Short Film With Greenkey Scenes: 4:2:2

[Claude Mangold]

I'm shooting a short film in about 6 weeks' time in the Geneva area.
This is a project I'm shooting with freinds over a 4-day period, just for fun but totally professional cast, crew and equipment. No direct sound, ADR.
Using my Gy-HD251 with mini-35 400 and Zeiss HS lenses.
We'll record most scenes to the DR-HD100 in QT or m2t mode and camtape backup.
We have two greenkey scenes to be shot in a high-end studio near Geneva. (both take place in the building of some Global Population Formatting Bureau)

I figure it might make sense to shoot the greenkey scenes (ca. 5 min. in all) in 4:2:2 (10 bit ?) in order to facilitate the effects work to be done later on.

What's your opinion ? Anyone tried this out ? Using what hardware at the recording end ??

Thanks !

Attachments: STORYBOARD scenes 1 and 11

[Brian Luce]

nice storyboard

I think you need a fast raid and some sort of capture board.

btw people pull nice keys in 4.2.0 mode. Much better than dv.

[Paolo Ciccone]

IN terms of color information to pull the key 4:2:2 gives you just a marginal advantage compared to 4:2:0. You can pull perfectly good keys in 4:2:0 provided that the GS is lit correctly and evenly and the usual precautions are taken when shooting for chroma key. Where you will see an improvement is in the definition of edges like in the shoulder areas of the actors. There the higher color sampling will give you less "stair-stepping" than 4:2:0.

[Claude Mangold]

Thanks Brian, Thanks Paolo,

Would the the small gain in edge definition be worth it in case it's transferred to film later on ?

But at this point it's just a project among pals, so the additional cost of that option and the local availability of the hardware would be decisive.

Is state of the art still a Mac with a Blackmagic card and a raid 0 ? fiber link also ? how much disk space if I have a shooting ratio of 6 i.e. 30 min. of takes ?

[Brian Luce]

Originally Posted by Claude Mangold

Thanks Brian, Thanks Paolo,

Would the the small gain in edge definition be worth it in case it's transferred to film later on ?

But at this point it's just a project among pals, so the additional cost of that option and the local availability of the hardware would be decisive.

Is state of the art still a Mac with a Blackmagic card and a raid 0 ? fiber link also ? how much disk space if I have a shooting ratio of 6 i.e. 30 min. of takes ?

There hasn't been many people shooting that way, with the raid and component capture. It's very cumbersome being tethered like that. I haven't even heard about many people using the jackpack on the HD250. The image to tape is really good.

[Mark Silva]

I captured some HD100 component output from a blue screen live into our editing system with audio and there was a darn ground loop in the video signal, so it was useless. Thankfully it was only a test to see if it could be done.

I just did a greenscreen shoot in a cyclorama for a music video last week, recorded to HDV tape from the HD100.

The keying worked really well.
I edited the whole thing in final cut as HDV then exported it 10-bit uncompressed into after effects and used keylight. Then exported
that as 10-bit and put it back into the edit.

the whole thing turned out really good.

[Paolo Ciccone]

Originally Posted by Claude Mangold

Would the the small gain in edge definition be worth it in case it's transferred to film later on ?

To me it wouldn't be. I can pull a perfectly good key using Keylight in AE plus cleaning up the matte with KeyCorrect Pro which has excellent plugins to blur and/or feather the edges of the matte. A little bit of blurring both makes the subject merge better with the composited BG and takes care of the stairstepping.

[Claude Mangold]

Thanks a lot, guys. We'll stick to HDV and try the 10-bit route via FCP and AE, especially since the strange atmosphere or the film suggest a kind of milky softness so a little edge blurring will blend in well.