she has been told to exit the house and she is doing as told. But actors should feel comfortable enough to know that they can look back and give a final wave to her daughter, if not say a final word. Another moment - the girl says "What do you want from me?" After being found by the intruder. I am not sure this is true. Wouldn't she first try to escape? OR she would be frozen by fear... But there would be some exreme reaction and it most likely wouldn't be a mental sided question. One other point. You could really spend a LOT more time building the suspense moments. Like when she is walking into the room, there is so much room there for knowing that she is walking into danger. good luck.
  17. The reason why blockbusters are more favorable economically for a studio is largely because of the marketing. It takes a certain amount of money to make the world aware of your movie. So, if it take 30 million for people to be aware of your movie - that is where the concept of making 100 one million dollar fillms instead of one 100 million dollar films comes into play. From a studio perspective, if you had 100 movies to market - you'd go bankrupt fast. So, you pick and choose, right? Well, if that's the case - why not just let other people make all these movies and then pick and choose which ones you want to distribute? Well, that is what is sort of happening now. So why don't the studios do just that exclusively? Well, because they can make money off making money. They can take a huge fund and then fund their own movies and pay for their own services in the meantime. So a hard drive costs $30/day to rent from the studio's rental place - but the prodution must rent this hard drive from the studio. Sure, you could buy one for 300 bucks yet' you are rendint it for 60 days thus paying 6 times more, so it makes no sense. But it makes perfect sense as a line item on a budget. Passes an audit just fine. Now do that for everything imagineable. So the studio is making money whether the movie makes money or not. so it's the investors who have to face up to the question of will the movie be a big enough hit to pay for it's budget and marketing. But since profits are so easy to hide... I'm not sure I'd want to toss money into a hedgefund where someone else was controlling the expenditures. There are a few people in town who frame their audit reports (and checks) from Titanic still. One producer I believe made $22 dollars off his profit participation. I don't remember the exact amount, but I do know it is framed behind his desk. This is why, though, that SAG insists on getting their percentages off the unadjusted Gross. Meaning - if you say you made a 500 million dollars... then there's a pool of 15 million dollars to be shared among the actors.
  18. Well, 13 views here and 40 views under HVX and no response - so I'm responding. I think it's really hard to comment on stuff like this because you don't really know the circumstances. That said I think you did a good job of selling the high chroma but not overproduced look without being annoying. I think I can tell where you might have added another light now and then if you'd had the time - so not worth mentioning really. I think the video is effective on the level that it made me curious about the band and it seemed "fun." I even went to their website and looked at their other videos. Frankly, I think this one is the best sales piece for them. It makes them seem the most interesting (and really shows off the endless beauty of the dark eyed bleached hair girl very nicely). Knowing the camera, I'd saw some surprisingly good focus work. Gotta love the green BG which really helps sell it. If I were to criticize I'd say that the video really comes alive when there is some interesting BG elements getting into the mix and the dead ceiling doesn't really do it for me (except in one shot which it is catching a little light); perhaps just comitting to it and trying to sell the lines in the ceiling if you had the lights. The tapping is so key that I would have probably wanted to see more light on that for sure and if possible the feet and body combined in a shot (I don't think one was there).
  19. I don't know the answer to this specifically because I don't use a PC. However, when I need to work on my hvx footage in AE after FCP, I export it out as 10 bit uncompressed.
  20. Okay... so you want the clothing dancing on their own with no bodies in them? Well, CG clothing would be the most flexible and safe approach. Hardest part of Character Animation is the face and fingers, so fortunately - you've made your life a lot easier. You would have to deal with making sure the client was happy with the recretion of their clothing and the way it moved. If you must shoot it live, then you probably will shoot actors in the clothing with any model parts (face, hands) that show covered in green on a green screen (or you can skip the green and just roto them out later. Either way you're going to have to go back in and track and roto all the parts which are blocked by the model's body parts (face, hands). And that is no easy roto work which is why I suggested doing CG clothing. Also you'd be shooting the BG separate in either case. And I don't think DV (cam) is good enough for quality greenscreen work either. There is always the old fashioned invisible man trick where you put them on black and then "trick the eye into seeing them as gone by covering their heads and hands in black and then adjusting the clothing wo that it actually closes in front of the hands and neck. Another trick is just to puppet the clothing by having it fake filled by wire - so it could almost stand on it's own. Then you attach it to the dancer on the front of his body. He is wearing black or green. In this latter example, you can imagine it limits some of the motion over the previous example. Either way this puts more labor on costuming, less labor on visual effects and production. I think those are the options.
  21. I can understand your use of M2 if you're using sets with any sort of depth because you want to keep the same feel as the rest of the movie. HOWEVER.... the entire purpose of doing sets on green screen is to do the sets that surround the actor so that you don't have to use a screen at all, you just do set extensions. If you're going to have some set pieces - if they're not interacting with the actors or blocking the actors from the screen - thus alleviating the need of the screen. I can't speak to the focus issues though as I've never used the M2 or the like. I CAN reiterate.... 1080...... not 720p. You get TWICE the datarate at 1080 on that camera. You can say "but we only want it at 720p" - then I say, well, your composite will then be that much cleaner. Shrinking always looks better than growing. You don't want to enlarge a greenscreen composite. my 3 cents.
  22. Would love to see this at a much higher resolution - something like 960x540. If you make an h264 with dual pass set to medium and automatic keyframes, it will create an uploadable size of movie. Then you can upload the file to blip.tv and share the original link... unless... you are limiting it for security reasons, then that's not a good idea. But most shorts are for publicity.
  23. I've done a few shoots on greenscreen with the HVX and it was fine. I would very much recommend shooting in 1080 so you can access the 100 Mbs datarate even if you only want standard def in the end. key at the higher resolution, will do wonders. As for using the adapter... if you're doing it so that you get a blurry edge (imagining you're in tight shots with a tight telephoto focus on eyes and want back of head or other person to be blurry) - well... you're going to have the standard problems with blurrieness on greenscreen. I find that if the blurriness is generally all in the same range it isn't so bad... though the more blurry the harder to deal with for sure. What is nearly impossible is when you have multiple levels of blurr going on. For example... two people talking in the foreground and an extra walking by in the background. well the blur level on that extra wants a totally different key (not to mention that in motion they will even be more trouble) - but you'd definitely want that other extra on a separate layer or you will have to roto. As for DV - I've never seen anyone do a good greenscreen key on DV unless it was stylized to nuts. The compression scheme sucks for keying and the data rate is too low.
  24. I actually tired to find threads on this thorugh the search and didn't find any... maybe I'm doing the search wrong or are they gone?
  25. You could try www.laurelcanyonstages.com one nice thing there (other than the people) is that they also have a bunch of lighting/grip gear right there which can be negotiated in with the stage. The screen is sometimes not green though - so you need to find out (like most stages) if you'd need to paint it. And it's tall... there are a bunch of other GS stages around for various shoots.... I will tell you what I did recently which worked... famously for a cheap set up. I rented a theater www.whitefiretheater.com and brought a 12x12 greenscreen there and all my lights and such and just shot there. there are lots of theaters which will rent for a very low amount of money without all the extras from normal film shoot stages. The whitefire owner was SUPER nice and easy going... you can tell either of these places that you got the info from Mark Allen in an online forum.
×
×
  • Create New...