Comedy show-- old film look

hemophilia

hemophilia

Well-known member
This is the second episode of a new online sketch comedy show I'm working on. It's the first thing we've really shot with the HVX. Originally it was meant to be a quick & dirty SNL-style sketch, but as we got to shooting with the HVX we got progressively more caught up in the photography/lighting/visual style in general. So I think it ended up looking pretty sweet.

DVXuser 'bena' was sorta the director of photography on this, and I sorta wore a lot of the other hats. (I say "sorta" because on a little production like this everyone ends up doing everything.)

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EDIT: I OVERWHELMED MY SITE'S BANDWIDTH... How DARE you all download my movie?!?! :P
I got it up on another server, which will inevitably get overwhelmed as well. But until then, enjoy.
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Please right-click "save target as".
Full res (720p):
http://crisislab.com/files/show/ep02-detective-native_res-.wmv
http://soinit.com/files/show/ep02-detective-native_res.mov
Half res:
http://crisislab.com/files/show/ep02-detective.wmv
http://soinit.com/files/show/ep02-detective.mov

I hope you enjoy it and get a laugh out of it; let me know what you think!

-Kevin
 
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And a framegrab, to entice you to suffer through the long download...

detective-still01.jpg
 
That was great ! Well done !

First; thank you for the imagery in a controlled production environment. This footy could be a poster child for the HVX. It looked fantastic and you did a great job lighting this piece. I think this is the best footy I have seen yet off the HVX.

It looks great fullscreen. Wow!

Your actors are really good; the lead is great. WHen he started singing 'Leggy leggy bo baby....' I was rolling.

-

I loved it and will look forward to more episodes. It held my attention and had me laughing throughout. A little too far on the narration over the actors for my taste but oh well, still dug it !

-

More legs pease! Damn those legs did go forever ! (Whistle)
 
can i get a shout out for some quicktime files !

goddamn, i hate the fact that WMV files suck on a Mac while QT 7 files suck on a PC

Bill Gates and Jobs should take a shower with one another and cry over eachother's problems with midnight porridge

DOWNLOADING now, hopefully it will play on my crap-mac
 
Thanks much Mr. Hudson. That means a lot, particularly coming from you-- cause I've seen your posts on here and you don't pull any punches. ;)

I have an h.264 compress going on right now, so I will get a QT up as soon as possible. But I have to sleep now so I won't have time to check it out til morning. And I'm not optimistic. All my attempts at the QT compression have messed with the colors and pushed the blacks up really bright-- which is particularly unacceptable specifically for this video. "Film grey" isn't nearly as memorable a genre as "film noir". But damnit I will persist until a quicktime exists.

Cheers,
-Kevin (the singing lead)
 
Very, very impressive, Hemophilia. I would suggest just a little more balance on the narrator (like John Hudson said). In my opinion, I don't particularly like the original voice overlapping with the Narrator recorded voice. The imagery is great. This just shows once again how great the HVX looks when shooting people.

And the wide shots at the train station look good, too.

EDIT- It reminded me a bit of those Police Squad/ Naked Gun sketches... I loved those...
 
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Kevin,
I'm downloading it now... so I haven't seen it yet, but... since it is obvious you are not a mac user I'd like to ask you: What system did you use to edit this?
 
That was very cool. Thanks for putting it up.

It seems the video was encoded as WMV8 instead of the newest and greatest WMV9. Audio was fine though 9.1 WMA.
 
Kevin,

That really was a lot of fun to watch. I have the same comments about the excessive narrative but the lines came across as fresh to me, no easy feat in this genre.

I didn't really get the point of the faux grain, it didn't serve any purpose to the look for me only an actual distraction. You might, just for grins, want to desaturate the whole thing, pump up the contrast significantly and see how it works in black and white. There was something about it being in color that, again, took me out of my suspension of disbelief.

Anyway, these are just suggestions. Everyone's a critic, right? The bottomline is you made a very clever short, it was well shot and I enjoyed every minute of it.

I'm looking forward to seeing more of your work. Oh, and I really appreciate you posting it at full rez.

~ D
 
rgdfilms said:
Bill Gates and Jobs should take a shower with one another and cry over eachother's problems with midnight porridge
Click to expand...

I think you just found something to shoot this weekend. :Drogar-Evil(DBG):
 
Good catch on the wmv8 video. I fixed that, the current versions that are up are wmv9, so the quality should be slightly better than those who downloaded yesterday.

Now I'm trying another QT compress; again the darks weren't anywhere near dark... still working on it.

As for the grain: I only added "grain" per se to the leader and title cards. None of the HVX footage had any "grain" added. It did however have hair, scratches, flicker, and other pleasantries added. And although there's no disputing that these make for a quantifiably "worse" image, in this case a "worse" image provided a better vibe for the overall piece. If I could have, I would've shot this 40 years ago on 16mm, played it too many times through a projector, and let it sit in my moldy basement until now, but that wasn't really feasible. So although there's no doubt it detracts from the pristine new camera's fidelity, I felt it was appropriate for this. I'm confident that the next bit we shoot won't have stupid film-damage-effects applied to it, and if this was anything but a throwback-detective story, I wouldn't degrade the footage like that.

Actually 'bena' that worked on this with me also hated the film-damage. I won our lengthy debate by virtue of being the one at the controls. ;)

As for editing, I did it on Avid. I used to use Premiere. The HVX made that a nightmarish proposition. But after trying to transition to Avid, I truly know what "nightmarish" is. I absolutely hate Avid. I never ever ever want to use it again. I want my Premiere back. Try the Canopus editor, buy a Mac, just shoot DV. I can't say enough bad things about my experience thus far with Avid, and am completely dreading the thought of ever having to use it again. I know that when the avid Avid users see this they'll go on and on about how it's fast once you get used to it, and it's an industry standard, etc. etc.... but what can I say? They're wrong; I'm right. :)
 
It was pretty cool. :) I liked it. Agree on a bit too much narration (I got that crit on my noir short as well...haha).

I also thought the slo-mo shot was a bit forced....if that makes sense.

disjecta said:
I didn't really get the point of the faux grain, it didn't serve any purpose to the look for me only an actual distraction. You might, just for grins, want to desaturate the whole thing, pump up the contrast significantly and see how it works in black and white. There was something about it being in color that, again, took me out of my suspension of disbelief.
Click to expand...
I dunno man... I liked the color. Maybe a bit more desaturated, but I dunno about black and white...
 
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That was great, and actually funny!

I second the suggestion on nixing the film grain, it's more of a distraction than anything else. Also, I would recommend desaturating, although not to the point of black and white.

Other than that, great stuff. :-)
 
Hi Kevin, since you have already succesfully used the HVX200 on a project I think you would be the right person to ask - I am not an HVX200 owner but I did rent it recently to shoot some test footage for my upcoming project. I am also a premeire user and have purchased Avid Express HD to edit my next project/ coming projects. So far I have not been able to import 720P MFX files - when I try Avid says "The import file is not a supported XDCAM file". Upon going to the Avid website I found this: The following shooting modes are not yet supported: 720P 60P, 720P 30P, and 720P 24P. All other shooting modes will work. They are not supported in the current MCA 2.2.2, XProHD 5.2.2 release. Check release notes of later releases as it should be fixed in the next release after the 2.2 release.

SO my question is this: Have you been able to get Avid to work with 720P footage, what this project offlined or ...? Please help. Much appreciated.
- Andrew
 
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Andrew--

Take the Avid DVD out of your drive. Put it back in the box. Return it to where you bought it. Get your money back, and never use that crap again.

If you are a glutton for punishment, it WILL work with 720pn-- that's what we shot in. The workflow I used is to copy the MXF files to my local drive. This post explains it:
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showpost.php?p=474111&postcount=2

And please accept my sincerest condolences. My heart goes out to you and your family.

P.S. Only Detective Bilks would be daft enough to use Avid.
 
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