How does the EX3 replicate the look of film in 'Monsters' ?

Basspig, I know you and your posts well enough to know that you can tell the difference between 44.1 and 48k!

But I doubt that anyone on this forum can tell the visual difference between 4:2:0 XDCAM and 4:2:2 on the EX's without a close technical examination. I have to disagree with the premise that there is a "4:2:2 look." It's all about lighting, composition etc.
 
Matthew, I would tend to agree, given a show I shot on Sunday that was under colored lights and had performers wearing intense primary reds, yellows and other colors. I watched the raw footage from Clip Browser, using my projector's DVD input as monitor 2 (double click the player window and it toggles output to mon 2 --also, hover mouse pointer over shuttle controls and they hide after a few seconds, giving full screen output on mon 2). Granted, Clip Browser crushes blacks and has a totally different look from VLC Media Player, the output looked amazingly free of jaggies around the lady's red felt hat and the guy's safety yellow vest:

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Just look at how solid the reds and yellows are!

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And in this one, look at how well the colored lights are handled.

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Solid, noise-free blacks. No jaggies on the red band.

Granted, these are reduced 50% which effectively makes them 4:4:4, excepting compression online reduces them to something like 4:1:0 so JPEG or whatever really decimated the quality of these. I do notice more issues with MPEG block noise on complex scenes, and that's where a higher rate CODEC would help alot.

I watched the above video last night on my 12' projection screen and it was better than being there (I had both experiences).
 
My Blu-ray arrived this afternoon and I watched Monsters this evening.

My impressions are that it was partly as I expected and partly a bit of surprise in terms of production values.

The overall look was pretty film-like, with just a hint of that 'smear' or softness that I notice on video shot to SxS cards. I had just seen Pan's Labyrinth the night before, and that was shot on film. Monsters compared very favorably.

Edwards demonstrated a pretty decent mastery of the PMW-EX3; his exposures were, for the most part, very much on the money. He must have used one of the Cine gammas. Colors were earthy and warm, but muted, looking a bit like RED footage in that respect. Cinema matrix perhaps?

There were many times where focus was off, and some shots where he was rocking in and out of focus. Also, some scenes, particularly the one where they're walking through the wreckage in Galveston, TX, where there wasn't enough depth of field. It was just too much blurring of the background. The Letus gave the whole picture a soft, organic overall look. Nothing was sharp to the pixel. Rather, it had more of a Stanley Kubrick look, but without the grain.

There were several night scenes where the footage was either pushed or gain was used and it looked very noisy. Oddly, other night scenes looked clean. It was inconsistent in that aspect. Scenes in the hotel room also had pasty skintones, indicating some grading which made the shadows and darker skin tones look a bit unappealing. But I have to remember that this was all done with available light. No elaborate lighting setups like in big budget flicks. I'd like to see a Panavision camera shoot in available lighting.. oh yeah, Barry Lyndon, and it looked pretty bad in that respect by today's standards too.

I see in the docu that Edwards was using the "el cheapo" shoulder brace for this rig, which was surprising. A steadicam would have improved a lot of the shots. There were many jarring motion shots where the cameraman's footsteps pulsated throughout the frame.

Conspicuously missing were a matte box and follow focus. Edwards isn't trying to impress onlookers--he's focused on results without the useless bling.

Also impressive were the fact that the entire movie was cut, special effects done, on PCs. Mostly Adobe Premiere, AfterEffects and Photoshop. Every roadsign in the film was altered in Photoshop and tracked and composited back into the footage. I can say that nothing caught my eye as being unnatural about any of the signage. Usually when this is less than perfect, the eye/brain are not easily fooled. Edwards did a masterful job with post effects. The monsters/aliens were well done too. Working in Zbrush, he roughed out designs in minutes. Very impressive. Here's a director who can make a big budget look with $15K worth of gear and software.

Funny thing is, I could have sat in that editing suite and gone right to work--everything, even the shuttle pro that he uses, replicated my own software environment very closely.

The extras/features on the disc are educational. While the movie itself is not great, plotwise, it serves as an example of how a person with vision and my sense of getting things done with a minimum of money spent, can accomplish an uncompromising work. That a hundred production people weren't involved in the making of this film is notable. It was mainly just Edwards and his editor and a few months' spent going through 96 hours of footage shot in five countries.

The whole thing makes me want to grab my EX3 and go make a film now. Very inspiring!
 
Watching it now and the shallow depth of field is already bugging me. Not every shot needs to have the background blurred. So far I like the movie but I sure wish he would take off that DOF adapter for a little while.
 
I read that he worked at one of the big FX houses so his competence in that regards shouldn't be a big surprise. I also read that he had an outline, but that they improvised the script as the three of them, director/cameraman and two actors, traveled through Mexico, Belize and Costa Rica. The improvisation probably accounts for the story line not being as developed as it could be. Still, it made theaters, has interesting points and was made with 'our' type of camera.
 
And Guatemala too. Yes, it was improvised. The 'extras' on the BD are educational and worth sitting through.
And yes, there was too much shallow DoF. But that probably took the strain off the CODEC, enabling it to look so good.
 
I thought the film came across as a work of genius...
I own an ex1, a letus elite.... even the cheap shoulder mount they gave me when I bought the ex1 in the shop (probably same shop Gareth Edwards got his from)..
WAKE UP CALL
I watched it on Bluray a couple of times and had mates round who thought it was great, no one mentioned too much shallow dof or anything, they just sat there and watched a good film.
.....the only bads I could see were a couple of shots looked like the adapter was off when shooting, the rather unconvincing telephone conversation at start and a few near jump cuts.
Truth is you can pull most good films apart on something.
We should all learn a little (or a lot) from this guy.
 
Probably one of the main points that gave this movie a real 'film-look' was the quality of the audio.:tongue:
Ok, the audio doesn't give a film look, but it helped to create a high budget atmosphere.
The audio guys equipment may have cost more than the video equipment at any rate.

Good score too, nice soundscapes.
 
brudney said:
Gareth is said to be directing the next Godzilla movie... :]

and yeah, Monsters looked amazing. here's the link to fxguide's podcast with Gareth, highly recommended:)

http://media.fxguide.com/fxpodcast/fxg-101014-monsters.mp3


also, AFAIK they didn't record to any externald device, such as Nano..
Click to expand...

Great thread. The mp3 is a cool listen too. In the mp3 Gareth talks about some guy showing him about a button on the EX3 that gives a redoutline in viewfinder when subject is in critical focus. Where is this button/setting??

Thanks!
 
Getting good audio is more technique than equipment. Of course, quality, reasonably-priced mics are essential, but it's more in how you use/position them, and how you do post production for sound that makes the difference. There's more than dialog. Mixing foley and soundtrack music is done a certain way that separates professional films from amateur ones. Keeping dialog levels consistent, staying out of the red, and placing the mics in the ideal locations to get clear dialog are all factors.
 
basspig said:
Getting good audio is more technique than equipment. Of course, quality, reasonably-priced mics are essential, but it's more in how you use/position them, and how you do post production for sound that makes the difference. There's more than dialog. Mixing foley and soundtrack music is done a certain way that separates professional films from amateur ones. Keeping dialog levels consistent, staying out of the red, and placing the mics in the ideal locations to get clear dialog are all factors.
Click to expand...

You missed my question - Any help?

In the mp3 Gareth talks about some guy showing him about a button on the EX3 that gives a redoutline in viewfinder when subject is in critical focus. Where is this button/setting??

Thanks!​





 
Nick Navaro said:
You missed my question - Any help?

In the mp3 Gareth talks about some guy showing him about a button on the EX3 that gives a redoutline in viewfinder when subject is in critical focus. Where is this button/setting??

Thanks!​
Click to expand...


Only on the EX1 there is a button called "peaking". On the EX3, it is a knob on the back of the viewfinder. You can turn it up from zero to full peaking display. In the menus, you can configure the style of peaking, too, from color to sharpening, as well. Hope this helps.
 
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