Finding and Adapting a Development Model

I have had an idea percolating in the back of my mind for a few weeks now. It is deeply personal, yet I think it holds some universal elements as well. I think it could be a really strong project, if done right.

But that is the problem. When ever I really fall in love with a project, it becomes too precious and I am terrified to move it along, for fear that I ruin my perfect concept. This is obviously unacceptable.

So, I am looking for a new, well any, development model that will help me get over this analysis paralysis and provide a framework for incremental work towards completion.

I have a lot of texts and hands-on experience with production and even writing, and have found them invaluable for accomplishing objectives and completing projects. However, I have never spent much time in the development phase. I have Linda Seger's Making a Good Script Great, which is a great book, but it is fundamentally a book of rewriting, so is obviously light on development.

Where will I find a model that works for me?
More »

Practical Experience Gained from Using My Equipment

A few months ago I bought new camera equipment: Canon HV40 camcorder, Letus Mini adapter and three old Canon FD lenses. Now that I have used the setup a few times, I have some real world data on usage. This is important because I have building this knowledge as I move towards making "real" movies.

Below are my random list of observations:

• The camera isn't great in low-light
• But with a little work, you can squeeze manual exposure control out of it (shutter speed, aperture, gain)
• The adapter and 35mm lenses eat light.
• The combination of the first and third above means that shooting indoors is not advisable if you aren't going to light.
• A movie should be lit anyway, even outside
• I knew low-light would be an issue going in
• A little gain might not be so bad, maybe.
• The footage can feel big, expensive. Sticking with 180 degree shutter, shooting at 24p and aiming for the angles of view that Hollywood uses all add a tremendous amount of production value.
• The bokeh is great.
  
• HDV, so far, is a pain. My machine is operable, but struggles to cut it, especially with a couple of layers.
  
• My computer is definitely under-powered and is incapable of running pro editing systems. HDV is lightest weight, non-proxy source material that I am going to be dealing with going forward.
  
• I am cutting with Premiere Elements 9. I don't think consumer editing apps will every be comfortable for me after using real Premiere, Avid and Final Cut so much.
• Additionally, the "user-friendliness" of Elements means I don't have a lot of control over the capture and preservation of my data. I am not even sure what the real specs are of the captured video.
  
• Color correcting is doable under these conditions given a properly white balanced and exposed scene. However, the heavy compression, color bit depth and lack of even a simple tools (three-way color correction, levels or curves) mean that color grading is complete out of the question.
• Still, the image looks pretty damn good, until you start messing with it.
• In order to retain maximum control over exposure, especially shutter, I do not use the cinema setting. Also, to try to give myself the most flexibility in post, I use the custom image controls and turn the contrast, saturation and sharpening all the way down. But given that I can't effectively manipulate the image in post anyway, I might start shooting with the image punched up. It at least merits a test.
  
• After three years out of the game, my workflow skills are rusty. Of course, a lot has changed in that time. DV becomes HDV, SD becomes HD, interlaced becomes progressive, 29.97 becomes 23.98, XP becomes windows 7, etc etc. I just realized how few codecs I have on my system.
• HDMI Out capture was one of the reasons I bought this camera, though that feature is a lot more common now. I would need a capture device, and to thoroughly test the workflow.
  
• Faster lenses would be awesome, but exacerbate the shallow depth of field issue
  
• Shallow DOF is hard
  • following focus is tough on non-cinema lenses (due to focus throw) especially without a follow focus system
    
  • gauging what is in focus is tough without a monitor or assists (e.g. false color). I am trying to use the Peaking assist that baked in, but the haven't found it to be too useful yet.
    
• Shoulder mount rig would be really nice.
  

More »

Five Movies in 2011

I am going to make 5 movies in 2011. They may not be large. They may not be great. But they will be made.
More »

On Practice: Wontons and Movies

A few weeks ago was the Chinese Mid-Autumn (aka Moon) Festival. A couple of friends came over and we made dumplings from scratch. A couple pounds of meet, a pound of cabbage and an assortment of traditional ingredients added up to a couple pounds of left over dumpling filling. We froze it, and I have finally worked through it all cranking out a couple hundred wontons along the way. The first few were awful: they were ugly and would come open and the skins split. But eventually I started to figure it out. Now, I happen to be a perfectionist. Most people wouldn't really care about the execution, my friends made a damn tasty filling, so even the ugly split ones tasted fantastic. But I was fairly unhappy about how they turned out until I had cracked out at least a hundred of them, maybe more. Then a funny thing happened; they started to turn out alright.

Even as my knuckles cramped while crimping the last of those little bastards, I was still getting better. Here is the thing: I had to make a bunch of really crappy wontons to get there. I wish I could have made that many movies that quickly.

The thing I think that is most exciting about the dramatically reduced barrier to entry is that you can crank out as many bad movies as you want, and you know, actually get better. At this point, there is really no reason not to make a ton of small projects and really learn the craft. This also gives you an excellent opportunity to hone your storytelling and visual style.

More »

The Masters: Philip Bloom, Part I

Philip Bloom has become an idol of mine—and a lot of other people too. He seems to have exploded onto the scene via the DSLR video phenomenon. My goal here is to see if I can deconstruct Mr. Bloom's meteoric rise to see what we can learn from him, not just as an artist, but as a new filmmaking icon. Here are my initial thoughts.

I have been following Philip Bloom's blog for almost a year now, coinciding with my rekindled interest in filmmaking. I have been following him on twitter for a few months, and on Vimeo for a couple of months as well. The guy is ridiculously prolific. I haven't seen him comment on the source of his productivity, but I think it has something to do with working non-stop. Perhaps at some point I will be lucky enough to ask him. But whether it is his films, his blog or his tweets, the guy is always posting.

I decided to go back to the beginning. I started with the first post in his archive. What I have learned is that from day 1—or at least day 1 of his blog—that:

• He knows his stuff (technical proficiency)
• He has a great eye and is a damn good filmmaker
• He is well-established (his first post mentions an upcoming project for the BBC)
• He is an engaging personality
• He is already looking for ways to shoot good looking images more efficiently and inexpensively

We will learn later what a brilliant self-marketer he is—and believe me this is not a negative; while that statement might make some cringe, self-marketing is important, especially for an artist looking to be self-sufficient.

I will continue with Part II after I do more research.

More »

Lucky

In a very unneeded turn of events, our place was robbed this weekend while we away. This leads to a lot of different emotions, most of which are probably better channeled in to screenplays than blog posts. However, there is one thing that I can't help but feel: Lucky. Sounds weird, but it is true. It happened while we were away—probably because we were away. There was a lot of valuable stuff that was not taken. The total value of things lost was not that high, in monetary terms—though my wife is pretty upset about the sentimental value of her lost jewelry. Other than my papers (passport, social security card, birth and marriage certificates) my only positions lifted were my old video camera and some peripheral A/V stuff: a couple of cheap lav mics, various audio cables and the like.

Personally, it could have been much worse. On a last minute whim, I packed up my new camera, tripod, 35mm lens adapter and lenses and hauled them a few hours away with only the slight hope of using them in a jam-packed weekend. Well, I did use them. I forced myself to break the rig out and spend some time capturing my daughter playing in the yard. It felt wonderful. And, it saved me a from a devastating loss.

Again, in the grand scheme of things, this would not have been a huge monetary loss. But buying that stuff represented a shift in my direction, my focus, my life. Using it this weekend, despite the inconvenience, took a dedication to this change. If I had lost that "stuff", it would have meant a lot more to me than the couple of thousand dollars that the renters insurance would have comped me for it. And for that, I can't help but feel lucky that I spent Sunday shooting instead of lamenting.
More »

Emmulating 35mm FOV with Letus Mini

I will continue the manual controls topic soon. In the meantime, I am going to go in a different direction. I spend my research and review time split between the philosophical micro-budget sphere and the technical geeky side of production. Over the last few days I have spent some time studying up on field of view—first prompted by Stu Maschwitz's tweet about Abel Cine's field of view "comparator", then reviewing a couple of Barry Green/DVXUser/DVInfo comments about the 35mm adapter field of view. Something that had not dawned on me is the angle/field of view difference between Super35 film and the full 35mm frame. Shape alone should have made it obvious, but it never dawned on me, mostly because I was focused on depth of field. But after review—and testing—it is true that the field of view is different and that my Letus Mini can be "calibrated" to either. I decided to test out my gear and write up the results. The following will be quick and dirty (again) because I discovered some cropping issues after I shot some test images. Also, I did not light for this, using only available indoor light and did not post on the images.

Calibration and Error

First, I set my up my camera and adapter by using Barry Green's math for a 35mm movie frame: at 2 feet with a 50mm lens, you should have a horizontal field of view of approximately 10.5 inches. I used a piece of paper with a mark drawn 10.5 inches from one edge, then lined this up in my viewfinder. Unfortunately, the still I took was wider:

Good to know that the viewfinder is cropped. At first I was disappointed, but if this frame is in anyway consistent with the HDV frame, I can deduce that the viewfinder by 10%, and should be able to reproduce and correct this test in the future by drawing my mark 9.5 inches from the edge instead. So, even though this test is not perfect, at least it provides a rough baseline. Keep this in mind as you review the rest of the images. I know I will keep in mind when i compose my images in the future (and when prioritizing an external HD monitor for my rig.)

Emulated Super35 Frame

This handsome fellow is me being disgruntled about being the subject of the most uninteresting image of all time. Next time I may put some thought into composition, lighting, etc. This time I just locked the camera, chair and focus at 5 feet. I did this for two reasons: to create a lazy but repeatable setup (I didn't have to move my tripod, just pan from the calibration wall 2' away from the focal plane and my happy subject 5' away) and because I wanted to test my lens focus barrel settings—I adjusted the back-focus on my FD mount a couple weeks back; it was obviously better, but I wanted a more accurate test. More on that in a later post.

You can see here that I have a decent medium shot with my normal lens. White balance is set to incandescent for my living room ceiling lights; the daylight coming through the shades is very blue. Also, hello vignetting. More on that later too.

Emulating "Full-frame" 35mm Framing

Next I used some online calculators to setup my full-frame calibration (no image.) The result:
Lo, it is wider! Yeah, this should be expected. Also, hello worse vignetting. Again, not surprising. Finally:

Frame While Attempting to Mitigate Vignetting

Here I zoomed all the way in on the adapter trying to frame out the vignetting:

Well, less, vignetting—note that it is not NO vignetting. Also, notice how the subject is more disgruntled as he is now in a closeup that emphasizes the uninterestingness and poor lighting of this composition—or perhaps due to the extreme deviation from the wonderful normal feel of the "real" normal framings.

Bonus: No Adapter 50mm Approximation

Here I removed the adapter and guesstimated the full-frame equivalent of a 50mm normal lens:

Not bad for mental math + eyeballing the zoom readout, though not great either. It is certainly wider. However, look at that infinite depth of field! Damn 1/3 inch sensor! And I still had the focus locked at about 3 inches for the adapter's ground glass! Gasp you should! This is of course, the real reason I opted for the adapter in the first place: Bokeh.

In this case the vignetting is caused by leaving the adapter's threaded attachment on the camera; this is the inside of the attachment's barrel. Also, please note HOW MUCH BRIGHTER this shot is than the others. I have avoided this subject on purpose, but it is obvious how bad this rig is in low-light. Not all the blame falls to my f/1.8 lens and half-stop eating Letus: this camera is not good in low-light, and my apartment is dark as hell. This further emphasizes the need to consider lighting when shooting. That brings me to:

VIGNETTING!!!

Some people—Philip Bloom, I am looking at you—love vignetting. I will admit, it can be nice. However, I will let you in on a secret: the best vignetting is added in post, and then, only when it feels right. I am already wondering if I can create a post workflow for brightening my corners with gradient masks. On the other hand, I am not freaking out at the moment. I have only really shot in awfully dark conditions, which makes the vignetting worse, I think. And I did nothing to help with the exposure, in fact, the opposite, since I was taking stills using the video settings. Hopefully I can actually test this outdoors again soon and see if I can minimize the vignetting with bright lighting. Actually, I kind of already did this:

Mike is Cinematic from Mitch McLachlan on Vimeo.

However, this was my very first try with this rig, so I have no idea how far I zoomed into the ground glass, but I would like to think it was close to the Super35 frame, likely zoomed in a little further to fight the vignetting. But, I also used two lenses that are a full 2 stops slower than today's test lens. Either way, that isn't nearly as bad as saw in my tests.

Wrap Up

You may be wondering why I care about this at all. To be honest, I had never even considered this until very recently—I opted for this setup for 35mm bokeh and nothing else. But I think that Barry Green (and Stu Maschwitz) have a point. Taking advantage of the traditional Hollywood frame further enhances the production value of the shot. If a cine 50mm lens equates to a still 50mm lens on my rig, then I am really happy. I may be cropping my still lens a bit—making my 50mm lens a still 72.5mm equivalent, my 28mm a 40mm equivalent and my 135mm a 200mm equivalent—but that is okay if I am able to get one step closer to the big budget feel.

For now I will opt for emulating Barry's Super35 frame while keeping a close eye on the vignetting. But This has inspired me and I will be doing some more testing and shooting soon.
More »