I remember when you posted the stills, and I thought that was amazing. This is FREAKIN' awsome.
I don't know if you've seen a short film called "The Taclebox". The DP was Bob Newcomb. This has a similar feel. But the key point is, he shot on 35mm film with a full crew and full LA post. This IMHO equals that work.
Man, would I love to own that soundtrack....are you kidding? It's from the soundtrack of Cold Mountain. I have such high standards for my films that nothing short of great film composers will do...that's my dilemma, always find it hard to find music from a library that comes close to the quality of film music...oh well, I'll just keep searching
mjhardin, what a huge compliment, my head is swelling to be compared with Bob Newcomb. I haven't seen the movie but would love to...not sure how I can at this stage, doesn't look like it's coming to Seattle anytime soon not to mention a DVD release. I looked at stills from the movie on the official site and that kind of imagery is right up my alley. I am honored if even one person thinks what I am doing is that good
I'm off to the park again in the morning to get some footage for the end of this film...I want to get some little critters this time, particularly rabbits, there is a prevalence of them at the park but they are elusive so I may or may not have good luck....
How exaclty did you encode that file? It is a nice small file size, but the quality is superb. Please tell me what program and whyat codec with what settings that you used please! It will make my website's videos MUCH BETTER!
Disjecta. Your stuff always looks so damn nice. Good job. Did you ever see the film "Microcosmos"? You should put all your stuff together and make a film like that.
;D Excellent. That was a great movie. Looks like you will have a great movie on your hands too soon. Loved the moon stuff. and the early morning mist. Keep up the good work!!
Wow that looks great! One question I had is about the richness of the black areas (in photography this is sometimes referred to as DMAX, not sure what the video equivalent is). As I watched your lovely work I felt a slight desire to see the dark areas look even a little darker. They looked nice and dark when you filmed the water lillies. But the silhouette shots of the trees earlier on felt like they weren't quite as black as I'd want them to be? Maybe I'm way off on that observation. But I was wondering if you could share your thoughts on how or why you achieved that level of darkness for the darkest regions. Maybe by making them slightly brighter than absolute zero you could maintain a softer appearance? I really don't know, that's why I was curious and asked. But I love the clip!!!
Mike
Good question and observation about DMAX. The reason you are seeing that is, if you look at some of the shots previous to these, you'll see there was a fairly thick fog around. That generally precludes capturing nice dark silhouettes. That bothered me too and I have since switched out some of those shots. I'm about six shots short of a final edit and am off to the park again in the morning to try to get what I'm missing.
As far as achieving that really black look in dark areas, mostly I have the pedestal set to about -5 and then I make a levels adjustment in Premiere Pro in post. Looking at the histogram shows me how much flexibility I have with the black range without losing information. My preference is to make blacks as black as possible and when the edit is finished I'll run the entire sequence through an NTSC-safe filter to ensure it is within broadcast standards.
The two flying geese shots were totally separate shots and it didn't even strike me that it could be construed as another angle of the same moment. That's why I chose a cross dissolve transition as opposed to a hard cut.
No crane was used in this sequence, just tripod and Glidecam 4000.
Thanks for the compliments...I'll post the finished version probably within the next week or so.