sunyata

For some time i wanted to get in to VFX industry but been fallowing for few months how vfx industry is crumbling down  where 350 employees at Dreamworks Animation were recently recently laid-off and the creature effects powerhouse, Rhythm & Hues just filed for bankruptcy and let’s not forget that Digital Domain’s brand new feature animation studio in Florida was shut down this past September – before they could even release a film. VFX artist have given them self new name digital gypsy since they have to chase the jobs all over the world. What will  Weta digital do after the the hobbits will same happen to them and incentive that governments gives to studios will soon run out for VFX industry in Canada Vancouver the those studios will just pack bags and move on for better incentive but then what happens to workers? they have to pack and move but then the issue of visa to move to another country can take 3 to 6 months, and lets not talk about artists not being paid on time or for over time  While big studios make big bucks on those films like iron man hobbits artist who actually make those films possible suffer and are abused peter jackson him self has changes law of new Zealand for workers not to be able to form unions. i guess artists have to bend down and take it and not complain for the fear of being black listen like.
 
Sorry for bag grammar

Yep it's really a terrible industry to be in right now, and I'm in it. Luckily I've yet to be laid off but I have countless friends who've had multiple jobs in the time I've been at one place. Problem is movie studios treat VFX houses like dog shit. They ask for bucket loads of work for not much money. And for some reason the VFX houses just keep kneeling down to them when they should be getting together and setting fair prices.
BTW Rhythm & Hues filed almost two years ago - almost immediately after finishing the box office hit Life Of Pi. It's fucking ridiculous.

​It's useful to think of FCP X as a subclip editor. Assume we had a dialog clip: 'Poor girl, do you want to marry me?' - 'Yes, 'cause I know you have terminal cancer!' ; then you can make a selection 'do you want to marry me?' - 'Yes ...', make it a favourite with f and rename it as 'proposal' and then make a second selection 'Yes, 'cause I know you have terminal cancer!' and rename it to 'cancer'. The result are three clips (the original, if you imported from a camera archive or from original card, it can already be a subclip!), the favourites technically subclips. Synchronized clips, multicam clips, compound clips: all different flavors of subclips.
FCP X has become very reliable in avoiding logic conflicts that made legacy FCP slow down and finally crash. You make, for example, an archive (save as ...) of your sequence in old FCP. Then you keep changing things, and two weeks later you remember that old sequence and how well a certain thing worked for you. So you open that sequence (= the grandparents of your current state of editing), copy a selection (technically it becomes a compounded subclip) and paste it to your new timeline. You commit incest or travel back in time and kill your grandparents.
In FCP X there seem to be almost no limits for such operations, perhaps because of the way the libraries work and that clips (and subclips) need to be copied before you can use them in another library ...

Sunyata, Yes, big time! You could mark the clip in the browser without sub-clipping and that is searchable. When you put a marked clip to the timeline, the timeline index allows that to be searchable within the timeline. If you wanted you could also mark ranges within a clip and favorite those, which is also searchable and that would be FCPX's version of sub-clipping. The only downside, or I should say a downside to favorites, is that they are non-overlapping. Meaning, if one section of a clip is favorited and you over lap that into yet another favorite section, FCPX will make that one favorite clip. A compound clip would be a work around on that. The use of keyword collections and smart collections also make searching massive amounts of data very quick.  

One thing, the distortion on faces comes because of perspective not because of distortions of the lens. Just try to close one eye and get close to the face of someone, your brain corrects any distortion but the perspective is still there and it will look akward. This is why some people say that wideangle closeups are "intimate".
Let's say that the most natural perspective is with the 50mm. A shot done with a 50mm on FullFrame will be natural because when viewed in a normal sized screen/viewing-distance relation it has the same perspective as your eyes watching the scene through a rectangle and being  at the same place where the camera is placed.
When going above 50mm it gets a closeup, or the way you would remember something where you concentraded on details while sitting away in a confortable distance.

​Right. It's the same sort of idea as with photos like this:
 
A lot of people use the term 'lens compression' or 'telephoto compression,' when a more appropriate term would be 'perspective compression.' It's not anything about the lens itself that is compressing the image like this (except that it allows you to get 'close'), it's how far away you are from the subject. It's a small difference and doesn't make too much of a difference when shooting (you're not going to stand 200 feet away with a 28mm and crop it look like it was shot with a 200mm), but it's a good thing to know.

Good suggestion jcs. That should be nearly instant btw because it's not re-compressing anything. Another thing to note is that a screengrab of the QuickTime player window might not accurately represent that file (I've heard lots of designers complain specifically about qt player). Save out a static to do a "fcheck" in something else, Photoshop etc.
"ffmpeg -ss 00:00:04 -i myfile.mov -t 1 -pix_fmt rgb24 myfile.tif" <= that will save out one frame 4 seconds into a clip as 8bit uncompressed rgb tiff. 
An open source fcheck utility: http://opensource.mikrosimage.eu/duke.html

From HFR, to dynamic framerates, to space operas.. 
 
 
 
 

Just watched that also and was really impressed. On a similar note, can't say enough about Abbas Kiarostami:
 
 
 

sometimes a great director comes up from nowhere, watch this movie shot with anamorphic zeiss lenses
killer scenario
killer images
makes you want to go out and shoot

Actually it really wasn't that sophisticated, which goes to show how serious this problem can become in the future; it's not limited to media companies or first amendment issues. This was a test post btw. Testing Testing.. 

Very interesting article.. "Also, ecologically, when you're more oxygenated, you're in better shape."  Maybe I should start hyperventilating when I'm around someone I'm trying to impress?

jcs- Inazuma makes a valid point, color is also not the only or primary difference between those examples.
 
 
You can alter de-bayered Alexa footage in post quite a bit because of the image quality and film-like sensor noise: it grades quite nicely. Also, because of the log-c profile, it's analogous to working with film, I'm sure that was one of Arri's goals when designing the Alexa. Realistic or idealized skin tones are also rarely the goal in developing the look for a show. I'll post some archived uncompressed Alexa examples to illustrate as soon as I get a chance, just finished doing some crap for Sons of Anarchy, which coincidentally was shot on an Alexa (with other cameras mixed in, even a GoPro this season) and very not-glam. 
 
Our eyes evolved to sense color for health and emotion in skin tones what??? Please continue. 

The stuff about the double bladed projector shutter (some projectors had a three-bladed shutter, there was also a prism-technology by the german manufacturer Kinoton, which, without Maltese cross, had tiny transitions between frames and no black phase at all), the 180° shutter and the discontinuity of time is true for digital technique as well. Insofar as the exposure doesn't capture 50% of all motion then. 
 
What imo counts most is the look and feel of it all. Old 50i/60i camcorders had indeed a more *realistic* way of capturing motion, it looked 'live' always. But as we all still recall, it never looked good.
 
What people like Trumbull a.o. mix up is immersion and virtual reality. 
 
For immersion, which is the goal of fictuous cinematic storytelling, you need to fill the screen with obviously stylized images that trigger intended emotions. 
 
For virtual reality, you have to convincingly avoid obvious style. Ideally, you don't look through a sharp, noise-free window, but are surrounded by an environment. Not an image. Things like cuts and music will destroy that illusion.
 
I am not entirely against HFR. I think all depends on the intention of the narrator. Cameron could have very well filmed Avatar in 48p. Because the narration was about the sensual experience of a virtual reality. He made images that were clearly pure CGI look like ENG-style camcorder-recordings. He inserted lens flares, camera shake, even jerky zooms. And it would have helped 3D to look clearer. I bet, Avatar would have been better in 48p.
 
The Hobbit, on the other hand, is a fairy tale. Once upon a time, but not now. One of those stories where the voice of your grandma can carry enough magic to suspend your disbelief and get you there, totally immersed.
 
I always thought of Galadriels narration ('The world is changed, I feel it in the water ...') that way. I immediately realized how Jackson had a very LFR approach to the accompaning images (as he often has, if appropriate). They could have rather been 12fps than 48fps. Just to test this theory, I downloaded the clip from Youtube and exported it with 12fps, here. 
 
Now of course it is a bit too much. With a modern 200-800 Hz TV-set everybody can easily check the opposite extreme and tell if he wants to follow 10 hours LOTR in HFR.
 
A few days ago, Matt James Smith posted his 12fps test with GH4 raw footage,

I've never seen "showscan" so I have to reserve judgment, but despite how much I respect Douglas Trumbull, I think we part ways on the HFR passion.. interesting video nonetheless:
 

After looking at Kristoffer's footage, I noticed that in the bright blue areas, the colors that were clipping are actually red and green (at zero) creating a pure blue saturation area, but there was still a little detail left in the blue channel highlights. It makes me wonder if a yellow filter might be enough to prevent this blue threshold from triggering? You would then have to color correct.. not ideal but might work for blue LED lights and lasers! 
 

LOL.. kudos to you Stab for being so candid, I've certainly worked with people that seemed to have that same philosophy, especially back in the analog days. In the end though, you don't need to worry about keeping secrets or trying to use a technical advantage to get work, there is no substitute for experience and talent. It's good karma to share what you know, some of the people you help will be clients some day, and there will come a time when you yourself will need help from someone. 

I knew a screenwriting teacher at UCLA that told me confidentially he wished he'd gone to USC as an undergrad, not because it was better than where he studied, but because he would have had better contacts. One catch, you need to be rich!

I knew a screenwriting teacher at UCLA that told me confidentially he wished he'd gone to USC as an undergrad, not because it was better than where he studied, but because he would have had better contacts. One catch, you need to be rich!

Look Stab you are exactly the person that you are worried about.  
 
I don’t post much on the internet but this idea is so misguided I had to come out and say something.
 
I’ve been in the business for 14 years now and I thought that with FCP v2 and miniDV as a tape format the industry would explode within 2 years and belatedly it has, but not how I expected it to.  It was DSLR’s that really changed the game.  No one is transferring film to miniDV so they can cut film jobs in FCP, people are now shooting with digital negative!  The Blackmagic cameras are absolutely amazing because they are giving people digital negative for less than what we used to pay per hour to grade film negative.  
 
We used to pay $1,400 an hour to grade negative in a DaVinci suite but now resolve is free.  The burden is on operators and artists to add the value.  Now that everyone is shooting digital negative we have added a grading suite to our post house and we bill ‘only’ $1,000 and hour to grade jobs.  We have one of Australia’s most sought after colourist in our employment and they are busy, even at $1,000 an hour.  Any director or DOP can now grade their own jobs in the same software we use (for free I might add, you don’t really need the desk) but the top end directors and DOP’s understand the value a professional colourist brings to the job.  Our colourist’s are happy to share their tips and tricks with me, an editor, but also our assistants or anyone that wants to know because their unique skill and mastery of their craft will keep them in demand even if I were to leave and offer grading at half the price.     
 
A lot on people new to the industry find the Blackmagic raw footage difficult to deal with because that have never graded actual negative or dealt with a digital negative work flow.  Everyone just chucks on a LUT and called it a day while a real colourist can dial in any look you want, live, with clients in the room and match the look between all the shots.  Experience is where the values is and everyone I know shares their experiences.    
 
Some of the advice offered on the web is incorrect or misguided but its amazing what someone like Shane Hurlbut shares for nothing.  I’m sure his paid subscription is amazing but you can lean pure gold from him for free.
 
A influx of “new kids†to the business offering services at a significant discount to us is going to erode our profitability.  They/You (Stab) already have.  As richg101 said a lot of these people do a shocking job and won’t get rehired but we still suffer because clients demand we cut our rates to compete.  Sure we’re delivering jobs shot on Alexa with Cooke S5’s professionally graded from the camera RAW, at a quality that is the same as when we worked with 35mm, but something shot on a 5D roughly graded from the h.264 looks 90% as good (sometimes 99.9%).  Most clients can’t tell the difference and don’t want to pay the difference.   
 
I’m not complaining, in fact this has been great for me on personal level because I’ve been able to get my personal projects up to the same quality as my professional ones.  Professionally I’ve never been busier.  Sure budgets are dropping but there is more work than ever before, with the web there is a much higher demand for video content at every level.  I’m always going to share all of my secrets because we all learn together, I’ve learnt a lot about DSLR’s and the like from the people on this site (respect ANDY LEE) and I really appreciate it.  I’ve just started my own blog to share my knowledge with people other than my assistants and to help me solidify the lessons I’ve learnt from my professional experience.  
 
People I’ve worked with and helped are now all over the world working in different parts of the business.  I helped an friend get his head around the basics of shake and now he’s VFX artist at D-Neg having worked on the latest Avengers movie.  An ex-assistant is the post supervisor for a company that cuts both movies and TV series work, she’s a good friend and back in the day I helped her and I know she’d do the same for me if I so required.  This business is all about the connections you make because you really never know where the next job will come from.  If you turtle up and withhold knowledge why should anyone share their knowledge with you, or hep you when you need it?  
 
There is no problem sharing your knowledge with others it makes you a better artist as you debate different ideas, experiment together and get inspired by others creativity.    
 
Stab you seem to have experience behind you so don’t worry about the new kids just worry about the next job.  I always wonder how I can make the next job so amazing that people will be beating down my door just to work with me.  Experience means your next job is better than your last so just think of the head start you have.  You have the head start of experience so please help new people learn the ropes, others have done it for you so don't turn you back on the film making community.            

Giants in 7

just came across the "DSLR slate" app with a tiny horizontal checker? no idea if you could calibrate at all off your iPad screen, maybe you could tape a horizontal macbeth chart to the top of an iPad and use the rest of the slate's functionality.
 

 
and this one is more full featured, $30: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/movieslate-clapperboard-shot/id320315888?mt=8
 
and the iPhone CineMeter?
 

 
got pretty high marks from users on-set.. 

might have to render an intermediate file with something like ffmpeg, which supposedly supports using LUTs, although i haven't tried it.. and it's freeeeee!
 
ffmpeg -r 24 -y -i my_sgamut_video.mov -vf lut3d="/path/to/my_downloaded_lut.3dl" -c:v prores_ks -profile:v 3 -pix_fmt yuv420p /path/to/render/drive/i_hope_it_works.mov

I have been frustrated by the fact that there is not really any good way of working with s-log2/s-gamut with Adobe software. So far I have not been able to find any way of working with default PP7 other than look luts, like Impulz. The problem is that I don't always want to use a look lut and I have found that the luts from Impulz don't seem to work that well with footage from the A7s anyway. The colors always seem off no matter what I had tried and grading without luts was even more problematic. 
  So I have worked out a way to convert s-log2/s-gamut to Rec709 without any look luts. So far the results have been good but I have not had any time to shoot with our A7s myself so I have been using stills generously uploaded by Roman Legion on vimeo. So here it goes, it is two effects that must be done in this order.   First I have attached a lut to correct the s-log2 gamma curve to rec709. This is based off a formula I found from sony for its s-log2 curve. Took some tweaking but mainly just had to deal with using video levels instead of full range. It is a 1D lut so it only affects luma. Apply this lut using a lumetri/apply color lut effect.   This is a matrix transformation from s-gamut to sRGB we will use it to fix the colors next.   S-Gamut to sRGB 1.87785101 -0.79411894 -0.08373153 -0.1768095 1.35097992 -0.17417008 -0.02620544 -0.14844233 1.17464781   Now apply a channel mixer effect and enter the follows values. The channel mixer effect appears to only allow integer values from -200 to 200 but it seems to still work fine. So you can enter them like this in the following format, what out for the const fields and leave them at 0.    Red-Red Red-Green Red-Blue Green-Red Green-Green Green-Blue Blue-Red Blue-Green Blue-Blue   188 -79 -8 -18 135 -17 -3 -15 117   That is it, so far this looks really promising but would like to hear how it works out for the rest of you. I am adding some corrected still from Roman Legion as well. These images are ungraded I only converted to Rec709 and adjusted exposure as they were under exposed a little.     slog2-to-Rec709-dhessel.zip

Dancing Taco?

Have you seen my reel from 98? It also had a dancing popcorn shrimp on it.

Upper or lower fields?