38sec anti-war video shot with HD100
 

Hi all,

Early August i directed a 38sec anti-war video using the HD-100 and the Firestore DR-HD100 (80GB version). It was a zero budget production (we only spent 150-200 euros for some props) which meant "available light" and a friend's tripod! The crew was just 5 people including my girlfriend and if it wasn't for that day's heat it would be really fun!

The temperature was more than 55c and the light was so intense that we could not even "read" the LCD monitor! The problem was that we were shooting on a roof that had some very reflective tiles on the floor, so light was hitting us from every direction. We tried covering ourselves with a dark textile to "read" the LCD but it was extremely hot and when we were uncovering ourselves the change of light intensity was so strong we had headaches!

We ended up shooting for a few minutes, then leaving the "set" to cool down our bodies in an air-conditioned room and then coming back to shoot some more.

The camera behaved greatly. I only wished it had a stronger ND filter. I guess i have to buy one later on.

I was worrying for the effect of the heat on the HD100 and the Firestore but they survived the test. At one point the Firestore's fan started to be noisy and i thought it would explode but it kept going until we finished!

For 2 shots i also used the WCV-82SC FUJINON WIDE CONVERTER. It's a good cost effective solution but it gave us some strong CA in a shot with high-contrasting edges. Nothing i couldn't fix in post though!

You can download the WMV 720p (44MB) video here:
http://www.box.net/public/static/q3ubp6ostx.wmv

Watch this with sound ON!

I hope you'll like it!

Hi Miltos. Looks good. Was this 30p in HD? What NLE did you use?

It was 25fps 720p and was edited in Vegas 6.0d

I'm 'guessing' that you did the blood/horror effects in post. Were they also done in Vegas?

You looked to have a boom as well... or are you just that steady?

I'd try to find something to act as a background plate for your end graphics. Even just a continuance of the slow move that precedes it or back to your clothespins.

Beautiful spot.

Very nice!
 

Hi, I really liked this piece!

How did you achieve such a soft (film) look, with all that lattitude under such bright sunlight... which settings did you use?

Thanks and congratulations,
Sergio Barbosa

You guessed correctly. All the post was done in Eyeon's Fusion 5 by me.

LOL! Not even God is that steady! The last shot was also done in post! The shot was done with the camera on the floor and then in post i camera-projected the footage on rough geometry (a couple of rectangles). This allowed for the camera to move in "virtual space". It's simpler than it sounds. Also, there were no props in the shot. All the laundry was added in post using photographed elements because we didn't have money to buy all those!

I will post a Before/After image later when i go home...

I am not sure of the exact settings but they were based on Paolo's True colour 3. The Sharpness was MIN.

For the lattitude i guess i have to thank the camera mostly. Also i found lately that unlike other editing software Vegas doesn't clip SuperWhite and SuperBlack information. That's the reason i recenty moved from Adobe Premiere 2 to Vegas 6.

Cineform solves this problem in Premiere but i don't like what it does to footage coming from HDV.

The soft look was also the result of Colour Correction. The footage was much more contrasty before the CC.

This was really good. I was curious if you used only a tripod, how did you achieve the jib move?

Very nice job. This was an amazing piece. Great job compositing by the way. I usually use an old version of Shake for the PC. I have been thinking of moving on to Fusion.

Miltos, very impressive work (and good subject matter too).

Like i said earlier the last shot was done in post. The camera movement was done "virtualy".

Have a look here:

http://www.box.net/public/static/yhurbrl2tt.jpg

Not having a Jib was not the only reason to do this shot in post though. The reason was that there wasn't any money to buy all those clothes :-)

If you are familiar with Shake the transition to Fusion will be very smooth. Both are very powerfull pieces of software but i think the future belongs to Fusion.

(No, i am not on Eyeon's payroll)

:-)

AH HA!

I get it now! It took a couple minutes of head scratching to figure out how you could've done a move like this in post, but what you didn't mention is that there's a 'cut' in the middle of that move that happens behind the digital clothing.

That's some impressive work right there.

What are the odds you'd render out a version without the clothes obscuring the transfer? I'm interested to see how you lined them up to get the perspective correct.

Hey Adam,

The digital clothing does help to sell the shot but they don't hide any cut in the mliddle of the move. There is no need for a cut because there is no transition from a real shot to a synthetic one. All the shot is synthetic.

Here is an image of the 3d environment from an angle that will help you to better understand the concept of camera projection:

http://www.box.net/public/static/u61acznonh.jpg

What you see besides the city backdrop is two rectangles that are rougly placed in a way to resemble the roof and it's surrounding wall. Then, from the place where the camera took the real shot you project the footage on those 2 rectangles.

If you do this correctly you can then move your virtual camera and the optical illusion you just created will give the impression you are moving into the shot's space.

I wanted the camera to move slowly to the right while it accents and this is where the digital clothing helped. The ones that are close to the camera hide the fact that there is no textured ground on the sides of the one i project.

i hope this was a little bit more clear...

It is actualy a decades old trick that came into fashion after they used it in the title sequence of Panic room. Remember those super smooth camera movements between the buildings?

Lately they use it all the time. From Star Wars to costume dramas. It's simple to do, you don't need to loose time in complicated 3D models, you don't need to render photorealisticaly because you use the actual environment and it's super fast to do.

Hi Miltos.
Very clever use of post techniques, the short looks terrific, the shake of the clothes + the atached sound makes it really creepy and your example of virtual camera moves is great.

Fantastic!

Thanks Paolo!

You have to know that because of TC3 somehow i think of you as a distant member of the crew. Even if it wasn't 100% it, for sure you were a strong influence.

Thanks again!

Agreed, an excellent and effective piece! Shows what you can do with very little and a lot of creativity.

Rob

Thanks!
As we say in Italy "Una faccia, una razza" (one face, one race), Greeks and Italians :)

Wow, that was very professionaly done. Great job.
The shirt effect is completely unnoticeable.

Who needs a cinealta, eh?

The look is fabulous, and except for one shot I wasn't at all sure that the clothes were done in post (wasn't looking for it, though).

Keep it up, and keep tellling us about it.

Any of it shot in mid day sunlight? It's just looks so soft and forgivingly filmic--almost like it was shot late afternoon.

...those who might not want a nasty vertical smear. Other then that it looks very good.

Great work Miltos,
Great message as well! Now if we could only get your short on tv.
Jon

Miltos,

Damn, that's a nice piece of film-making, regardless of budget.

Thanks for sharing it.

We started shooting around 11:00 and we finished around 18:00 because outside that time-window there was a neighbour building casting it's shadow on our roof.

You might say that those are the worst hours for everyone to shoot exteriors but we were carefull with our angles and very carefull with how we used reflected sunlight.

Also, having a storyboard helped a lot to better plan our shooting program and take better advantage of the sun's angle.

Thanks Jon,

TV would be great but i can't hope for that much. For the moment i am glad people can see it on YouTube ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mQA5doBC9Y ).

Me, and my friends also sent smaller versions through email around so i guess many people will get to see it and maybe think for a second about it.

I would also like to thank everybody here for the positive feedback. When you don't work for a paycheck this is the best reward you can have and the most valuable.

Thanks,
Miltos

Congratulations Miltos and your crew, it is really great.

Luís ventura Santos

Miltos

This was a very striking and powerful video. Excellent. Thanks for sharing.

I'm still totally confused about the virtual camera thing you used to create the pan near the end. Can you provide (for a stupid person = me) step by step instructions on setting this up?

Thanks



Andrew

Thanks Andrew,

I got many emails on the subject and i realized that there is a lot of intererst on this technique. I could write a step by step tutorial on how to setup a simple shot but unless you are using Fusion or other software capable of camera projection the instructions will not be of any use to you.

However, since it's one of the tools that indie filmakers can use to add a little production value to their work i will write this step by step tutorial when i find some free time.

In the meantime there is a lot of info on the net and a simple google search will bring many results.

Have a look here:
http://www.digitalartform.com/archiv...rojecti_1.html

It's the first that came up. It's much more elaborate to do and you have to know Maya or other 3d software (of which i don't have a clue) but it helps to understand the logic behind it.

Miltos

I thought this was the case. Hence my confusion as to how this could be done in reality without a compostor or 3d software.

Again, excellent short film.

Thanks


Andrew

This effect can be acheived in Shake ($499.00) and I believe it can be done also in Blender (free 3D, see http://www.blender3d.org)
The latter will require quite a bit of learning while Shake's 3D environment can be learned in an afternoon.

so, can something like this be done in AfterEffects? or not, because it lacks this projection function? I think I understand what's going on, but just barely...

AfterEffects allows you to "project" the video any way you want, move around over the video, etc.

There is a tutorial I saw that takes a map, lays it down, then puts in sign posts and a line to follow, and the camera follows the line, passing the sign posts.

also, you said you made all the clothes in post? you still had to photograph all the garments, no? you said you didn't have to buy all the clothes which saved budget-wise...

did you just do a dozen or so and duplicate?

fantastic job. i'm blown away.

We photographed 6 or 7 'Hero' garments for the two 'crash zoom' shots and then we photographed one laundy line made of 17-18 different garments. Changing the order of the garments we photographed again the same laundry 6 times of which i used 4 photographs.

To make a long story short, from 20 garments we ended up with 180 different pieces on screen which is very good economy in my opinion. :)

As far as i know, at the moment there is not the possibility to do camera projection tricks in Aftereffects. What you are describing is simple 3D rotation of image planes and placement in 3D space.

Maybe some very clever people will find a very elaborate workaround to do it in AE but i am not sure if it worths all this effort.

Very well, I stand corrected.

A lot of people diss Blender because they're not able to launch it and immediately create the next Toy Story, but my standard response is and has always been, READ THE MANUAL! 3D software is inherently complex and it always confounds me how people can possibly expect to simply pick it up without doing any of the basic research you should do when you first get any complex piece of software. Imagine trying to jump immediately into editing a full-length movie in Avid or FCP without reading the manual first. 3D software's even more complex.

I started using it around version 1.5 (this was many, many years ago, a full license cost a hundred Euros and there were no mouse driven menus at all, just hotkeys, and that's the way we LIKED it =D) and by following along in the manual I was able to make the interface second nature in just a couple of hours. Since then, Blender has been open-sourced and the community has taken great strides in improving the newbie-friendlyness of the interface while preserving the inherent efficiency of the heavy use of hotkeys. I don't see why anybody couldn't learn Blender in about the same amount of time as any other piece of 3D software.

I've been using 3DS Max for years, so I guess I could use that.

Would this be possible?

Andrew