Matthew Hartman

1 minute ago, Mattias Burling said:

Yes, brand. As a joke.

We need some of that humor here lately. ?

"Mobile phone film-making must be going mainstream when Matt Damon has a cameo in a feature film shot on an iPhone. It might be a movie made by his greatest collaborator, director Steven Soderbergh, but still – the entire camera department for Soderbergh’s latest film, Unsane, fitted into a backpack."

http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20180223-claire-foy-and-matt-damon-in-a-film-shot-on-a-smartphone

This is only forward moving from here. Two huge Hollywood names attached to this propels smartphone filmmaking 10-fold. 

Has to be dynamic range for me. I could deal with 1080 resolution for the time being but blown out highlights and clipped shadows drive me bonkers to no healthy end. 

And it makes sense. Our eyes are going right to the lightest and darkest parts of the scene, and what do many videos have in the background? Blown out skies and practicals. ARGRHGHAGHEUHGH. ?????????

Badge? You mean brand? 

I think absent in this topic is what I elluded to previously. Vertical composition sends the viewer a subliminal message, which is a long used convention in the art photography and science of composition for many ages. It can be challenged of course, but it can't be ignored or absent from this conversation. 

It's more than just orientation for Facebook, Instagram, etc. It makes sense in terms of green screening because you are most likely compositing the key on a horizontal frame and you need that vertical headroom. This is only logical. 

When you have a vertical frame, leading line and weighting become very different as opposed to an horizontal frame. 

If you don't understand the narrative of what your frame denotes you should probably not consider shooting vertically because you may be unwittingly sending the viewer the wrong subliminal narrative that's opposite of what you intend.

Know the rules and conventions you're breaking, because you will be asked to justify them at some point in your career. If you have no answer to this question you will look foolish and arbitrary in the eyes of the industry and lose credibility. Your clients don't know this. It's your job to inform them, you're the expert. 

Composition absolutely matters, and you'd be hard pressed to find a working professional that would disagree. 

Just now, Liam said:

I think my monitor might suck. let me know if this looks horrible

The reason many of you are seeing differences in the image in your application as opposed to the outputting file is most likely because you're exporting in a different color gamma than you're using in the app. You can embed various color gamma in the jpeg marker which ensures consistent viewing. 

I still remember the smell of all the chemicals used in the process. It's funny how that stays with you after so many years. Last time I processed negatives and went into the darkroom was about 1996.

My least favorite part of the process was loading the film into the canister for the chemical process to expose the negatives in complete darkness. Everything was done by touch. 

Man, thinking back, what a long multi-step process to get from A to B. It was all experiemental. I can't decide if I miss it or not.

At least I know I don't miss the cost or brain cell damage, nor the unforgiving nature of making a mistake. ?

I woke this morning with the realization that we fanboy over these cameras because they (as in all) are exactly underwhelming and unremarkable. We are such pain and frustration (sounds overly dramatic, but follow along) that we cling to the insidiously incremental differences between brands as a claim to somekind of superiority. 

In short, we as the consumer are being played. Our phycology is being manipulated because we allow that psychology to exist with in us. 

We all desire the "perfect camera", and we are frustrated, annoyed, pissed off and hurt that it doesn't exist and likely never will.  

I've taken part in these "my camera is better than yours debates" (because that's the root of what's happening here) and in other places. My psychosis ends here today. I no longer "care" what camera you choose to use nor which one you choose to reject.

You do you boo. It's all good. 

5 minutes ago, Matt Kieley said:

This x1000. I'm trying to put more thought into the color of clothing, sets, and lighting more. Just watch a Wes Anderson movie, or Breaking Bad for great use of color in storytelling. Of course there are a million other examples, but those two are my favorites, and probably the easiest to notice and understand. Punch-Drunk Love is another one of my favorites.

Good on you. On professional sets everything is curated and that's why successful images pop the way they do. If you learn any color theory learn basic complimentary and split complimentary, and that get you to gold 99% of the time.

Here's an Adobe smartphone app that can help big time in this regard:

https://itunes.apple.com/mt/app/adobe-color-cc-capture-color/id632313714?mt=8

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.adobe.creativeapps.gather

36 minutes ago, Deadcode said:

Okay guys, let's do the "is it possible?" challenge

Here you can download Andrew's original A7S II SLOG3 banding (and black sun) example video. I have never seen this kind of stripes ever in any of my footages, but this is the toughest example of the problem in 8 bit 420 4K 100Mbps. Do your best with grain and NR, i hope you can make it work.

 

edit: ohh, as i can see, you are unable to download the out of camera file, the "original" files is already re-encoded, so challenge canceled

Ummm I think we should get Andrew's permission first? 

7 minutes ago, mercer said:

Thank you for your suggestions and contribution to this exercise. Your “cool” version was amongst my favorites. 

I am a zero budget filmmaker, and wear all of the hats of my production. I started filmmaking in pursuit of another outlet for my screenplays. Meanwhile, while attempting to acquire a modicum of skill, I was bit by the filmmaking bug, but I would never consider myself a cinematographer or a DP.

I really have no interest in being one. I’m hoping to be a competent camera operator before my film is finished... But somebody needs to film my movies... so I guess it has to be me.

With that being said, I appreciate every bit of info I learn from you guys on this site.

For sure my man. We all want something different out of this filmmaking business. But even at your "level", I still would recommend finding a good book or online tutorial on color theory or harmony. It will propel your captures 10-fold at whatever purpose you're after. 

5 minutes ago, hmcindie said:

I've had a Pioneer Kuro plasma for about 7 years. Rec709 through that thing looks brilliant, especially films. At has dynamic range to spare (not as bright as LCD's but who cares about brightness? Blacks is where it's at)

What would an HDR television bring that does anything better? I have a phone that does HDR, whoopty doo. I'm not changing my Kuro until OLED reaches a good point.

In a world where image quality is an endless pursuit to match the human eye, I would say it's another stepping stone on that path. 

Quote

@Andrew Reid The real puzzle is why Sony keep giving their main rival the absolute top spec sensor, whilst putting older tech in their own.

Even when manufacturers purchase the sensor from Sony, do they not strap on their own proprietary technologies? Sony may have the best image sensor on the market but that doesn't mean they know how to best leverage it as a complete system. (I'm not disparaging Sony cameras here)

For example, Samsung sold AMOLED screens to Apple for the iPhoneX, but Apple adds their own spin on it. Samsung now wants to sell their ISOCELL sensor to everyone and their grandmother whilst using a Sony made sensor in the S9/9+.

In photography, shooting vertical is part of a narrative. I would be careful shooting vertical merely to fit a social media platform.  

8 hours ago, jonpais said:

Don't underestimate the ability of forum members to find fault where there is none and to overlook faults if it suits them.

Human nature wouldn't you say?

I think some of you need to remember change does not come easy for everyone. In fact, we are part of an industry that is considerably hostile to and is currently going through a lot of growing pains, especially at the upper echelons of the business chain. It's uphill all the way, but berating people into change is never a good idea. It just gives them more reason to remain hostile and indoctrinated. 

At the end of the day, no one interested in image performance is going to reject more dynamic range. But everyone comes into that differently. 

4 hours ago, Arikhan said:

The most recent rumor says, Trump will soon resign from his US presidency and will convert to Islam. When announcing this officially, the White House event will be shot exclusively on the NX2 - and brought to American people in TV by an Iranian broadcast company. 

I MUST REFRAIN FROM THIS...I MUST REFRAIN FROM THIS...I MUST REFRAIN FROM THIS...

2 hours ago, Eric Matyas said:

Some new tracks for your projects:

On the Fantasy 8 page:
"Spooky Hollow" (Looping)
http://soundimage.org/fantasy-8/

On the Puzzle Music 3 Page:
"Dreamy Island Puzzler" (Looping)
"Brain Teaser" (Looping)
http://soundimage.org/puzzle-music-3/

I hope they are helpful!

Dude, I'm really surprised more here in this community aren't showing you some love for this. I've linked your website to some local filmmaking groups in my physical community. I can't thank you enough. I know how much time and effort goes into this type of stuff. 

9 minutes ago, kidzrevil said:

@Matthew Hartman the end game will always be in pursuit of better quality. I like to test things myself. Its how I learn new techniques to incorporate into my work.

being able to get 10 bit out of the file shows its benefits when grading

Fair enough. I hope you don't think I was being adversarial, I was genuinely curious. 

@mercer

This is an excellent exercise for this community. It gets us talking less about gear and getting more involved in the process of actual film making. There's a lot that we can teach one another here. 

One thing that I like to do in pre-production is pay very close attention to color harmony within the scene. I think a lot of inexperienced or less experienced cinematographers forget that this is definitely part of the cinematic equation.

It's good practice to come up with a harmonized color pallet/theme when thinking about your actors and the locations/set design and the narrative. This is usually thought of as the set designer's and wardrobe's responsibility, but there is cross over into the cinematographer's responsibility too. At the end of the day, the DP owns the image, and the director and producer is coming squarely for you when that image fails.   

The benefit of color harmony besides obvious resolve, attraction and readability, is there's going to be less grading and qualifying in post down the line. When one can, color is best to handle in pre-production. 

"Qualifying" means targeting portions of your image to grade independently. This can be done in several ways. In Lemetri, this is called "Secondary Color". 

Just some friendly suggestions. 

Personally, I'm favoring the more subtle grades. I think pushing too much contrast into this scene is equivalent of the narrative "trying too hard". 

6 hours ago, Geoff CB said:

Yes I do recommend practicing grading, especially masking, curves, and color wheels. Don't just throw a LUT on it. 

You'll never catch a colorist using pre-baked LUTS. Maybe as a starting point. The point being, OWN THE IMAGE. It is yours after all. 

1 hour ago, Mark Romero 2 said:

 

If you are both saying what I think you are saying, which is, "Let's just call it improving image quality instead of converting to 10-bit," then I am in agreement.

Exactly. 

1 hour ago, kidzrevil said:

I dont think we can upscale to 4K 10bit but I am extremely optimistic about downsampling 4K 8bit to 1080p 10bit with the assistance of neat video. Noise reduction works by averaging neighboring pixels to create new ones. This means by either doing NR in 4K & exporting to 1080p 10bit or downsampling to 1080 10bit from 4K and doing NR mathematically there are enough neighboring pixels for 1080p 10bit 4444

Anytime you are adding new sub sampling to a bitmap image, you are theoretically adding bit depth to it, which is just a way of saying adding new pixels that were not present in the original file. 

I'm still trying to figure what the end game of this is for you personally, besides obvious data gain/image quality. It sounds like you want your 8bit file to register as a 10bit file so that HDR is automatically triggered on YouTube playback? If that's the case you could just output your 8bit footage to a 10bit codec.  

Duotone

Warm & Cool

With online distribution it becomes very challenging, next to impossible to stop piracy. And if you can even track it down you then have to have the money for arbitration costs.

When you sign on to a network it becomes their IP and they have their boardroom full of lawyers to assist in protecting their IP. On the bright side, you get your check and/or royalty, not to mention any new projects that spawn from that exposure.  It seems as if losing strict control over your IP is almost the new norm. I mean even the big media networks can't stop it.

That being said, piracy is still very much illegal in most countries so technically speaking the laws still protect you. 

https://www.bradley.com/insights/publications/2012/03/international-copyright-protection-how-does-it-w__

7 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

In theory the NX1 is the best here

H.265 is double the efficiency of H.264 and it cranks to 160Mbit reliably with the hack.

That is equivalent to 320Mbit/s IPB H.264.

It's a very stable image.

I actually pull down a very stable 180Mbit and 200Mbit (HEVC) if I turn off other in-cam features. 

If you have the cash these monitors are calibrated and really, really nice. I have the 2K version.  

https://www.benq.com/en-us/monitor/video-post-production/pv3200pt/specifications.html

https://www.benq.com/en-us/monitor/photographer.html

18 hours ago, IronFilm said:

You're special!

Do you also know when the trailers might be coming out?

I don't but I can update you, or the cinematographer can update us here as he's a member of this site as well.