Clark Nikolai

I developed a technique that works well for this. Basically it's to upres it to HD and do a smart deinterlace. This way you control the deinterlace and uprezzing instead of them. (I use Final Cut for this but probably any NLE would work.) There are probably several ways to do this but here is my method. -Duplicate footage outside of Final Cut. Bring both in. -Put one copy in an HD progressive timeline. (Same frame rate.) - Lay the other copy above it. - Turn down the audio of one of them. - On the lower one, in FCP inspector, check Deinterlace and choose the Field Dominance Override to Lower. - On the upper one, do the same but set the Field Dominance Override to Upper. - On the upper one, set Opacity to 50%. - Output to ProRes and make your H.264 from that. Some notes: This method blends the two fields together. Most footage should look good but if the shutter speed was set very high at the time of shooting there'll be a double image. This will of course be pillar boxed in a 16:9 frame.

This is something I find as well. When I first got an editing computer at home (MacPro in the miniDV days) I had dial-up so would only check emails on a separate computer. Later when I got ADSL and could connect more than one computer I decided that it was too distracting and kept the edit computer offline and used the other one as the general computer, email, web browsing, etc. That was good for a few years. Then the laptop got too old to run some new things and I ended up making the MacPro the single computer for everything so it had to be online. Big mistake, way more distractions. Say I'm in the middle of concentrating on a scene, there's all the subtle things you have to notice in the footage to make creative decisions that you have to muster up, then you get interrupted by an email coming in. Another thing is when things get tough it's natural to avoid it but you have to force yourself to stick to it and figure it out. When distraction is easy you can avoid it easily. You can tell yourself that you're just taking a break but a real break would be not involving a computer (going for a walk, etc.) I read about how David Lynch meditates every day and has for decades. This might be why he's so prolific. (I also have a theory about the increased diagnoses of ADD in young people. Maybe they're just normal but living in a time when their environment is more distracting than previous generations and to manage.)

I'm impressed too after having watched some of those same films on standard definition TV years ago. The new scans of the old films are amazing. I was working on a project recently where I was wanting a 1960s and '70s film look applied in post. At first I was looking at adding grain, scratches and instability(gate weave) but then realized, the look of old films now is of high quality scans of film so scratches and instability are no longer what people associate with old films.

I agree. Since Red's patent doesn't apply to uncompressed raw, and storage is so cheap now, new cameras could be including internally saved uncompressed CinemaDNG and be totally legal.

About a year ago I found an old Olympus Pen EE in a box of junk. It's very cool as it does half frame and has the photocell (that powers it without any battery) surrounding the lens which makes it look pretty interesting. I've been shooting with Rollei Superpan 200 film. It's fine grained so makes up for the half frame. (Not that I'm avoiding grain or anything.) It's fun to use. I find the lens is really good for half body portraits. Landscapes are fine (but a less interesting topic for me). It's partly shooting on film and the cost of that which makes shooting with it somehow special. Also the look of it is a conversation piece when asking someone to pose. The aperture and shutter speed are automatic, only the focus is manual (which I sometimes forget to set.) When I first started using it I was intentionally shooting retro subject matters to go with the look but now I just shoot anything even if there is modern elements in the frame. It's part of the "look of today" I suppose. I always take a digital picture of the same thing when shooting with it. I suppose to have some instant gratification but also as a backup in case the film image didn't turn out or something. Also as a good comparison of the two mediums.