DVC7-Fossenkemper, Martens "Two Guys in the Woods by a River"

[Robert Martens]

Well, gosh, Lorinda, I don't know what to say. "Thank you", of course, I just feel like that's not enough. Very kind words from you and your son, pass my thanks along to him. Maybe this'll serve as the reason I need to go ahead with those acting classes I'd wanted to take. I did a little "commercial intensive" back in October, got headshots and everything for it, haven't auditioned for anything yet.

As for the rest of this discussion, 720x480 is 720x480 is 720x480. No two ways about it, you're not going to lower the spatial resolution of your video with some simple color grading. Chroma resolution might become a problem, as DV only gives you 8 bits per component and a 4:1:1 color space to work with in the first place, but if you do all your processing in 16 bit or higher, you shouldn't have problems. The big issue comes in the compression scheme of this format, which doesn't provide much wiggle room as far as color is concerned before you start seeing exaggerated artifacts in your footage. Easy to go too far in one direction or another, and only the slightest corrections really look acceptable. At least, that is, from folks like you and me; I'm sure an experienced color timer could push this stuff farther than we could.

Regarding your question, Mike, I doubt the size of your window is the problem in this case. Without a calibrated monitor on set, you won't know what you're getting on tape, and editing on a laptop with an LCD screen, you can't tell what the video actually looks like. You're correcting the movie to look good on your laptop's LCD, then transferring it to a CRT for viewing, well, it's bound to look significantly different.

That is assuming, of course, that you're viewing the DVD on a CRT television; if it's a flat panel (LCD, Plasma, whatever), then I'd just suggest that they're calibrated differently. I'm no expert in that world, you might want to browse the SDTV / HDTV Video Monitors forum.

In any event, when it comes to standard definition, NTSC video, you'd need at least a properly adjusted CRT monitor attached to your NLE to know what you're getting. Preferably one on set, as well, but if you have one to look at while you're editing, I imagine that over time you'd get used to the relationship between your camera's display and the final product, and you'd develop the ability to compensate. Without that (I know they're not cheap, I don't have one yet either, I'm just sayin'), there's no telling what the video really looks like, and you have no yard stick with which to measure your adjustments. What makes a clip look great on your laptop may make it look bad on a CRT, Plasma, or even another LCD display. And what makes it look great on one piece of (comparatively) cheap, low-end consumer equipment may make it look horrible on another.

All of this, in my opinion, is all the more reason to shoot the way you want in camera. Do it once and be done with it. Use a good field monitor when shooting and if nothing else you'll always know that what you've captured is decent. There are other reasons, of course. First off, there's the simple "theory vs. practice" aspect of it: I'm as much a computer nerd as the next guy, and I love my copy of combustion, but DV is fairly unforgiving to the novice color corrector, and it's just not as fun as I always thought it would be. Further, I've found that I usually know more or less what I want from the get-go. I say "I want to shoot it this way, but I'll shoot it flat to give myself options later". When I get to cutting the footage, I always find myself sticking with what I wanted all along. Your mileage may vary, but I say it's good to trust one's instincts.

Besides, if we want to be good directors, it behooves us to hone our decision making skills, right? :) It's good for us to stop waffling, choose a path, and stick with it. I think locking yourself into a look at the shoot encourages careful planning and decisiveness, the latter being something I've had problems with in the past. If you know that "more options in post" is your thing, then hey, go for it. Just don't count the other style of working out too quickly. You might like it.

[Michael Fossenkemper]

Yeah, I definately need to get a CRT. I only have LCD in my apt, so that's my only reference. Everything is pretty closely calibrated. I think my eye is just seeing my enhancing blown up really big. The colours all look the same, it's just the little detail stuff that i exagerated in shooting and then seeing that blown up on a big LCD tv kind of screams at you. Also the brightness changes depending on the size I make it so that's frustrating too. The smaller I make it, the darker it gets. So I shot compensating for that on the camera and when I watch it full resolution on anything, it looks a little bright to me. Just kind of talking out loud. Actually I think I'm trying to talk myself out of or into a new camera. MUST RESIST.

[Sean McHenry]

I mirror everyone else comments. Darn good. I am thinking if you guys could do a really nice presentation version there is no reason you shouldn't enter this in a few short festivals. It is good on a lot of counts.

Have you told us how you did the overhead shot yet? I may have missed it.

Thanks for that 3+ minutes of fun.

A friend of mine here at the studios (My day job is with a very large post house) did a feature some time back called "Bottom Feeders" which was changed in some distribution chain to "Criminal Minds" or something like it. His film has similar criminal bungles and I always liked that. If you get a chance to pick up a copy of his you should see some similarities. I bought my copy from Amazon.

Good job on the collaborative effort. If this is what happens when two of us get together, imagine what we could do if we all worked on one piece together. It boggles the mind.

Sean