A new way of shooting coverage with the RED?

[Bruce Allen]

Interesting discussion.

A few years ago I directed a greenscreen music video - shot on HDV. At some point, I realized "hey, since I'm going to do a garbage matte anyway, I can tell the DP that she is allowed to leave lights in-shot as long as they don't cross in front of the singer..."

We're doing a trailer right now for an animation-heavy movie coming out later in the year and watching the rough cut of the film I noticed that they had the mics in shot most of the time, since they were going to cut them out in post - clever... sound was good actually - usually in rough cuts I can't hear what anyone is saying. When it comes out, see if you can hear the difference and guess the movie.

So if you're doing green screen, a couple of the disadvantages of punching in for closeups disappear.

In fact, I always plan to punch in a little - I leave the periphery of the shot for tracking markers, etc.

Music videos are still SD deliverable most of the time, so I can do this with even HDV. When HD becomes the standard, I'll be ready with Red... bwahaha

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

 

[Vincent Rice]

Walter Murch uses 'little people' in front of his computer monitor when cutting in FCP.

Actually Walter's whole methodology is very interesting and practical.

 

[dalemccready]

What this extra resolution could give you is the option for some funky techniques for promos though.

I recently shot and composited a video using 4 locked-off 35mm shots from a central position around a pool... the 4 shots made up a 360 degree view and most of the camera moves were done in post by hand keyframing.

I had a lot of grain when zooming in (up to 4000%) in places, the red should make tiled shots pretty easy.

I've always thought 4 cameras up on a steadicam could be good to post pan around while also walking the camera through space.

If anyone's interested...
you can check out the tiled clip on my site, it's the Del Rey one on my directing page (I co-directed that one).

I can't wait to use the Red fort his sort of experimentation between shooting and post.

 

[zak forrest]

What this extra resolution could give you is the option for some funky techniques for promos though.

I recently shot and composited a video using 4 locked-off 35mm shots from a central position around a pool... the 4 shots made up a 360 degree view and most of the camera moves were done in post by hand keyframing.

I had a lot of grain when zooming in (up to 4000%) in places, the red should make tiled shots pretty easy.

I've always thought 4 cameras up on a steadicam could be good to post pan around while also walking the camera through space.

If anyone's interested...
you can check out the tiled clip on my site, it's the Del Rey one on my directing page (I co-directed that one).

I can't wait to use the Red fort his sort of experimentation between shooting and post.

can you tell us more details about the 4 cam/post panning etc, on that vid? its really cool. seroiusly. give up all the deets. i love it

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I've never done it with camera footage, but I've done post panning/zooming with rendered backgrounds (animated and still). Can make for some nice FX. This would sure require a lot of overhead if you're using 4xRED shooting 4K.

Anyway, nice video Dale -- you've got a couple nice works on your site. You can see it when you push in too far, but the effect was still good and like you said, RED should really help with that.

 

[vanguy]

I've used the post panning and post closeup technique in documentary quite a lot. We're shooting in HDV or XDCam HD and delivering in SD, so there's a lot of room to fiddle around. HDV is typically quite a bit softer than XDCam HD on these digital zooms (probably the lens), but you can still push in a lot, or pan across the frame.

It's saved our butts on a number of occasions, but I wouldn't use it for drama. I like my camera moves too much. There's still no way to do a crane shot in post.

 

[Rudi Herbert]

Well, you don't really need to wait for a 4 K projector as a tool in referencing size and proportions for bigger than standard Tv screen sizes. I've done mostly TV work, but once it became clear that most of our documentaries would be shown at festivals on cinema screens, I started editing more for the big screen. I still used my JVC CRT and an apple 30" for color grading, focus checks, etc, but I used the S-video feed out of the card and plugged into an old $600 Epson 480p projector onto a $100 100" screen and that did the job quite nicely. I was surprised at how much sharper and clearer than expected the image was (without loosing track of this set up's limitations). So, you can get yourself a big screen monitoring option for very little money and keep it running all day long ($50 for a new lamp every 500 hours), since you should still do most of the grading and critical work on calibrated monitors anyway.

Just my two cents,

Rudi Herbert

 

[vanguy]

If you're a true geek and a tweaker like me, you might like a CRT projector. Old technology, heavy, and difficult to set up, but AMAZING picture, and capable of resolutions up to 2000x2500. I've got an NEC (140 pounds bolted to the ceiling) and after a few hours of setup, the picture is like being in the cinema.

The best part is they're really quite cheap. Projectors that used to cost upwards of $25,000 can be had for 2K or less, and in mint condition. You can even get into an entry level one (1080i capable) for under a grand. They're not as bright as modern projectors, but the colors are truer. And the blacks are rich and structured.

Editing to one of these babies is luxury.

check out www.curtpalme.com

 

[Rudi Herbert]

Hey Vanguy,

Any suggestions for CRT projectors? The weight and hassle is no problem, come on, if you can't handle that, then get out of the kitchen or the editing room anyway, any models you can recomend?

Rudi Herbert

 

[Robert Sanders]

One smart thing I overheard when talking to some guys who shot an IMAX feature - even though they were cutting in DV, they used a projector and were looking at a 6 foot wide image just over the top of their computer monitors. Helped them to remember the Imax scope of things.

I'd recommend a similar approach for anything feature-bound if:
a.) editor wasn't used to cuttting for Big Screen
b.) you had budget for projector
c.) you thought it was kewl to do so.

: )

-mike

Here here! Absolutely.

I'm old enough to be the last film school generation to graduation before the NLE's showed up on campus. We cut on Moviolas. But the great part was at the end of the day we'd thread the picture and sound on a projector and watch the day's work. You really got a different sense of pacing and spatial relationships between the actors and the scenes.

We're finally getting our first projector. And I'm thoroughly excited to be able to go back viewing the day's work on a large screen.

 

[Robert Sanders]

I want to see more coverage like RAN. I don't think there's a single close-up in that film, and it works so much better than a lot of today's seemingly DVD-conscious coverage style. I think as more people get HD TV's and HD DVD's coverage will start to move back out.

Agreed. At least I hope so.

Just drop in the Lawrence of Arabia DVD and enjoy the old-school way of shot composition and framing. There were no other formats to worry about then. Just the big screen.

Ahh. The good ol' days.

 

[Robert Sanders]

Well, you don't really need to wait for a 4 K projector as a tool in referencing size and proportions for bigger than standard Tv screen sizes. I've done mostly TV work, but once it became clear that most of our documentaries would be shown at festivals on cinema screens, I started editing more for the big screen. I still used my JVC CRT and an apple 30" for color grading, focus checks, etc, but I used the S-video feed out of the card and plugged into an old $600 Epson 480p projector onto a $100 100" screen and that did the job quite nicely. I was surprised at how much sharper and clearer than expected the image was (without loosing track of this set up's limitations). So, you can get yourself a big screen monitoring option for very little money and keep it running all day long ($50 for a new lamp every 500 hours), since you should still do most of the grading and critical work on calibrated monitors anyway.

Just my two cents,

Rudi Herbert

Yup. You can even get 1080p LCD projectors for less than $3k these days. Good ones! And run those in your suite. Edit, edit, edit...turn your head, lean your chair back and watch the big screen...make a judgment, and then get back to edit, edit edit!

 

[vanguy]

Hey Vanguy,

Any suggestions for CRT projectors? The weight and hassle is no problem, come on, if you can't handle that, then get out of the kitchen or the editing room anyway, any models you can recomend?

Rudi Herbert

Check the www.curtpalme.com website. Tons of resources there. And Curt's a good guy, with a double garage full of projectors. He'll take care of you.

I used to have a Sony 1031Q, but it was rather dim, and needed parts. Now I have an NEC PG6000, which is quite nice, and Curt recommends for skin tone. The Electrohome Marquee series are also quite good. Get an 8" ("Intermediate") or 9" ("high performance") for the resolution. The rest is a price/performance equation.

Just be careful when mounting it. I shattered my desk and killed off some hardware when my hoist failed. 138 pounds falling six feet is deadly. oster_oops:

 

[beatniq]

You wouldn't have to lay down a track for a dolly or set up a jib for a small crane shot. You could achieve all those results in post while minimizing the expense involved with the actual production.

Punch in, maybe. Pan-scan, yes (ech!).

Dolly shots and jibs, no.

Think about it. How are you going to do a dolly or jib shot from the same exact angle?

 

[Friedrich Moser]

I want to see more coverage like RAN. I don't think there's a single close-up in that film, and it works so much better than a lot of today's seemingly DVD-conscious coverage style. I think as more people get HD TV's and HD DVD's coverage will start to move back out.

It's already on its way. Just think of BBC's series "Planet Earth".

 

[Jonathan L. Bowen]

I think David was spot-on in page 1, as usual though, he has great advice.

I wouldn't shoot a movie relying on these kinds of techniques, but it's not at all crazy to think you have a bit more leeway just in case. That's not craziness, that's just a nice safety net. It's true, though, you really want to light every shot for its specific setup, that yields the best results. From my understanding it's even not something most professional DPs want to do to have two cameras shooting the same scene from different angles unless it's some type of stunt or action sequence (in which case it could be more than two cameras and I think always would be), because if you have a dramatic scene the lighting looks different if you have two totally different camera angles shooting it. At least, that is what I've heard from a few professional DPs.

There are a few things I don't think would be bad to do in post with 4K footage, though. One is correcting shaky footage and stabilizing it, because if it's just barely shaky you will hardly lose any image quality and there's absolutely positively no way anyone could notice the difference if you shot in 4K and a few shots are at 90% quality because you had to correct for a bit of unwanted camera motion. I actually found doing a few projects that you couldn't tell even with HDV footage if there was a bit of motion, we were able to get away with zooming in at 105% and fixing it, which wasn't much quality loss. The other application is a very slight zoom-in that would be about like a constant zoom feature on some cameras. If you did that in post I don't think it'd be bad, but I agree you wouldn't want to try to mimic full dolly movements in post because the look I just don't think would be the same.

Still there's no doubt to me that playing in a 4K sandbox does allow for a bit more lenience than anything else before.