What’s going on peoples (that’s me trying to be hip…enough of that)? Here are a few stills from my feature film shot with my GL2. These are before and after stills; color graded MANUALLY with Autodesk combustion (yep no plugins!!!!!!!) Lost some resolution compressing the files to fit the size limit, but I think you can still see the difference.

Comments will be nice good or bad! The links below are to the trailer on you tube, and my myspace page.

http://i97.photobucket.com/albums/l204/tanjorin/ashleycombined.jpg

http://i97.photobucket.com/albums/l204/tanjorin/finalecombined.jpg


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pvui9CCtyE4

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=61597983

Tunde,

I checked the stills, The first pics all seemed to red and the second ones seemed just right. What did you have the red green and blue set at?? what exactly did you do in post?

I watched the trailer on u tube. I am going to show it to my students tomarrow as three of them a making trailers right now.
You got my attention, I like the quality of the video. good Job!!

Thanks for the comments Dale!!!! Hope you’re ready to read?

Firstly I can’t express how important it is to have good source material! Proper lighting and all that good stuff…. I got to give a quick shout out to my DP (Erik “aka MR. Hyde” Eddings) for Lighting the scenes beautifully!!!!!!!! Also for dv anything white is your ENEMY once an image is blown out all the information in the image is pretty much gone! Unlike film dv has crappy dynamic range.

Okay now to the good stuff!!! I give the image a 2-strip effect: which is pretty much reordering the RGB channels (substituting the blue channel with green. The blue channel is pretty much crap anyways). Then I custom tweaked the COLOR SHIFT OPERATOR IN COMBUSTION this is what gives the skin tone it’s natural look. Then I add an s curve to simulate the curve of film. I then add another curve operator to boost the midtones just a little bit, and finally I add a blur to take away the sharpness.

All of the above is applied to the duplicated top layer and both images are blended together and what you get is the final results. I wasn’t going for a stylized look I just wanted the images to look good and natural.

Once again I did all of this in COMBUSTION not after effects. Please don’t ask if I think combustion is better than after effects!! This is just the software that I used, and for all of those who think “wow I’m gonna use combustion for my next Indy project”. The combustion interface is like reading Greek; it took me 2 years on and off to teach myself how to use it. And the real trick to color grading is really UNDERSTANDING COLOR THEORY!!!! Once you figure that out color grading is really easy.

Hope that was helpful!!

Tunde

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pvui9CCtyE4

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm...endid=61597983

I like it all. It all seems clean. I do notice in the trailer the differnce in ambient sounds from scene to scene. All in all it looks great! What kind of response did you get at the screening. I wish I would of known when it screened I would of come.

Better sound quality. It sounds "hallow" in a lot of the scenes. Poor sound quality can kill a picture. I know it's only the trailer, but that's what sells it.
Also a filter of some kind to give it a better, maybe more rugged feel. Lighting looked too 2 dimensional, ie..flat in many of the scenes. I was expecting something more dramatic considering the story. By improving on these few things I think you'll have a better film.

Granted this is just 1 opinion, but with some tweaking I think you can get more out of your film. Considering the effort you obviously put into shooting it I think these tips might help. You'd be surprised at what people make with limited audio/lighting resources.

One of the things I teach is that sound is 50% of the picture. You can have the best looking video, but with poor sound it's wasted.

Hope this helps, you said you wanted honest opinions.

Thanks for all the comments!!! The trailer was cut before I ADR 85 percent of the movie, and the rest that I didn't ADR. I captured the audio to a Marantz PMD 670. I used an Okata mk-012 as the source mic; have no fear Mike I'm an audio guy as well. I don't mean to sound cocky but I know my shit!!

I'll post an excerpt from the movie in a little while and you'll hear the difference in the audio. As for the lighting, I think we did the best we could under the circumstances that we were under. Two man crew, 16 day shoot, and averaging 6 setups a day. All points noted and I appreciate everyone's honesty.

Pulp fiction didn't look rugged and it was a fantastic movie.... At the end of the day the thing that will sell any film is the story, and I have a good story.

The original premiere never happened don't ask long story... I’ll be premiering the movie in February 22, so if you live in the ATL come check it out!!!

Tunde

Tunde,

thanks for the bits of information. If I ever try to shoot a feature i will know to go to for information!!! I really liked the skin tones in particular. I was not really paying attention to the audio, I am half deph out of my right ear anyway.

would like to see the feature some day!!

Dale,

No problem I just hope it was useful! Did you show your students? What class do you teach??

Okay now to the good stuff!!! I give the image a 2-strip effect: which is pretty much reordering the RGB channels (substituting the blue channel with green. The blue channel is pretty much crap anyways). Then I custom tweaked the COLOR SHIFT OPERATOR IN COMBUSTION this is what gives the skin tone it’s natural look. Then I add an s curve to simulate the curve of film. I then add another curve operator to boost the midtones just a little bit, and finally I add a blur to take away the sharpness.


Could you show a screenshot of just this part before being layered? I'm curious to see what the results of this process looks like on its' own.

Cole I must warn you that I've won the "village idiot competition" a few times. Do you mean each individual step? When you say screen shot do you mean still photo, or a screen shot of Combustion??

still of just the end process right before you add it back over the other original footage (if that's what you are doing).

Got ya! I'll post it up soon.