"A Verse Before Dying" - AF-100 Western Short

Billygoat said:
but what I really want to know is how it will hold up downstream of this. How will it look encoded to DVD, or encoded to Bluray and then projected nice and big on a screen. I wonder if that's actually where recording to Nano is going to hold advantages over the AVC, and differences seen.
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It will look as good as any other production that was sourced from a pristine original, methinks.
 
Paul Vicente said:
Yep.
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Well, not exactly guys. When you have more compression to start with, and then compound it with additional compression later, you WILL increase the potential of seeing more of the impact of the original compression as you add to it downstream. That's the no-brainer part. What I'm curious about is to what extent, and at what point it might justify external recording. I dealt with this quite often in seeing the effects of DV based footage we shot and edited, which looked fine with only the original mpeg-2 compression. But then when the cable companies or Dish added their compression, it really degraded on the air as compared to footage shot with originally less compression.

AVC is a very efficient mpeg4. Doing a Blu-ray will re-encode that with another process of mpeg4, mpeg2, or VC-1. But it will chew on it a second time in order to make the m2ts bluray file. Same with SD DVD, mpeg-2 only, but a much lower bit rate. So that's why I wonder how this AVC will do when you start chewing on it again with mpeg-2 at 7500 mb/s, and when we should consider adding external recorders.

And as far as the Quicktime .mov file on Vimeo playing straight without conversion on PS3, uh uh. It does not work to simply change the file extension to mp4, from .mov. It shows the file as "corrupt". (I have every single piece of test footage from the AF100 on there, so I've dealt with that by now). The only files that I've been able to have PS3 play without conversion were files posted and encoded as mp4.

And again, this stuff looks awesome, and totally cine, especially with the 2.39 aspect I added in Sorenson. Love that look.
 
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Again great stuff guys. The trailer does exactly what a good trailer should do: make you want to see more. And we do!

One question: I wonder if the crew could comment on what their favorite lens on the shoot was. Did you have a choice go to lens?
 
editman said:
I'm excited to see some shallow DOF shots in the feature because these deep DOF shots looks great.
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?

There were several shallow DOF shots in the trailer:

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And to answer the previous question, "The Howitzer" Nikon 50-300mm f/4.5, which Timur used for that long shot above, was my favorite lens, but then again, I am somewhat biased.

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Timur almost has me convinced to consider getting it converted to PL.
 
I'm looking forward to reviews of the gear used, mainly the Shoot35 FF, RR Mattebox and Small HD monitor and how they all perform with the AF.
 
Really great, guys. I've watched it a bunch of times. It's so expressive and so rich. Along with the wavy grain, sweet DOF, the thing that keeps knocking me out are the blacks.
 
Congratulations guys, great job.

Timur, could you also post the videos and tests you did before shooting the short?

I would like to see some more "run 'n gun", "real world" images.
 
AF-100 Lighting Setup #1 - "The Saloon"

AF-100 Lighting Setup #1 - "The Saloon"

"A Verse Before Dying" - Lighting Setup #1 - "The Saloon"


One of the key scenes in the short takes place in the saloon. As you can see from the lighting diagram below, DP Timur Civan used a combination of HMI fixtures and mirror and white boards to sculpt a look that felt authentic and not overly stylized. What follows is his description of the tools he used, along with frame grabs to show the results, which, of course, you'll see come to life in the final film.


From Timur Civan…

Seeing as the 1850's had little in the way of artificial lighting indoors, the saloon scene had to be lit by the "sun." I am a huge fan of the look of natural lighting and did my best to create a natural and logical lighting plan. Using my favorite tool in the world, the Mirror Board, we bounced the illumination of 1.2k and 4K HMIs into the windows and doors. The sun was on our side for this shoot, and it naturally poured into one part of the room and with some clever bouncing we created a "lit from the ground" approach. Taking after my favorite natural light effect, the shaft of light pouring into a dark room, the reflections give a soft, subtle under lit characteristic. We staged the actors on the edges of these pools of light, and I used a 1/4 Promist filter to help add a little softness to blacks and help flare the bold shafts of light for dramatic effect.

Diagram
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Still A - Wide Shot
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Still B - From Behind Actor, Window with 1.2K HMI "Bounced" In
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Still C - From Actor's POV Towards Bartender
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Still D - ECU of Actor Holding Prop
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Billygoat said:
And as far as the Quicktime .mov file on Vimeo playing straight without conversion on PS3, uh uh. It does not work to simply change the file extension to mp4, from .mov. It shows the file as "corrupt". (I have every single piece of test footage from the AF100 on there, so I've dealt with that by now). The only files that I've been able to have PS3 play without conversion were files posted and encoded as mp4.

And again, this stuff looks awesome, and totally cine, especially with the 2.39 aspect I added in Sorenson. Love that look.
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If you have a Mac, take the mov open it in MPEGStreamClip, and click file>save as... And choose mp4. It'll repack it into mp4 without altering the video/audio data.

I'm sure there is a program on pc that could do the same. Maybe even QuickTime pro.
 
editman said:
I ment some serious shallow DOF!
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Razer thin DOF isn't used in big movies as often as you might assume with the current DOF craze right now. Its best to keep the person in focus when they move a tiny bit. That's actually a big advantage of the m4/3 sensor over the 5D/Vista Vision sized sensor. You don't have to stop it down as much to keep the DOF usable.

I was very impressed with the separation of 'scar face' from the background as the camera circled him. (Also impressed with the way the codec held up with movement.)
 
I agree that m4/3 is the perfect sensor size for acceptable DOF. It is after all what we are used to in 35mm cinematography.
 
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