It is not practical or technically possible to shoot movies with exposure bracketing because there is no such camera that can do that (namely, shoot 3 or 5 identical versions of the same shot at the same time with the same lens but at different exposures). However, a camera that already has high dynamic range and shoots RAW can make it possible to create tone mapped HDR-looking movies. 1 RAW copy is not as good as 3 or 5 RAW copies, but it’s better than nothing. The RED One camera should be good enough for this job.

If I had that $150 million that Spielberg has available for the creation of each of his movies, I would do an HDR-like movie. I always had in the back of mind an epic sci-fi movie (a’la Star Wars) with visual elements from the Final Fantasy franchise. A new application or plugin would have to be developed specifically for the movie that does tone mapping (kinda like Photomatix for video), while the actor’s faces would have to be smoothed out in post to look as pristine as in the FF games (I never said my movie would be about humans anyway).

I like the look of these pictures and I think that with a lot of visual effects and CGI buildings would look interesting: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13. If you are careful with such color grading you can create a convincing look without looking totally CGI or cartoonish.

I watched “Rambo” on Blu-Ray tonight and I was delighted to see that their deleted scenes were in HD, and untouched: uncut to regular 16:9 and ungraded. So I could easily go back to the 2.35:1 version and graded in-movie footage, grab some snapshots with my Kodak digicam and compare. Most of the “Rambo” movie uses the blue grading theme that is in fashion at Hollywood in the last 5 years, although if you look closely you will see how the highlights were totally burned out during grading. I really like the ungraded versions, they are more natural, very close to what you would get from a consumer Canon camera like the HV20 when shot in PF24 with “CineMode” turned on and the “neutral” color setting.

Ungraded, as shot

Graded, in-movie


Ungraded, as shot

Graded, in-movie

This is how I would have graded this


Ungraded

Graded, in-movie

As you might know, the biggest free hobbyist/community filmmaking competition on the net is DVXUser’s. There are usually two such competitions every year. The current competition, titled “Timefest” because the key element is time, is now open for viewing. I spent most of the day watching the ~70 entries. You can view the entries here, login info here.

I must say that except two entries, the ones titled “O2” and “RPDM“, the rest pretty much sucked. Sure, there were a few more that were watchable, like “Survival”, “Unzeit”, “Parallel”, “The Small Multiple” and 1-2 more, but for the most part, the vast majority of these entries were pure cheesy suckiness. I remember a year ago, the SpyFest competition, that had at least 5 entries good enough to become full featured films. This time around, there’s a lot more people who entered the competition, but I couldn’t find truly amazing films (except the “O2″ and “RPDM”). This time seems to be about quantity over quality.

The suckiness experienced is not just about the actual camera movement, framing or dialog, which are the artistic part of each movie, but in the technical parts too: overexposed subjects, terrible audio quality, bad exporting quality (someone even exported in QVGA at 12 fps), interlacing, what have you. All the shit is there. There were about five HV20-based entries too, among the worse of the overall bunch I must say (I am sorry if any of these HV20 directors reads this, but I got to write my opinion).

Someone could say to me “oh, at least we tried, where is your entry Eugenia?“. Well, that’s the thing you see. If I know that I can’t do something as well as I should, I simply don’t do it. Or, I do it, and if I notice that the result is not up to high standards of an international competition I simply don’t submit it. But I certainly won’t release a movie for a well publicized competition and have people laugh at me at the end.

And as for the exporting, gosh, do it right. DVXUser requires up to a 6 minute video, h.264/AAC encoding, and up to 50 MBs of a MOV/MP4 filesize. Now, to achieve this, is pretty easy. Export like this:
- From a miniDV widescreen camera export at 720×400 at 1024 kbps h.264 and 128kbps AAC.
- From an HD camera export at 848×480 at 1024 kbps h.264 and 128kbps AAC.
- From the DVX100 camera export at 852×480 at 1024 kbps h.264 and 128kbps AAC.
For the HD and DVX cameras, if you are not happy with the quality you get, or if you shot at 30p/60i instead, you can go down to 640×360 using the same bitrate. If your film is shorter than 6 minutes, you can upgrade the video bitrate a tiny bit, just enough to gain some additional quality without running over the 50 MB limit. And for God’s sake, remove pulldown if you shot in PF24, and de-interlace if you shot in 50i/60i. Nobody wants to see your horizontal lines on their media player.

UPDATE: What do you know. The “O2″ short movie used the same set that was used on Firefly’s 3rd episode, titled “Bushwhacked”. Pictures here.

Shot with an HV20, without a 35mm adapter from what I can tell. The director surely uses a lot of other tripod accessories though to pull through such moves with the camera. HD version here.

My first ever 35mm adapter arrived today. It is built by Worley, and I think I was the last person who got one, as he sadly — but understandably — closed the shop a few days ago.

The adapter has an achromat and it’s vibrated. I tried it with a 50/1.8 Canon EOS lens, but I must have assembled it wrong as the ground glass rotates when I turn the lens’ focus ring. I am waiting for my JBQ to come back from work and have a look for me.

And thanks to reader Josh for letting me know of these cheap rails designed specifically for the HV20/HV30, going for just $125 (with shipping). That’s dirt cheap if you think how much rails usually cost.

It’s just sad. There is absolutely nothing in the market that’s actually affordable and usable. I am talking about an external monitor for your camera while shooting.

The only affordable solution that was created with camera work in mind is LCD4Video. But its resolution is embarrassingly low, has no high quality input jacks for us HD users, the battery is external, and I hear that its shoe mount is flimsy to the point of being unusable.

So what an honest hard working indie filmmaker to do? I hear that people are buying LCD kits (with their electronics dangling out like a slaughtered pig), and even car LCD kits (e.g. Ikan, Lilliput, Xenarc) that they will have to modify and build holders for. There’s a lot of DIY involved.

In other words, there is no “good” solution today for external monitors. There is no monitor that has a 960×540 (1/4th 1080p) resolution at 8″ size, has a proper flip function, enough controls, HDMI/component/composite inputs, has a built-in 6 hour battery, has an optional sun hood and a car charger, and it comes with a special tripod mount with two “strong rotateable arms” that lets you mount the camera on one side and the LCD on the other. The right price is $300 for something like that. It’s economically doable, and with profit.

Instead, people have to improvise. The latest craze among videographers and even professional indie filmmakers is to buy the Sony DVP-FX820 (DVP-FX850 for PAL countries) portable DVD player. It comes with a rotateable swivel 800×480 8″ LCD, 6 hours of battery and an RCA input jack (requires extra $6 adapter to connect your camera to it). Then, you will have to either build yourself a monitor holder, or buy this (not sure it will fit nicely with this device). It’s stupid. It works alright, although the LCD resolution via composite is not fantastic, it’s just that it’s not a device that was designed for this job. Unfortunately, I will have to buy one, as my 35mm adapter is on the way here, and I need a bigger screen for focusing (it’s impossible to use shallow focus on the HV20’s 2.7″ screen). Overall, this DVD player with the tripod mount and the adapter will cost me $320. For something that’s not ideal. Simply because there is nothing better in the market right now.

And then they talk to me about market demand. I can tell you that this DVD player sells like crazy among filmmakers right now. There is demand, there’s just no one to sit down his a$$ and create the right product for us.

And don’t let me start as to how much overpriced tripod rails/rods are. I haven’t seen anything below $600. Because I don’t have any tripod rails I will be limited to be using my 35mm adapter with a single small lens, that won’t break my HV20 apart because of the added weight of the adapter. I am not the Black&Decker type you see to built it myself.

I received Tiffen’s Film Look DV Kit a few days ago and played with it with my HV20 and our recently purchased Canon 450D XSi. The kit includes contains a 4-pocket pouch and the following filters: Black Diffusion FX ½, Black Pro-Mist ½, Warm Black Diffusion FX ¼, and Soft/FX 1. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the best HV20 videographers out there, Ben, posted this impressive air show video. HD version here.

A small video I shot with the Kodak HD digicam while JBQ had climbed up to shoot the drummer from above (no way I could climb up there myself). You can clearly hear the song playing back really fast at 125%.