Here are two clips from a short that I am preparing to shoot called "The Dental Assistant." They are large AVI files that are encoded in the DIVX Format (http://www.divx.com)

These clips haven't been processed beyond being color desaturated and a few points decrease in Gamma. Both takes are with a Canon XL1[s] , 16x Manual lens, set at F1.6 and in Frame Mode.


10 MB - Pam - The Dental Assistant's Friend.
http://www.mediathreat.com/tda/Pharah.AVI


36 MB - Simone - The Dental Assistant
http://www.mediathreat.com/tda/pickup/Shamika/Shamika.AVI

What would you think when you saw these clips? Would you think instantly that it was video? mini-DV? 8mm? Film? What can i do to enhance the process in post for the footage to look more like film.

The first clip is only 416 KB large and is corrupt. I'm downloading
the larger one at this moment....

The clip looks okay, but I would have gone for a different
background....

I'd go either way on the clips but I'd buy that it was film, especially in B/W.

You may want to look at filter like a ProMist. That'll smooth it out a little bit more and make Frame mode look even better.

Also be sure and consider (specially since you have the manual lens) DOF when shooting. Zoom in a bit and set your appature as open as you can (even if you have to add an ND filter) to get a depth of field for some of your shots.


The number one "trick" of shooting video so it looks like film is shooting it like it really was film.

John,

have you thought about going with a color filter on your camera to help the tones and textures for B/W ??

I don't know why I didn't think of this before but it's a practice in B/W photography to use a color filter (like a yellow, or green or orange) on the lens to bring out B/W tones.

You might just try it.

I can't remember what the different colors do for B/W but I'm sure it's out there on the web in some site for B/W photography.

In black and white film photography, as you go darker from yellow to orange to red, it hides more blemishes, and increases contrast.

If you've ever seen those 'film noir' type black and white images, chances are they've been done with very fast film (way more than 800 speed) and with a red filter.

Basically, these filters do for black and white what polarizing filters do for color. For example, bringing out definition in clouds vs. sky.

First of guys, you have to view video on a TV or broadcast monitor to judge if something looks like film. Computer screens does not show things in 50 or 60Hz interlaced. And usually the gamma is all wrong on CRT's or LCD's. So if the clip is interlaced or progressive there is no way to tell on a computer screen. If you post clips I would suggest posting a DV stream. That is the simplest way to do it. Most of us can output a DV clip to a TV (I guess). A DivX or MP4 stream is all I-frames.

Now over to the clip posted by John: The optics sells this as video right away. It's got to deep focus compared to if you would put a comparable lens on 35mm. And the black and white doesn't look like black and white emulsion. To fool the eye you should give the footage an s-curve range in contrast in stead of the z-curve that is typical for video. You lit this in a very soft manner. Heres an example of a frame I lit using only one KinoFlo fourbank. I did a lot of post work on this to make it less z-curve like.

http://www.dvdforum.nu/images/galleri/009972ALTOQ1CRS67M14J7RRDPFMMS.jpg

Martin looks fantastic... tell us more about what you did!

Like the process, what programs.. how it was achieved.

Zac

We had a pressrelease out the other day. Here's part of it.

http://www.uemedia.com/CPC/article_9492.shtml

We used a PD150, an Optex 16x9 attachment and a very basic lighting kit. This was shot in PAL. The post was done in FCP and AE using the Magic Bullet Suite. Theres so much I could tell you but there is really only one valid piece of knowledge I've discovered: Don't shoot it the way most books and articles tell you. Tey're mostly all wrong. Don't add grain. Don't light it evenly. Don't watch out for overexposed windows (unless the story dictates seeing everything). Don't underexpose abit. Don't shoot for motion blur. etc...

Which magic bullet settings did you use?

Zac

In this case it's a variation on Berlin but it's first color corrcted in AE and I'm always using several layers of grading with different types of opacity. The modified Berlin is in an adjustment layer above all the others. You have to be pretty advanced in AE to work this way. There's no "push one button" operation here.

And don't forget. The secret is all in the shooting really...

Martin, lucky i used it for like 10 hours each..

But i tell you it is still a lot of trial and error, having a video monitor there is the only way to do it.

Zac

BTW I like your website Zac.

Thankx, i just wish i had some, if any time to finish it... look for it to take to the waves in the next couple weeks when i finally finish my uni semester!!! YAY

Take my world for it, if you do a masters group project, and get stuck with 2 non english speakers, in an english speaking school, run for your life... i just completed 90% of the project and am now stuck also writing the documentation... ahh the joys of someone working you through uni.. i can only wish. Next semester i will be the spanish exchange student i think, then i can be lazy.


Zac

I've played with magic bullet a bit, although it's quite powerful and nice, I think a lot of the magic actually can be captured if your footage is shot really well.

I almost always shoot with a NTSC monitor on the set. Magic Bullet often makes the footage look like a well lit scene with a black pro mist filter on it.

It's still a great suite of plugs however and the deinterlacer is nice, but the magic bullet is in your footage.

Martin...

Impressive work!

Dean Sensui
Base Two Productions

John. The black and white promist settings in MB is optional. I use it because my story dictates a dark, dreamlike quality. In other things I work with there is no diffusion at all. I suspect alot of people use diffusion because they think it looks cool - and then it most of the time looks bad. I would say MB does very little to your footage if you want it to. But enough to make it more organic. The strength of it is that you can make light react in a more organic way than the camcorder actually captured the source. This is the greatest limitations in camcorders versus shooting on film. And just to add some facts: most of the diffusion in my stills is not produced using MB (I only use very little black to bring down some of the noise generated by the PD150) but using After Effects standard plugins.

The worst way of using MB is by only using presets. To use it well you have to be skilled in AE.

IMHO: A cinematographer today has to know everything about digital grading. The grading process is much more attached to the creative work of the DP now then it was in the days of film to film.

And a small but funny note: The typical black promist preset in ver. 1.1 of MB has the description; "Why?". I think that says something about what The Orphanage thinks of the way most people use MB ;)

..."The worst way of using MB is by only using presets. To use it well you have to be skilled in AE."...

Hello Martin.....I'm sure that you are 100% right. Could be very interesting for us (the newies) if you can show to us a practical example - some like a tut- about how are you using MB for a determinate "film look" effect...

cheers

FP

I would think anyone who has spent the 3k on getting magic bullet and AE would pretty much want to know how to use it properly anyways...

Zac

Actuallly i meant, that a lot of the settings make it look like a pro black mist filter was placed on it, not the actual preset setting.

I love filters, but the pro black mist is not a favorite.

I like ND's polarizers, gold and silver, bursts, Graduated ND's are my favorite although a bit overused for a second, will be back with a fresh look.

Actually the title of this thread is prep for film look, which meant that those clips are test of a style of shooting that will be preped to be run thru Magic Bullet.

I think you have a point about using smoke to add the sense of a shallow depth of field to large areas, especially if they aren't that bright, but if there is enough room to move the camera far enough , you can get a nice shallow depth of field with just the default lens.

This has been debated countless times, but I think because so much film material is ends up on televisions, and watched on NTSC screens, that 24 fps isn't the killer. It's shallow depth of field, lighting and maybe gamma. Only people in the field will be able to tell the difference on some footage even before it goes to Magic Bullet.

Federico: Perhaps I'll make a tutorail in the future. Right now I'm drowning in work. If everything was realtime I wouldn't have time to debate in forums. My posting occur when I'm looking at some sort of progress bar in the background ;)

Zac: I usually spend the budget of MB and AE on a single music video shooting s-16 and developing and doing telecine. So I payaed for the tools years ago. I used to spend fortunes on renting Avid systems. Nowadays I spend it on FCP upgrades only.

John: I think your footage has all the potential in the world. And I think 30p looks more like film projected in a theatre than 24p. Projected film has every frame projected twice (almost) using a shutter on the projector. This is to remove some of the flickering that progressive footage has. I agree that black pro mist is over used. But it works on evening out low light noise if you set it to 1.

Well you must do a lot of waiting if you are rendering with Magic Bullet. That's when my posting goes on an upswing, during editing periods such as these.

How are you moving your footage over to AE/MB for processings? Quick Time Referrence? automatic duck? Are you breaking it up into 10 Minute segements to processes?

By my reckoning 10 Minutes comes it at about 30 hours of rendering average time with Magic Bullet which should be just shy of the 2GB filesize limit.