HV20, Letus25a and a 48 Hour Film- Real World Test

[Chris Barcellos]

Hey Mike.

I feel very lucky myself. Jason Denzel from Argonaut lives about 2 miles away from me here in Elk Grove. He has pretty extensive production direction background. He was checking out the HV20 on DVInfo.net, and was going to get his own HV20, when he ran across my ramblings. We hooked up and eventually he indicated he wanted to do the 48 Hour thing again. He had done one in 2004.

As far as process, I shot in HDV 24p and passed tape to the editing crew. They captured in Final Cut Pro. I don't think they had pull down capability, and I don't know if that was an issue. I am PC oriented here, so I am not sure what is the resulting file was. From what I understand from director they edited in FCP with whatever is they captured raw, and outputted to a final final that was acceptable to the 48Hour rules, with minimal rendering. They did virtually nothing to color correct, but added the slow motion scene which resulted in a minimum of render. They had a choice to present a DVD, a DV tape, or a data file on data DVD. Again, we did a data file, but I am unclear what or how it was output, but I know it was not HD. It was touch and go at the end as it was, because we had to go 3 hours to deliver from Sacramento area to Bay (assuming traffic issues), and they were having some difficulty with render. Was a new Apple system, and he had a couple of crashes. He ended up rendering out in "Compressor???" for the final file.

[Elmer Lang]

Nice job, Chris, by you and all involved. The story was pretty good, especially with the 48-hour clock tolling. And I think drama was a good choice, it made you stand out.
best,
elmer

[David Delaney]

Hey Chris,

You were saying that you shot most F4-5.6 - why is that especially if you are getting such vignetting. Do you think next time, it might have been ok without the Letus35A for indoor shots and thus avoiding the vignetting?
Usually when I shoot indoors, I open up to at least 1.8 on my lens for the Letus35A, even then it is a struggle not to get vignetting, so I am curious why you went this route?

[Chris Barcellos]

Focus, in a word. We were monitoring on the SD monitor on a cheap DVD player. Due to time issues, I was n't able to see the shots as they were being uploaded to edit. So I closed lenses down a bit to give me focal room, recognizing we would have some vignetting issues... This was my first 48 Hour, and I was freaking out the who time wondering how the focus was ....

[Charles Papert]

Originally Posted by Chris Barcellos

I had concerns about no post color correction that was just not feasible in the 48 hour format.

I made 12 films in the 48-hour format between 2001-2005 and I made sure to color-correct every one of them. I'd usually allow about an hour for this at the very end of the edit. Obviously that's not much time but I could correct any egregious issues and lay in some basic looks (any severe filter application that required a lot of rendering would have to wait until after the initial screening). It was very important to me to be able to do this, almost as important as having a decent sound mix that allowed dialogue to be heard and room tone added to keep audio from jumping around between cuts, both of which are typical issues with time-restricted filmmaking and real deal-killers for me when watching.

Actually I think it was more time-consuming to use a 35mm adaptor, which I did a few times on those films, because of the stop loss (I was using a Mini35 which droppped about 2 stops, challenging on the night interiors) and swapping lenses, dealing with focus marks etc. It's a good look for sure but you can move a LOT faster with a standard on-camera lens.

Anyway, good work and it is interesting to see what is being done narratively with this little camera!

(p.s. I have a bunch of my Instant Films up on Youtube if you search under my name...ones done with the Mini35 were "The Undecided" and parts of "Captain Freedom")

[Chris Barcellos]

Here is an extended edit, high definition version of this film I shot as DP in the 48 Hour film festival. This is an extended edit version, with color correction, and retitling, etc.... I am posting it because some have expressed desire to see a higher definition example of the film:

Please right click and download, to save bandwith ! 165 megs

http://www.argonaut-ent.com/Download...64-24p-WEB.mov

[Chris Barcellos]

Just wondering if anyone tried downloading. This is a new server, that production company has, and I wanted to give him input on whether anyone was having problems.

[Ian G. Thompson]

bump.........

[Ian G. Thompson]

No problems here..downloaded it last night.

I had to bust out with my tissue....once again...(sob)....

[Chris Barcellos]

Thanks, Ian.... sorry about the tissue..... Did this version give you a better feel for the HV20/Letus combo ?

[Ian G. Thompson]

Actually...yes it helped. The only thing was the vignetting all the way through. It seemed appropriate in the the earlty scenes..as if i were looking back in time but was a little distracting later on...

i thought one o he best shot was when the young son 9officer) stops just in view of the cam with the parents cooking in the background...excellent....Kind of like watching a scene from "An Officer and A Gentleman." The shallow depth of field was appropriate...and then the very next scene where the father takes off his glasses and looks at his son proudly..there seemed to be sort of like a brightspot in the middle of his face (as if it were purposefully done..I'm sure that had something to do with the very slight vignetting in that scene). And then the rack focus back to the Mom hugging her son...nicely done.

Other than the excessive vignetting there was only one other scene that bothered me..and that was in the kitchen when they received "the phone call".it was kind of dark....but had good camera shots and was well acted out.

Sorry for the long critique...but I appreciated seeeing it in higher resolution.....

....Tito....get me a tissue...(sob)....

[Chris Barcellos]

Ian:

About the brightness around the face. I think the director, editor, was playing around with secondary color correction, where he tried to bring up specific sections of the film. When he told me he had done that, I noticed it right away..... I will pass this on to him....

Yes vignetting seems to continue to be an issue, that I believe is related to inability of the HV20/Letus combo to allow a closer zoom.... I am now trying a different approach... I actually have removed the "condenser" the Letus comes with, an compensated for its loss by adding a Cinevate achromat in combo with the Letus.... I will see how that works. .

[Ian G. Thompson]

I hope you understood that I liked that scene..where the light shined on the daddy's face..that was smartly done i think...it sort of made you focus on how proud he was...of his son. Anyways....that was a nice short.....especially for a 48 hour thingy...I could'nt do that 4 sure.

[Yang Wen]

Hey I just watched the movie.. nice movie overall.

However, the interior scenes had horrible vignette.. is this due to the lens you used on the Letus or can this be expected of the Letus despite the camera/lens combination that is being used with it.

I want to use the Letus for select interior scenes for wedding videos. The vignette I saw in this movie is unacceptable for this application.

[Chris Barcellos]

Yang:

This is due to the HV20 35a combination. I just couldn't get enough zoom, to get inside the vignette and not loose focus in many situations.

I am now trying a double achromat set up that seems to work, but haven't shot a project yet.