Hiya Queeq.
Yes, this was the second year that myself, and my two other film buddies took part in it. Last year, the three of us were stationed on a team that was organized by someone about 35 miles from where we live. The genre the guy drew at the banquet was "Drama" so he wanted to do a Zombie film....which made no sense because a Zombie film is so over done and hardly a drama in my book, but whatever. We were responsible for writing and shooting most of it. Then, as we ended, the team leader said "Thanks guys. I'm really excited to start chopping the footage. I have a great Sophomore High School student who's gonna edit the film on Window's Movie Maker."
.....Yep, we knew it, we're screwed. And sure enough, the film was an absolute mess.
So after that, we decided this year we'd enter as our own team, learn from the mistakes we made last year, and adjust how we go about our weekend in terms of structure. A few nights ago, all 31 film's from the 48 hour competition were screened at a movie theater which we atteneded.
I can safely say, giving my honest, complete unbiased opinion, that I would rank us in the top 5 this year. I'm extremely proud of what we did this time around, and the movie came out terrific. Our genre was "adventure serial." There were a few other films that I think will beat out ours just in terms of "quality." It looked like something you would see in an actual movie, which I'm assuming they probably had a ridiculous 20,000 dollar camera. We shot ours using cameras that were 3 grand a piece, since that's the most we can really afford.
But all in all, this year was great, and I'm sure we'll do it again next year. We probably won't find out who wins until September 12th, as that is that day all the awards were announced last year. But either way, I can walk away from it this year knowing that we did a really solid job and came out with something we were happy with.
Yeah, I'd like to see it.
And nowadays you don't need expensive camera's to make your film look like a million bucks. I'ven doing some commercial and short corporate films lately on the Canon DSLR 5D... now with the proper lenses that thing makes stuff look almost as good as film. The body is about $1800, add another $2000 for a couple of primes and you can make stuff look totally awesome. I have colleague professional looking completely stunned seeing that quality. It's all full HD, with a depth of field that is so shallow it'll make your mouth
water (using the proper lens of course).
You can rent those for about $150 a day... cheap cheap cheap and great great great. You do have to find a way to do the audio though, but that can be worked around.
You're absolutely right.
The camera I use to my preference, is a Canon XL2. Then I dial it in at 24 frames per second. This was the camera I always used at school, and I'm saving up right now so I can own it myself pretty soon. I'd like to go bigger and better, but it's a great camera that will suit my budget for the time being and within what I can afford.
However, in the film festival, we didn't use the canon, but instead used my friend's high end camera, which I don't quite like as much. The focus on it blows, and it doesn't handle filming in the dark all that well, but it's still cost them 3 grand.
Give me a few days to get the video up online, and I'll send you all a link to it. I gotta get the file over at my buddie's house, where I edited it together. It's on his computer since we had our group stationed over there, so I'll need to transfer it on to my hard drive.
Usually after I'm shooting, when I edit, I color correct the hell out of it. There's another trick I do, where I double my footage on the time line, overlap it, drop the opacity on the top one, and add a 25% Gausian Blur, to help give the blurry illusion that film has. Not too blurry of course, but film always has those really smooth edges, and this trick helps that a lot. That, along with shooting in 24 fps at 16x9, always looks great.
About a month ago, I had one of the worst shooting experiences of my life. I was doing cinematography, as well as editing for a short film called "VANILLA."
The guy directing it was nice, but he hasn't a clue what he's doing when it comes to post production, or cinematography. He wanted a lot of it hand held, which is fine, but the opening shot featured me shooting at an impossible angle looking down, which trying to keep the camera steady was a real pain, so I wanted to use a tripod, but nope....
Then I told him about adding the film effects and color correction, but it's like he didn't know what the hell I was saying and so he said he didn't want to mess with it, which is a shame.
These pictures here are a side by side of his version, (on the left) and what mine would have looked like (on the right) if I could have added the effects I wanted to add. Keep in mind, this scene is early morning, and the character is just waking up, so I tried to accommodate for the early morning hours, and how the sun is more of a goldish color in the morning, and evening, then during the day. The color is exaggerated a tad, as most films do, but it looks great.
Well, yeah, depends on what you like of course. Seems to me the shot on the right is losing a lot of detail though, while it stills kinda crisp in the left shot. All a matter of preference though.
I've decided to no longer use the phrase 'color correction' anymore. A lot of dopes think the colors are wrongly shot or summin. I now use the more preferred phrase 'grading' which does the job more justice: finalising the look.
But then, as a filmmaker I was 'born' in post-production. My first jobs apart from directing a couple short corporate films, was writing and editing documentaries... Usually badly directed with never enough footage. Out of necessity I learned every trick in the trade to make something out of nothing. When I finally to making stuff from start to finish I swore to always have what I need to make a decent film without needing all the post-production tricks. But they do come in handy to make shoots more efficient.
I'm often surprised how old fashioned some people look at the possibilities of post=production or even the whole cheaper digital revolution. I love it... I never make films that have million dollar budgets... but I can still make them look expensive.
The shot on the right doesn't have any detail loss in terms of footage. The colors were corrected, and the brightness and contrast was also adjusted as well as the gausian blur settings. It blends together more like film would and is a much better depiction of what morning would look like, rather than waking up in the middle of the afternoon, which is when we shot it. On a widescreen TV, the shot on the left is just bland and very homemade-ish. It looks crisp, but film never looks entirely crisp. It's always has a smooth, somewhat blurred finish over it without ever looking out of focus. I couldn't seem to nail that in his head, but it's his loss. We also had lighting on the scene, but the lighting guy didn't bring any of his "amber" gels, so making it look like morning by using our lighting kit wasn't any use.
I personally hate the look of homemade footage when you shoot on a lowgrade camera, and all the edges look too sharp. Not to mention the framerate looks horrendous to. I always shoot at 24 fps no matter what I do, simply because it also gives the illusion of true film, even when you don't have the money to shoot on true film. It's not perfect by any means, but it always looks nice.
But you're right, it is a matter of preference really, and my prefrence is I always prefer it to look like film, rather than something that was just shot without any touching up whatsoever, and it's hard to make anything look like film without making adjustments when we have to shoot with crappy cameras. lol
Originally posted by queeq
But why shoot on 24p if you're not actually converting to film? The alternative in the US is 30i or 30p prolly... Living in Europe, I always shoot 25p. I only do 24p if it actually gets tranferred to film for projection.
Yep, for the US, there's basically 60 fps, 30 fps, or 24 fps.
30 fps is really nice, and does a great job for filming in general, or doing commercials or videos for a client and what not.
Shooting an Indie film though, 24fps makes a huge difference. Even if it's not converted to actual film, it still looks gorgeous when exported to DVD and played back, and you can tell in the overall "look" that it has more of a movie feel to it because of the way the frames blend together.
Also, everything I work with on Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere, movie wise, is set to 24 fps HD Square Pixels, so it allows me to work and export in the same frame rate as well.
Just my preferences though.
Originally posted by Sith Master X
Mandrag! How you been? 😄Figures Nintendo put Zelda off till 2011 huh? lol
Been good... just busy.
Yea, no Zelda untill 2011... 🙁 I already have it paid off... well except the fifteen dollars a friend owes me for betting me that Skyward Sword would not have a sub-title... (that was before we knew the subtitle.)
Anyway, now I have to get to the library to see if I can't snag one of the parts of the script for the play I am hoping to audition for either Wednesday or Thursday.
Originally posted by Sith Master X
Yep, for the US, there's basically 60 fps, 30 fps, or 24 fps.30 fps is really nice, and does a great job for filming in general, or doing commercials or videos for a client and what not.
Shooting an Indie film though, 24fps makes a huge difference. Even if it's not converted to actual film, it still looks gorgeous when exported to DVD and played back, and you can tell in the overall "look" that it has more of a movie feel to it because of the way the frames blend together.
Also, everything I work with on Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere, movie wise, is set to 24 fps HD Square Pixels, so it allows me to work and export in the same frame rate as well.
Just my preferences though.
Oh,right, well that makes a lot of sense then.
Shooting in 25p, which is quite common here (although 25i is the standard), is very much like 24p.
And 60fps is high speed.... don't you mean 30i?
