Posted on Tue 16 Dec 2008 at 5:37 PM PST. Filed under Filmmaking.
I completely re-cut and re-graded the music video of “You’ve Gotta Want It” by Dolorata. The original was too dark, boring, and cheesy. For the amount of footage I had (just 40 minutes of tape), I think I did a better job this time, as I used pans & crops to hide the fact that I don’t have nearly enough footage for a proper music video. HD version and download here.
To compare, the original cut is still available on youtube at Dolorata’s channel. It’s amazing that it got over 30,000 views overall though! I wish I had the current cut available from Day 1.
Update: And as I was writing all that, I burned our dinner tonight in the stove.
Posted on Fri 12 Dec 2008 at 6:57 PM PST. Filed under Filmmaking.
The trailers of two feature films both shot with the RED One camera: “Che“, and “Knowing“. Che feels more like a documentary, while Knowing feels more like a real Hollywood movie. It’s good to see digital taking over film cameras little by little.
Interestingly, viewing these films, they don’t always have very shallow depth of field — certainly not as much as 35mm adapters attached to cheap-ass consumer camcorders have. They feel much more natural, and yet, they still don’t look like home video. That’s because the composition of the scene, the lighting, dynamic range, and grading, are more important than just a shallow DoF scene. Another thing that bugs me with 35mm adapter footage on places like Vimeo, is the fact that 95% of them are just tests. Test this, test that. No footage of value to speak of. So why buy them then?
Posted on Wed 3 Dec 2008 at 11:57 PM PST. Filed under Filmmaking.
Van Blumreich is one of my favorite indie directors. His “Imprint” short story was amazing and could easily expand in a full featured movie. His music videos are an example of inventive camera work and ideas too. This week Van will release another short movie, named “Fury“, so it’s a good timing to grab a Q&A with him.
1. Tell us about Fury. How did the idea came to be? How long is the film?
Fury is a coming-of-age story about morality and adolescence. It focuses on the relationship between two friends, Scott and Danny, who are faced with a difficult decision after hitting a homeless man while driving under the influence. The idea came from a CNN article I read about teen sport killing that really shocked me. I wondered, “What could cause these suburban kids to lash out so violently”? I thought it would be a provocative issue to explore. That article, along with the John Knowles novel “A Separate Peace” were the starting points of inspiration. I really wanted to tell a story that reflected the confused morality that is seemingly rampant among kids today.
The film runs about 25 minutes.
2. Why the RED instead of an EX1 or DVX with an adapter? Did you buy the RED camera or rent it?
Ever since the RED came out, I really wanted to get my hands on it. Just the latitude on the camera is astounding, and the ability to shoot in 4K attracted me in case of a film-out later on. It’s a little out of my price range at the moment, so I rented from Rick Darge, a RED camera operator I met on the DVXUser forums. He liked my previous short film (Imprint) and so I flew him down to work on Fury. We became good friends and worked well together on set.
3. What are your thoughts on the new RED announcements? What cameras do you own/play with?
I’m definitely interested in the new Scarlet camera. I’m curious to see how it performs. I think what the RED guys are doing is very cool, breaking down their cameras and offering components so that you aren’t left with an obsolete camera down the line.
I own a Pansonic HVX200 and a Redrock Micro 35mm Adapter. It’s been a very trustworthy camera. I’d really like to upgrade to the Panasonic HPX170 down the road. It handles noise better and includes a built-in Waveform Monitor and Vectorscope.
4. I am sure you heard about the success of the HV20 and HV30 in the amateur artistic videography scene. What do you think about these sub-$1000 cameras?
I think they are great. They really allow people to create great looking content at an affordable price. I think if the final product is just going to be showcased on the web, these cameras can do amazing things. It’s when you want to blow it up to film or project it on a screen that I think the illusion wears off. But still, I think they are great cameras to learn on but definitely have limitations.
5. You’ve done both, so how different is artistically a music video to a short movie?
They are similar in some regards, but I feel that the processes differ in that music videos are more focused on what’s happening externally and films are focused more on what’s happening internally. With music videos, you convey feelings and emotions more through the images, colors, and music. With film, I think the feelings and emotions are more causal, coming more from the relationships between people. I think it’s important to understand this difference, because a lot of music video directors go on to direct films and end up with movies that are great to look at but missing that internal focus.
6. Did you have to secure locations, get permits for Fury? Or was it easier than that?
We secured almost all locations for Fury. I learned from experience that unsecured locations can be a huge headache, especially when they try to shut you down in the middle of shooting. We had a security guard call the cops on us before and I had to plead with him to let us go. So this time around, I worked with the Houston Film Commission and contacted all the right people concerning permits and such. It is sort of a time-consuming process, but saves you from getting trouble. But I still find the philosophy of “it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission” very true in some cases.
7. What do you think of using Creative Commons Attribution licensed music for your films?
I think it’s a nice affordable option, but I personally like collaborating with someone who can create original music for my work. But if a particular piece was perfect for my film, then I might consider using it.
8. I read that you helped out NBC during the Olympics, in China. What was your experience?
It was an unbelievable experience. I studied abroad in Beijing and was dying to go back for the Olympics. Luckily, the universe conspired in helping me get there. I assisted with the NBC Today Show. It’s kind of hard to describe in words, the whole experience, but it was definitely a once in a lifetime opportunity. I made some good contacts from it, and plan to go back soon and do some narrative work.
Posted on Wed 3 Dec 2008 at 11:38 PM PST. Filed under Filmmaking.
Digital Juice has some very good tutorials on its site about how to shoot and edit properly. There are a number of new things I learned by watching their videos, and the most recent one is “record 1 minute of ambient noise before you start shooting in a location”. Their video tutorials are highly recommended, and they offer MP4 downloadable versions too. To save you time, out of about 200 videos, I have put together for you the most practical & important ones — in my opinion.
Posted on Sun 30 Nov 2008 at 12:52 AM PST. Filed under Filmmaking.
For those who would like to embark into filmmaking territories, I would suggest you take a look at the “Pi” movie by Darren Aronofsky (trailer). The movie has a film school cutting and camera movement style, it was cheap ass, and yet, it has a very high rating on IMDb, because it has a great story. This movie is the definition of story telling.
Pi was shot in Super16 ten years ago, it has virtually no shallow DOF, it is extremely grainy, it’s black & white, and it generally looks like ass on first look. But the story takes you away and all that weird look add to the weird world the hero lives in.
Update: Aronofsky’s new movie, “The Wrestler” that comes out in a few days (trailer), was also shot in 16mm and has no shallow DOF to speak of either.
Posted on Sun 23 Nov 2008 at 12:20 AM PST. Filed under Filmmaking.
A short video about boats, shot for the purposes of my upcoming Kodak Z1012 IS digital camera review. It was shot within half an hour with this HD-capable digital camera at San Mateo’s marina (Coyote Point) yesterday.
Most scenes are over-exposed as the camera has no exposure control in its video mode. The video is color graded. HD version, comments and download here.
Update: And a pseudo-HDR image I shot and tone-mapped yesterday with the same camera:
Posted on Wed 19 Nov 2008 at 12:13 AM PST. Filed under Filmmaking.
I blogged about Christina Aguilera’s new song earlier today. As I said there, the song is very nice, maybe the best ever from Christina.
The official music video for it is pretty good too. It was directed by Peter Berg, the same director who did the movie “Hancock”.
In the meantime, Christina signed an exclusive contract with the Target superstores, and Target did a 30 second commercial for it, featuring Christina and her new song.
Here’s the trouble: the commercial is about 10 times better than the official video, and everyone who has seen both says so. If something like this was the official video, it would have kicked so much ass.
I am not sure how the director will take all this though. It can be a blow to him and his morale.
Posted on Tue 18 Nov 2008 at 9:43 PM PST. Filed under Filmmaking.
I revisited my “Garden Spinners” (was: “Kites”) video this afternoon, making at least 8 changes to the video. It is much more faithful to the beat now, and a bit more interesting too. Additionally, I upgraded the bitrate to 6 mbps VBR (original version was 5 mbps VBR), so if you had downloaded the previous version, please re-download the new one — it’s better.
I got some pretty positive feedback about this particular video, so I am interested to know if people prefer it over my jellyfish video. The jellyfish video is one of most “liked” HV20 videos on Vimeo ever, so I wonder which one is better.
Posted on Mon 17 Nov 2008 at 4:49 AM PST. Filed under Filmmaking.
We visited Santa Rosa and Bodega Bay this weekend, and so here’s one of the two videos I shot. HD version, comments and download here. The second video will come later today.
