HUNTED - Premiere

i had the anamorphic adapter. basically it's a wide angle lens, just giving you more or a wider view. it doesn't improve quality...it's just a glass lens...a curved glass lens, but it's just a lens. with the adapter say you set up for a shot at 10 feet...to get that same shot without the lens then you would have to set up the camera a few feet back to capture the same width of the anamorphic shot. however doing so you lose the height of the shot. so if you have 2 people facing each other standing 10 feet apart, but both fill the frame height-wise...without the lens to get the same shot you'd have to move back, but now instead of them being head-to-feet in the frame they are now 3/4s of the frame.

so in that aspect it's great to have because if you're in a tight space and want a wide shot then you can with the lens, but without then knock down a wall and move the camera back.
 
Mark Dog said:
hey moe u use the anamorphic adapater correct ? and if so did this help with u getting ur great picture quality cause i think it properly the best i seen so far of what i seen so far on the site using the dvx, and did u use a dvx 100a or a b ?

peace n luv

Mark Dog
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Hi Mark, the anamorphic lens only helps if you are planning on blowing up your footage. The thing is when you use the anamorphic you get a 16:9 image without having to crop any of your pixels so basically you are using the camera to it's full potential when you want the end result to be 16:9
With that being said, I think the number one issue that budget filmmakers face most of the time is lighting, sometimes knowing how to frame your shot helps, but understanding how to get a proper exposure is key so I would say this affects the footage more than the anamorphic lens does. Like I said the anamorphic only helps if your are trying to blow up your footage. I used the 100A and thanks for the kind words :)
 
rszebras said:
I previously posted and commented on how good the trailer looks, especially how vibrant the colors are. Did you have to do a lot of color correction in post or were your camera settings sufficient to alleviate a lot of correction? Also, what (if any) filters did you use and were they screwed on the end of the camera or did you use a matte box?

Finally, you mentioned you bought a crane and dolly, and rented a steadicam. Do you mind telling what products you went with? There's a lot of discussion on dvxuser about cranes, dollys, and stabilizers. I'd like to hear from you on this, since you're producing such high quality productions. :)
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Hi there, as far as the color correction is concerned I worked on camera setting for the most part, and then Color corrected using Premiere, but most of the time the image was close to the color corrected one. I used a polarizing filter with matte box. I used the cobra crane, which works great but you have to watch out not to make the camera super heavy i.e. I had a matte box, 6 hour battery, anamorphic lens, follow focus all which made the camera a little heavy and these cranes are made for light cameras but it still worked. The dolly I bought of the internet, no brand, I'll post a link if I ever find one. As for the stabilizers, I used two different things, we rented the Glide cam with the vest, arm, mini screen the whole thing, but some other times I used my personal glide cam 2000 pro which cost much much less but guess what, you can barley tell the difference :)
 
rszebras said:
I'm curious about the anamorphic adapter, too. Is it worth the bucks? :huh: If you want 16:9 output is using the adapter better than shooting 4:3 and applying a 16:9 matte in post?

BTW, I've seen all the posts and want to thank you for taking time to give feedback. I'm sure you're busy working on your feature. :beer:
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Like I said b4 it is worth it if you want to blow up your footage or transfer to film but that is it!
No problem about the posts :) I learned alot here on this forum and hopefully this information is helpful for your projects
 
novelt said:
i had the anamorphic adapter. basically it's a wide angle lens, just giving you more or a wider view. it doesn't improve quality...it's just a glass lens...a curved glass lens, but it's just a lens. with the adapter say you set up for a shot at 10 feet...to get that same shot without the lens then you would have to set up the camera a few feet back to capture the same width of the anamorphic shot. however doing so you lose the height of the shot. so if you have 2 people facing each other standing 10 feet apart, but both fill the frame height-wise...without the lens to get the same shot you'd have to move back, but now instead of them being head-to-feet in the frame they are now 3/4s of the frame.

so in that aspect it's great to have because if you're in a tight space and want a wide shot then you can with the lens, but without then knock down a wall and move the camera back.
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I have to disagree with you here, yes you can get a 16:9 image without the anamorphic but you will be cropping your image thus losing rez... the image I get of the anamorphic is 864 X 480 as opposed to 720 X 400. That makes a BIG difference when you blow up the image...
 
You guys better see it. That was tight.
Moe, one of the things I like about the trailer was the sharpness of the actors.
So I guess you did not use any adapter.
Do you have any pictures you can share of the set?
 
Now that was really,really nice. Let us know the release date. Tnanx for the info about the anamorphic adapter.


Now Moe who did your sound design? The sound design is outstanding.
 
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the image I get of the anamorphic is 864 X 480 as opposed to 720 X 400. That makes a BIG difference when you blow up the image...
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technically not true..if the lines remain the same then it will be approx. 854x480, but to be truly picky...

blow up the image? it might get uprezzed to fit a 35mm frame considering the CCD image is smaller than a 35mm frame.

also consider this, the lens optically "squeezes" an area to fit into the 720x480 frame. the information gets stored "digitally"...so it's not like extra information is being stored. you can't cram more information into a pixel. so if the pixel contains a shade of a color...that's it. so when the frame gets "stretched" the information in that pixel gets stretched. take a regular 4:3 shot and stretch it to 16x9 (which is technically all that's happening with the anamorphic shot) the image is stretched. did the NLE or graphics editor add data to the image? no. it's like a rubber band. you pull it, it stretches...is there "more" rubber band?

above i said it was basically a wide angle lens...all it's doing is grabbing more of an area and squeezing it down to fit a 4:3 frame. point being however that it is a piece of glass and in no way improves the image quality.

Example

now what i said was good about it still holds...you can get closer to a subject or object and be able to grab a wider area around it. of course if we had the following then...

Panavision
 
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Novlet, I don't know where you got the 854 number, but i won't argue with that.
I will say this though, the squeeze mode in the DVX is a joke, it is just like adding two bars on top of the image. Try it, shoot both ways and look at the footage they are identical! meaning that the dvx is not using the full ccd in the squeeze mode. Really what the dvx is doing is it is taking a 720 X 400 (approximately but you get the point) image and stretching to 720 X 480 image now your loosing 80 pixels here, how will you make up for them?? When you shoot with an anamorphic the squeezed image is already 720 X 480 so when you view it on a wide screen TV all it does is stretch it horizontally. If the DVX had a TRUE 16:9 option, then I would say there is no need for the anamorphic and your statement is true but that is not the case my friend... look up the threads about the anamorphic on this site there are plenty.
 
Thanks for the compliment guys :)
xilixfilms, I used the anamorphic adapter. The actors did a very good job I was pleae with most of the performance :) I'll try to post up behind the scenes images when I get the chance.
Northainan, i'll keep you posted! If you thought the sound design was good in the trailer, wait till you see the actual short! All original music composed by Greg Chun who did an unbelievable job IMO. Javier Cortes, who also did a very good job, worked on the sound design and the mix.
 
WOW! I am new to this site and did not know what to expect from the camera. Holy Cow was that nice. Congrats on a super cool trailer. I wish you all the best of luck wiht the movie.
 
854...math...if 480 is the 9 of 16:9...480/9 is 53.333333 multiply that by 16 and you get 853.33333. right if the dvx had a 16:9 ccd then it would actually store that data, but it's 16:9 squeezed down into 4:3 and no extra info is stored. sure the DV header might get a pixel aspect ratio of 1.2, but that's it...even though that's not happening in camera, because the camera does not know there's an anamorphic adapter on the front.

When you shoot with an anamorphic the squeezed image is already 720 X 480 so when you view it on a wide screen TV all it does is stretch it horizontally.
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isn't that what i've been saying? my whole point was that it wasn't improving picture quality, just grabbing more of an area.
 
Come on now enough of the tech stuff. Movie fans don't care about that stuff. All they care about is that the movie looks good enough,and the story is good and the ACTING and that's it. 16.9? 853? 700 rez or whatever. They don't care about that stuff. You know there are a lot of movie flops shot with Panavision cameras such asThe Last Action Hero and blockbusters shot with a video camera from Sears such as The Blair Witch Project All fans care about is the story and the ACTING.

Moe, again your trailer looks great and the story looks interesting too.:thumbup:
 
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northainan...

tech stuff? that wasn't the point of our discussion. i was trying to make sure a million people don't run out to buy an anamorphic adapter thinking that it will improve their image quality. it's not going to make your shot look crisp, soft or anything you might think will get you closer to film. all it does is grab a wider shot.

if you have the money to transfer to film then you probably have enough to uprez the DV through Discreet at which point it wouldn't matter if you used an adapter or not. even cropped shots will look much better resized through a high end application. lastly about adapters there are some film DPs that don't use adapters and prefer to shoot 4:3 so that later they can frame whatever area they want into the 2.35:1 cinemascope. because framing with the adapter you are stuck with the shot you film.

and i agree with you that fans of genres don't really care about format. if you like sci-fi then you want good sci-fi. if you like action then you want good action. horror, better be good horror. to which point blair witch isn't that good of an example because it's format is part of the story we found theses tapes and here you go. you know it's video and if you were given film you wouldn't believe it was "true"...you'd now think it was a hollywood production. now what you should've mentioned is "28 days later" done exceptionally well.

ah but king in hollywood is "titanic" with a box office of $600,000,000..."blair witch" - $140,000,000

just the facts...and just so you know i'm currently in production on a feature and i'm making it to please me and if one guy in illinois likes it then great. i'm not trying to break titanic's record or surpass blair witch. my goal is to get it done and if anyone likes it...great, but i'm doing it for me and the people working with me.

moe as you already know i think the clip is great and as you know i asked for a DVD. i just hope people don't think i'm knocking you...we're brothers in the same cause.
 
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Thanks for the kind words Northainan :)
Novelt, I don't think you are knocking me down, we are just having an educated discussion that's all :) Listen, all I'm trying to say is if you shoot with the DVX squeeze mode you are not utilizing the CCD to the fullest (you end up losing about 80 pixels this way) do you agree with this statement? If you don't agree with this statement then you do your own experiment, shoot squeeze mode, and shoot with bar mode and notice how you will get the same exact result... We all know that bar mode crops the image thus squeeze mode is cropping it as well. This was a big issue with the DVX when it first came out, and trust me I did alot of research on this issue alone.
 
I do agree with that...however i can't shoot squeeze because i have the original DVX100 no A and definitely no B. the only thing about the anamorphic that i didn't like was i had to get a matte box to use filters. however i totally agree that having a full 720x480 image is better to work with than resizing a cropped one, but even better than that is having a 16:9 chip...speaking of does the HVX have one?

by the way above when i said "had" i didn't get rid of it...it was dropped and broken by someone. well the glass is fine except for a minute chip. so minute that it's not truly visible on screen. what broke was the housing...i tried contacting panasonic to see if i could just get the housing and fix it myself, but they don't and i couldn't find out where it was manufactured...if anybody knows that, that would be great...cuz i liked my lens.
 
Well hey, carry on fellas!
I have the DVX100A. I started to get the anamorphic adapter back in the Fall,but I went ahead and bought the CS Sanken shotgun mike instead. Don't have plans for projects going to the big screen right now but that's probally down the line. What format do most independent film festivals use; DVD or Film? If it's film then the anamorphic adapter will go in the budget.
 
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