Getting that "Saving Private Ryan" look

Unsomnambulist

Unsomnambulist

Active member
I'm putting together a spec style commercial - sort of a chase/race scene between two runners through a city. Lots of kinetic shots.

Can anyone offer tips to achieve the look from the opening scenes/beach invasion from the opening of Private Ryan? Part of this I believe was due to the crazy camera action causing a funky strobe effect, but I'm not sure...

Can anyone lay out a step by step on how to create a similar scene file for this?

I'm mainly trying to get the look of the fluttering frames/strobe. Secondary is the bleach bypass film look...
 
To start with, shoot at the fastest shutter speed your lighting will allow and then use Magic Bullet effects for the bleach bypass look.
 
Exactly what Sirius said:
You have to use a fast shutter speed. 1/150, 1/200, or 1/250, depending on how dramatic you want it to look.
Then a lot of CC in post to get the "beach bypass look"
If you have barry's dvd, he has a "war" look you could use for the scene file. I dont have it with me right now, i'll check it out, and get back to you, but the main thing is the shutter speed.

detail level 0
chroma level -7
chroma phase +2
color temp -1
master ped -12
gamma - low
matrix - norm
 
fast shutter is the key, just like these two guys said. i wouldn't go as fast as 1/250, but i would shoot atleast at 1/120. if you go any faster then the strobing is too active and you'll be missing A LOT of movement, you don't want that.

i'd make sure you had an overcast day too. if the sun is out and you put the bleach bypass look on the video, then it will be way too hot. make sure it's overcast so you don't have to mess around with the settings later.
 
Thanks for the info.
Living in Los Angeles, overcast is hard to come by. Damn sunny, warm weather in the middle of winter.
 
yeah sunny in winter...damn....NewEngland, I'll trade.

I don't know about in camera settings, I usually shoot pretty generic settings and handle the rest in post. Perhaps this is bad?
 
IIRC, they used a 45-degree shutter, which would equate to about 1/250. On Zombie Hunter we wanted that stroby "28 Days Later" motion, so we used usually 1/500 or 1/1000.
 
On that note of fast shutter speeds, I have noticed if I try to shoot 1/120 in 24P or 24PA, I see a bit of a chroma shift. I was just experimenting around with faster shutter speeds to see what kinf of look I could get and it seemed like the white balance was constantly shifting. When i switch back to normal speed, the shift seems to go away. Seems like the shift gets worse as I speed the shutter up too. Am i missing a setting somewhere? I might be shooting a war short pretty soon and I want to get that cleared up beforehand.
 
Another thing they did was go into the camera and modify the shutter so that it spun out of synch with the pulldown claws. That's how they got that streaking effect (also seen in "The Island").
 
To tack on to the previous solid advice about using the 1/250 shutter speed, they also shot a lot of handheld, though I would suggest using a slight stabilizing device, even a monopod, and turn of the image stabilization setting on your camera. Kaminski also shot with a lot of long lenses, to enhance the choppy movement of the camera, while increasing the sharpness of the image. Basically, tweak the settings and camera placement/movement to get the sharpest, most chaotic image that you can. Enjoy.
 
Iain said:
Another thing they did was go into the camera and modify the shutter so that it spun out of synch with the pulldown claws. That's how they got that streaking effect (also seen in "The Island").
Click to expand...

You can get that with a Bolex 16mm camera by modifying the feed loops size before and after the plate.
 
well, I stumbled upon this thread, and decided to try some SPR stuff.

spr_11.jpg


spr_12.jpg


spr_22.jpg


spr_13.jpg


spr_5.jpg


spr_9.jpg


spr_1.jpg


spr_14.jpg

original

the grabs are actually interlaced because of stupid ole Liquid Edition 6, but they're still pretty good.

shot on 1/120 shutter, and just a simple desaturation.

edit: just so nobody tries to be a smartie, I realize the aspect ratio's different than with SPR. :thumbsup:
 
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A little Kaminski/Spielberg "flare" :)

spr_23.jpg


lol, look at that glare coming from the metal stripping on the car. strange how the sun only hit that particular part so hard.
 
Is there any software that will allow you to get the same effect as changing the shutter speed (fast or slow) in post?
 
hmm... not too sure about that one. I'm sure that there is something out there that allows you to do so, but I don't see why you'd need to, unless for some reason you forgot to shoot it with a faster shutter (but chances are that you'd notice before you ran off to cut it).

I guess just do some searches through here or google it. goodluck!
 
i can't imagine you could create a fast shutter in post. Although you never know in these times.

but considering the faster the shutter the less blur, you'd be trying to get sharp, no blur pictures from footage that was shot using 1/48-1/60 footage which will have plenty of blur.

I could see possibly going the other way. I imagine software could use kind of a morph effect to ADD BLUR between two frames, simulating a slower shutter, but not the other way around.
 
as a quick question, did they get that really cool rain effect in 28 days later from shutter speed as well? because it looked nice and it looked low budget.
 
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