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

clabart said:
It is no coincidence that you have used as a storage medium a Nano's Convergent...
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I take this to assume we used the Nano because we didn't fully "trust" the onboard codec, correct?

If so, I can tell you that you're so far off-base it's not even funny. We used the Nano on ONE SCENE in the entire film, and to be perfectly honest, I haven't even looked at the footage we recorded with it. We won't be using it in the final film, I can tell you that much. Everything you see in the trailer, and everything you're going to see in the final film, will be from the on-board AVCCAM codec, with the possible exception of maybe one or two shots which originated on 16mm film.
 
Owning a HMC 151 and GH13 (based on AVCHD), I prefer the color correction of the 4:2:2's DVCProHD which is less destructive than the 4:2:0's AVCHD.
You probably have found an adequate measurement of software processes the color of AVCHD.
 
Sorry guys...I have come to this 55 page plus thread very late.

Can someone shortcut me to the link for the Trailer please.

Real excited to begin reading about your shoot. I will progress thru the details in the thread, page by page...shortly.
 
Shooter said:
Thank you so much.

Nice work and looking forward to seeing this in its entirety.

Have you projected up on a "big screen" yet?.

That I would really love to see.
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We're working on it. Specifically, we're working on projecting it at a local theater with the latest Sony 4K Digital Cinema system. :D
 
Stephen Mick said:
We're working on it. Specifically, we're working on projecting it at a local theater with the latest Sony 4K Digital Cinema system. :D
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Brilliant...good luck with that. Please let us know how it goes.

Comment: would love to see the trailer "crushed a little".

Question: Does the Pro Res Codec exhibit the Qt "gamma bug" ?
 
Stephen Mick said:
We used the Nano on ONE SCENE in the entire film, and to be perfectly honest, I haven't even looked at the footage we recorded with it. We won't be using it in the final film, I can tell you that much.
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This is amazing and wonderful at the same time.

One question though did you have the nano on hand because you didn't think this would be the case? At one point did you realize you didn't really need to use it?
 
Stephen Mick said:
"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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We also had a single open net on the window to kill a hot spot that kept creeping in on the fireplace edge.
 
Steve Kahn said:
This is amazing and wonderful at the same time.

One question though did you have the nano on hand because you didn't think this would be the case? At one point did you realize you didn't really need to use it?
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Convergent Design was generous enough to loan us a NanoFlash to test out on the shoot, which we did, on the one scene. But our real goal with the film was to test the native codec, and to see if we felt it measured up to the needs of indie filmmakers like us.

The fact that we'll be using it exclusively in the final film should tell you just what we thought of it.

And this isn't at all to say that the Nano isn't a great product. It is, and it's the kind of thing that, if you need it, you know you need it from the start for the particular type of work you're doing, or for the specific workflow that the Nano is perfect for (native .MOV and .MXF files).
 
Stephen Mick said:
We're working on it. Specifically, we're working on projecting it at a local theater with the latest Sony 4K Digital Cinema system. :D
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So Stephen, are you working to get it onto the Digital Cinema Package hard drive? (which is what the studios send their films out on). Do you have a resource for that transfer? I've worked with festivals and theaters with my film, and it's always quite a chore to get it displayed properly, or with the right audio. Is this film going to have 5.1? I have had difficulty with finding a way to feed optical digital audio out of bluray players to the pro Dolby Decoders in theaters.
 
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sodotoguwangus said:
Very nice trailer...

One thought -- on the second shot of the trailer, it's very hard not to focus on the guys ass as he rides the horse. I guess if it was a chick it might be acceptable, but alas...

The issue has to do with the framing -- I'd suggest re-framing the shot to include the horses head (in addition to the horse's body) instead of cutting it off at the neck.

Now I like an over-cranked shot of a cowboys ass as much as the next guy (joking, of course), but this is a distraction.

Seriously though. You guys can say I'm wrong, but, let's be honest... who here didn't look at the dude's ass -- if only for a moment?

I'm being dead serious here. It might sound like a joke, but little details like this are important, and must be considered.

Flame away.
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I'm sorry I was looking at some sweet cowboy ass. Now what were you saying?
 
Well it's good to hear that you're really happy with the codec (or seem to be). My goal is to shoot another dramatic narrative, and I likely won't be able to truly take advantage of what a nano would give me. My Canon XHA1/Letus is nice but obviously outdated and quite difficult to manage.

We'll see how things go as the camera comes out and people make their initial tests. It's an exciting time.

Barry, I'm glad to see your confidence in the codec...that's one of the things that might have held me off. The only remaining thing is the 4:2:0 I would have to settle with.
 
And along the same line of thought, as I'd posted earlier in this thread (and nearly got flamed for even mentioning), was that I feel the true test of that onboard AVC codec will be how it holds up to the downstream series of compression encodings it must endure. We all know that if you start with more compression in example A, than in B, and apply the same compression to both, example A will have more total compression relative to the original (or least compressed possible) image. And speaking of theaters, I've seen what projection can do to a higher compression source which may have looked really good on a smaller screen, as compared to something that was far less compressed. Really a great test would be comparing a bluray encoded with onboard AVC sourced footage, worked through the post workflow of color correction, etc, against the same piece of footage sourced from the Nano Flash, with the same workflow and Bluray compression downstream. Compare those two projected via Bluray on the theater screen. That would be a realistic assessment of how that codec will fair. Standard def DVD would of course be a more rigorous test, and maybe a better source for obvious comparison. If the AVC holds up as well as the external 4:2:2 high bitrate sourced in that scenario, then I'd be true believer in it. But just saying it looks good in the timeline before further compression for display isn't really good enough for me. And the 8mb/s output I've downloaded from Vimeo isn't good enough, with lots of color banding in the sky of some shots. But obviously that's a low bitrate 8 mb/s upload.
 
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Billygoat said:
So Stephen, are you work to get it onto the Digital Cinema Package hard drive? (which is what the studios send their films out on). Do you have a resource for that transfer? I've worked with festivals and theaters with my film, and it's always quite a chore to get it displayed properly, or with the right audio. Is this film going to have 5.1? I have had difficulty with finding a way to feed optical digital audio out of bluray players to the pro Dolby Decoders in theaters.
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At the moment, we'll be "onlining" the color-corrected final film and mastering to HDCAM (perhaps SR). From there, we'll see just how to get it on screen in the best possible scenario. Whether it gets the DCP treatment or not I can't say at this point, but I'll keep the thread updated as things progress.
 
Stephen Mick said:
At the moment, we'll be "onlining" the color-corrected final film and mastering to HDCAM (perhaps SR). From there, we'll see just how to get it on screen in the best possible scenario. Whether it gets the DCP treatment or not I can't say at this point, but I'll keep the thread updated as things progress.
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If you're working with most festivals, and not one you have really direct access to the projection process, I wish you luck. The experience of talking tech with some festivals is much like explaining to the kid at Best Buy why I don't need $100 HDMI video cables. It can be a very trying experience in some cases.
 
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