Optical looking vertical smears - eg Sunshine - Rihanna disturbia

Deano

Deano

Active member
How do they achieve the optical looking vertical smears from the source lighting hot spots in the Rihanna video for disturbia. I doesn't look cg as the smears happen even when the source is outside of the frame. Danny Boyle also mentioned some sort of lens / prism for the similar looking effect in the Sunshine commentary.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6zdhHLvT7k

Thanks

Dean
 
But it seems to happen when the source of the hot spot is outside of the frame so I don't think it's done in post. I may be wrong but I'm sure it's some sort of lens effect?

I also see a similar thing happening here;

http://www.vimeo.com/609985
 
Ryan Patrick O'Hara said:
Done in post as far as I can figure, although it looks like a glorified (and animated) simulated CCD flare.

Cool effect, I agree.
Click to expand...

Hey Ryan, I just checked out your reel. Fantastic man! Looks like most if not all of it was shot on film, yeah. Looks awesome. Where are you based?
 
Deano said:
But it seems to happen when the source of the hot spot is outside of the frame so I don't think it's done in post. I may be wrong but I'm sure it's some sort of lens effect?

I also see a similar thing happening here;

http://www.vimeo.com/609985
Click to expand...

I'm an idiot and was assuming it was digital

If this was shot on FILM... then they obviously set the film shutter out of sync with the film movement, hence causing the bright objects to smear vertically. Perhaps some slight flashing of the film, for the blurry ones, but none of the examples you have shown me look as if there was additional flashing.

So, if film, it's in camera but not because of the lens flares or etc.

Sorry! I assumed it was digital, my bad!

:beer:

Ps: Thnx for the comments! I'm now based out of Los Angeles! Only been here less then a year!
 
Brilliant, thanks Ryan. Damn, I'll have to fake them for my HD project, but now I understand them it'll be a lot easier. Thanks for digging up the Private Ryan thread! Really cool of you,

Again great reel, hope your landing lots of work,

Cheers

Dean
 
how about the horizontal flares that pop up all the time in michael bay and jj abrams work? star trek had like three going on in every shot. is that all in post?
 
JJ Abrams talks about those here.
jj-abrams-admits-star-trek-lens-flares-are-ridiculous
 
Those are traditional anamorphic flares - some are added in post (by guess who) but most of them are in the plate. JJ even had someone aiming a light at the camera to create them for Star Trek. The vertical effect in the Rihanna video is something different though.

If you want a laugh someone added flares to the classic star trek to bring it up to date : )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAaX8Aq6smQ

Dean
 
Maybe the vertical smear could be created in AE using motion blur. A tall comp where the shot moves downwards from top to bottom over the duration of the clip, use extract so it only has highlights, add motion blur, drop that in another comp screen or add over top of original shot and link the anchor point back to the tall comp position to take the movement out again. Something like that.
 
ASG said:
Maybe the vertical smear could be created in AE using motion blur. A tall comp where the shot moves downwards from top to bottom over the duration of the clip, use extract so it only has highlights, add motion blur, drop that in another comp screen or add over top of original shot and link the anchor point back to the tall comp position to take the movement out again. Something like that.
Click to expand...

Hi ASG, yeah I'm sure it can all be recreated digitally, the thing i liked is that the smears happen when the light source is outside of the frame, so you'd have to work on an oversized comp and track in the source to the unexposed areas, run a vertical smear then crop the image back to it's original size. The Rihanna effect and the Okenfold vid have a really great organic feel to them which suggested that it was a lens or in camera effect. I was hoping it was some sort of mirror / prism thing and not a shutter thing so I could do it on HD. Didn't Danny Boyle have some cool piece of glass for the awesome blooming in Sunshine?
 
Yes, sadly, an off sync shutter is not an available option on HD...

I'm sure an AE guru can solve your dilemma. I'm an idiot when it comes to post. I just envision effects and rely on talented people to make it happen. :P
 
Ryan Patrick O'Hara said:
Yes, sadly, an off sync shutter is not an available option on HD...

I'm sure an AE guru can solve your dilemma. I'm an idiot when it comes to post. I just envision effects and rely on talented people to make it happen. :P
Click to expand...

Envision away man, that's the way we like it. Thanks for sharing your knowledge.

What other sites do you subscribe to? Any you know of that are less specific about the camera equipment one uses ie red dvx hvx etc, more about cinematography / filmmaking in general?
 
as mentioned, that rhihanna video shows telltale phase shift / shutter mis-synching.

for hd, you may wanna try using a streak filter (usually used to fake horizontal anamorphic flares) to give an organic foundation, then augment in post. for turning on/off the streaking, maybe try manually swinging the filter into place (the glass would have to be sans frame), though any change in angle will change the rotation of the streak onscreen, so you would need it on some sort of hinge (does this make sense?)... though this won't work if you have an expansive DoF... and it just won't look as pronounced or the same as phase shifting. you can also try making your own streak filter with an optical flat and a a razor.

probably the best way to mimic phase shift is in a linear/float compositing app: luma key your specular highlights, stack them on top to build severe overbrights, luma isolate the overbrights, obscure matte them with slight fractal noise, and then vertical blur the hell out of them. then the holy grail in simulating phase shift is to dupe the smear and temporally offset it one frame and place it near the bottom or top of the frame. what you mentioned as smears occuring from sources outside of the frame is actually the smear coming from the frame physically below or above on the celluloid. hope this somehow helps.
 
jaan said:
as mentioned, that rhihanna video shows telltale phase shift / shutter mis-synching.

for hd, you may wanna try using a streak filter (usually used to fake horizontal anamorphic flares) to give an organic foundation, then augment in post. for turning on/off the streaking, maybe try manually swinging the filter into place (the glass would have to be sans frame), though any change in angle will change the rotation of the streak onscreen, so you would need it on some sort of hinge (does this make sense?)... though this won't work if you have an expansive DoF... and it just won't look as pronounced or the same as phase shifting. you can also try making your own streak filter with an optical flat and a a razor.

probably the best way to mimic phase shift is in a linear/float compositing app: luma key your specular highlights, stack them on top to build severe overbrights, luma isolate the overbrights, obscure matte them with slight fractal noise, and then vertical blur the hell out of them. then the holy grail in simulating phase shift is to dupe the smear and temporally offset it one frame and place it near the bottom or top of the frame. what you mentioned as smears occuring from sources outside of the frame is actually the smear coming from the frame physically below or above on the celluloid. hope this somehow helps.
Click to expand...

Thanks so much Jaan for such a detailed answer. I really appreciate the time you took to reply to my post, thank you.

I work as an inferno artist so could mimic it in post (fair amount of work that 'd like to avoid though) but I like the idea of destructive incamera effects. Could you point me to a streak filter, I assume it's a piece of glass that attaches to the lens yeah? I'm using an HVX with a brevis 35mm adapter and Nikon primes.
Since the HVX is 8bit I really enjoy manipulating the image before it reaches the sensor and that lattitude is lost forever.

Thanks again Jaan, I'm learning more everyday : )

Dean
 
hey deano, sorry i kinda skimmed through the thread and didn't quite catch the info about your vfx expertness. the great synthetic sunrise in your "golden" clip made me realize how kinda useless it was for me to explain the "faking phase shift" thing, ha. that whole clip is super impressive and looks & sounds amazing.

as for the streak filter, you will likely need a mattebox (with rotatable stage to change the streak angle to vertical) for the filters, though they may have rotatable screw-on versions for some, i dunno. keep in mind that if you ever aren't using your brevis, then the hvx200's DoF may be too deep at wider focal lengths to properly work with them. i haven't used any streak filters, but have seen footage using a few different kinds... some are labeled as 2-point star filters (essentially what they are). the more blown out/overexposed the in-frame lightsource is, the greater the intensity of the streak... you won't be able to get the same intensity of streaking from weak sources as with phase shift though. they have lines etched into them at a fixed angle, and it's the tiny specular highlights of the light catching on the edges of the etches that create the streak.

i remember seeing one called bluevision that produced the blue-tinted streaks of some anamorphic lenses. and one from harrison i saw footage from that looked pretty nice. tiffen makes them as well. if you're in the bay area, i remember seeing streak flters on the rental list for chater camera, you should ask them if you can demo them. the folks there are great and super helpful, and they have matteboxes for rent as well.
 
jaan said:
hey deano, sorry i kinda skimmed through the thread and didn't quite catch the info about your vfx expertness. the great synthetic sunrise in your "golden" clip made me realize how kinda useless it was for me to explain the "faking phase shift" thing, ha. that whole clip is super impressive and looks & sounds amazing.

as for the streak filter, you will likely need a mattebox (with rotatable stage to change the streak angle to vertical) for the filters, though they may have rotatable screw-on versions for some, i dunno. keep in mind that if you ever aren't using your brevis, then the hvx200's DoF may be too deep at wider focal lengths to properly work with them. i haven't used any streak filters, but have seen footage using a few different kinds... some are labeled as 2-point star filters (essentially what they are). the more blown out/overexposed the in-frame lightsource is, the greater the intensity of the streak... you won't be able to get the same intensity of streaking from weak sources as with phase shift though. they have lines etched into them at a fixed angle, and it's the tiny specular highlights of the light catching on the edges of the etches that create the streak.

i remember seeing one called bluevision that produced the blue-tinted streaks of some anamorphic lenses. and one from harrison i saw footage from that looked pretty nice. tiffen makes them as well. if you're in the bay area, i remember seeing streak flters on the rental list for chater camera, you should ask them if you can demo them. the folks there are great and super helpful, and they have matteboxes for rent as well.
Click to expand...

Hey Jaan, thanks again for your insight, I'll google the 2-point star filters. And see if I can jerry rig it up to my cheapo cokin filter system, then augment it digitally to achieve the phase shift look. Until I posted this question I'd never heard of phase shift so I'm really happy that I have a small inkling of why it happens and a new lead on how to mimic it. So I really do appreciate your explanation a lot.

And thanks so much for your comments on Golden too, as the story spirals into a frenetic and disturbing third act I want to compromise the image more and more for an unearthly look. Distressed, disturbed and distorted is what I'm after at the end, hence the initial post.

Fabulous!

Dean
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top