Making a feature using a t3i.

Straight Edge

Straight Edge

Active member
'Ello, so my XHA1 died and a friend of mine is kind enough to lend me his T3I. Nice cam. Certainly lacking a lot of stuff I was used to, but great quality. Anyway, I'm in the middle of production for my latest feature-length film entitled NOWHERE JOHNNY, a neo-noir type flick. Anyway, check out the 30 second teaser that focuses solely on one of the characters. It's vague, so don't expect too much info.

And please like and share the Facebook page if you want, there are updates there and new screen grabs from each new shoot: NOWHERE JOHNNY on FACEBOOK!

Here's the teaser, watch in HD:

*EDITED*

Teaser has been deleted, here's the NEW TRAILER:

 
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M. Gilden said:
Going to move this to the footage section. Meanwhile, as far as "Certainly lacking a lot of stuff I was used to", have you looked into Magic Lantern?
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Thanks.

Yes, I have. Great firmware, but it's not my camera. It's not my place to install it and I wouldn't want to on a friend's camera. I've heard it's not 100% safe to install.
 
Cool stuff, but I would advise against matting the 2.40 like that unless you use black made up of 16:16:16 for RGB. Otherwise you'll have some issues when someone watches it on a "tube" TV. Instead, physically crop it to 1920x816 or similar. This will give you a true 2.40 frame without the black bars (more professional)
 
El Director said:
Cool stuff, but I would advise against matting the 2.40 like that unless you use black made up of 16:16:16 for RGB. Otherwise you'll have some issues when someone watches it on a "tube" TV. Instead, physically crop it to 1920x816 or similar. This will give you a true 2.40 frame without the black bars (more professional)
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Thanks. And how does one do that in Final Cut Pro?
 
Good question. I'm a Vegas/AE user, so I'm not sure. It's probably either a project setting or output setting or both (as it is in AE)
 
To change it in FCP, just right click your sequence in the project window, select settings, then you can change the size to whatever you want. HOWEVER I do NOT recommend doing this to any sequences you have footage in. It'll jack it the crap up! Create a new sequence instead and change the settings to whatever you want, then put the footage in there.
 
I have Compressor. But honestly, I still don't know cons of using the black bars versus the cropping. Can someone list out the pros and cons, if one intended their movie for theatrical/TV distribution? If one were fortunate enough. Haha. Thank you.
 
Straight Edge said:
I have Compressor. But honestly, I still don't know cons of using the black bars versus the cropping. Can someone list out the pros and cons, if one intended their movie for theatrical/TV distribution? If one were fortunate enough. Haha. Thank you.
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Think about it- you are encoding black bars into each frame. While the end result may look about the same on your monitor, what about monitors of a different size and/or dimension?
Back in the days of classic tube TVs, there were times that I would be working on a composition with frames shot in 16:9 widescreen. One way of displaying 16:9 content on a 4:3 screen is to edit with black bars on top and bottom. Scenes shot in 4:3 could also easily be combined by placing black bars over those parts of the frame.
The problem is, if someone wanted to watch this finished comp on a 16:9 native display, there were now black bars "baked in" to the image. Watching 4:3 content on a a 16:9 display means adding vertical bars to the left and right of the image. Now, add to that the black bars that are baked into the top and bottom, and suddenly your video is now confined to a square box in the middle, surrounded by black bars all around!
Surely, this is less than ideal.

Also, sometimes you will get gamma shifts when converting video into different codecs or when using certain playback engines. That means the "black" bars might start to turn a bit lighter than absolute black, and be noticeable against other parts of the screen which are true black. In the example given above (real black bars inserted on the left and right, and the "baked in" bars on the top and bottom), the artifically added bars could turn a deep navy/grey, which will look even more bizarre against the true black bars that the display is inserting around the borders.

Also to consider is the extra encoding bandwidth wasted on the borders that could have been used on the frames of the video. That means either unnecessarily larger file size and/or reduced image IQ. The difference might not be enough to notice to be honest, but its one of those things that just seems silly and inefficient to do.

Worst case scenario, you'll end up with baked in borders on different aspect ratio displays, gamma shifts and wasted codec bitrate bandwidth. Best case scenario, you come off as too lazy to do this the more professional and efficient way. Either way, I think its worth doing things the right way.
 
Hmm. I think I kinda got a grasp on what you're saying and I do not wanna degrade my video quality. So I'll try not to use the baked in widescreen bars on the actual film. Excuse my non-technical knowledge! Haha. So when a movie gets on a DVD, who puts the widescreen black bars that we see?

And thank you for your reply.

By the way, here are the latest screen grabs, now with the actual Johnny (and Scarlet)!


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Do like us and sharing is caring. Help our little neo-noir indie flick get noticed.

http://www.facebook.com/nowherejohnnymovie
 
If you render a film at 1920x816 at 24p and tell your DVD software to interpret it as such, the viewer's DVD player will take care of the rest. Their player will add letterboxing as needed, as well as perform pulldown as needed
 
Straight Edge said:
http://a6.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/418052_242963215780743_202517173158681_543249_1299810078_n.jpg
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Some quite nasty banding there. If it looks like that on a still... well. Don't wanna be that guy but, unless it's a complex shot of some kind, maybe consider a pickup on it.
 
Martin Oller said:
Some quite nasty banding there. If it looks like that on a still... well. Don't wanna be that guy but, unless it's a complex shot of some kind, maybe consider a pickup on it.
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Yeah, the banding sucks. It was literally black outside. Had to bump up the ISO and bump down the shutter like crazy. The only key was an iPhone. It's not a terribly vital scene though.I may re-do it or use Neat Video
 
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