Axel

Hello everyone,
I worked as a dp on this short by Remo Pini.
 
It was with the bmcc 2k version, my first time using this camera.
 
If you have any questions let me know
 
http://vimeo.com/72492685
 

For mpeg4, you can install the free Quicktime-component "x.264", which appears in QT's or preferably MpegStreamclip's 'H.264' or 'mp4" -Export. Of the five best-known software-encoders it proved to be the fastest and the second best in quality (beaten by AME), whereas Quicktimes own encoder (working with all apps, including MSC and Compressor) was slow and the worst in quality.

My recommendation: Export your final project from FCP as ProResHQ. Open this huge mov with MpegStreamclip, choose >export >as mpeg4 >x264.

Depending on the plugin you get a few pages of 'options' But they are, er, optional, it' s enough to determin the right data rate and hit 'Go!'

I'm impressed with your grades mindcut. Some of the best posted on this site.
 
FCPX is deceptively simple, but you can do nearly everything you need with just the stock tools in it for well-captured footage.
 
To get around keyframeable color in FCPX, you can blade the clip and dissolve across the cut from one correction to another.
 
To have a comparison frame, you can just use the Match Color view, without necessarily picking a color to match. This also lets you match someone else's footage or still you import. Another way of doing that is Window->Show Event Viewer, and load your still or whatever (you can export and re-import a still from your timeline for this if you want) into it next to the footage you're grading.

So many of us are absolutely obsessed with talking about VL and PB on this forum.
 
Its as though people forget how may other filmmakers are out there actually making amazing films, all accessible within a few mouse clicks or fingertip touches. 
 
The world is bigger than you think. 

I am a radical, but I think a camera should be introduced with chart tests (resolution, moire, DR, and color), and an ISO ladder of the inside of the lens cap to show the noise floor. Some form of motion and visual load testing would be useful too to stress the codec and reveal any ghosting. Ideally these tests are carried out in a fully open, documented, reproducible manner by an independent test lab that knows how to do them properly. We then have an objective baseline for the camera system, and can move on to subjective concerns.
 
I think it's fine for there to be whizbang marketing pieces made, though ideally they aren't made by the gear reviewers (e.g. Philip Bloom being paid to make the GH3 promo and then casually leaving such conflicts out of his "ethics statement"). People want to get excited about their new toy. Certainly the C100 promo was embarrassing other than for those memorable girls on the beach and their lovely skin. The C300 promo was way over the top but announced Canon was now in town. These things cost a fortune to make and for a small struggling manufacturer are a luxury best left to the volunteer enthusiasts like you guys.
 
Though I honestly doubt anyone in this thread has ever shot footage in their entire lives that is as good as Reverie. I certainly haven't. But it's fair for you to criticize as it was made in the interest of separating you and your money. The people that bought 5D2s in 2009 after watching it still aren't suffering for their purchases however.

Your post makes me feel uncomfortable for critizising Brawleys approach, and I realize I just missed the point. Also about the DR. You know, I am used to scale the stops for my GH2, cramming all values in front of the lens into the eight or nine stops (does anyone have the hard facts?) I have. Brawley could have done this as well. He could have chosen to shoot on another time of day, when there was no directly reflected sunlight on bright walls, blue sky and a lot of shadow in the image. He could have used an ND grade. He could have used an ND-filter(*) and dial up the iso, which had resulted in noisy shadows, but higher DR (GH2's 'iDyn'). (*) He needed no ND, he could have used a smaller aperture, like f8. Would also have helped to keep everything in focus.

But what would doing so show us about the BMPCC?

Also, natural high dynamic range is not like the HDR-images you can generate out of 2-9 differently exposed jpegs (principle: Make a LFR image, that shows different bright objects with the same values). It is about having dark and bright areas. And that's how it looks in ProRes 10-bit (on an 8-bit monitor for most, graded as 8-bit).

Reverie: I don't hate it, but I never loved it. I didn't like the 30p, it looked like video for me despite the shallow DoF. I had the Canon XH A1 (aka GH1 in the USA) with a Letus. I had the same DoF and 25p, I wasn't much impressed, only by the helicopter ;-)*
*EDIT :
Wrong!
Every 35mm adaptor owner and fan of Blooms Letus clips was VERY impressed by the lowlight in Reverie. This really was something. What can we expect from the BMPCC in this regard?

The flat files were released by John Brawley, out of the goodness of his heart. I don't think this was sanctioned by BMD at all. And if you are interested in buying this camera I think you should download some of this stuff and see the type of versatility you can get over the files in the grade. Are these the most interesting shots ever, no. But Brawley wasn't being paid to shoot a commercial for BMD.
 
In fact, I'm glad that BMD doesn't waste a bunch of money on marketing. And I'm surprised Brawler leaked these clips again, given the Shitstorm he go got the last time he let clips out (for the BMCC). And to be fair (to you guys), back then I was one of the people screaming bloody murder about the BMCC clips until i realized that John was doing this pro-bono. 
 
Anyway, how helpful (for a potential buyer) would it be to release a bunch of clips with $100K worth of cranes and studio lighting? I think it looks like quite a capable camera. Think about how far we have come. And speaking of overproduced promo vids, lets take a tour through history, shall we?
 
https://vimeo.com/7151244
 
I've come to hate this film... and I'm not sure I have a good reason.

I remember the panic about the GH3 when it first came out and everyone was over analyzing and despairing over what few images we were given, like it was the zapruder film. I think patience, for this one time, is deserved for BMD.

If it's magenta or not is hardly any reason to say that it's 'badly graded'. In the end, as long as the flesh tones convince (which they can even do without following the 'flesh line' in the vectorscope, for example at sunset, when these shots seem to have been taken), it's a matter of personal taste if I grade darker, brighter, more or less saturated or with the colors left unchanged like in this auto-balance-screenshot from Color (midtones lifted though a bit):

 
I don't like the way Brawley grades, but again, that's my problem. I also don't like the opposite of magenta, green, when there was no plausible source of light where this cast could have come from:
 

 
But it's Lee's decision, I don't depreciate his effort, for if this is about achieving a neutral and scientifically correct image, i completely misunderstood the whole purpose of grading. Have a go with the clips yourself and explain why your grading is better.

 
Or, watch again, the camera has poor resolution. Actually, it looks like a combination of oof, terrible lenses and a resolution around 720p. There is no sharpness in the images to begin with. But one shouldn't mistake softness for poor resolution. Generally. But here, we know the lenses from the Lumix. It's true, they have sharpness added and distortion corrected by the system. But adding sharpness doesn't improve resolution and to de-squeeze the distortion really costs resolution. But nobody ever complained. With this in mind, study areas of the images that strike you as 'sharp' or 'well-defined'. How many are there? Look at the hairs and the fabric of the clothes. The crossing with the red house left: Look at the bricks. 
 
 
I don't see clipping, if this means that values are cut off abruptly. When you look at the luma waveform. On the other hand, you are quite right: There is not much definition in the highlights nor is there in the shadows. I'm not sure, maybe this is because there is also not much resolution in the midtones. Couldn't this have been shot with any AVCHD camcorder in 8-bit? Sharper though and out-of-the-box? (deliberately exaggerating, a bit). But of course: We haven't seen raw yet.
 
 
Now I am relieved.
 
richg101:
 
 
 
I like the many versions you did. The upsizing also shows that there are not many artifacts which usually become visible then.
 
I don't know. I hope I'm wrong with the bad resolution.
 

Here is my take. 
 
https://vimeo.com/71782779
 
I'll take whatever JB gives me and like it, but geeez.

http://vimeo.com/71785015
 
uprezed to 4k and cropped

https://vimeo.com/71787060
 
The original footage was very flat and neutral, which was nice for grading, but there was little to no highlight recovery possible in this prores file. 

Grading was nothing too special:  7-8 minutes messing around in AE with levels and curves.  No sharpening and no noise reduction.  I might spend some more time tinkering tomorrow in Resolve, but I may just hold out for raw footage or for my own camera's delivery.
 
And I agree with how shoddy this footage is.  You are charged with revealing a highly-anticipated camera's first footage to the world and this is what you come up with???  Is JB instructed by BM to make the footage as amature and boring as possible?  I guess the footage provided us a good test of dynamic range, but if that's the goal, then I'd much rather have a few seconds a raw instead. 

My attempt...
 
https://vimeo.com/71726506

I downloaded from here (last three files).

Graded it, sharpened it, watched it critically.

My verdict:

> How on earth can you NOT use a tripod, when you know the whole world waits for your shots ???
> The sharpness is quite, er, okay, but not with these lenses (because 90 % of the image is slightly and annoyingly out of focus!)
EDIT: Maybe this is the downside of the sensor size. It had better been so small that it allowed absolute focus. Must probably be used with smaller apertures.
> Definitely needs some sharpening.
> What appear to be clipped walls are out-of-focus walls.
> The distortion in the two wideangle shots is absolutely terrible! We really need to find decent lenses that also must have good focus controls.


EDIT2: Dammit, doesn't this thing up til now look poorer than GH2 stuff? Do you actually see any better DR? What's going on?

Suckerpunch was Snyder's Inception, it failed on an emotional level, it failed even on VFX level ( looked like a video game, just like Man of Steel ) but it did manage to mislead 99% of audiences in critics into an incorrect interpretion of the story. And this is where it is a 100% success in terms of what it was trying to do, that is sucker punch everyone.
 
Almost everyone interprets the film as a story of a girl who is in a madhouse who escapes into a fantasy whorehouse reality, then escapes into a video game reality. That is incorrect. The correct interpretation is that this film is about a girl in a whorehouse who escapes into a madhouse fantasy, then escapes into a video game fantasy.
 
There was never an evil uncle or a dead sister, there was never a lobotomy...the "sister" is the girl who sacrifices herself to let her escape, the evil uncle is the pimp, the "lobotomy" is her losing her virginity to John Ham, who she visualizes as the Doctor who "penetrates" her body. Lobotomy = Loss of virginity, innocence, childhood.
 
The movie basically reveals the artifice of the lobotomy in one key scene when she first arrives at the Whorehouse, you see the other girl performing a theatre play portraying a character GETTING A LOBOTOMY, that's where she got the idea for her Madhouse fantasy. Even more, the opening narration SPELLS IT OUT for you, when it talks about "angels, demons, and an old man who comes to save us when we least expect it"...the old man on the bus who saves her from the cops is REAL and everything else is imagined, she is imagining everything on the bus, having escaped the whorehouse.
 
Is noone paying attention anymore? That was probably Snyder's point. 

I didn't like Dune very much when I first saw it in the cinema, but I guess I was too young then. I also didn't like Coppola's Dracula then, but now I must admit both films get miraculously better every time I see them.
 
BTW: Do you know this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjvuCOlkO4E
 
or the Goofy version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7baCckh-XE
 
It's fun to think about other directors. Years ago I read in a german book on Kubrick that one should imagine A Clockwork Orange as written and directed by Steven Spielberg, starring Tom Cruise. And only today I found a satire with that connection, here.
 
The article mentions A.I., and I found it a great movie (though probably not too Kubrickian). In the end, when the Blue Fairy actually appears, I found it so much over the top, I was reminded of David Lynch. It was an effect like this:

 
But of course, Lynch had his own fairy:

 
 

I didn't like Dune very much when I first saw it in the cinema, but I guess I was too young then. I also didn't like Coppola's Dracula then, but now I must admit both films get miraculously better every time I see them.
 
BTW: Do you know this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjvuCOlkO4E
 
or the Goofy version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7baCckh-XE
 
It's fun to think about other directors. Years ago I read in a german book on Kubrick that one should imagine A Clockwork Orange as written and directed by Steven Spielberg, starring Tom Cruise. And only today I found a satire with that connection, here.
 
The article mentions A.I., and I found it a great movie (though probably not too Kubrickian). In the end, when the Blue Fairy actually appears, I found it so much over the top, I was reminded of David Lynch. It was an effect like this:

 
But of course, Lynch had his own fairy:

 
 

Hmm.  I wonder why he didn't shake the camera more.  Needs more cowbell
 
If I had to pick a list of my top 10 favorite movies of all time, at least five of them would be Lynch films.  Had a long conversation with Sean Young about Dune when I worked with her on a low budget b-flick several years ago.  That said, he's an acquired taste.  Is it really a shock to hear, in a time when people like Lucas and Spielberg are moaning about difficulties in funding, that Lynch would be singing the same tune? Don't cry David, I'll send you a love letter.  Straight from my heart, #$%#&!
 
This brave new world feels so foreign to filmmakers, but the theatre scene has been feeling it for decades now.  Times change, audiences change, things evolve.  Welcome to Earth

1. A good film may appeal to the masses, it's doesn't HAVE to be a contradiction. Correct me if I'm wrong, but what we witness right now is absolute dullness as a result of EXCLUSIVELY trying to repeat former successes.
2. This justifies the equation 'a mainstream film is a bad film'. Exceptions only prove the general rule.
3. Spielberg, who now complaints in a chorus with Soderberg and Lynch, contributed to the misery. He is a master of the big budget movie as well as of the serials, franchises and remakes. And he is responsible for quite a bunch of terribly stupid movies.
4. So maybe Lynch has lost it. I don't know, but I accept that creative people can burn out too. Their work survives. If not for the masses, then the more for few. Rock'nRoll (cinema) is bigger than all of us ...

It's not a matter of getting used to a habit or of overcoming a distaste. There have been studies in the 90ies about the correlation of the film image's size (relative to the viewer's field of vision) and how many details of the plot could be reported afterwards. There is a clear proof that size matters, and the advantages lie in the two-digit percent-range. Is this so hard to imagine? What about Blue Velvet, with all it's very dark scenes? What about Lawrence of Arabia, with it's grand panoramas? What about 2001, with it's dominating blackness that represents immeasurable distances and works as a wormhole for our 'doors of perception'? But even an easy-to-digest movie like Transformers will never have the same impact on a phone, retina display or not.
 
If small screens were the future, why then discussions about 4k? You can do without higher resolution (see Lynch's Inland Empire), but for a cinematic experience you must blow it up!
 
Today, giant tv sets and high quality beamers have made home cinema installations easy and affordable. With the right attitude (isolation of your screening room from the rest of the mundane world, dimming the lights, raising the volume, becoming unavailable for calls or other messages), you needn't go to the cinema, only if you want to see a new film.
 
What is more, people in their 20's suffer from a form of deprivation, for which their smartphones are as well the cause and a kind if remedy. I am in several facebook and whatsapp groups (I have to, if I want to keep in touch with people of that age). I assure you, it's not just a silly game like when we used to send us silly or obscene letters under the desks. It's stultifying. The road to disaster.
 
However, as the very interesting 'Lincoln'-thread suggests, cinema is experiencing a crisis. Maybe two hours are either too long to transport an audiovisual idea or way too short. Films should either run 3 minutes or develop interactively as a television/internet series with open end. If the form can change - the size, the length, the narrational structures, what have you - the content will allow for new ventures as well. An example: Erdogan might learn from a short clip that he no longer represents his people and is disempowered effectively, making the future development a mere formality. 'Film' could become an instrument of communication in the best sense. 

In art, beauty often means that something looks absolutely purposeless, but with a hint that it's purpose is just too advanced for the recipient to see. You admire the form because it expresses a bold thought.

In design, beauty has a condition: It must never contradict functionality, usability. The axiom reads 'form follows function'.

I don't like the probably very high price of this, higher even if you think about all the expensive periphery, but it surely is a fantastic machine. It will be accompanied by a new version of FCP X. This software made many professionals switch to Premiere, because it had many flaws (and still has some). Today, it is stable enough, fast and with Resolve makes a dream team on the Mac. Once one overcomes initial preoccupations and edits a project with it for real (provided one has a fast enough machine), one will see Premiere as hopelessly outmoded.

If not, that's the implied statement of this new Mac, you can as well stick to an array of PC-tower gadgetry with Adobe.

Yes. I don't remember how this is done in Dexter, but generally you assume that thinking is a voice out of nowhere, it doesn't reach out, reflect or resonate. It's mono always, captured in a silent room (no dictionary at hand, but since you know german, "schalltoter Raum"). You cut out breaths (unless they are inward sighs) and in the mix you contrast it to a stereophonic panorama or make it the only event in the center channel.

The more primitive way to make clear that a voice is supposed to be a thought is, er, "Hall". It implies that the voice comes from far away (in time) or that the skull is hollow. Today only used in parodies ('Scary Movie').

I wholeheartedly disagree.
 
You are not a professional, you are an amateur, and perhaps you consider yourself a skilled amateur?
 
Then the best way to prove it is to film and edit a wedding. Don't raise the expectations of your clients too much, but assure them they will be happy with the video. 
 
Know, that filming a wedding confronts you with considerable challenges. You spend maaany hours with the family and friends, you can't be tooo much in the way, you can under no circumstances lose or botch important moments, you have to film them in clean images, beautifully, without shaking or trembling (but also very often without tripod), you have to get usable sound (in the beginning you will probably not wire the pair, but be aware you have to capture their voices really well!), you have to control the light for perfect exposure, in an environment where very often your only way to influence light is how you position yourself (and keep in mind, don't be in the way tooo much!). There may be no noise, there may be no clipping, but there may very well be creepy darkness. Or, almost worse, a parc in the harsh sunlight, with beautiful green treetops that cast green shadows on the faces of the lot, alternated by veeery bright stripes. You get blinded, hands sticky ...
 
Perhaps you have a talent to master all these problems or never experience the worst. You produce excellent images.
 
But having technically good images, perhaps even with glamour to them, is not enough. A good videographer is very rarely also a good narrator, let alone editor, and vice versa. Finding images is fundamentally different to arranging them. So if you are not a very good camera operator, but a good editor or the other way around, you have to find a way to become good enough.
 
You have to know where the moment you witness and record fits. You have to realize the moment. Often you have to make it fit. People react to you. They act to you. They know their expression and their remarks will be seen by their hosts, they absolutely have to come up smiling. You have to be charming. You have to direct them. You are not 'an eye', you are not a participant with a camera, you are the Ghost of the weddings past.
 
You really learn a lot about how people like to be, to be seen or to become. You are their magic mirror. An invaluable insight if you ever wish to do something dramatic.
 
This is so much more than an industrial image film. Who never made weddings doesn't know.
 
Next step is editing all that. The first time you will curse the day you said 'I do it', and you rue to have followed Zach and me and not Moongoat and /p/.
 
The second time you will try to follow a concept.
 
The third time you will talk with the pair in advance, find funny stories, write down a draft. You will get your clients to accept that you keep it short, you will have enough experience to face difficult situations calmly. You will edit in one day, in a relaxed mood, seeing that your preparation fruited.
 
The fourth time you will say, allright, I like you, that's why I charge only $1000. 
 
 
And if you have improved your skills the first three times, you can actually enjoy it.

I wholeheartedly disagree.
 
You are not a professional, you are an amateur, and perhaps you consider yourself a skilled amateur?
 
Then the best way to prove it is to film and edit a wedding. Don't raise the expectations of your clients too much, but assure them they will be happy with the video. 
 
Know, that filming a wedding confronts you with considerable challenges. You spend maaany hours with the family and friends, you can't be tooo much in the way, you can under no circumstances lose or botch important moments, you have to film them in clean images, beautifully, without shaking or trembling (but also very often without tripod), you have to get usable sound (in the beginning you will probably not wire the pair, but be aware you have to capture their voices really well!), you have to control the light for perfect exposure, in an environment where very often your only way to influence light is how you position yourself (and keep in mind, don't be in the way tooo much!). There may be no noise, there may be no clipping, but there may very well be creepy darkness. Or, almost worse, a parc in the harsh sunlight, with beautiful green treetops that cast green shadows on the faces of the lot, alternated by veeery bright stripes. You get blinded, hands sticky ...
 
Perhaps you have a talent to master all these problems or never experience the worst. You produce excellent images.
 
But having technically good images, perhaps even with glamour to them, is not enough. A good videographer is very rarely also a good narrator, let alone editor, and vice versa. Finding images is fundamentally different to arranging them. So if you are not a very good camera operator, but a good editor or the other way around, you have to find a way to become good enough.
 
You have to know where the moment you witness and record fits. You have to realize the moment. Often you have to make it fit. People react to you. They act to you. They know their expression and their remarks will be seen by their hosts, they absolutely have to come up smiling. You have to be charming. You have to direct them. You are not 'an eye', you are not a participant with a camera, you are the Ghost of the weddings past.
 
You really learn a lot about how people like to be, to be seen or to become. You are their magic mirror. An invaluable insight if you ever wish to do something dramatic.
 
This is so much more than an industrial image film. Who never made weddings doesn't know.
 
Next step is editing all that. The first time you will curse the day you said 'I do it', and you rue to have followed Zach and me and not Moongoat and /p/.
 
The second time you will try to follow a concept.
 
The third time you will talk with the pair in advance, find funny stories, write down a draft. You will get your clients to accept that you keep it short, you will have enough experience to face difficult situations calmly. You will edit in one day, in a relaxed mood, seeing that your preparation fruited.
 
The fourth time you will say, allright, I like you, that's why I charge only $1000. 
 
 
And if you have improved your skills the first three times, you can actually enjoy it.

You are right again, and your examples two posts above prove it.
 
Could you accept the view that in the wake of the Matrix success a lot of films exaggerated the BBL? It's not all about highest color contrasts, colors (not just two) do influence the mood, the emotional impact. And it's not a very original look anymore. 
 
My fellow projectionist test-viewed Avatar. He studies film and happened to learn color correction then. He said we obviously projected the film in the wrong color space or whatever, because the faces had a green cast.

 
Cameron almost made a parody of the BBL in Avatar. The schema is only prominent when the stubborn military is associated. But even there, he broke the Maschwitz-rule (I call it that because I first heard of it in the Prolost-blog), that 'porange' (Maschwitz again) needs to be protected. Quaritch in the image above looks down to the Pandora forest, and the green forest reflects subtly on his face, giving the impression he was filmed with a GH2, before someone could apply Andrews WB-shift (The EOSHD-GH2-guide, page 79).
 
Of course, green and blue are not too rare in Avatar :mellow: .
 
And elsewhere humans are'nt protected either. Lights, computer screens and natural light are allowed to eat in their skin tones, obviously intentionally:

 
For my own taste, there should be another rule: If there is a color in the image, it has to be justified. There must be a source that may plausibly have emitted this color. I don't know how you feel about it, but I am getting used to realize the BBL as something very artificial and lumpen. Some make the look so extreme, it doesn't help the least, it's only distracting (Swordfish, CSI Miami).
 
The BBL is like the slice of tomato you have to put onto your beefsteak before you shut the hamburger, the better to counterbalance the dry saltyness. The necessity is confirmed scientifically by ecotrophologists. Add remoulade, and a Big Mac tastes the same all over the world. Films resemble each other visually more and more, they turn McMovies. I admit, the colors are merely a symptom, hardly the cause.