Ivanhurba

Sandberg recently gave a 2 hour interview on Indie Film Academy's Podcast. A great interview where he goes in depth of his beginnings in filmmaking and how he rose to direct the feature film version of his award winning short that went viral overnight. He also gives a crap ton of BTS info... Including how he snuck off during break and shot some flashbacks with the BMPCC. 
http://www.indiefilmacademy.com/ifa-49-lights-out-director-david-f-sandberg/

According to Andrew's review this works, yes.

This is a personal taste, of course. And not only that, it should be related to the mood of the piece, So here's my attempt at that, just some basic correction, boost on skin midtones, muting the rest of the colors and adjusting blues and greens slightly to the teal. All with Color Finale in FCPX.
 

This is a personal taste, of course. And not only that, it should be related to the mood of the piece, So here's my attempt at that, just some basic correction, boost on skin midtones, muting the rest of the colors and adjusting blues and greens slightly to the teal. All with Color Finale in FCPX.
 

It happens to me too, all the time. I uploaded a clip to instagram about a tankfest in Trencianske Stankovce -Slovakia- And I realized after I uploaded that the logo disappeared half way in the video. I corrected it for the Youtube version but, damn, the first youtube version had twenty seconds of extra black which appeared from apparently nowhere so I had to repost it! I always feel that perfection is the worst enemy of good enough so I try to not overthink and upload stuff quickly, but it keeps biting my ass all the time. There has to be a way to make a screenshot appear before uploading screaming in capital bold DID YOU SEE THAT!!??
It's a fun test of the RX10II too. I wanted to record some clips and make some photos in raw to see if it could held on weddings and it did great. Stabilization at 200 was a little shaky, but it was handheld, so I didn't expect more. And for the color I tried to get that Kelly's heroes look. I loved it!
 

It's like she mixed too many drugs with alcohol. The problem is that it looks like a drugged, drunk screenwriter. Think about it for a second. AIs are going to evolve, get more sophisticated and being less drugged and drunk until one day we may get a sober one. That is scary.

Reelsmart motion blur can help take most of the sharp choppy shutter artifacts away when using a higher shutter speed to reduce exposure. Like any image analysis that uses optical flow or similar interpolation algorithm - it can only be pushed so much before it will introduce its own edge artefacts. Knowing how to refine the settings in the plugin will give best results.
I often shoot higher shutter speeds when I know that post stabilisation of handheld footage is going to be applied - the sharper frames enable a more accurate stabilisation solve to be made. Then I apply post motion blur to take the quality of motion a step closer to the appearance of a 1/50 shutter. It does not always need a heavy touch, just taking the edge off the sharp frames can help make the footage appear much better, and is far less prone to reveal nasty artifacts.
 
here is a rough before/after example:
 
Password: birds
 

Check out the RX10 II. It gets knocked by some people but after picking one up for a 2nd slo mo camera, I've been really impressed with it as an all in one tool. We primarily shoot Canon and BM cameras and have never been a fan of Sony clors but love their tech, so I got one with low expectations and thought I might just use it as the 2nd slo mo cam and then shelve it.
I'm glad I didn't. Instead I spent a couple of days tweaking to create a solid PP and after a lot of testing I've ended up with a very solid s-log gamma/cinema color setup that gets consistently great results at 1 to 1 1/2 stop over, converted w/ Filmconvert, FJ Asst.
Here's the positives that you probably already know:
Maybe the best 1080 120p around
Great 24p 4k when exposed and colored right.
Almost ridiclulous 24 - 200 mm 2.8 glass 
Very customizable interface.
Same great evf as the 7RII
I got this for $900 open box from B&H and while I won't use it on commercial work, It's almost silly how cheap it is for what you can do with it.
I did some close up model tests with it in the studio Friday and asked two peole in my shop what it was shot on, C300, BMCC or a Sony. Neither thought the skin tone and depth could have been sony and they were blown away, as was I, that it was shot on the RX.
I looked at a ton of footage online and assumed it just wasn't going to be more than a specialty thing, but, not surprisingly it turned out that 99% of the people putting up footage really aren't very good at working with the codec, log footage and grading. 
FWIW, we start shooting on two docs tomorrow but I've choosen not to put this in either kit because I haven't tried to intercut the foootage yet and because it's only been a few days of testing. But I'll be surprised, given how fast I've progressed the look this week, that I won't pair it with a new A7S II as a small two camera setup.
I could share some tests privately.

That was one hell of a happy dance!

Here's one of my results with the RX10 II and Davinci Resolve 12 (Win64).
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Source: 4K Slog2.
Colour graded (with LUT) and exported to h264 1080p (15.000 kbps).
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For the audio, I used a RODE Stereo Videomic Pro. It records LPCM automatically, which is quite interesting. The camera also seems to automatically adjust the audio level.
I did some 4K exports before, but as it's mpeg4 (the free version won't allow me to export 4K in h264), the blacks are simply awful on YouTube and nothing like what I saw on Resolve's preview.
Exporting to h264 yields correct blacks, so I decided to stick with 1080p.
It's a shame, because watching the files (even the YouTube downloaded versions) back on MPC-HC, the picture seems quite good to my taste.
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Exposure settings:
25 fps - 1/50s - ISO 3200 (+2.0 E.V. showing on the viewfinder).
I found that the MPC-HC is the best player to play these files back (compared to what's seen on Resolve's preview window).
 
P.S.: YouTube degrades the IQ quite a bit.

I know it may sound out of context here, but if you are really on a tight -and I mean tight- budget like I do, you could follow Curtis Judd's advice and use the Samson C02 for indoor audio. Please don't kill the messenger. :D
 

 

I am starting to get more and more involved in VR and 360 work and have been running a few tests on Oculus and Samsung Gear.... Really cool tech that I will talk about soon in another post, with regard to VR narrative work.
What I wanted to discuss here though is the ability to watch 2D video within the VR theatres in Oculus Cinema.... At first I was sceptical, but it really is like viewing a film in a real theatre (or a theatre on the moon, or a theatre for ants!).
The sense of scale is unique and really effective. The way the light from the film changes the theatre just adds to the feeling. I think this will soon be a bone fide way to start testing your movies for theatre release and could be a really simple way to get test audiences for your film.
As with all things VR, explaining, showing videos etc just doesn't do it justice.... If you can get hold of a Gear VR or Oculus, be sure to check it out... It is stunning and sure to play a big part in the future of film consumption.
I found this video below that gives quite a good glimpse into how it all works... But really, you need to try this out for yourself... Exciting times!
 
 

Yeah , but If you had the budget to go do a shooting on a glacier, you should probably rent/buy something like a c300 mk2 that is weather sealed with pro camera functions and internal ND. Because I don t think you want to go shoot a space where everything is white without zebra and peaking and on a 8 bits codec.
 

Go the A7RII. I owned it, and though not owning the current A7SII, I owned the A7S - the BSI sensor in the A7RII produces an image that I believe is much superior to the original A7S, and everything I have seen from the A7SII. I find the colours of the A7RII are much more accurate, shadows much cleaner. You really don't need more than 12,800ISO (if not 6400ISO), which the A7RII does fine. Personally, I scrap a location if it needs more than 6400ISO (back in the day I'd scrap it if needed more than 1600ISO) - when ISO gets ridiculous, good chance one shouldn't even be shooting there in the first place.

The real takeaway here is that both companies are doing good (in a declining market) and that both systems have a future. Maybe Canon is doing a little worse and will have to innovate and Sony still remains an underdog that has to innovate hard. Hopefully, Sony will soon have the luxury to slow down and start on polishing the quirks and provide the absolute best system money can buy.

Sony had it's fare share or disappointments, failed proprietary standards and they hit low on 2012 , since then it looks they've been recovering little by little and trying to get a foot in the market by offering whatever we say in the forums... Slowly and by bleeding us with price, I agree, but at least they're now listening. I'm happy for them for the same reason like you, more players means less cake and more competition. The a7 line is not overhyped, the people were really surprised with the stuff they crammed up in those little bodies and the results in good hands speak for themselves. It's always has been about the hands, regardless of the manufacturer of the camera.

I've been lately having the feeling that Sony is done with their sprint. They stepped into the game for another round, they got their name out there again with the a7 FF line dropping bodies like every other month and reached some kind of sales or status point they set as a milestone. Now that they have a fighting chance, they will slow down to concentrate on the other complains: Resurrect their alpha line for high end pros, fix the lack of lenses and grow from there. The good thing is now we have a great battle ahead; with another global economic slowdown, Canon, Nikon, Sony, Panasonic, Olympus and even JVC will have to offer something significant in exchange for our money or we'll probably pass and wait or move somewhere else. Interesting times.

If only their camera would be as good...

Get a second hand G7(non weather sealed) or a GH3(weather sealed) if possible; something like a rode videomicro or a cheap long wired lav -or both- and a gorillapod. Probably you can get all that for under 500$ in total. That will give you good quality video and sound and you'll be rolling in no time.

First sony hack unlocks time limit and language selection
http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/comment/216902#Comment_216902
The hack works with an app. 

I just want the 5-axis, better low light, a recording YAGH for backup and the same focus transitioning as the 80d without the stuttering and self doubt. I know, not easy, but not incredibly out of reach either.
The YAGH was a missed opportunity to replace the AF100 but the idea was really clever, I hope you're right and sell a new version.

I wonder what could Blackmagic do to integrate Cineform ST 2073 VC-5 as a codec for their cameras, being crossplatform it would start to make sense over Prores, even more now. Specially if it can be encoded in PC and mac.

I wonder what could Blackmagic do to integrate Cineform ST 2073 VC-5 as a codec for their cameras, being crossplatform it would start to make sense over Prores, even more now. Specially if it can be encoded in PC and mac.

I think there are still some patents involved in Cineform for encoding outside of the Cineform GoPro installation codecs, even though it is SMPTE standardized. DNxHR in BM cams is probably a more likely development.

It certainly isn't Apple's fault. Users demand QT native codecs like ProRes, camera manufacturers listen to them, and software vendors follow up by integrating QT.
DNxHD/DNxHR is essentially the VC-3 SMPTE standard and plays very well with another SMPTE standard -- the MXF container. Cineform is also a recent SMPTE standard (VC-5), and defined for MXF wrapping. It's not like if ProRes+QT is the only player in town.

If you can get by Blackmagic and ask them about the Quicktime dismisal and what are they going to do about it It would be great!