im 16, i have a gl2, and film is my life. Im just getting annoied about all the differnt methods and othere things on making a "film like" look. please someone just give me the basics of it Im making a movie Called "SWAT THE REAL STORY III" and i really want to impress my freinds and family with this one. I dont mean to brag anything, but me and my other freind are just about the only ones in our entire highschool who can work a freaken camera with out asking the video teacher evry 2 seconds. So basically ill mostly be shooting outside, on a sunny day, sometimes in the woods and sometimes in my yard. I would really like it if I could get this movie to just stand out. Thanks for all your help. also I have adobe after effects 7.0 and adobe premiere pro 2.0 and if theres any post editing effects i can do to make it more film like that would be awesome too. thanks guys -Nick

Nick,

I am no expert on the film look (I'm here to learn myself), but would say one of the first steps (and not always the most basic) is learning to light your scene properly. Video has much lower latitude/contrast range/dynamic range than film. This means you must compress the difference between the darkest parts of your scene and the brightest parts of your scene, so that those bright areas don't overexpose and lose detail, and you don't lose too many details in the shadows. In addition to accomplishing this technical requirement of lighting you can design more artistic lighting setups.

I purchased the book "Lighting for Digital Video & Television, Second Edition" by John Jackman from amazon.com and it provided a good introduction to the technical and aesthetic purposes of lighthing.

Maybe somebody with more knowledge and experience on the topic could expand on this a bit. Good Luck!

cool ill look into getting it. but yea im looking for some more detail then just lighting. thanks

Hey Nick,

If you get down the two basics of good color and proper exposure, you'll be miles ahead and it will be impressive, the GL1 and GL2 footage can look really fantastic. Plus if the color is correct to start with as is the exposure, then you'll have room to play in premiere and AE.

I'll leave the sound tips and premiere and after effects tips to others.

but for the GL2... here's some of the things I've done to get some really good looking footage (I have a GL1 since 1999 and a GL2 for maybe 3 years)

Color... White Balance! you'll get nice looking color, your footage from one location to the next will be matchable. And you'll have some room in post to give it a signature look if you want. I white balance with a gray card that is gray on one side and white on the other. If I'm in bright light, I'll set the balance on the gray side of the card (does the same thing as white, as long as it is a neutral gray, but sometimes in bright light the white coming off the card is so bright, the cam won't balance correctly)

Exposure... I like to use manual control of the camera for the exposure. I don't like the iris going higher number than 8, cuz diffraction sets in. I think the sweet spot is around 5.6 or something like that.

I keep the shutter between 60 and 250 tops. I use the ND filter on the cam to keep the cam in the sweet spot when I'm outdoors.

for tricky exposure settings, such as in the woods, where you can have dark dark and really bright all in one frame, auto exposure might keep adjusting itself and it will look amatuerish. So again, the kodak gray card helps out, just in the same as still photography. You can zoom in on the gray card in manual exposure and adjust your exposure until the meter in your viewfinder slips into the middle of the bracket. Then you can adjust up or down to suit your taste, but it will remain constant and not go wierd on you (where light things are dark and then the dark areas are all light and washed out the next kinda thing). But one good thing about exposing to a gray card, is that everything will be represented properly and dark things will look dark, and bright things will look bright and when you get into post you'll have some room on both ends to tweek exposure a little bit.

I like shooting in frame movie mode, it takes out some of the rough jaggie look and gives it a kinda smoothness, especially when shooting people.

I also like using a polarizer outdoors as it cuts down on some of the reflections that can blow out and gives a saturation of its own to it.

that's all I can think of right now.

have fun

Staying away from contrasty light is my advice. Video does not handle it well.

i second that GL2 definetly does not handle contrasty light nicely! blown out highlights and flare are just a few of the problems it creates.

cool ill look into getting it. but yea im looking for some more detail then just lighting. thanks

Audio, audio, audio. Did I mention good audio is important. People are more forgiving of bad pictures than they are bad audio.

-gb-

Yes I agree, I use the Rode videomic, and its very nice quality. I taped a kids baseball game, and i was at the homerun fence, and could hear the croud cheering with amazing clarity. you could hear the coaches yelling to the kids, it was soooo nice. My freinds and family were amazed!

so is it reccomended to shoot a film in frame movie mode on the gl2? because if the camera is moving it doesnt come out very good? thanks

so is it reccomended to shoot a film in frame movie mode on the gl2? because if the camera is moving it doesnt come out very good? thanks

if you intend to be a filmmaker and use 24 and 30P, you have to allow for the fact that the motion updates are slower than for 60i or 60P. This means you have to learn camera movement techniques and limitations and framing compostion to help mask those issues. Lots of good threads here already covering those subjects.

-gb-

You will usually want to get the mic as close to the subject as possible to pic up clear dialogue. Also set the audio levels manually. The GL2 offers great control over the audio, you can control the left and right channel gain independently. When I had my GL2 I really liked the meters it had in the lcd and also in the little window on the side of the camera body. I try to average my audio level right around -12dB.

I would suggest shooting 60i and then deinterlacing or going to 24p with a quality plugin in post. I have never liked PPRO's deinterlace options, but I bet there are some good plugins. Magic Bullet? I use FCP and have tried out Nattress' filters which have worked well.

Shooting 60i leaves your options open. Frame mode on the GL2 isn't true progressive anyway.

does the gl2 shoot in 60i? and soon im gonna post a link to a introduction that im making for a movie. Im wondering what i can do to make it stand out a little more in premiere pro 2.0 its pritty cool but it doesnt idk glow like i want it too. thanks

http://communityvideo.aol.com/Playback.do?AssetID=1beafda1d843a70b465b3de69a9c0d6&pid=CVN&type=ANY_METADATA&value=swat&sort=RELEVANCE&index=1&page=10

link to my movie intro. please watch it and give me sum input. thanks

all I saw was flashing cop car lights.. the word SWAT pop up across the screen and then more flashing lights, then a black screen. I'm a bit confused on what you are looking for input on...

Before the shoot:
http://www.yafiunderground.com/AJ/howto.html

On the day of the shoot:
http://www.yafiunderground.com/checklist.html

Still working on this one...there are some technical inaccuracies in it, but it's not currently linked on my page, so I'll fix it when I can...mostly the errors are about compression and data storage.
http://www.yafiunderground.com/Turnkey/1.html

I'm working on a series that covers every aspect of this in a way that is less overwhelming to beginners...the last link up there was meant to be a piece...it fails in my effort to keep it easy to understand, so I'm starting it over...it's just my "screw the film look, shoot good video and be proud!" rant.

well i didnt meen for it to go on for so long, thats when all the other parts are gonna go in, but i mean like how does it look and feel?

thats when all the other parts are gonna go in

Nick, I think you're assuming that there are effects you can just apply to the footage to give it a film look. There are filters that contribute to that, but what we're saying is that the lighting, camera movements, framing and audio all contribute many times more than a filter you apply on your computer to your footage.

Basically, there is no cheap shortcut to getting the good "film" look. You need to take time to light, frame and mic (yes, audio contributes to the "look") your shots properly--you can't simply hit record and then slap on a filter and expect the appearance of film.

The film look is actuallybased on the time and money spent on what sits in front of the camera more than what happens inside the camera...there are 3 things that happen in camera...exposure level, focus and camera angle...every thing else is done for the sake of these three things...generally it's the everything else that makes the film look. Lighting, staging, acting quality (movement counts...certain movements don't look good in camera), costume and set design all play larger roles in making the film look than what you do with the camera.

If you use your camera in manual mode and frame mode, expose well, keep the iris as wide as possible and use selective focus by keeping the camera closer to your subjects while moving the backgrounds farther away from them...you'll get the film look. As long as you put effort into what you point the camera at.

I cringe when I read the film look plug in threads on forums...all they do is color saturation and levels adjustments...GIGO...garbage in, garbage out. No magic...make a bunch of shorts...or one big feature and screw up everything possible...learn from the mistakes and use that knowledge to make better pictures in the future. That's what my feature is for. My goals for it were to make a feature length movie that I could enter in festivals...that means - original story, releases and completed...all acheivable. I've learned more in the 20 days of shooting than I did in the 4 years of research getting to the starting point.

dig in, screw up...start small and pick one thing you are going to improve per short...first time is angles; next lighting; then more outdoor shoots; then camera movement; then more complex lighting; then something else you want to learn...continue until you don't think there's anything more to learn, and you will find what the next thing you want to work on is.

The BTS of the village included a short by M. Night Shamalan...it's really bad...but he did it to learn the basics of story telling in a visual medium. I've seen the same from lots of really big name directors...you don't start with this knowledge, you have to screw up to gain it. I think this is the reason that so many student films are nigh unwatchable...these are film school students, they should be amazing...this is what they want to do for the rest of their lives as a career! But Film School is where they spend their time learning what not to do.

Screw up , welcome brutal critiques and listen to them! Be honest with your work and yourself. Learn what you personally need to work on and work on it for the next shoot. Pick one thing that bugged you about your last short and fix it in the next one. You'll never run out of things to correct, ask anyone on here, there's always something that could have been done better in every shot they put in the final edit...no exceptions.