myview: italia

Re: myview: italia

The lomo is interesting. It's kinda weird after using a digital still camera, a little hit and miss. I used 50asa velvia, 100asa polaroid c-41, and 100asa agfa scala. Slide film is a little oversensitive and any underexposure results in a black frame. But it's the lens that gives the crazy colour and vignetting. It occurred to me after I'd ordered it that $200 for a $10 russian camera is probably not a great deal (I was drunk at the time), but the results are pretty sweet.

Camera settings on the DVX were pretty simple: just wide open all the time, making sure the whites aren't getting clipped. No anamorphic adapter. I was thinking about picking one up, but having read Barry Green's book, I'm not sure - would love to rent one and see how it goes. I just shoot full-frame and then choose which areas to throw away later. I wouldn't recommend shooting in squeeze mode or letterbox, it'll cause more trouble than it's worth. If you keep the whole frame you have a lot more data to play with, especially if you want to stabilise the shots in post (I use Furnace, from The Foundry).

So yeah. A litle colour correction, some stabilising, some vignetting on the shots that needed it, and then used Frischluft LensCare (thanks for the tip Rich!) to blur out the edges on a lot of the shots.

Everything before Italia was shot on a Sony TRV900 in 60i. Not the greatest camera in the world, but with a little tweaking it can look kinda nice. It's my backup camera now, in case I ever feel the urge to duct tape it to another race bike :)
 
Re: myview: italia

also Rich, in terms of interesting formats... polaroids are cool, yeah; there's also the Holga, which shoots on 120 film and leaks a shedload of light. You can either tape it up, or learn to love the freaky results.

and if you like the convenience of a digital camera, you can just run the 'lomoizer' on your files. it's an action set for photoshop that approximates the look of the lomo, although it generally works best on images around 400px wide - you can probably modify the script to make it work on anything though. for some reason it's moved from where i got it, so have at it here:

http://www.bubble-squeak.com/ae_list/Lomo.zip

thanks everyone for the kind words :)
 
Re: myview: italia

cool, glad the frischluft tip worked out...did you use its depth of field setup or the out of focus?

im digin your stills section man, didnt see that the last few times i was hangin around your site. excellent work!

thanks for the camera tips...i will check out the holga. yeah, the lomo seems a little expensive for what it is mechanicly. but its still cheaper than almost any accessory for a d-slr. know what i mean?

anyway, keep up the killer work man...whats next? got any videos lined up? would be interesting to see a short film from you.

peace
 
Re: myview: italia

i used depth of field mainly, with a simple radial gradient to pull the depth info from.

i wish someone made a digital back for the lomo. that would be rad. although i was hearing something about digital backs for the holga or something? i'm sure it would be like 200x the price of the camera body itself though. heh.

more stuff is in the works, yes. A bunch of new music videos lined up, a short film (god damn. I'm not looking forward to having to figure out how to record good sound), and some stuff I can't talk about yet. Also going to a couple of classes at SF filmarts to learn how to shoot film and operate steadicams, cranes etc. Hopefully one of the next projects we'll be able to shoot 16 or 35.

There's two things I'm loving about film: frame rate and latitude. Look at this ****er. I'm so mad that he's the same age as me :)

http://collider.com.au/webclips/arc_large.html
http://collider.com.au/webclips/sia_large.html
http://collider.com.au/webclips/levis_bull_large.html
http://collider.com.au/webclips/whdntd_small.htm

How about you? Is 'just like you' done already? What's next?
 
Re: myview: italia

Wow thats some nice Motion tracking in SIA...

Polaroids... kinda reminds me of the +HP commercials
 
Re: myview: italia

yeah, digiback stuff would be insane...too expensive...

yeah, tell me about it, sound...i have been trying to avoid doing anything with it. thats why videos are soo cool, cause you can skip over all that shite...seems like it can be a *****.

dude,that sai stuff is cool. but nothing that you should fret over much. almost anything is cool when it is super slow motion with the nice lighting. slow motion diver going into water...how many times have you seen that? its well done and all, but nothing earth shattering...anyway, just keep pushing youself and you will be golden. i liked watching your kids video more then the stuff on that site. all that stuff looks like fashion mag photography, which, to me is kinda boring.

how old are you by the way?

i dont have anything lined up now. but something that could potentialy turn out to be effing killer might happen soon. i cant really say right now, cause im a freak about trying not to jinx things.
all i know is i need a vactation...burnt out as hell doing whats like 3 projects at the same time.
 
Re: myview: italia

know what you mean about jinxing. I told some friends that i'd be going to mexico in a couple weeks to shoot the baja 1000 for BF goodrich... but they ended up cancelling the project for everyone involved. bummer! woulda been beautiful, I had a bunch of shots already mapped out in my head.

i'm 27. feels young and old at the same time.
 
Re: myview: italia

I just watched that SIA " Breathe Me " Clip.

Holy ****; one of the best videos I have ever watched. Very moving. The song was so badass. Wow.
 
Re: myview: italia

Anyone know where to find a similair filter(Frischluft LensCare) for Final Cut Pro? Or would it work for FCP as a AE file?

thanks
 
Re: myview: italia

John (and everyone else)-

'Sia' is Sia Furler, one of an ensemble of wonderful musicians touring in the UK under the name Zero 7. Check out their website:

http://www.zero7.co.uk/

I just kind of blundered into them on the net about 9 months ago, and their sound has totally captured me.

I got all twitterpated when they came to Boulder to do a show, and I offered my crew to capture their gig and turn it into a DVD. It looked like it was going to happen, as the guys from Atlantic Records seemed enthusiastic, but their bosses across the pond decided at the last minute to pass. >:(

Anyway, jasonk: nice work. You really pull out those lush tones.
 
Re: myview: italia

Hey jasonk,
could you please share how you did all the " ...litle colour correction, some stabilising, some vignetting on the shots that needed it, and then used Frischluft LensCare (thanks for the tip Rich!) to blur out the edges on a lot of the shots..." :)?
Did you use MB for cc?
And how did you do the vignetting, it looked so optical, the edges were like multicolored(?), well didn't seem like a simple PS black gradient ???
Simple and short: you got style, man!
 
Re: myview: italia

yeah, i know what you mean, im 26..when i turned 25 i was like...whoa shite! i need to get on this film making shiznit or im just never going to do it and be old and bitter...

anyway, your work is killer dude!

Boomerang- check this site...http://www.frischluft.com/...dont think they support FCP
 
Re: myview: italia

thanks christian -

the colour correction was done in FCP with the 3 way corrector. I have the Digital Film Tree CC book but it might have been a waste of money, the 3-way is so easy to use with a little trial and error. I guess the book would be more useful if I was trying to put together something with narrative that had to hang together more consistently... but I wasn't :)

stabilising is a little harder. Furnace is supercool but sometimes it picks up movement from, say, people walking across the shot instead of the fixed elements, but again, trial and error sometimes helps, and sometimes you have to fool it a little by masking out areas with unwanted movement. It's not cheap, I think it's like $600. AE 6.5 pro's stabiliser is pretty cool and definitely a good solution if you can pick out specific points that you want to track from, although it doesn't have all the bells and whistles that Furnace does. (Furnace also includes a sweet retimer like Twixtor, which helps explain the high price).

The vignetting was all done in after effects. I started with a coloured radial gradient from photoshop (usually going from white to a desaturated dark blue) and then applied it to different shots using the multiply or overlay transfer modes. Overlay gives really nice results but has a tendency to blow out the whites; multiply is useful, but has a bit of a flat look to it. You can use some of the 'colour burn' or 'classic burn' modes too, they keep the saturation strong but again have a tendency to get a little too hard-edged, so you have to go at it with a light touch. Maybe part of the reason why my edges are colouring is cause I never set the white balance on my camera. It always looks a little pinkish. Must figure out how to do that. Heh.

And then finally LensCare probably helps the vignettes look optical, the blurring effect is so much better than the standard AE stuff, and when it combines with the in-camera shallow depth of field it takes on a crazy richness.

I think the biggest thing I'm learning from all this post work is that it helps to do as much as possible in-camera to preserve the image quality, cause DV can only bend so much before things start going south. I was doing some tests with the Cavision grad & polarizer filters yesterday. Curious beasts they are, these were the results with a little FCP 3-way on it:

http://www.bubble-squeak.com/ae_list/ftest.mov
 
Re: myview: italia

Well I can say this; your work is inspiring. Lately I have seen alot of 'visual imagery' that is wonderful. You, Rich Lee and the D MAN have definately upped the ante.

I went out yesterday and shot and spent about 5 hours today in POST doing some similar work and cant wait to share.
 
Re: myview: italia

Jason you are totally awesome.

What a great job of not only filming your project, but the editing was most excellent. Was really curious as to how you achieved the edits in the rail station (or im guessing it was a station cuz of the colors) where the edits have a little "flash" effect when they go to the next edit?

--Bop

And by the way, incase I didn't say it properly. This film kicks ass. A perfect example of someone who is ment to be behind the lens.
 
Re: myview: italia

[quote author=John Hudson link=board=Clips;num=1099712239;start=30#33 date=11/07/04 at 18:47:43]Well I can say this; your work is inspiring. Lately I have seen alot of 'visual imagery' that is wonderful. You, Rich Lee and the D MAN have definately upped the ante.

I went out yesterday and shot and spent about 5 hours today in POST doing some similar work and cant wait to share. [/quote]


Share DAMN YOU !!!!!
SHARE !!!!

--Bop

opp's sorry I'm calm now. It just bothers me that you give the "little man" a watch, and all we get if we behave are a few clips. ;D
 
Re: myview: italia

:D

I have tons of footage and stuff I have shot that is 'shooting around/documenting the city/nature/objects and have never really shared them (Other than my virgin first grabs, a music video promo and a drunk day at the beach of the some sunsets).  Serious though, I'm starting to appreciate all of the work I am seeing lately.  Rich Lee I think started it with his carnival piece, Jason comes along with his world tour, shai always hooks with compelling imagery, you had the nice relfections on water, Dman is always making me appreciate nature and scores of others.

So, I went out and decided to shoot.  So far, I'm happy with what I have and will be finalizing sometime this week; need to pick a score and polish edit.

What I am saying is I am inspired and there is no excuse to NOT share the love and art just because Im not currently 'In production' on a film (writing).  Sometimes, a visual piece with a nice score is all you need to appreciate the art of imagery.

Im rambling
 
Re: myview: italia

Wow!
Jasonk! Thanks!
That leads me to my main problem:
From where do you now which colors to change or which part of the picture(darks/mids/highs)?
Just rewatched your Italia clip and eg sec 18, the guy chrcking diamonds or sth - it looks so cool, kind of Matrix like, or sec 51, the old guys, or sec 54, the baby, or sec 57, the guy with glases, or at 1 min, the Italian girl (tasty btw...) - always looks so artistic, the colors may be 'wrong' but the stuff just looks so coooool ::)...
When i try, even with 3 way CC, it always looks like tinting and most of all i can't go far cause artifacts will show up (DV)!
 
Re: myview: italia

badass John, can't wait to see your clips!

Boomerang - actually I should have mentioned that not too many of the shots were stabilised - maybe 3 or 4. Mostly I was going handheld with OIS, cause setting up a tripod takes a while and attracts attention, especially when you're trying to catch a candid moment. But if you want to check out Furnace, have a look at the Foundry's site:

http://redirx.com/?gi04

Christian - I never really 'know' what colours to play with, but I find that it helps to drag your shadows and mids in different directions. That way you end up with an overall effect that more closely approximates the original tone of the image (rather than going all-blue, etc), but with greater depth and mood. If the original light sources are mixed, all the better - you choose WB for daylight, for example, and let the incandescent lights go all warm. It also helps to reduce the saturation sometimes - that way you don't get overwhelmed by the colours, and can create a more sombre look. Have a look at some of these sample settings if you like:

3way.jpg


Thistle - the flash effects are pretty straightforward. I was applying an adjustment layer with LensCare (any blur will work) and a simple levels effect. You keyframe it so that it raises the highlights and blurs it out in the final 3~ frames of the clip, coming back down to normal levels as the next clip comes in.

thanks everyone!
 
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