SD (vertical orientation) into HD project

[Giovanni Lampitz]

Hi all,

I'm currently working on a video dance project. Main characters of the action are the three dancers and the space, a very tall entrance to a yard. Therefore we dicided to shoot with the camera (canon xm2) in vertical orientation, what in still photography is also called portrait orientation. I think it is an estetically sensfull choice. With some technical problem to solve. On the set (we're mostly rehearsing right now) it's quite a lot of fun and, with the camera lcd screen, it's not that complicated. But I'm already thinking of the postproduction and how to deal with these images.

My plan is to open a HD (720p 25fps) project on FCP (or Premiere) import my DV images, turn them 90° and use the 720 orizzontal line of the DVpal as the 720 vertical line of the HD, avoiding croping , shrinking and losses of definition. Does it make any kind of sense? Would it be flawless as in my words or would it be a lot of problems? should I instead shoot in a orizontal orientation and then just crop it out? Any other suggestion?

Thanks in advanced for your help.

 

G.L.

[Freya Black]

Hi all,

I'm currently working on a video dance project. Main characters of the action are the three dancers and the space, a very tall entrance to a yard. Therefore we dicided to shoot with the camera (canon xm2) in vertical orientation, what in still photography is also called portrait orientation. I think it is an estetically sensfull choice. With some technical problem to solve. On the set (we're mostly rehearsing right now) it's quite a lot of fun and, with the camera lcd screen, it's not that complicated. But I'm already thinking of the postproduction and how to deal with these images.

My plan is to open a HD (720p 25fps) project on FCP (or Premiere) import my DV images, turn them 90° and use the 720 orizzontal line of the DVpal as the 720 vertical line of the HD, avoiding croping , shrinking and losses of definition. Does it make any kind of sense? Would it be flawless as in my words or would it be a lot of problems? should I instead shoot in a orizontal orientation and then just crop it out? Any other suggestion?

Thanks in advanced for your help.

 

G.L.

 

It can work and I know people who have done this with green screen stuff, the problem you are going to have I imagine is that the dancers are going to not have a lot of room to move in side to side, so it depends on what they are doing (and I guess how far zoomed out you are and other stuff). Also you don't say what you are shooting against. Is it green screen? Some other kind of back ground? Are you planning to just have portrait images of the dancers, what will you then do with the rest of the screen. (text maybe?) While there are some technical issues, these seem a lot more minor than the practical ones but then I don't really know much about your production.

 

love

 

Freya

[Saul Rodgar]

It can work and I know people who have done this with green screen stuff, the problem you are going to have I imagine is that the dancers are going to not have a lot of room to move in side to side, so it depends on what they are doing (and I guess how far zoomed out you are and other stuff). Also you don't say what you are shooting against. Is it green screen? Some other kind of back ground? Are you planning to just have portrait images of the dancers, what will you then do with the rest of the screen. (text maybe?) While there are some technical issues, these seem a lot more minor than the practical ones but then I don't really know much about your production.

 

love

 

Freya

 

Yeah, your image is going to be tall but skinny. A little less than a third of the width of 720 HD, actually. And yes the dancers are not going to have a lot of space to move in. But if that is what you want then go for it. I would say test it and see.

Edited July 18, 2008 by Saul Rodgar

[Giovanni Lampitz]

The dancers are moving in a real entrance to a yard with white/cream walls, no green screens. Other backgrounds are the street and the yard. The dancers don't have a lot room to move into the frame. But they also don't have a lot of room in the actual space, being this entrance really narrow. Anyway i will maybe have a wide angle lens in front of the camera. I'm shooting with natural light. All of this can sound difficult to controll but, so far, everything is going quite fine.

while I'm really worried about the editing. I don't have an easy access to a FCP workstation to do experiment and test if my idea can be achived . :(

thanks again

[Freya Black]

The dancers are moving in a real entrance to a yard with white/cream walls, no green screens. Other backgrounds are the street and the yard. The dancers don't have a lot room to move into the frame. But they also don't have a lot of room in the actual space, being this entrance really narrow. Anyway i will maybe have a wide angle lens in front of the camera. I'm shooting with natural light. All of this can sound difficult to controll but, so far, everything is going quite fine.

while I'm really worried about the editing. I don't have an easy access to a FCP workstation to do experiment and test if my idea can be achived . :(

thanks again

 

Sounds straightforward then. The entrance is a clever idea to restrict movement. I think this could be fairly straightforward. It would certainly be a doddle in after effects and possibly vegas. I don't use final cut so often but I can't imagine it would be that hard to do in final cut either. You need to work out what codec you are rendering to of course and how you will lay it out but other than that all is good. You could even compost in the rest of the building around the entrance probably.

 

love

 

Freya