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With the convergence of stills- and videocameras comes the convergence of the job of photographer and cameraman. And both will start exploring the “other” medium in new, creative ways. For example making movie posters, that suddenly come to life.
Professional stills photographer Alexx Henry has put together a nice clip showing how this is done, also thanks to RED.
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Does it make sense to spend money when the reason for the recession is excessive overspending?
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ASC member and DP for the long-running 24 series, Rodney Charters, gave a 20+ minute interview, showing off his RED One rig that he used to travel around the world. Equipped with the Birger Canon mount (about 1.200$), he uses the Canon 16-35mm 2.8 (1.450$), the Canon 24-70mm 2.8 (1.190$) and the Canon 70-200mm 2.8 (1.190$; $1.700 with image stabilisation) lenses. From Sim Video he has a special handle (1.200$) that doubles as EVF and battery holder.
He also had some custom made handle bar system, that does not need any rods – thus shedding off a pound or two, and saving further space (sorry, no link).
The whole set fits into one smart looking bag (the Think Tank Airport Acceleration, about 200$) that can be taken onboard a plane.
The whole interview can be found on the excellent Reel Show.
On a current job the client wants the videofiles on an external harddisk in FAT32. One of the problems with FAT32 is of course that it doesn’t allow for file sizes of 4GB or bigger, which translates to roughly 20min of DV material, and less on better codecs.
One way would of course be to use Final Cut, iMovie or QT Pro to mark each 15 minute segment, and export that to the external harddisk. This means a lot of button pushing, when there are hours of material to be transferred.
Doing a longer search on Macupdate did not come up with any easy solutions. So here is a step by step guide for non-geeks. Those who know their way around UNIX will probably know of a quicker solution…
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finderdefaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
killall Finder This restarts the Finders and hides the system files again.Now you are done with the installation part. Now, if you want to split a video file, simply enter the following code into the Terminal: splitmovie /volumes/sourcedisk/original.mov -duration 10:00 -self-contained -o /volumes/targetdisk/split.mov Sourcedisk is the name of the disk that contains your source footage, target is the name of the targetdisk and duration is the length of each segment (in this case 10:00 minutes). Afterwards you can drag and drop the split files from the finder.
If you need to split AVI files, you can have a look at Explicit.
Florian Andrei pointed me to a paper discussing a new approach to combining stills and video photography to get much better results. This leads to
Here is a video explaining the idea with examples
P.S. I do notice the irony that since my warning against posting on Vimeo I have only used Vimeo examples…
Videos are very popular, and most don’t think twice before uploading their own films to sites such as YouTube or Vimeo. Those are popular and very convenient – you just upload your video, they transcode it to a webfriendly format, give you the code to easily embed your video in your blog/website, and they handle all the traffic. But the downside is that you have to give away some rights.
Vimeo is becoming quite popular amongs independent film makers, for Vimeo has an exceptionally good quality. But reading their legal text, I stumbled upon this mumbo:Â
you hereby grant [...] a worldwide, perpetual, non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free, sublicenseable (through multiple tiers) and transferable license (with a right to create derivative works) to use, copy, transmit or otherwise distribute, perform, publicly perform and display your Submission for any legal purposes whatsoever now known or hereinafter becomes known.Â
In other words: While you still own the copyright to the film, you have now given Vimeo and its partnes the right to make new films out of your work. And even if you change your mind and remove the video, Vimeo still has the legal right to use your video. Forever. And it doesn’t stop there. Vimeo can license your film to another company. And that one could again sub-license it. You’ve essentially lost control of your video.
Another downside is that your visitors might easily get sucked into watching other videos offered. And suddenly your visitor becomes YouTube’s/Vimeos’ visitor.
Not to forget that those video services also have to make a living, which usually boils down to advertising on your film.
So what to do? Bite the bullet, spend a few dollars on your own hosting (I can recommend Media Temple) and serve your video from a source your have control over.
Matt Mullenweg of wordpress fame recently did an interview with the Yahoo Developer network. This video could have been better.
As usual in my improve series, I’m not going to talk about the content, but the technical side.
They used a tripod, they used proper white balance.
Nice to have some opening graphics, it gives the whole piece more weight. Though for my feeling, the title should have the same graphic feel and sound as the opening graphic.
There is way too much headspace. Tilt down a bit. Or even better: use 16:9 widescreen format, which works much better for 2 persons.
Change perspective. Flat on is usually boring. In an interview situation, I would move the camera so we see more of the interviewee’s face, while getting the interviewer more in profile.
Get closer. When you see that a person is talking for a longer time, zoom in. Preferably, have one camera locked on a two shot, and then have a second operated camera, that zooms in — and follows — the interviewee. Thus you can cut between those two, hiding those ugly zooms. If need be, then close-ups of the interviewer can be shot right after the interview.
Watch your background. White background is about the worst for a camera, it draws attention. Jeremy’s head gets almost lost in the background.
This is the weirdest miking I have seen in a while 
One huge attention-drawing microphone on the interviewer, and one tiny lavaliere mike on Matt, where no effort was made to hide the cable.
Interviewer and interviewee really should have the same type of microphone, otherwise it just looks ridiculous. Preferably a lavaliere — this would also help the informal atmosphere. And a lavaliere that is hidden under the sweater. If you don’t have time for that, put the wire behind the back of the interviewee.
If you have to use two totally different mikes, do us the favor and use 10 seconds to even those microphone levels in-camera. As it is now, Jeremy is way louder than Matt. If anything, the interviewee should be loudest.
Doug writes a very interesting post on how his company lost a bid by not using a video.
While I have to agree that video is a powerful tool, I would like to make some remarks:
For that video to be powerful, it has to be well made. A badly made video hurts more than a badly written text. But a well scripted, well executed video can convey information – and emotion – more efficiently than written text can.
Rather than Video >= Images + Stories I would suggest a formula along the lines of value of a video = min (story; technical quality; execution). It’s the weakest link that defines the potential of your video.
There are many companies that call themselves “video production”, and even more people with a video camera. Video cameras can be had for little money, simple editing programs come with all modern OSes. While it may be tempting to go for a cheap in-house solution, as always quality costs.
Not all clients appreciate “meat”. One of the first bids we did was for a state controlled company. After the presentation we were told (unofficially), that our presentation was the most creative, most exciting. But, in the end they went with a production company that is used by most other state companies. They got an alright, off-the-shelf video, that is watchable. But not memorable.
While our solution promised to actually excite the audience, it also would have been a non-standard way of presenting. Our client was not prepared to take the risk of doing something unusual. So, they got a run-of-the-mill presentation, well executed, passionless. Something our client could safely show to his boss and say that he o.k’ed it.
I don’t think that people read less than before. It is just that the amount of data people have to process has exploded. I actually think that we read more, but we skim also more than before.
Following up on a previously posted video on Germs are from Germany, here comes CollegeHumor’s take — using only archive footage and some novel soundbites. Enjoy.
Just came across a one-page site by Jan E. Schotsman which offers a couple of video tools for the Mac, and at zero cost.
The JES Deinterlacer does a fine de-interlacing job, but despite its name, it does more. It lets you slow down the frame rate, interpolating the in-between frames. Click here for a comparison between iMovie and the JES Deinterlacer. Feature list:
- Deinterlace movies (half height/normal height/double frame rate/blend,adaptive/simple).
- Change field dominance (for PAL films with fake interlace).
- Reinterlace from one or two movies.
- Standards conversion (PAL<->NTSC or custom).
- Inverse telecine.
- Trim, shift, simple color correction, noise reduction.
- Change encoding (RGB gamma, video range/full range).
- Fix jagged edges.
- Pitch preserving sound track for half speed.
- Change movie speed, reverse movie.
- Interlaced in/out, progressive in/out.
- Includes utility to view and edit image description extensions and movie and track geometry
If you have noisy video, the JES Video Cleaner may be the quick tool for you. It also allows for removal of logos. I imagine this must be great for cleaning up consumer camcorder footage with a burned in date.
- General noise reduction (adaptive)
- Remove logo
- Average two movies
- Remove cross-luma
- Remove periodic brightness variation
If you still run OS9, he has a helper program that allows for transfers > 2GB.
And if you have an old Power Mac, he offers a program for uncompressed capture of SD video.
Finally, Jan has a little app to fix the blue cast on a monitor under Mac OS 10.4.
