Hello everybody,

we've just finished a no budget music video for a belgian rock band called norma.

Here's the link to the video:

http://www.theblacksheep.be/temp/norma.mov


It was shot with a PAL FX1 in HDV and two PAL Z1. We shot with a shutter of 1/25 (making the picture actually progressive) in low light. We had a tripod and a small Cobra Crane. We did capture with ConnectHD, edited in HDV in Premiere Pro 1.5.1, sfx and color grading in After Effects 6.5. The fake motion control effect/360 shots were done with just a tripod and AfterFX.

We hope you'll like it :-)

Nice work!

The lighting look wonderful, very clean pictures.

Hi,

Nice job, On the shots with the panning motion, which look like they are continuous, i assume you did a pan on the tripod, and then in After effects you "stitched' together two separate pans to make them look continuos??
Did you have any of the "Cinema" features turned on in the camera to help achieve the Film look ??

Thanks,
Mike moncrief

Oliver
Excellent! Great editing work, beautiful footage. Please elaborate on the usage of 1/25 shutter speed. Exactly how does this produce a "progressive" image?
Thanks
Bob

Nice work Oliver. :-)

I take it you guys didnt use motion control, just wondering how you synced it all up?


Cheers,
Ben Gurvich

Oliver, really nice editing.

"The fake motion control effect/360 shots were done with just a tripod and AfterFX."

I sort of understand how it was done in FX. But how did you get it to be seamless? That's what it looks to me.

Thanks,
Ray

Olivier Vanaschen,

Fantastic job! Excellent execution in shots and blending of your material. Absolutely professional work.


Michael Pappas

Nice video!

Really nice! The video is excellent and I really like the song.

thanks a lot everybody for the comments ! Sorry for the late answer, we had a lot of work to finish...

It was a 360 stage. Actually, we did shoot 9 static shots (that did overlap each other a bit) and stiched them together in After Effects to create a huge huge picture (something like 12000px x 1080px) and then did the panning in post. It's exactly the same process as making a panoramic picture in still photography but in video. We asked the band to play the whole song, each member seperately so we could move when we wanted. To make more than one turn, we did stich the 12000px image three times, making a huge 40mpx + composition in AE, pretty heavy rendering :-)

Here's a picture of the panoramic video: http://www.theblacksheep.be/temp/norma01.jpg

Actually, we did like the look of the 1/25 shutter. We still don't understand how or why it's even progressive (we just looked at the picture in AE and it surely is). This kind of semi-slow shutter helps making the movements smoother,... We won't use everytime but here it did work well. Actually, it shows really when you watch it on TV.

Thanks again,

the black sheep

We still don't understand how or why it's even progressive

I belive it's progressive because coming off a 50 Hz interlaced chip, it's impossible to have a 1/25th shutter without simply ignoring one field. Hence, at 1/25, you're essentially using the Cineframe25 mode.

-Steve

Olivier, I remember watching your video, and it was great. Try www.HDVawards.org

Olivier,

I am very much interested in this 25 shutter. But I have serious problems when panning, tilting, in general when moving the camera. It is like the picture is blurry or the camera has problems to maintain autofocus. If I can avoid these problems I want to use this shutter speed.

Did you notice such problems when shooting???

This shutter speed is easy to prepare lighting.

If I can avoid these problems I want to use this shutter speed.

Typically movies are shot with the shutter at 1/2 the framerate. I.e., 24 fps -> 1/48 s shutter. 30 fps -> 1/60 s shutter. 25 fps -> 1/50 s shutter etc.

Having a long shutter will result in extreme motion blur of anything that moves... so any camera motion, shake, zoom will result in your entire image becoming blurry. Since there's very little high-spatial-frequency information in the image, it will be quite difficult for any auto-focus algorithm to pick out a real object to focus on.

Therefore, if you really want to shoot with a 1/25 shutter, you should be very careful with camera motion and use manual focus.

-Steve

Very much thanks, that was the information I was looking for, now my mind is quite clear.

And I now completely believe, shooting 25 shutter with this camera will result in progressive image, but, there is a big but, that does not mean necessarily getting good results, because the point is to get a progressive picture when the shutter is double the frame rate. (most of the times)

So, this is the drawback about this shutter speed.(25) Otherwise we could name this camera as progressive at this shutter speed. But, now, I understand, it is not usable most of the times. The picture is stuttering.

Well, no chance but continue with 50 shutter. Thanks again for the explanation.

I belive it's progressive because coming off a 50 Hz interlaced chip, it's impossible to have a 1/25th shutter without simply ignoring one field. Hence, at 1/25, you're essentially using the Cineframe25 mode.

-Steve

Steven, do you think shutter speed of 25 results in the same resolution loss as Cineframe25 as well?