HD For Indies

ProVideo Coalition.com: Camera Log by Adam Wilt | Founder | Pro Cameras, HDV Camera, HD Camera, Sony, Panasonic, JVC, RED, Video Camera Reviews

Adam does his usual thorough rundown on the NEW AND REVISED version of the Panasonic 17" LCD display. Many improved features, but still 1280x768 - so no pixel for pixel full size 1080p view. There is a pixel for pixel unscaled viewing mode, which is interesting though.

Model # is BT-LH1760

Labels: hardware, Production

Village Blackout Cool quick-mount tent for video village blackout. Sets up and tears down super fast, watch the video for demonstration.

I picture having this and a 17", 1920 res Macbook Pro and Redcine running...maybe connected to an AJA IO HD and a JVC DTV1710CG monitor running FCP 6 on set to see what you're REALLY getting?

NICE option to have.

-mike

Thanks to Mark of Off Hollywood Digital for sending this in, they're planning on having one for their Red One kit.

Labels: Production

Needless prologue you can skip:
To all my American brethren, Happy 4th of July! Celebrate our indepence as you see fit. I have already joined my neighborhood parade & party (which was cancelled due to rain, but everybody showed up anyway and had a good time, which strikes me as perfectly South Austin/American reaction to adversity); and I'm going to watch fireworks tonight with a cute girl. What's a better day than THAT?

: D

To everybody else, have a nice and lovely Wednesday, this is all the blogging I'm doing today (holiday!)

----

So there's been a lot of controversy over the new shooting permit requirements for NYC - see this NYTimes article I mentioned in the blogwad the other day. Here's the meat of the matter:

New rules being considered by the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theater and Broadcasting would require any group of two or more people who want to use a camera in a single public location for more than a half hour to get a city permit and insurance.

The same requirements would apply to any group of five or more people who plan to use a tripod in a public location for more than 10 minutes, including the time it takes to set up the equipment.

Julianne Cho, assistant commissioner of the film office, said the rules were not intended to apply to families on vacation or amateur filmmakers or photographers.

Nevertheless, the New York Civil Liberties Union says the proposed rules, as strictly interpreted, could have that effect. The group also warns that the rules set the stage for selective and perhaps discriminatory enforcement by police.

“These rules will apply to a huge range of casual photography and filming, including tourists taking snapshots and people making short videos for YouTube,” said Christopher Dunn, the group’s associate legal director.

Mr. Dunn suggested that the city deliberately kept the language vague, and that as a result police would have broad discretion in enforcing the rules.


So at first blush, this sets off several alarm bells in my own head:
-potential for selective police enforcement - they don't like what you're up to? You're bounced.
-burdensome for indie/garage level efforts
-$1M production insurance - for >10 minutes on sticks? With my $300 DV camera and $40 sticks? That seems wacky
-how long does it take to get a permit? What if I'm trying to film reactions on the street to some current event and need more than 10 minutes on sticks- I gotta get a permit? Certainly that can't be obtained in a day.

Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing chimes in:

The ACLU warns that these rules are designed to be selectively enforced, and selective enforcement is most often aimed at brown people, protestors, and other people who face discrimination in everyday life.

Well put. The protestor one is the one that clangs the bells most in my head, in terms of preventing or thwarting socially valid documentary efforts. The ACLU also points out the story of an Indian man who was detained for not having a permit, but later found there were no guidelines for issuing permits, and he couldn't get a written explanation for why he was denied when he asked for a permit.

So there's two sides to this - the political/social/free speech rights side of this as discussed above, then the business, practical side of making movies and TV shows side of this. To get the latter perspective, I decided to check in with somebody on site - I reached out to my friend Mark Pederson of Offhollywood Digital (he's a producer/co-owner) to get his take on the matter. He was kind enough to sit down and take some time and write up the following:

=============

Mike -

I just wanted to send you some comments on recent press regarding new rules that New York City Mayor's Office of Film, Theater and Broadcasting (MOFTB) has under consideration.

Most of the "controversy" seems to be coming from the fact that the New York Civil Liberties Union says the proposed rules "set the stage for selective and perhaps discriminatory enforcement by police" and that tourists, amateur photographers, and would-be filmmakers could be forced to get a permit and $1 million dollars in liability insurance. Now, I know nothing about the New York Civil Liberties Union specifically, but I do believe that groups and organizations that fight for civil rights and liberties are extremely important, and I appreciate their concern. I do however, feel that almost all of the articles I have read really seem to be a bit "out of context" and really unbalanced. Headlines like "Permit May Be Required For Public Photography" are just ridiculous and in my opinion, poor journalism.

Currently, you do NOT need a permit (or insurance) to shoot "hand held" in the city. If you put your camera, any kind of camera, DV, HD, 35mm, 4K, whatever, on a tripod for ten minutes or more, you do need a permit (which you can NOT get without a liability policy with a minimum of $1M coverage).

Now, just so everyone is clear, New York does not charge ANYTHING for shooting permits. . Permits are FREE. And so is parking for your production vehicles. And so are police officers from the NYPD Movie and TV Unit when your project is shooting at an exterior location which requires traffic control, or has a scene with prop firearms, weapons or actors in police uniforms. Free. Over 20 years of shooting in New York - and on many under-staffed, under-budgeted feature films that suffered from typical lack of organization - I have NEVER been let down by MOFTB, and they have saved my butt on more that one occasion.

MOFTB has issued such permits for over 40 years and the process is remaining substantially unchanged - here's exactly what the proposed changes are:

The New Rules
The proposed rules would effect the following practical changes:

1) Film or still photography activity involving a tripod and a crew of 5 or more persons (at one site for 10 or more minutes) would require a permit, or the same activity among two people at a single site for more than 30 minutes. However, note that this situation is RARE for recreational photographers;

2) Applicants unable to meet the insurance requirement may be eligible for a waiver of insurance;

3) Still photographers engaged in "permitted" activity (activity where you need a permit) would require insurance. "Permitted" activity can include those where vehicles or equipment other than hand-held cameras are used.

So, let's put this is perspective.

You can still go out with your HDV camera, a full 35mm hand rig, or your new RED ONE 4K camera and shoot all over NYC WITHOUT a permit, for as LONG AS WANT if you are hand-held.

If you are a "crew of 2" - you can be at one site, with your camera ON A TRIPOD for up to 30 minutes WITHOUT A PERMIT.

And "Those guys standing across the street? Never seen them before. They're not with the two of us". Get it?

A "crew of 4 or less" - you can be ON A TRIPOD at one site for up to 10 minutes.

Again, PERMITS are free, you do need to carry a liability policy, which EVERY film and EVERY production company has - which by the way, you need to have just to RENT OFFICE SPACE in New York City. These rules were NOT designed to apply to families on vacation or amateur filmmakers or photographers. MOFTB works extremely hard to keep producers, film crews and residents happy. I am actually amazed they do what they do with such a small staff. Sometimes I complain about shooting in the city, it's hard to find "holding areas" for cast and crew and there's always the location on the 5th or 6th floor with no freight elevator, etc. - but how many city's can you close down whole streets and get a dozen police officers for free?

===========

Thanks Mark for taking the time to point all this out. We talked on the phone for a bit about this, and he also pointed out that NYC is very solicitous of film business, and NYC locations are typically much more affordable than jaded LA. The MOFTB also balances the desires of film/video shooters with respect for the neighborhoods - if one area has been inundated with productions, the office will declare that a "hot zone" and nobody can shoot for a month or two - to give the neighborhood a rest. Seems like a really good system.

So YES, selective law enforcement could still be a potential issue, BUT it sounds like MOFTB is pretty accomodating to film/video shooters. Get your insurance (anybody know what a one day $1M liability policy goes for in NYC?) and Mark yelled across the office to ask Aldey Sanchez (his biz partner) how much lead time a permit usually takes - "within the week" is what Aldey shouted back.

Oh - and you could always try the trick that Stu recommended in his excellent DV Rebel's Guide - set up your sticks in the back of a parked pickup or on a flatbed, and you're not blocking foot traffic on the sidewalk, so perhaps might not need a permit. Hmm - would this still fit under the new guidelines? Anybody that knows better, please chime in.

Anybody else have anything they want to say about this? Feel free to use the Comment link below or email me directly (mike [at] hdforindies [dot] com. Any particularly good stuff I'll fold into this article.

Labels: analysis, Production

I don't know diddly about audio production. Well, here's what I know:

1.) Get good sound.

2.) Get somebody good on set to handle it.

3.) Once burnt or echoed, It R Gonn, just like video (many many similarities to running too hot in both)

...so I don't do audio related stuff, other than to recommend don't use the built-in mike on your camcorder, odds are 99% it isn't that great (it is a common place manufactuers cheap out on cameras...because buyers don't pay much attention to it.). And get somebody good with good equipment.

OK, so that's what I know about audio. Oh - and just like video, Compression R Badd, M'kay?

That's the fun way to put, but as always the truth isn't so pithy - careful and light compression can be OK, but it limits your flexibility in post. Nothing succeeds like good source material, well balanced/exposed/noise free, with as little compression as possible in order to yield best final results and maximum room in post to have creative and technical flexibility and control. Some kinds of shots, and some kinds of post production processing, can survive more or less compression, depending. YMMV.

That's not nearly so pithy, is it?

Which leads me to this - a sound guy, Christian Dolan, came up with his own Top Ten audio related list after reading my 10 Things Not To Do.

sync.sound.cinema: The Fifteen [drops tablet]...Ten! Ten Commandments of Sound for Picture! (Part One)

sync.sound.cinema: The Fifteen [drops tablet]...Ten! Ten Commandments of Sound for Picture! (Part Two)

which references this:

An Open Letter from your Sound Department - A Production Sound Manifesto written by audio professionals

Good audio is worth having. If you're shooting on good, professional cameras (that have XLR inputs and DON'T compress the audio), I'd...hmm....not so sure if I'd say I'd ARGUE the point that it is OK to get good mikes, mix/balance, then run tethered back into the camera to record sync sound, but I'd certainly like to have a conversation about it. 

UPDATE

I'd asked why not go into the camera on set, and Christian Dolan came back with good answers:

Mike,

Most of what I wrote in the list was proselytizing, with a dash of ranting. The majority of what I do is corporate, industrial and reality, which is single system all the time, so it obviously works, but for features, I really feel that people should go the extra mile, especially considering that it may not add that much to the budget overall.

A) There is the quality issue, as measure by Jay Rose in that article that Bruce Allen linked to. I've done some of my own, non-scientific comparisons, and camera ADCs always seemed far noisier than a dedicated audio recorder.

For (non-narrative) TV, docs, and other programming with simple mixes (or whose audiences have different quality expectations), I think single-system is absolutely the way to go. It's simpler, direct, efficient.

For movies, though, things get more complicated in the mix. Generally, you will be applying some amount of signal processing, and in the case of adding gain and/or compression, you end up also raising the noise floor of the signal. With 16 bit audio (the only option in most cameras), the noise floor is higher than it is in 24 bit audio-capable recorders; throw in the self-noise of the camera's AD converters, and you're fairly limited in your range of gain before the noise floor becomes audible. When you start summing multiple tracks (as you definitely will in the mix), you'll be adding noise to noise. The more tracks you have, the more noise you'll be adding, which is why it's imperative to start with as quiet a recording as possible.

I think that the greater bit-depth argument may even carry over from HD, in that choosing 10 bit over 8 bit gives you much more latitude and wiggle room in post. (Of course, I am a audio guy, so take that one with a grain of salt:).

B) Confidence. With single-system, I set my levels with tone, tape down as many of the camera's audio switches as possible, and then cross my fingers. While I can listen to the headphone return, just about every camera I've ever listened to has had an incredibly noisy headphone output amp, which means that I have to do my critical listening off the mixer, dipping in here and there to make sure I'm still reaching camera. The noisy amp may mask subtle background noises (people talking, AC rumble,etc.), that become issues in post.

Plus, in my experience, every Sony broadcast-level camera mixed its audio tracks to mono to monitor. If I hear a crunchy buzz hit the audio, I can't tell if it's the wireless on track one, leaving the boom on two usable, or across both, rendering that take useless (unless you roll the tape back and manually switch the monitor output at the camera itself to check).

And even with the level-setting and taping off of controls, there may be a chance that a well-meaning, but very hurried cam op may bump an input setting (track one from me, track two now from the cam mic, still got audio, just sounds weird, why?) or an input level pot, giving me one more x-factor to troubleshoot.

With double-system, I have the audio recorder right in front of me. I can set,and more importantly, see, all of my audio levels. I can solo any input I want to see where that weird buzzing is coming from, and I can roll back to any take to check it without having to bother anyone else, or risk the "tape return" feature not quite doing what it's supposed to (that isn't a dig at camera at all. I've just seen it happen more than once where even veteran cam ops have rolled back to check a take, engaged the return, and ended up recording over some material).

C) Track count. As far as I know, just about every major SD/HD camera out there only accepts two line-level inputs. While two tracks can take care of most audio needs (indeed, the venerable Nagra never had more than two tracks, and countless classic films were recorded with that little Swiss tank), today's demands are changing, skewing towards more and more wireless mics. With single system, you must do a live mix on-the-fly for shots with more than two mics, which means that you end up with what you end up with. What happens if wireless #1 gives you an RF hit, spoiling the track that it was sharing with wireless #2, even though #2 was free and clear?

WWCD: Imagine a multi-camera movie shoot, where you have four cameras, but only one VTR. You have to do a "live switch" that is committed to the recording medium, without the benefit of iso-records to re-edit later. While this is all well and good for live TV, it doesn't make much sense for a narrative, where you want all the options you can have in the edit bay.

Well, as usual, I've blathered on for quite a while. I'm pretty new to tech writing; I guess economy of words will come with practice, but I'm certainly having a good time with the blog.

Thanks again for the links, and let me know if you need anything else.


Thanks Christian!

-mike

Labels: audio, Production

ProLost: Redrock Gets It

"Redrock Micro, maker of the popular M2 35mm lens adapter, is showing a new compact handheld rig at Cinegear Expo in LA today and tomorrow. Unless you snapped a photo of it at the show and put it on your blog today, the above is the first publicly shown image of the thing."

UPDATE: a reader sent in these pics so I wouldn't feel left out. Click each for larger view.

Labels: cameras, Production

Reader and long time emailer/contributor Bruce Allen went to the LA based Cinegear Expo this weekend, and submitted this detailed report. he also sent in a big bunch of photos as well. As someone who knows how much time it takes to do this kind of documentation, BIG THANKS to Bruce for taking the time. If anyone else went and has something good to add, please let me know.

You might also be interested in reading Mark Allen's report from the Red presentation at Cinegear as well.

UPDATE - John Ott also posted his own thoughts on CineGear at Making the Movie: CineGear Expo 2007

Below is Bruce's report:

==========

Codex digital recorder - pictures included. Light, small, nice, takes standard Anton Bauer battery power. The "mag" seems to be 2.5" notebook hard drives - they confirmed it was running RAID-3. Cost is supposedly competitive with a HDCAM SR deck. It has optical in and will be able to take RAW data from the Red, do very light JPEG2000 compression (lighter than REDCODE) and store it. It has tons of cool options - ethernet output, H264 proxies, etc. But you get the idea. Cool high-end recorder. They also had huge big uncompressed boxes, fancy workflow solutions, etc. But as far as indies go, I can see us renting a Codex for a day, offloading via Ethernet to our PC at night (their software can output all usual formats - dpx, Quicktime, etc), then returning it the next day. Pricing not set yet - I heard $60,000? Don't quote me.

Mike note - Matthew Jeppsen over at FreshDV has some more on this new device as well, and I regretfully only folded my own coverage into the Friday Blogwad.

Wafian - I saw the HR1 and HR2 boxen. Big fellas, but nicely packaged - fine for a studio or greenscreen shoot. They are renting them - they quoted me something like $500 (per 3-day week?) for the HR1 or $800 for the HR2 (not sure, need to confirm that). They also had a prototype smaller box (picture included). It will run off DC power (yaay). The final one will have a larger screen, be more compact, etc. August. Basically, they are the indie equivalent of the Codex. And friendly too.

Phantom HD camera - I played with the Phantom HD camera (you know, the 1000fps 2k one) at Photo-Sonics (just one of the places that had it). Very very nice, very compact, etc. Records to built-in RAM - can store 4.5 seconds worth of 1000fps 2k x 1k frames. RAM upgrade coming soon. You can review the footage on camera, scrolling through it with a little scroll wheel, etc. It shows you how far you are through it, how much space is used, etc. Connect it via ethernet to dump frames to computer. Rental quote from someone was $2500 per day including lens (a nice 20:1 Cooke, I think) and laptop, I think. Claimed ASA is approx 600 - they were shooting footage live at the show (mix of sunlight & shade) at 1000fps and were at around a 5.6 and 2/3.

Dalsa - remember there are 2 branches - the 4k cine camera, plus the rental department. First off, the cine camera - they had footage playing. It looked incredible. Latitude, etc was nice, shots were very clean, no fixed pattern noise, etc. They had one shot that was available light at night. Wow. Some noise of course but just looked like a slightly high speed film stock. Advantages of this camera over Red are claimed higher latitude, plus definite lack of CMOS motion warping and better sensor alignment for 2:35 (theirs sensor is 2:1 aspect ratio I think?). Next, the rental dept - for a start, yes they are renting Reds.

MIKE UPDATE Tuesday afternoon - Dalsa contacted me to say this is not the case. "We have no plans to rent Red cameras at our facility in LA." according to their spokesman. Apologies for any inaccuracies....or are they? See other update end of article. End update, resuming Bruce's coverage...

I asked them whether you could do something mostly on Red and then switch to their 4k camera for a few days. They obviously felt that their camera's image quality was higher but said yes, as long as you were not cutting directly from one to the other, it'd probably work. Finally, lenses - they had their slightly-anamorphic lenses on display - I played with a 50mm 1.4 one attached to their camera. It was very nice and had that nice oval bokeh that we love out of anamorphics. On a side note - ah man - love that optical viewfinder. Anyway... they are aiming at a set of 6, all under T2.0. Yes, they are PL mount, yes they are for rent. Yes, you could use them on a Red - if you were shooting a 2.35 feature that might be a very good idea because it gets you more usable pixels. They also had a beautiful set of non-anamorphic PL mount primes - mostly Leica glass, plus Canons for the extreme zooms. They feel that the Leica glass is superior to Zeiss and Cooke for 4k acquisition. Again, no reason you can't rent those for your Red.

What else? Lots of Vipers running around - they are small and cute. Wish I'd had time to play with them. The amazing TechnoDolly thing was there again (like a motion controlled Technocrane). Lots of people with Modula HD mini-cameras. Didn't see Silicon Imaging. Red Rock was there with a prototype matte-box ($500, will have swing-away now and 3 rotating filter stages, designed to work with the Red). They also had a HV20 rig similar to what I am building. Many cool follow focus devices running from the Preston to the Bartech, but I didn't see the Red Rock one there (no time!).

I Saw a 18K HMI - it was successfully illuminating the underside of a tree 20 feet away in broad daylight. I played with the always-impressive weatherproof and dual-voltage Kobold HMIs and the O'Connor 1030HD. Looked around at the other LCD monitors - still nothing that competes with mine, yaay. I stopped by Schneider and talked to them about their DigiCon - you know, the latitude improving filter. The thing seems cheap for what you get. I'm going to have to rent some different grades and test.

Also checked out a crazy rotating iris gizmo that gives a supposedly "3D" effect (www.inv3.com) - believe it or not, it actually worked, although it was weird as shit. Basically, the rotating iris thing gives a still shot a tiny bit of parallax motion by, uh, going round and round. It's kinda like the stupidest thing you've ever seen and the cleverest thing you've ever seen at the same time. I'm not sure if I'll be using it on my next shoot, but it did get me thinking a lot about how humans perceive depth - those little movements of the head that we do are important - and also why the gradual dolly shoot has the psychological effect of sucking you into the picture. The human visual system is a fascinating thing...

Otherwise, played with the Petroff follow focus and matte box, the Vocas matte box (very nice, very light and very pro), Innovision's little "bird's eye" camera support tower (not much to rent - was something like $250 per day?), lots of LED lighting systems, the usual impressive Steadicam rigs. P+S technik were doing a demonstration of their Skater-Dolly hooked up to a simple motion control system - it seemed cheap but effective. But I didn't notice their 35mm adapters being talked about much. Abelcine did have the competing Movietube ST. But my tests with the SGpro have really satisfied me - I really don't think you can get much higher quality without going up to a Red or something like that. Otherwise, I saw and photographed a S.two but didn't have time to check it out properly. I had bought a whole bunch of Zacuto stuff on their 25%-off show special for my HV20 rig (yep, I'm going with that whole shoulder-mounted 35mm adapter thing) and was weighed down at that point...

ADDENDUM: he sent this in later:

Finally, the Wafian people were demonstrating the Cineform beta codec on a Mac laptop. So they are trying to get it working with the Mac world. I don't think it was playing full framerate at full res yet (something to do with the codec not being multi-core aware yet).

=========

Mike's Comments - first off, BIG UPS to longtime reader/contributor Bruce Allen for taking the time to write all this up and submit annotated pictures - I welcome and invite well credentialled/qualified/informed submissions from readers.

Dalsa's new smaller form factor camera (as further detailed in the for-pay NAB Premium report) improves their package size and shootability, and if you can team that up with the new much smaller Codex recorder that can do 4K, that's a substantially new package.

The Wafian stuff looks very interesting for an HD-SDI based, Windows keyed green screen shoot (and other usages). I still have a bunch of Phantom HD footage to process sitting around on a hard drive somewhere, it is a very attractive prospect for high speed, high resolution digital cinematography (not to pimp it too much, but the NAB 2007 Premium report includes further info and a long interview with Mitch Gross about the camera's improvements).

Viper with a Wafian (for tethered) or Codex recorder is a very interesting new option as well.

This is definitely an exciting time to watch the progress in digital cameras and recording options. Of course, how reliable and cost effective all this new gear is in the field is a whole other level of analysis to be done.

: )

-mike

UPDATE WEDNESDAY - Then there is this quote on Reduser.net from someone else visiting Dalsa's NAB booth:

I asked the Dalsa rep if they purchased any Reds for the rental department, and he says 'No. We're waiting until they produce a final camera so we can do a comprehensive evaluation. But we're not at any rental disadvantage, because we've already got several reservation holders who've agreed to 'consign' their cameras for rentals as soon it ships.'

So it sounds like they've been keeping their options open (or were at NAB), and have been (or were) considering renting Reds definitely, but may not have publicly committed to doing so. Bruce left CineGear with the impression from the booth reps that they were definitely going to rent them. So MAYBE the rental reps and the PR folks aren't on the same page.

-mike

Labels: acquisition, cameras, Cineform, hardware, Production

...so I'm catching up with my good friend and ex-business partner Patrick Curry the other week - we worked together at frogdesign ten years ago, he was the mad web genius that was largely responsible for frog winning an ADDY Award for their website (I think he was about 19 at the time). Patrick is one of those massively technically talented but also highly creative folks most of us envy because they have such Mad Skillz. Except when they are one of your best friends for just that reason. We used to geek out on movie stuff loooooong into the night.

Projected reader intervention: "Whatever whatever Mike, tell me what's up with this $25,000 cash prize....and what do you mean by 'John Woo-esque?'"

OK OK, lets get to the meat of this matter. Patrick has been working at Midway in Chicago as a Senior Game Designer on the first game based on the work of, and with the direct involvement of, action movie legend John Woo. It is called Strangehold. It is...well hey, let me just ask Patrick - this is the email & chat based interview we did, my questions in italics, all bolding mine for emphasis:

Mike: What’s up with Stranglehold?

Patrick Curry: The most important thing to know is that Stranglehold is the first true John Woo game. We’ve teamed up with John Woo to bring his style of over the top action cinema into action game form. At this point I think it’s safe to say that we’ve nailed it. And, of course, we had to get Chow Yun-Fat to star in the game, since it’s based on the same characters from John Woo's "Hard-Boiled."

M: Cool - so who’s making it?

P: Midway is the publisher, and we at the Midway Chicago Studio are developing the game.

When’s the game coming out? What do I need to play it?

Stranglehold is coming out this fall for the Playstation 3, Xbox 360, and PC. You’ll need a pretty beefy Windows PC to play it… I’m afraid I don’t have the minimum specs to share yet, but I can send them your way once I get them. As for the PS3 and 360 versions of the game, I highly recommend an HD TV and surround sound, but it will still work on a regular old TV.

At one point you mentioned you guys were trying to get a copy of the movie Hard Boiled included with the game - what ever became of that?

The Playstation 3 Collectors Edition comes will a full, remastered, high-def version of Hard-Boiled. The collectors editions will retail for $69.99, so for ten bucks more you get a whole movie! I believe this is the first time anyone has done this -- a game and a film on the same disc, not to mention an HD movie. So that’s pretty awesome.

Hard Boiled in HD? Schweet! OK, lets get to the juicy stuff - so what’s up with this contest? What's the deal?

The contest is to make the most John Woo-esque short film. It can be just about anything you want, so long as it’s not longer than two and a half minutes. The winners will be picked by John Woo himself, and the grand-prize winner gets $25,000 and a bunch of other cool swag.

"John Woo-esque." Love it. OK, so when’s the deadline?

The deadline is in less than a month, June 25th, so you need to get cracking on your short.

(Mike note: the contest had been under way already when Patrick and I had the discussion that lead to the obvious conclusion that I should be covering this. But hey - that's 2 1/2 weeks - Peter Jackson shot, posted, and delivered in 4K the 12 minute short Crossing The Line in that much time! You only need to make a MAXIMUM of 2 1/2 minutes, and deliver 320x240. You gonna let that punk upstage YOU? ; D )

Yikes, that is tight. What’s the submission format?

We’re doing the contest online via MySpace, so you need to submit a 320x240 clip in MPEG4 format (Divx, Xvid) at 30fps. Please compress it to be under 100 MB. I’d hang onto a higher-res version if you have it, but that’s what you have to submit to enter the contest.

OK, easy enough, what are the rules? How's this work?

Well all the usual fine-print legal stuff. The website is the best place for all that: http://www.myspace.com/strangleholdgame

Yeah Yeah whatever great. So what do you get if you WIN?

John Woo himself is going to select the big winner. That person gets $25,000. As the John Woo Selected winner you also get your film shown on Spike TV, a trip for two to Chicago to interview with Spike and a chance to geek it up with us at Midway, a framed Hard Boiled poster signed by John Woo, a copy of Stranglehold, and a free cell-phone for six months.

It’s quite a haul.

On top of that there’s a $1,000 audience prize voted on by people visiting the Stranglehold website. That also comes with the cell phone, a copy of Stranglehold, and a signed poster.

Nice! Who thought this madness up?

Our really-clever marketing folks thought it up. We’re doing a game with John Woo after all, so it was a really natural fit. John’s super psyched about it, since he’s all about supporting up and coming film-makers. And of course we think it’s cool as hell because it’s not every day you can get someone like John Woo to watch your short films. I’m still bummed I can’t enter. :-(

(Mike insert - and this I know to be true - Patrick is a hard core movie geek, even took a bunch of film classes at UT, and lets just say that Patrick is the Right Kind of People to be working on a John Woo game.)

OK, but so who are these preliminary judges?

Ah good question! A panel of folks will do the initial judging and narrow the entries down to the top ten. They will include some of John Woo’s associates, people here at Midway, and a group of people from MySpace. They will narrow down the top ten entries and then John will select from there. The top 10 will also go online July 9th when voting starts for the audience award winner. The entries will be judged on three criteria: 40% quality, 40% homage to John Woo and 20% creativity.

---end interview---

So this does definitely sound promisng - $25K and a bunch of swag for a 2 1/2 minute short - that's a reasonable ROI for the risk involved to produce an entry. I've been hearing about other contests to edit together a music video, or make such and such company a promo, and I felt it was kind of lame and manipulative and not-quite-right - "Hey, do all this work that we'll massively benefit from and we'll give you some skittles & beer!" Uncool. This I can get behind, in part because I know some of the folks involved, but also because the reward is, well, rewarding, and commensurate to the effort.

And in the end, it is just a promotional contest, so it isn't as if they are going to be milking your work to death - plus you get a decent chunk of change if you win. And at the end of the day, if you don't win, you don't get the audience award, you don't even get in the top ten shown on the site....how much fun could you have putting together a Woo inspired short anyway? I saw the Grindhouse trailer competition stuff, they clearly had a blast making it.

This just reeks of an HVX200 job to me - use that overcrank, folks! Since it'll end up on Spike, which AFAIK only offers standard def, you might as well shoot DVCPRO50 for 24p and DVCPRO HD 720p60 for the slomo and use FCP 6's Open Format Timeline to edit those together (or whatever, why not 720p for everything if you have enough P2 cards?). Too bad Red isn't out and full featured - 120fps 720p would be, well....The Killer. Ahem.

And probably hit it up with some Optical Flow action to slow it down even more, using After Effects CS3 or Shake. They want it as a 30fps file, not 24fps, so grit your teeth and export at 30fps even though shooting at 24 will feel right (and help the slowdown factor). Tell yourself that when you win, you'll send them a Digibeta with proper 3:2 pulldown added to your 24p masterpiece.

Real bullet hits (well, not REAL, but practical squibs) are best, but digital squibbing is the new greenscreen I hear. Go back, watch all the old Woo movies, distill the essence, then come up with something new enough to be fresh (a shot for shot remake of the table flipping, pistol in air scene is NOT going to win, I betcha), but a fresh twist that hits all the notes in a pleasing but not pedantic way is what I'D guess would have the best chances for success.

I'm picturing people going further and doing wire work with roto removal to accentuate the dual guns a' blazin' leaping hang time.

The big deal is that it needs to be John Woo-esque - an homage, not a parody. Think about it - John Woo wants to find a new indie filmmaker that makes something he likes and feels represents his style - so do it with a straight face, deep thought, otherwise I'll have to go all flock of white doves on your belittling *ss. Go back and look at the George Lucas Star Wars Fan Film competition - make something that appeals to Woo, not just you.

So think about your plot, make sure it is under 2 1/2 minutes, master it to a decent SD format at least (DVCPRO 50 or ProRes, anyone?), don't forget to sprinkle some luv on it in Color (or After Effects, or combustion, or use Colorista or Magic Bullet Looks; or a Pablo or Quantel if you have access). Make it look as good, as real, as professional, and as John Woo as you can.

Woo Hoo! This'll be fun. I wish I had the time to make one. So go out and start writing and start shooting this weekend.

I'd love to hear everyone's ideas on best tools, best John Woo homage moments to recreate (be it composition, shooting style (gun or camera), plot elements, etc.) - post away using the Comment link below!

I thought this was a cool enough deal I wrangled an ad sale to them, so you'll get a chance to be reminded of what you should be doing in your spare time up at the top of the site for the next few weeks or so until the contest is over.

For indie moviemakers and want-to-be's, isn't this a prime opportunity to get out there and practice your skills? Grab your thoroughly dog-eared copy of the DV Rebel's Guide (you DO have a dog earred copy, RIGHT?) and get busy! REAL indies can produce in a hurry...and the clock is ticking towards this Deadline....and hmmm...wouldn't THAT be a good title?

-mike

UPDATE Friday

Seriously, this is the perfect DV Rebel's Guide project - Stu has chapters specifically on weapons, muzzle flashes, bullet hits, filming with guns in public places (without getting arrested or scaring people), etc.

Also, you can see some HD trailers of the Stranglehold game on this site, just search for Stranglehold in the search field (no direct links possible, durn it).

-m

Labels: contest, DIY, Production

Leopard 9A343 Gallery | 19.jpg

They DO pay attention! This is a screen grab from an unreleased build of Leopard - note "HD 709" that is the native high defintion video colorspace - this bodes well that Apple is paying attention to our needs...

Labels: Apple, OS X, Production

EFPlighting�Introduction

Found this one via FresHDV - a good overview site on lighting for field production. Good for beginners & intermediate shooters.

-mike

Labels: Production

FresHDV Test Bench - Steadybag by Visual Departures at FresHDV

The Steadybag is a simple camera support system for film or video cameras, similar in concept to a bean bag and available in several sizes. I have been using both the 3lb and 7lb models for a few months now. Originally I was only going to review the smaller model, but after they kindly overnighted the 3lb review unit to me and I had a chance to use it, I was impressed enough to immediately purchase the larger 7lb model at B&H.

Read on, a good tool for the small camera DIY set.

-mike

Labels: Production

Another day, another post-midnight note taking session.

short version - LOVED color on HVX200, the JVC looked better than my first impressions indicated, setting up gear is Fraught With Horror when you haven't done proper legwork. We got LUCKY we got everything to work. Woops, lost like three paragraphs here. This'll have to do.

The facts: Zane met me a little after 8am and we planned on building a couple of RAIDs with new drives that had arrived priority Fed Ex the day before, and using a couple of enclosures I brought from home I'd dissassembled and removed the drives from. We sit down with a couple of screwdrivers and 16 little bracket parts that require 4 screws each, and discovered that the new drives were...wrong. ATA not Serial ATA. Sigh. Another priority overnight FedEx wasted. Ugh.

So we bailed on that and set out to get all the capture stations up and rolling smoothly, and started assigning computers to cameras. I'd asked a bunch of folks to show up and help capture, and in the end, I got 5 volunteers:

-Rita Sanders, editor on the doc Slam Planet that debuted at SXSW that I did some post work on
-Neil Halloran, local filmmaker and client of mine, who was INCREDIBLY gracious and generous to let me borrow not just his person for most of Saturday, but also his COMPLETE G5 based editing system, including his 19" JVC studio HD monitor.
-Lary Cotten, who deep geeks deeper than anyone I know (and I mean that in the best way), CTO of OpenLabs, makers of bogglingly phenomenal pro audio gear that mashes a computer with touchscreen into an musical keyboard
-Craig Negoescu, co-founder of OpenLabs, and like Lary and myself, an ex-frogdesign employee (he was one of the handful who started the Austin new media office where I worked)
-Jenn White, a friend and local DoP who ended up running the Varicam a good portion of the day while I captured the output from it

The plan was to capture the uncompressed output of the cameras, either via HD-SDI or through a converter attached to the HD analog component outputs of the cameras. Either AJA HD10A converters were used, or the analog HD inputs on my BlackMagic Multibridge Extreme or through an AJA HD10A converter (HD analog component to HD-SDI) to an HD-SDI capture card, either BMD or AJA.

Why? Becaue ZERO compression artifacts since all these sources ARE before compression, beause you get full raster (1080i HDV is only 1440 pixels wide, not the 1920 most assume, for instance), and is 10, not 8 bits of color depth (more subtle color choices available - can your camera reproduce them?). Of course, uncompressed capture is only viable under limited circumstances, such as on a studio set, greenscreen set, or BIG set that already had a video village type of need.

Please keep in mind these are the random floaty brain bits of an exhausted guy after another 14-15 hour day on set. These are preliminary notes and observations, and don't have the qualifying wrapper of serious analystical comparisons and analysis - these are my gut reactions at this late hour.

Duly disclaimered, read on:

NOTES ON SHOOT;

Adam Wilt, Camera King on this shoot, who has a better trained and and more experience in these things than I, commented on some footage we viewed (and I missed a bunch, but here is some):

-ADAM on 18 vs 35 mbit on the F350 - "18 looked like a bit more degradation when sitting 2 feet away from screen, 18 looks better than I would have expected" - (I'm curious about 18 here vs. JVC 19 mbit?). In motion they both looked good when viewed from 15 feet away, but looking at stills, BIIIIIIIIIG difference. (I thought 25mbit HDV from XL H1 held up surprisingly well against 35mbit F350. But F350 is a COMPLICATED camera, and it just started shipping a few weeks ago, and none of our crew had spent huge gobs of time with it).

-F350 harder to focus, something strange about pulling focus with this - a lot closer to the 1/3" focus than 2/3" in the focusing ability - is it viewfinder or depth of field? Viewfinder was hard to use - contrast was all the way down in viewfinder, made it tougher to focus

The thing that panasonic does better is naturalistic color and good gamma, and skin tones (going into overexposure it doesn't blow straight out like the Sony (even F350), skin tones going to overexposure is NICE

----------

-F350 reportedly has only 4:2:0 amount of information in the 4:2:2 stream coming out of the HD-SDI, when asked to explain at 10pm after an 8am crew call, I blurted "It's like saving a GIF as a TIFF." to which I'd now add "...and then smiling like you did a great thing."

-the question that popped into my head - after a CURSORY examination of some of the footage (I ended up running the Varicam capture all day today, so I thought all the footage looked great since that was what was in front of me), I went and looked at some Z1U footage. Comparatively, eww. But hey, whaddaya expect when one camera costs 15-20 times more than the other?

-I then thought about this - esp. on the cameras that don't produce color well at first blush (and based on EXTREMELY PRELIMINARY GLANCING WITHOUT EXTENDED TESTING, EXTENDED "I RESERVE THE RIGHT TO CHANGE MY MIND DISCLAIMER DISCLAIMER), I'd put category of in the "not so great/not so pleasing color rendition" the GY-HD100U and the Z1U.

ANYWAY, for the cameras that don't do nice pleasing color with low noise, even capturing uncompressed (and I gotta look at the uncompressed footage), my gut says it is of lesser value to go to the trouble of capturing uncompressed (see about troubles below) from these cameras, better off going compressed (or uncompressed) from a better camera. that's my gut vibe now, I'll have to see how it turns out later. Because...

...recording uncompressed to disk is fairly complicated. You can say "Well hell, you just buy a G5, a Sonnet E4P card, and 4 or more drive RAID, a BMD or AJA card and away you go!" To which I say, "Kinda sorta." On they fly, later in the day, we decided to shoot some tethered (record uncompressed to disk via Mac with HD-SDI capture card) footage from outside the building. Problem - it's about 175 foot cable run from where the Macs were set up to where we wanted to shoot. We hooked up two HD-SDI cables and used a barrel adaptor to link'em together. We took the BlackMagic Multibridge Extreme box (remember all the brains 'n guts are inthe box, the card is barely anything, just a connector) outside, and run that long HD-SDI back to another capture Mac in the studio. Hooked it up, fired it up, and....nothing. Changed to an HD-SDI camera (not component analog) and....something, but jibberish. I then realized the problem could lie in:
1.) the long cable run, esp. with a barrel adaptor
2.) something misconfigured in the Multibridge
3.) If something were misconfigured in the Multibridge, I'd have to troubleshoot it, and possibly take my laptop out and hook it up via USB to configure it until I got it working...with the G5 200 feet away.
4.) Or it could be a problem with the capturing Mac

...so I bailed on tethered, uncompressed recording, since in addition to the trouble I was having at the moment, I'd be having to switch the HD-SDI cable from capture Mac to capture Mac to put in the right capture bins, or straighten it out later, or possibly troubleshoot any new difficulties.

Now, on a "normal" (if there is such a scenario) shoot wanting to shoot uncompressed, there would largely be one chunk of technical troubleshooting and then you'd be good until something went wrong or broke.

So I bailed on it. Tethered capture to uncompressed is a hassle - gotta have all that extra gear out on set, it's noisy, sucks a ton of power, requires another person to operate, whine whine bitch moan and YEAH, it is a pain. So think twice, nay nine times before going to the trouble.

And practive BEFOREHAND. I could have easily spent 2-5 more days prepping, testing, etc. Only becauase I've been playing with this stuff for 2+ years is it even sane for me to have tried this. To have only failed on a 1080i50 vs 1080i60 issue for a few shots, and had to cancel one test, ain't bad at all I figure, and I was LUCKY. There were many, many possible points of failure in this ordeal today.

FYI, unlike last year, switching frame rates on Varicam didn't crash Macs attached to it at the time. Either an AJA vs. BMD thing (BMD trouble last year), or

-when I lamented to Nate that I'd had a few problems today, Nate said don't sweat it, we'd done better than he'd expected when he heard what we were trying to do. Boy, that helped!

-along those lines, I hoserated myself by NOT Sticking To The Plan. I'd sat down with a spreadsheet and carefully calculated out which Macs, with which capture cards, with which RAIDs, with which RAID cards, would be cobbled together and record from which camera. What size computer monitor, whether it could run out a computer LCD with the video image on it, the RAID speed, the card's capture capabilities, all factored in. It was very specific and limiting. At one point, I'd plotted out that the Z1U should go to the Quad G5 with the Multibridge Extreme. I figured heck with it and used a different Mac running through an AJA HD10A converter - big mistake, the HD10A doesn't do 50i, so I had to have that Mac sit out of some capturing.

GEAR: Oh, MAN, I had a ton of different stuff! A sample listing of gear used:

-Quad G5 2.5 GHz
-Dual 2.3 GHz PCI-X G5
-Dual 2.0 GHz PCI-X G5 (multiple)
-Dual 2.5 GHz PCI-X G5 (multiple)
-AJA Kona2 (multiple)
-AJA Kona3 (and why does the Kona LH have analog HD input and this doesn't?)
-AJA HDP
-AJA HD10A (LOVE these! Had two on set)
-BMD Multibridge Extreme card/breakout box
-BMD DeckLink HD Pro Single Link PCI-X
-BMD DeckLink HD Pro Dual Link PCI-X
-BMD DeckLink HD Pro Dual Link PCIe
-MacGurus 5 bay eSATA port multiplying enclosure with five Seagate NL35 400GB drives
-MacGurus 5 bay eSATA port multiplying enclosure with five Hitachi 400 GB drives
-MacGurus Burly Box enclosures (two 4 bay enclosures) with 8 unknown drives (Seagate 7200.8's if he got what I recommended)
-two arrays comprised of Firmtek Seritek 2 bay enclosures with Seagate 7200.8 drives (set up two of'em, for 4 drive array, partitioned at 560GB to be sure it's fast enough)
-LaCie Biggest S2S 5 bay enclosure (went unused, didn't need after all)
-Trans International Mini-G 4 bay SATA enclosure (one I did a review of)
-huge, dim, blurry, 80-90 pound Power Computer PowerTron 24" CRTs that I never, ever, EVER want to lift again
-Apple 15 or 17" LCD, old plastic style (went unused)
-Apple 23" LCDs (multiple)
-Dell 2405 24" LCDs (multiple)
-Apple 30" LCD (ooooooooooh, I want one - it's so big you could crawl into it through the screen.)
-Sonnet Tempo 4+4 SATA cards
-Sonnet Tempo 8 port eSATA card
-Soonet E4P cards (in both Quad G5s)
-JVC 19" broadcast HD CRTs
-Pansonic 17 or 18" broadcast CRTs with HD-SDI and component inputs, and built in waveform - LOVED these, but Jordan said they cost $-$5K
-then of course the cameras:
JVC GY-HD100U
Sony HVR-Z1U
Panasonic HVX200
Panasonic Varicam
Canon XL H1
Sony F350 (the new XDCAM HD)

HD10A thoughts -
GOOD: rockingly small, lightweight, easy to use, has HD-SDI passthrough (smart!)
BAD: no 50i support (I got bit by that), requires use of dip switches on bottom (doesn't auto-detect in some cases), a touch pricey these days

Multibridge Extreme - a bit complicated since it does so much. Took me about 15 minutes of troubleshooting, even after working extensively with BMD products for a couple of years, to figure out that selecting analog inputs had to be done in the Preferences Pane, not in FCP (or if it is in FCP, I didn't know where to look. Of COURSE, I didn't read the instructions, why do you ask?)

-AJA HDP, BlackMagic Multibridge Extreme's DVI output, and BMD's HDLink - great for checking focus on set, not so great for interlaced or true 24p footage, not sufficient for very fine/finicky color correction work - poor black levels, impossible to calibrate by standard video means, JVC 17" CRT too close to price competitive - just get the real thing rather than a simulator for COLOR, but for DETAIL, they can't be beat for color accuracy, fidelity, black levels, etc.

Is it worth capturing lower level cameras uncompressed? I'm kinda thinking not, just seeing their compressed output. Even without compression artifacts, there are still artifacts.

The HVX200, which was ranking low in resolution tests, and was described as noisier than many if not all others (I'll have to prove that, may well be wrong), looked GREAT as raw footage. Colors were just a bit off from other cameras. I'd think about capturing his uncmopressed. Or at least, the Z1U I probalby wouldn't, dunno on the GY-HD100U. XL H1 looks pretty darned good with HDV footage.

BUT is Varicam worth capturing uncompressed, ever? In theory the answer is a clar yes - you gain:

10 vs 8 bits/pixel color depth
none vs. moderate compression
1280 vs.. 960 recording pixels

Also, specs aren't everything. While the HVX200 kept sinking in the ratings in the objective tests (Chroma DuMonde, etc.), when I saw footage I LOVED it - colors look vivid and real in CineLink-D. Now, liking the color reproduction of a camera CAN be a subjetive thing. But nobody chimed in saying they liked the HD100U, Z1U, or XL H1 color reproduction better. I likes it.

But I'll have to refer to footage and guage for myself.

OK, I just hit the point of about to fall asleep on keyboard.

this should keep you busy for awhile.

No pics tonight, too much work to do now.

All this is totally random, incompete, and inconclusive.

Thunk.

Labels: acquisition, Production, TX HD Shootout