DV Info Net - Evening night shot effect with the DVX

Ozan biron was pretty close. All you need is a good 35MM slr, good tripod, chalk and a measuring tape. I went down to a street corner at about 7:30pm and took my measuring tape and measured about 15ft across this corner. I then made marks with the chalk starting every 1/4 inch, then 1/2 inch and finally going up to about 2 inches. These marks were basically tripod placements. I wanted it to ease in and out hence starting with teh quarter inch. I had two identical lines for two of the tripod legs, this let me keep the camera pointed in a single direction. I used 100ASA Kodak gold with a 35 sec exposure on each frame. This was kind of a test so next time I want to use a dolly to get a much smoother motion. I'm a digital artist at a local photography store, so I got my film developed for free. I think I used 5 rolls alltogether. I then scanned each frame and imported them into after effects 6. I used the steady move plugin (without zoom) to smooth out the motion. I made each frame about 15% larger than the 720x480 so that the steady move plugin would not lose any resolution when evening out my footage. So that's my secret, I hope this helps. By the way it is a slow and tedious process, so make sure you have lots of time on your hands. It took about 2 1/2 hours to film and about another 1 1/2 for the after effects work, all for a 5 second shot.