Fade out vs. Fade out

[SplitFieldDiopter]

When watching older films (pre-NLE) I have always wondered why the fade outs looked more organic than the ones I was able to achieve with AVID or FCP.

The answer, I suppose, is obvious. Whether they were using an optical printer, or actually doing this in camera, they were preventing light from hitting the pickup device (in those days, film)

Now that I'm using fully manual cine lenses, I'm able to stop down the iris with a very smooth motion.

The left frame is a properly exposed image that I irised down to black.

The right frame is essentially the same shot, but I added the fade to black with FCP.

Both fades are 70 frames long and start at the exact same time.

You can tell the difference and the manual iris down looks more organic to me.

With our last movie, we shot some footage from the camera with the lens cap on to get a non-digital black. This, I find, is another step closer to achieving an organic look with digital tech.

 

[Steve Kahn]

You can do this in editing as well. Just don't use a liner fade but use some sort of log curve fade and you will obtain a simialr result.

 

[SplitFieldDiopter]

That makes sense. Using Final Cut for quite a while. Don't think there is way to do this without a plug-in. I could be wrong though.

 

[maranfilms]

It looks as though the NLE has a deeper black. Im sure the iris fade could be made to be as rich as the NLE. But I see what your saying, there is definetly a difference. I like the iris dip more.

 

[Jimmy Pierce]

Pen tool & opacity. Make two marks at the end of the video track and lower the further end mark down until it reaches the bottom of the track. It'll look like a diagonal curve.

 

[SplitFieldDiopter]

Pen tool & opacity. Make two marks at the end of the video track and lower the further end mark down until it reaches the bottom of the track. It'll look like a diagonal curve.

Just tried it out and yep! That does look a lot better than the straight fade. YET, I find that the iris down still has something that the NLE version doesn't. I don't know if it's the graininess of the image as the light disappears or if it's the manual feel to the stop down, but it still feels a bit different.

Such a minor issue though. Just thought it was fun.

 

[djkarn105]

Just tried it out and yep! That does look a lot better than the straight fade. YET, I find that the iris down still has something that the NLE version doesn't. I don't know if it's the graininess of the image as the light disappears or if it's the manual feel to the stop down, but it still feels a bit different.

Such a minor issue though. Just thought it was fun.

I'm going to venture an educated guess and say this it is because films exposure response is not linear. You just need to make your fade out a bit of an s curve as opposed to being linear. Really, I don't ever use "transitions" in final cut anymore. Nowhere near the control required for opacity or audio level adjustments.