i thought it was pretty cool. makes me want a dvx 100a even more now.

Vegas is pretty good to do these kind of conversions, and I agree, uprezzing
can look pretty good most of the time. SD has a lot more resolution than a
lot of people credit it for, especially with a good camera.

Prospect Movie XL2
 

Just want to thank all the people at the dv info boards for their help during the making of my first film. The preview is up at my website www.prospectmovie.com if anyone wants to check it out. It features a bunch of major league baseball players and coaches and was completly shot with the XL2. It's starting to pick up steam in the baseball community and looks to be a succesful project.

I used these boards for guidance on issues ranging from what camera to purchase to multiple editing questions. It's been fantastic.

Rick
www.prospectmovie.com

I forgot to add that I got my camera from brian at Zotz digital...who I found on these boards. From my experiences working with zotz, I wouldn't go anywhere else.

Rick

likey
 

I like it.. insightful, compelling... and the little subtle transistions are good, with good text animations.. short and to the point... may i suggest crushing the blacks a little bit, to give some enigmatic stimulation to the subconscience brain?

I would watch this movie..

cassidy

www.motivitypictures.com

"After Twilight" to screen in LA.
 

Our short "After Twilight" was selected by the Texas Film Commision to be part of the Texas Filmmakers Showcase. It will screen as an evening of Texas Films at Raleigh Studios, The Chaplin Theatre on June 12th. It's pretty much an invitation only event, The Film Commision uses it as a showcase to industry professionals to illustrate the caliber of crews and locations available in Texas. We're the only Houston based film showing.

"After Twilight" took a Gold award at Worldfest Houston International Film Festival last month, and continues to make the festival rounds. We just finished up a feature length version of the script, and we're shopping it to a couple of distributors now.

www.nu-classicfilms.com has info and a trailer.

I'll be in LA that weekend to smooze and see it projected in a nice theatre.

Hunter S. Thompson is on a field trip to Heaven and is bringing Tricky Dick down to the depths of hell.

Thanks for the comments, Mathieu.

I don't have that many production 'behind the scenes' photos or footage, but I'll try to gather something and add it to the site. Good idea.

The reason for no sound in the trailer is that I still have quite a few things to do, so I haven't had the time to refine it.

The whole short was done with a GL2. When the trailer is playing, you can actually see a small GL2 icon at the top-right corner of the web browser.

Anyone else with more positive/negative comments welcome!

5 minute edit of various XL2/mini35 footage
 

I've uploaded a new cut used on my demo DVD which has version of various footage shot indoor and outdoor from a project I worked on towards the end of last year.

Shot with mixed nikon and Arri lenses, 1k's mostly used and ND for outdoors.

www.starcentral.ca/images/bb/bb.htm

Feedback welcome..

Was that shot on DV or 16mm?

2- Hey, I happen to know Igor (credited as cinematographer on your webpage) and did some color grading for his demo reel.

I saw some of that footage earlier (different shots some of them) on his reel and I though it was 16mm.

Hey Glenn,

It was shot on DV using my XL2 and mini35 adapter... thus the depth of field we were able to achieve on this project.

Glad to hear you know Igor and that you thought it was shot in film. The footage did need quite a bit of color correction and grading, what tools do you prefer using for that? I've found Color Finese to be pretty good for After Effects.

Igor and I might be working together on something new shortly.. hope to have more footage to post soon.

I prefer using Vegas 6. Why I like it:
-Very powerful (as in lots of tools), although it doesn't do everything.
-Controls are responsive. Double click a slider, it resets. Move a slider, things update on the fly (as opposed to Final Cut, where this doesn't happen).
-OK still/reference store.
-Firewire preview, has big vectorscopes + histogram.
-Reasonably fast. Very fast compared to Magic Bullet Editors. Some operations like bezier masking and blurs and chroma blur are slow, which affects responsiveness too.
-I'm very comfortable with the interface and it doesn't take that much button pushing to do things.
-Filter heirarchy (can apply filter at various levels), and takes system.

What I don't like:
-Speed (Ideally there's be a system out there that's faster. I don't think there's anything significantly faster.)
-No luminance curves like Combustion does.
-No motion tracking which you can tie into masks. (Never figured this out in After Effects. Yet?)
-No 32-bit float rendering. You just have to be careful as to filter order.
-No good built-in noise reduction tools, although you can use Mike Crash's filters. DNR and Smart Smoother
-Conforming tools- never tried AAF import, although apparently there are bugs?
-Learning curve / things that aren't obvious (i.e. 7.5IRE setup in the scopes, how not to make illegal colors [especially on dissolve to black], which filters are stupid, etc.)
-No luminance composite mode.
-Reference store could store more stuff.
-There needs to be shortcuts for specific commands to speed up workflow.
-No color matching tools, although I wouldn't know what to use em for.

I tried Color Finesse + After Effects. I didn't get into it, but I am more comfortable with Vegas so I like that better. What I didn't like about Color Finesse / AE:
-You have to wait for the interface to load up. On my system, it's buggy.
-Things aren't big... i.e. the curves window, and the histogram. It hard to see things precisely.
-I don't get the secondary color corrector. It seems to be limited compared to Vegas'
-Lacking some tools in Vegas: Noise reduction, gradient map to add duo/tritone (although secondaries can do this??; I don't get them, so I don't know how I'd use em)

2- I'm not really sure what film looks like. Probably why I was under the impression it was film:
-Igor was talking about how some of the stuff on his reel was shot on film.
-It didn't look like video.

I think it could look better (i.e. camera likely could've been steadier if you had a steadicam), but you don't have a Hollywood budget.

First "Star Wars" Fan Film I've really enjoyed.
 

http://www.theforce.net/fanfilms/sho...onceuponajedi/
I have my own opinons on it. I think it's a really solid little short. It kept me entertained.
What do you think of it?

Shot on Sony's Cinealta HD900.

Rick, I'm in the middle coaching a team now, and have been coaching at the junior-senior level for several years now, so this struck more of a baseball reaction, instead of an analytical reaction from me.

Your preview looked great, and I've passed your link on to other coaches in our league...Although your video focuses on what it takes to get to the next, ultimate level in baseball, it would not surprise me if its lessons would apply to all other levels of life, whether in basketball, tennis, golf, or the business world.
We've found in business(I run a large division of a very large company) that those who have succeeded in getting to the "next level" in sports, especially team sports, usually are very successful later on in life. It's just that most kids and young adults who have the talent, don't know what it takes to get there.

Best of luck.

No Need for Alarm - finalist for the UCLA Shorttakes Film Festival
 

Hey guys,

It's been a while since I've posted anything on here, but I wanted some constructive feedback from you guys so I decided to put my latest short online.

www.noneedforalarm.cjb.net

My friend and I rushed to make this film in 6 days and barely made the deadline for the UCLA Shorttakes Film Festival (we're freshman at UCLA) so the quality is not the greatest and I know it doesn't match up to the other work found on this board, but I'm just looking for some feedback so I can get better and learn from my mistakes. Thanks so much for all your help, I really appreciate it!

- Chris Yi

XL2 footage - broadband streaming
 

Hi, just if somebody want to see 2min. test footage XL2, converted to .flv
1000Kbps, 25fps

(Note: if your connection speed is slover, press pause button and wait responding time to buffer the video...)



http://www.demagotheatre.org/eyetea/

I'm not sure what others might think of this, but I found it interesting. Great job Chris! The concept of this short was easy to follow and the story captured my attention. The quality of the video was good too (same goes for the editing), what camcorder did you use and what software did you use to edit(adobe,vegas,magic bullet,etc.)?

Very nice! What camera? What did you use to light the night dorm room scenes?

Bad Cat 3
 

The much anticipated final chapter in the "Bad Cat" series is now available for download at http://loudorangecat.com

"The meow stops here."

4 minutes, 13 seconds.

It streamed fine for me, but I also tend to make my "personal" streaming video for high bandwidth users only. Business applications are another story.

Maybe one or two very slight pauses viewing your test at that rate, on our end anyway.

As a side note... I love the look of just about anything from the XL2, it's my #1 favorite SD/DV camera.

hey guys, thanks for the compliments! I used a Canon GL2 and shot all in frame mode. The only software I used was Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5 and we lit the dorm room scenes with 2 small lamps, lol. the production was FAR from professional, and you guys probably would've laughed if you saw us, running around with desk lamps trying to make a movie, haha. thanks for checking it out and leaving comments!

Cool! That's just the right spirit :) . I thought, that the guy running around and finally getting into the classroom was a little "too" overdone and messed up, the homeless "copy" of him was genius!

Regards, Matthias

WOW! I had 1 glitch only when checking the video and that was a glitch of
0.4 seconds. It loaded pretty fast, amazing really what broadband can do with video. Super!

I loved some scenes you implemented in your xl2 footage. I like scene with the water pourring straight into the bowl and heat comng out of it. The lighting was just perfect and so warm. I would however change the background when the green plant comes into a solo-action (I would do something with the white backrgound).

Xl2 is just amazing now I have looked at your video. Thanks man. xl2....I need to have it.

Great initial text animation with the numbers rolling and everything. I would only change some text scenes with the background white inoto some other colours, cause the white seems little bit greyish/video to me. I would also add a little bit of post productiont o warmen up the colours, cause the colours of some scenes are a little bit pale/grey. You only need to warm them up and the video will be fin. Thanks for the footage. Always nice to see what xl2's can do.

Thanks for the footage. The quality of your work resembles most other xl footage out there which used a mini 35. I can tell the mini35 is used. The quality is amazing, no doubt, but sometimes I can tell it is fake or something is going on.


Things I like:

- scene with windmill and guy looking up. NIce cinematography there.
- warm colours/ DOF makes the difference
- end scene was nice to watch. A little bit overlighted but amazing pan view.

Things I don't like:
- scenes when the guy walks behind the colourfull houses...lacks action there. A bit stiff acting
- stiff acting (you can feel what is going to happen). HEad over shouder scenes are a bit too obvious. I would use the DOF to include the shoulder so that it blures away or shorten the distance ratio. MAybe that is because one cam was used on the conversation scene. I don't know.

good luck with your work

Fire Department Video
 

Opening couple minutes of a video I made for my Fire Department, Maple Ridge, BC. It's for the new recruit class.

http://www.mckeedigital.com/MRFD2005.wmv

Chris

Nice. Was the bumper cam real time or time re-mapping in AFX?
Your poor lens! I hope those were water droplets I noticed ...
Great intro!
How's the civic square project going? Your ex ceo spent a few whirlwind days as our ceo, was quickly fired and now he's in Kazakastan ...

Thanks!
All edited in Premiere Pro... I believe the bumper clip was at about 450% speed. Don't feel too bad for the lens... it's a $40 Wide angle converter on the front of a cheap 1CCD Sharp miniDV that I [ab]use in those situations. Most of the rest is XL1s.

Yes, Mr. Robertson's name is mud around here. Civic square is finished, but we'll be paying for it for years...
Chris

Hey Chris...

You got some good shots from the bumper cam to the guys donning gear in the Engine to the cutout still shots of each of the crew (or were they the instructors for the Recruit class?).

Even though it was upbeat I had a difficult time with the music selection.
I couldn't quite put my auditory finger on it, there was just something about that specific song that seemed to detract from a pretty cool Fire Dept. video.

So far have only sat in on editing sessions but I can sure appreciate that simply making a simple decision on what music to use just ain't so simple.

Thanks for posting.

visual effect test for upcoming short
 

Okay guys. I'm going to be producing a short pretty soon and a friend and I created this as concept art for the short. Basically to make sure we could do it. It took about 5 seconds to film and 5 hours to complete.

www.rch-e.com/temp/steven-boom.mov

Specs:
PV-DV953 16:9 anamorphic, frame mode (specialized AE conversion to 24p)
After Effects to composite
3DS Max for 3d animation
Stock footage for flames
Particular for flares

Lemme know what you think and what could be improved. Thanks!

Great job! Wow. I wasn't buying the signal flares terribly but the jet was jiving for me. Awesome.

You need a real yellowish-orange blast, then fade to black instead of white!

Agreed! Also, the green smoke doesn't look real. looks very CG. It stands out in the shot, using Shake might help the compositing of the effect. That is usually the tell tale sign of home-made VFX, poor compositing.

Nice job over all. Better than most I've seen. Good Luck and keep truckin'
; )

Alex
http://www.whatisbroken.com

The blast part needs to be faster. I like the effect though and I don't mind the colour.

Thanks for all the suggestions guys!!! I did a little tweaking and re-rendered.

www.rch-e.com/temp/steven-boom.mov

HDV for the masses - FREE HDV Timelapse clip!!!
 

Hey everyone,

For the last week and a half, I've been shooting with the Sony Z1U (HDV) camera for a review I am working on. Unfortunately, the weather has not been that cooperative - cloudy, windy, rainy - not the best for trying to get HD beauty shots.

The good news is the camera produces a very nice image (review coming soon), and I was able to capture another timelapse image that you can use for free in any project you see fit.

I have placed two versions of the 30 second clip on my site. The first is using the HDV 1080i60 codec, download it and drop it into your project. The bad news is it was encoded using QuickTime 7, so this means PC users won't be able to use the clip until Apple releases QT7 on the PC. Hopefully you won't have to wait to long (Monday maybe?).

The second clip is down converted for NTSC DV use. It has been saved as an anamorphic clip to preserve the 16:9 ratio. You will need to make adjustments in your NLE system to use it. This clip will work on both the PC and Mac (I tested it).

Don't forget there is also a timelapse sunset clip available as well (30 seconds, DV NTSC).

If you decide to use any of the clips (remember it is free for commercial and noncommercial use), please drop me a line and let me know what you used it for. I know of at least one person who used the sunset clip in a commercial spot.

If you are wanting to learn how to use HDV footage in a SD Final Cut Pro 5 Timeline, be sure to check out the just posted Final Cut Pro Quick Tip #49. Next week I'll have the milestone Final Cut Pro #50 posted, which shows how you can do co-located editing ala the Apple demonstration at NAB.

Hope everyone has an enjoyable weekend! I'd be out shooting more with the camera, but it is raining again... I think there is a song in there somewhere...

Cheers
Stephen Schleicher
www.stephenschleicher.com

Teton Ski Descent Video
 

Here is a 8 minute/31mb video that I put together after climbing/descending the Skillet Glacier on Mt. Moran in the Tetons.

http://fritzrips.com/Morannet.wmv

This type of filming is why I am thinking a light Panasonic AG-DVC30 would fit the bill for a functional camera to haul around in the mountains.

My Graduation Project (Fur-ag)
 

I really enjoyed all the information I got from the site and the community, so I decided to let you guys help me make my work better. Please tell me what you like, and what you think needs work. Either will be equally appriciated.

The link:
http://homepage.mac.com/jim.sowden/furag.avi

Note: You need a DiVX player to watch this, like mplayer for the Mac, or VLC for anything else.

Strange Adventurers: Where Walks the Waitress
 

http://www.globo-chem.net/~jay/SAFinalWeb.mov (Sorenson 3, 25Mb)

A four minute superhero-based entry for Wizard Magazine's 2005 Direct-to-Video contest.

Shot with A GL-2, assembled on a Mac.

Any comments appreciated!


-j

somewhat funny and entertaining for sure. the characters themselves are funny and thats what appealed to me the most i guess.

good job production wise.