My film log: how I have filmed my project. Opinions?

Post by **steve hyde** » Sun Oct 09, 2005 8:27 pm

right -the scratch will still be there, but I think it will look darker after the wetgate instead of white. It will be far less distracting then. You should also ask Mattias about his scratch remover software.

Steve

Post by **npcoombs** » Sun Oct 09, 2005 8:32 pm

steve hyde wrote:right -the scratch will still be there, but I think it will look darker after the wetgate instead of white. It will be far less distracting then. You should also ask Mattias about his scratch remover software.

Steve

oh thats encouraging. I already got Mattias's software - very effective for hairline scratches not so for the 'marker-pen' effect. Maybe he could help in some wya though by suggesting a re-code of some sort.

Post by **steve hyde** » Mon Oct 10, 2005 8:47 pm

....What frame rates did you use for your slow motion and time lapse photography?

Steve

Post by **steve hyde** » Mon Oct 10, 2005 8:51 pm

...also, how did you create the quicktime viewer page for your clip? I'd like to create some links to some of my clips this way. I need to learn more about streaming visual media over the web...

Steve

Post by **Evan Kubota** » Mon Oct 10, 2005 11:19 pm

You could just copy a vertical strip of the clip to a higher layer and move it slightly to the side - add a little blur and mask feathering and it will not be noticeable at all, especially if it doesn't fall over the edges of objects.

Post by **npcoombs** » Tue Oct 11, 2005 3:02 pm

Evan - Do you know how I could try this on FCP?

UPDATE: I received my roll of PLus-X 50ASA pushed up to 200ASA today. Tad grainy (10 year old stock as well) but perfectly acceptable - it will look fine on a PAL tv I think. At 80fps the plates smashing look good.

On the downside I am beginning to worry that my 3 rolls of Vision 500T (developed by Andec last Wednesday) have become lost in the post, which would be yet another disaster to add to my first super-8 filmmaking experience.

Post by **Evan Kubota** » Tue Oct 11, 2005 3:18 pm

I'd probably do it in AE - FCP isn't meant for compositing. I can try it with some of the sample stuff posted on your site.

Post by **mattias** » Tue Oct 11, 2005 6:57 pm

that's more or less what my plugin is doing, although it's a bit smarter. what can sometimes work is to use the dual layer technique, crop the top from the left just to the right of the scratch and move it left a few pixels to cover (it's all in the motion tab of fcp). this method will completely remove the scratch, unlike the vertical strip trick which will just cover it, but it causes stairstepping of anything that moves across it. it all depends on what's happening "behind" the scratch.

/matt

Post by **mattias** » Tue Oct 11, 2005 7:00 pm

Evan Kubota wrote:FCP isn't meant for compositing.

sure is. it's meant as a one stop solution to most of a modern editor's needs. it has its limits, sure, but within those i see no reason not to use it. the basic compositing tools are quite advanced yet easy to use.

/matt

Post by **Evan Kubota** » Tue Oct 11, 2005 10:54 pm

I had considered cropping the top layer, also. I agree that the better method depends on the situation. I wonder if setting a mathematical color average (blending the two sides of the scratch) would work well, possibly combined with an overlay of a duplicated strip to preserve some detail.

FWIW, I never use FCP for compositing, but that's mainly because I learned AE first. I have noticed that the chroma keyer in FCP is more usable at least sticking close to the default settings - I've seen some fairly clean keys (for miniDV) pulled from less-than-ideal source footage.

Post by **npcoombs** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 9:44 am

Steve - I shoot all my slow motion at 80fps. To create a web-page to view a clip you just embed the movie like an image. Just copy the code from any of my web-pages to make it easy.

UPDATE: trailer is now updated with falling plates.... this will be my last update now (I have to save some surprises for the final cut!)

http://democratfilm.angeltowns.net/savpreview.html

Post by **Alex_W** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 10:43 am

Nice, the plates came out pretty good i think, they add to the eery atmosphere. The birdseye view of the people walking in the street remind me of Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad, where the people have long shadows, but the bushes and trees don't. It also has an Eisenstein quality to it, with the dynamic frames and the shot of a person walking down the stairs. The music also sounds alright.
What kind of voice-over will you give it? Will it be descriptive or poetic or something else?

Post by **npcoombs** » Thu Oct 13, 2005 12:43 pm

Alex_W wrote:Nice, the plates came out pretty good i think, they add to the eery atmosphere. The birdseye view of the people walking in the street remind me of Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad, where the people have long shadows, but the bushes and trees don't. It also has an Eisenstein quality to it, with the dynamic frames and the shot of a person walking down the stairs. The music also sounds alright.
What kind of voice-over will you give it? Will it be descriptive or poetic or something else?

cheers, the voiceover will be descriptive and probing. The overall tone I am aiming for is probably less poetic than the trailer; more conflictual than harmonic.

Post by **npcoombs** » Thu Oct 13, 2005 12:45 pm

mattias wrote: the dual layer technique, crop the top from the left just to the right of the scratch and move it left a few pixels to cover (it's all in the motion tab of fcp). this method will completely remove the scratch, unlike the vertical strip trick which will just cover it, but it causes stairstepping of anything that moves across it. it all depends on what's happening "behind" the scratch.

I might try this. I think it would work for the static, tripod mounted shots.

Post by **npcoombs** » Thu Oct 13, 2005 12:56 pm

UPDATE: received my Vision 500T bonfire shots.

grainy and soft.

I attribute this firstly to the stock, since its high speed seems to really drop the resolution.

Secondly is the absense of additional lighting which i could have used to fill shots with more detail, close the aperture down from f1.4 and increase DOF. Another reason is probably because I was operating in pitch dark and not setting focus correctly. I was also filming at distances closer than 1.5m meaning many shots were taken using the tricky macro mode on the lens.

Still, some usable material. Shots in focus with sufficient lighting probably have something like 50-60% of the resolution of my Plus-X material. Here's what I want them to look like: