No one said it has anything to do with Dogme 95. It is "similar" to it in that a set of rules was laid down, in this case for web cinema. I think it was done tongue-in-cheek.

I agree with you when you say more emphasis should be placed on story/character, rather than the gadgets used to tell the story. However, this debate (complaint?) has been ongoing for nearly 30 years! Alas, we live in a time when gadgets rule.

Yes, story (character) is the strongest card any filmmaker can play. And when it is played, and played well, that film will rise to the top. Having said that, it may not rise to the top immediately. It may take years, or even a generation or two, but it will rise.

Fads come and go. Art endures time.

Im assuming nobody knows what im talking about, eh?

Please make sure you're posting to the proper forum. This question belongs in the XL1 Lens & optics area.

See my "Guide to XL1 Lens Options" at the XL1 Watchdog, www.dvinfo.net/xl1.htm

DV Documentaries
 

Here's a good source for information for those of you who are interested in documentaries. They refer to it as a "cookbook," we're using it as our "bible."

http://journalism.berkeley.edu/program/courses/dv/cookbook.html

Jay,

Great find! It is rather timely as we are working on the development of our next project/documentary.

Thanks!

Paul,

Glad to hear it was of some value to you. We too are gearing up for a new project. It's proven to be a valuable tool. As they discuss in the body of the material, story is everything, and ours seems to be a perfect fit.

Best of luck to you on your upcoming documentary, too!

Holy Cow, My film was selected by Ifilm...go See it!
 

My film, RuN, was selected as a "Ifilm Pick" by www.Ifilm.com so Support a Fellow Xl1s owner and go see it and give it an awesome rating! Thanks!
here's the URL:
http://www.ifilm.com/ifilm/product/film_info/0,3699,2439660,00.html

P.S. It wasn't shot on a xl1s but go see it anyway:)

Re: Holy Cow, My film was selected by Ifilm...go See it!
 

<<<-- Originally posted by Adam Craig : My film, RuN, was selected as a "Ifilm Pick" by www.Ifilm.com so Support a Fellow Xl1s owner and go see it and give it an awesome rating! Thanks!
here's the URL:
http://www.ifilm.com/ifilm/product/film_info/0,3699,2439660,00.html

P.S. It wasn't shot on a xl1s but go see it anyway:) -->>>

Adam,

Congrats! So what camera did you shoot with?

Thanks!
 

This film was done with a Panasonic PVDV 910 (Just a basic 1-chip consumer camera). This was done before I bought the XL1s, but it would have been sweet to use this though. The only concern would be running full speed... it could turn out like that trailer from that Eddie Murphy movie, Showtime. Crash!

Adam

Looks very nice Adam! Good work. Anymore you can tell us about
how you made it? Looks liked you used a steadicam or something
at least? Nice editting job too!

That was pretty f'n good. II liked nearly everything about it. You know how to put your shots together and it had plenty of style. Loved that stunt when the guy ran over the car. Impressed by your steadi-work (however you did it).

The only things that were detractors was the voice of the heavy, the daytime fight in the parking lot that just seemed to end abruptly for no reason, and the 'ending'. I think you could even have gotten away with leaving it open ended.

Very nice, good sir. I think I got confused, but it was probably my fault. I had the extreme pleasure of watching it over a 56k modem. I feel sorry for that poor bastard at the end.

Re: Thanks!
 

<<<-- Originally posted by Adam Craig : This film was done with a Panasonic PVDV 910 (Just a basic 1-chip consumer camera). This was done before I bought the XL1s, but it would have been sweet to use this though. The only concern would be running full speed... it could turn out like that trailer from that Eddie Murphy movie, Showtime. Crash!

Adam -->>>

As both Rob and Keith mentioned, I would like to hear more about the making of your short movie.

Also, what software did you use to edit the movie in?

How i did it...
 

OK, This was originally a group project for a Webster Universuty Video I class. The class only gave up access to Old SVHS cameras but we wanted more possibilities. So we decided on Who was acting, directing, etc... and decided to use my Panasonic MiniDV camera.

After storyboarding A basic skeleton of the Film (in an hour) we decided to meet one saterday and shoot the whole thing. Most of the shots just started as an idea like "wouldn't it be cool if..."

The Camera stabelizer i used was similar to one shown in these photos: http://www.steadytracker.com/steady5.html. I had a knock off that I paid far too much for.

After having about 45 min of footage, and pretty good coverage, I decided to edit the film in Adobe Premiere 6.0 and do the sound editing in Sound Forge 4. The visual effects were done in AfterEffects 5.0

Those Freeze frames in the beginning (influenced by Guy Richie's Snatch) were done in photoshop 6. I first thought i should just freeze frame in premeire and just add titles but the interlacing of the video created this weird strobing effect. So I exported the frame I wanted frozen into a Targa frame and simply took that one frame and filled in the background with what ever color i thought looked the best and simply repeated that frame for as long as was confortable.

The Gunshot was done in the same manner, only i took the frame before he jerks his hand back and airbrushed a white and yellow triangle (looks like actual gunshot).

The introduction was done using basic keyframes and a large digital image to pan across.

The black and white portion was shot with a SVHS camera mounted on a tripod resting on the upper level of the garadge. I (the black guy) just threw my head back as though i got shot and added the flame from the gun the same was as memtioned above. The blood crawling down the sidewalk is rootbeer somone happen to have on the set. We poured next to my head just after i acted shot. To do this, we had everyone in frame hold still will the rootbeer got poured and then contunied the scene from there, editing around the grip that ran in frame.

All the actual running, car chasing etc.. was sped up about 50%
(150% of actual speed) to give it more energy while being safe on location.

And everything else was just carful, time consuming editing.

We didn't use any external mics other than a lav for the voice overs. And one section of dialog was re recorded in post due to not having any audio equipment.

Well, that's all i can think of. Just basic equipment and some creative kids...

Did that answer your questions?

Oh, The NLE I had was a Dual P3 866 mhz with a Pyro firewire card, 256 o'ram, Gainward Geforce 3 Card. And that's about it, i think.

Please Don't forget to Go to the Ifilm site and Give it a rating so, i can get more of an audience, and tell friends... Hopefully, this will open some doors.

The sped up bits were nice.

In my opinion digital has a long way to go before it will be as good or even better then film, and remember new film with higher speeds and finer grain are being developed as we speak.

Xl-1 on cable
 

I just finished a 30 sec. commercial for a Toyota dealer in Los Angeles. It will air starting 10-28-02 on TNN. I used my Cannon Xl-1 and did the editing on a 1 gig pentium 111, 20 gig hard drive using Ulead MediaStudio Pro 6.0. I really love the Xl-1 and the dealer thought I used film. The camera really has great picture quality and I'm also shooting a movie for DVD realease. The ulead software is really easy to use and I've never had a crash durring captue. They could do a better job with the instuctional manual as it's sometimes confusing. Iv'e read reviews knocking Ulead however this is a very powerfull editing App.

Cool! Did you shoot in Frame Movie Mode?

My Project Greenlight Scene
 

Well, my scene didn't make it to the Top 250. But I did want to share it with this community, since I've learned so much here.

http://www.singlereel.com/directory/clip-20863.html

It's 3 minutes, Quicktime, but not streaming. It's 10mb, so you have to wait until it downloads before you can play it. Be patient, it takes a while.

Shot it on a PD150, cut it on Premiere. Had to compress it down to 10mb as per the PGL guidelines. That's why it looks kinda crappy.

I'd be happy to answer questions, and I'd love to hear comments. Thanks,

Kris Carrillo
WCTV 56

Hix,

For those of us that don't live in LA, can you post it somewhere we could see it?

Cool, Ray. When will the finished animation be ready for viewing?

Spike Lee's "Bamboozled" and it's quality
 

Hi all. I watch bamboozled last night and was actually quite shocked at the poor quality of the footage. I know there probably was a certain about of creative decision to have that look, but I was surprised that the trailer on the net looked a LOT better. Is that a resolution issue more than anything, or does anyone thing that more effort was put into post processing that trailer to get it looking nicer?

Just interested to see what people think.

Bamboozled was shot on SONY VX1000s. (Incidentally, I confirmed this with Spike Lee in person!) I don't know any more about post processing on the footage.

Robert, reading my post again, I realise I didn't explicitly say it but I knew it was a video shoot. I thought it was VX2000's but it's interesting to know it was VX1000's.

The trailer looked really good and less "like video" than the actual movie I saw and that made me curious.

By the way, I really liked the movie. There is one bit at the end when there is a montage of clips from old tv shows, cartoons and movies where one white guy, who is dressing himself up with the "black" makeup which is being help by his black servant says "This stuff is hard to get on, and to remove....You really have it lucky'. It just stunned me, I was not expecting that. So check it out anyone if you haven't already.


Thanks

It was shot on a vX1000, and I thought it looked good. You know it's video and I believe the DP went on to win an award for her DV cinematopgrahy (Ellen Kuras). Some short won at sundance and other places. She also lensed Blow for the Late Ted Demme and i think Jim brown All American for Spike Lee.

Journeys w/ George
 

Looks like this flick on HBO was all shot with a trv900. Not 100% sure, as it's miniDV and Sony, so I'm assuming it's done with the 900, but since I didn't see the lens hood, I almost wonder.

I guess the documentarist was originally working for NBC which is also what leads me to think it was a 3chipper. Then again, why wouldn't they get her a pd100a?

Maybe someone else knows?

huh?
 

what does this have anything to do with this site?
i'm sorry. i don't get it? isn't this just spam?

christian
nebunule films

It was a sony something.
That flick was really funny.

Another shot on Digital Movie
 

Rented "The Anniversary Party" last night as I'm doing a scene from it for my acting class and was interested to get some backstory to the situation and in the special features there was this "Anatomy of a scene" section where they talked about the movie and how it was shot on digital. I don't know what HD digital cams look like so I couldn't tell if it was HD or what, but you can see the operators using them. Does anyone know what those cams are?

I haven't seen many DV movies and I was very surprised that this was DV because it was really nice to look at and very well made and lit, in my humble viewers opinion.

Thinking back to it now I noticed that sometimes the scene would go "slightly" darker for about 1/4 a second then light again and pulse that way a bit then return to normal and then remembered that there was a discussion about this sort of thing while back where someone was having this issue. Wonder if it's the same thing?

Anyway, it's an excellent movie and dv to boot. See it.

BTW: My scene is the one where Joe and Sally are looking for the Dog, Otis. Damned stressful..;)

The Anniversary Party was shot by noted cinematographer John Bailey using PAL Sony DSR-500's, which are high-end DV cameras (2/3" native 16:9 chips).

* * Film/digital Festivals * *
 

I am casting out to all community members and non-members who have been to any film/digital festival.

I have Chris Gore's Survival Guide, but I need information regarding press packages.

Has anyone made one? Have you made one for your movie? Have you made one for advertising/ or whatever?

I would also like this thread to start a conversation or two regarding this.

Cheers!

Derrick

When I was in student media covering films I used to get hundreds of packages every year. This is what I remember about them.

- Interesting packaging makes people pick them out of the pile. Even student reviewers are a cynical bunch and it takes an inventive package to make them pick it out of a pile. The most interesting package I remember was from "The War of the Roses", the Danny Devito black comedy about a bitter divorce between Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas. The package was made like a wedding photo album. I still have that one.

- Include 8x10 photos of the stars, the director and spectacular screens.

- Put the contact information on the folder package itself. The loose papers tend to get mangled or lost. Better yet, put the contact information on EVERY paper and element.

- SWAG: includes a poster. You never know when an interesting poster might end up being stuck on a wall. You might want to look into cheap items that will remind the reviewer of your movie.

- Paper elements: advanced reviews, pre-answered interviews (for those papers who don't have the resources for actually setting up real interviews), bios for all principals, background sheets for the making of the film, clippings.

Putting together a good package is expensive because getting beautiful printing done in short runs is not economical. Unfortunately, you cannot count on press or people at festivals having access to the Internet so you can't just say go to our website. HOWEVER, you MUST have something on your business card and on any packaging material that has your website. And MAKE SURE your website is the project specific domain. Nothing looks more cheap than a free-hosting situation.

I would include a hard-stock card containing a blurb, contact, website information that is more distinctive than anything in the package. This is in case the person who receives the package has to throw away the rest of it but wants to keep something bigger than the business card.

also note that the anniversary party was shot according to Dogme 95' films

http://www.dogme95.dk/

this means that the director takes an oath to fallow a list of specific rules
while shooting the film, which includes using a hand held camera and all
natural lighting with no props....this is why you will see alot of "un-hollywood"
like methods of film making, hence the point of the Dogme oath.

* * EXCELLENT * *
 

Keith!

Thanks for the abundance information. I printed it out and placed it close because your breakdown is superb.

Thanks for the solid foundation.

As far as the cost, oh boy! Working on it! HAR HAR.

Cheers!

Derrick

No problem. I hope some day to be in the same position.

Link Update
 

community.webtv.net/JEFCom/NATUREASB

If in the future this link is not valid, just visit www.jefcommunications.com and navigate to find the Nature Conservancy Documentary.

New DV Film "28 days later"
 

Does anyone know what DV cameras Danny Boyle used for his latest film "28 days later" I know it was definately DV but don't know what cams were used.

John.

Well.. time for my shot at a "concert video"
 

URL: http://www.docuwild.com/spetsnaz.php

Have a concert video shot i did in a local club here in Borås. Only had one camera at my disposal so i let that run off a tripod and let the talent work its' magic =) Sound was tapped directly from the PA system and heavily re-mastered afterwards (needed a lot of cleaning up).

My PD100 exposure settings were 1/25.th exposure and i only used standard col corrections (no Magic Bullet on this one). Intro was made in After Effects and the editing done on FCP 3. The entire video runs for 32 min total.

A word of caution for the sensitive listener =) This is a band that does retro late 80's early 90's body techno music a'la Front 242, Nittzer Ebb & Laibach. It's fast, it's hard, it's dynamic, and it's anti-fascist. So don't be to "shocked" when viewing it =) Though.. after Slipknot these guys feel more like the Teletubbies :P

Feedback appreciated (as long as it's not "you need a 2.nd camera dude ;)")

/Henrik

Hi Henrik,

Pretty cool band. Very different from what we are used to here in North America.

I have had experience shooting a similar type venue. It was hard for me deciding how to shoot the video as well, being that I only had one camera.

I really dug the intro you did, pretty slick!

I think in your situation, being that there are only two guys in the band that never really moved on stage, and a constant changing of effect lights, I would of done some suttle zooming to get some close ups of the two members. On the other hand if you did do that, you might of missed some of the action on another part of the stage. Tough call.

I guess it all comes down to what the client wants.

-Nori

P.S. -"you need a 2.nd camera dude ;)"

Yeah. hehehe.. i would have loved to have two rigs. one for this setup, one for closeups. But the guy who was supposed to be 2.nd camera cancelled the night before the gig so i was a bit short of luck :)

But in the end it isn't a total loss =)

And the intro was fun to do :) All AFX. Now if i could just get the text tools in AFX to use different char setups than the bog standard ones :) (Wanted cyrillic letters for example)

/Henrik