Axel

​You nailed down an important point: production value. An army of robots, attacking a small group of superheroes in a russian town which is drifting off into stratosphere - you can't do that 'on the cheap' (second title of Stu Maschwitz' DV REBEL). You must forgo such stories. No problem. Yes, The Hobbit was unbelievably bad, compared to the LOTR trilogy. But there, I admit, Jacksons vision made his 'army of orks' succeed, I was blown away by that. But let's stop listing the real big budget movies. ​No. You are right, you can't do it alone. You are handicapped already in too many ways. But it has to be possible with a small crew. Let me tell you one of my ideas for a short film (abandoned), just to flesh out things a bit: A big fairground in my town, which has a big japanese community. I saw young parents and their cute little daughter, about five years old. It was in the night, and the girl almost slept. The father tried to impress her by showing off his skills at the shooting gallery. He won her a giant pink teddy bear. But she just took it and showed no enthusiasm. This is how I continued the story from there: The father takes his family to the tunnel of horror, with spectacular ghouls and zombies, the white-water-ride with a giant 3D-shark snapping at them. His childlike enthusiasm (in japanese) borders on ecstasy, but the girl yawns. Then, on top of the Ferris wheel, the child falls off the cabin, and the father can only grip her hand in the last second. Both parents are in panic. The father holds the girl, the girl holds the teddy bear, below them the millions of colored lights and the abyss. In the sleeping girl's dream, she plays with the living pink teddy bear on a meadow. Then she releases the bear and it falls, falls ... into the hands of a young boy on the ground. If the story is worth the effort is only my concern - unfortunately, because I couldn't convince my closest friend- whom I wanted to operate the camera. He didn't see the point (obviously I lack persuasive skill or storytelling skills). That's where the troubles start: If you can't pay your team. The question is, how can you plan sth. like that on a small budget, with a small crew and still with very high production value? Does anybody care later if it was done with AE, Hitfilm or Fusion? Good, cheap, fast - pick any two.

Must be my poor english. Mercer liked your posting, so I guess you didn't hurt him too much. Too many cooks spoil the soup. What you are talking about is an industrial product, not a good film. And regarding VFX, it's accomplished on the backs of many (credits) underpaid modern slaves, who ruin their health sitting 14 hours a day in front of computers. The last film I saw in the cinema was Avengers - Age Of Ultron, and though it was somehow entertaining, it really was a big heap of shit. I never dreamed of making such a film myself (though at age 16, before having seen really good films, I dreamed of making car chases with lots of guns and explosions in James Bond style). ​Excellent check list. For a one-man-band (or a small crew of trusted enthusiasts), you had to delete some of them from the start to make the project manageable. The crucial part would be to leave the right ones on the list. Somewhere I read a wise line: Good, cheap, fast - pick any two. On the short film Ascension (search on Vimeo), the filmmakers say (homepage >making of): Let's start with some numbers: 5 students, 1 year and 2 months of production, 19 000 hours of work, 2 months of calculation on 20 computers, 11 000 final pictures, 4 To of storage and very few sleeping time. Those are numbers that impress me. ​I'll try to, and I start by confessing what I have not achieved so far: pulling off something that I'm really proud of, capturing my dreams on film. Am I alone? Well, if very many had succeeded, I'd expect to see more good short films around. If I finally succeeded, I expect that instead of typing lengthy postings on how to succeed, I'd lean back and dream about the next project ;-) EDIT: As I see it (and I am the TO), this isn't off topic. The software industry (not Quantel or Flame) must be careful to sell their products to us without risking their reputation of being 'pro' (whatever this is supposed to be, in our times). In the beginning of cinema there were the pioneers, and they found out how to entertain and astonish their audience in a playful way. Had they had one percent of the opportunities we have today, they would have happily exploited them without having to compare their work to any industrial standards.

​I don't know what tempted you to react in such a condescending way to a forum member - as a moderator -, but it could be worth the effort to find out. Must have to do with our self-perception as filmmakers (in the broadest sense), and that's the point of this thread as I see it.

​Talking about expectations: what do you expect? To build up your own company, work professionally, satisfy the expectations of your clients? Just between us fellow EOSHD members, what is this all about?

​ ​Do you realize how touchy people are if you question their professionalism? Being a pro actually means doing it for a living. Whores. I wrote out of personal experience. I did nine weddings over the years, for friends as a gift or for a new piece of equipment. Certainly I am no pro. Long ago I was camera assistant for a company shooting commercials on 35mm film. Let me assure you: professionals in this field are not different from everybody else. My comment wasn't meant to ridicule wedding videographers, it was to concretize the real strengths of FCP X, it's unique advantage.

​And yet we ourselves 'confuse' creativity and professionalism, and I don't single me out. A good film essentially is a fake, and that's why this business attracts posers. Somewhere out there (may be), there are people with deeper knowledge and understanding. They are not confused. I just want to make some things clear for myself, put the fakes in my films and stop feeding delusions.

​You are right.

​What is the target group? Would someone with the skills of, say, Andrew Kramer, touch Hitfilm 3? How many of the CC subscribers, who admire the professionalism of the suite for AAE's possibilities, are on par with Andrew Kramer? Do they profit from the complexity of that program at all? The careful Adobe PR department labels it's products 'creative'. See how they put the term between quotation marks. 'Creativity' is not exactly professionalism: 1. New Color Workspace: now includes the Lumetri Color panelAs many of you know, Lumetri is the color engine that powers Adobe SpeedGrade and it’s now integrated into Adobe Premiere Pro CC in a new more “creative way”. The idea is to adjust color as you go during the editing process. I like to call this “color editing” . While the new Color Panel is very powerful and will satisfy most users need for complex color work , we wanted to be careful not to confuse Color Editing with Color Grading with specific grading tools like Adobe Speedgrade and others. They are careful to confuse it without appearing to do so. Merge AAE with APP? They would lose their crown jewel. They'd become Adobe Hitfilm Cloud. As for Blackmagic, they hire real pros to suggest that their cameras and other stuff is used on a professional level: Staged professionalism (screenshot from BM site) This isn't aimed at professionals, it's aimed at wannabes. What's more ridiculous? Being a proud amateur, utilizing the stuff that really helps him make his dreams come true or taking part in this charade? Think about it. Final Cut Pseudo Pro X: Oh yeah, it was used on Focus (like Premiere was used on Gone Girl). But what is it really good for? The honest answer: weddings! Really, if you've got a few hours of footage and you want to edit this in reasonable time, there is no faster way. You very quickly adjust the colors also (in a very 'intuitive' way, Apples pendant to Adobes 'creative', which implies something unnecessarily complicated), and you don't need hours to build nice title animations, there are thousands of adjustable templates for free. You'd be crazy to use anything else. But would a pro?

​Yes, I don't doubt this. But if someone is a brilliant 'surgeon', and this is his only calling, would he then grade in the CC embedded *Speed*grade anyway? He then will have one of those hardware suites with elitist software, the names of which are seldom uttered, because they cost $100.000 and much more (hardware calibrated reference monitors, a full cinema projector if he grades for the big screen, control panels that even Mr. Chekov ate his heart out). The protocol by which the colorist gets access to the footage from old AVID could as well be carved in stone, compared to this 'workflow' Adobes dynamic link really is already an all-in-one-solution. ​Here is the riddle: Apple could have made FCP X the consumer's (or no/low-budget filmer's) definite NLE. They had the crew from Color, they had the crew from Shake, from Logic, they had Soundtrack Pro, they developed Motion. They put every effort into making the most advanced editing software in the world, but then they miraculously stopped. Take for instance the new mask paint tool. What is that supposed to be? The roto tools in Motion had been better since 11 years. The plugin-combo SliceX and TrackX had been much better (Mocha tracker). Why? If you think hard, you'll know the answer. ​When cows fly. But is it technically impossible? Surely not. Then why don't they? ​You say that because you're doing literally all the work. A one-man-band. Professionalism has a nimbus. You pay the CC fee because you consider it a pro app. And why did Apple not call their flagship 'iMovie X'? They savagely cut off anything resembling the 'Adobe Production Suite' (as it was called then), but they insist on being pro. A professional NLE, see AVID, doesn't have to be smart or make things easy. It doesn't have to swallow a hundred proprietary codecs, perform multicam edits, allow to apply funky looks, what have you. My posting wasn't meant to discuss the complexity of color grading nor to demand a better workflow integration, I just started to wonder why we all accept to be lied to so readily.

I recently read an unsuspicious text from the Adobe site, listing the new features of Premiere CC 2015 for NAB. Let me cite: 1. New Color Workspace: now includes the Lumetri Color panelAs many of you know, Lumetri is the color engine that powers Adobe SpeedGrade and it’s now integrated into Adobe Premiere Pro CC in a new more “creative way”. The idea is to adjust color as you go during the editing process. I like to call this “color editing” . While the new Color Panel is very powerful and will satisfy most users need for complex color work , we wanted to be careful not to confuse Color Editing with Color Grading with specific grading tools like Adobe Speedgrade and others. I asked myself, why should it be important not to merge color grading and editing (or whatever else one may think of) in one program? Up to now, I was under the impression that it was difficult to accomplish, that Speedgrade simply was so unique and fundamentally different from Premiere that they couldn't integrate it seamlessly. Then I was told by a post guy that the reason probably was a strategic one. He could be asked by a client to refine the edit though he really was paid only for color refinements. Professionals like to have every task strictly separated. What Blackmagic now does with Resolve 12 is not what professional colorists ask for. Reasonable, understandable. From an amateur's view, this means actually 'deliberately crippling the products' (a nice term I picked up from Andrews rant about DSLRs with poor video functions to protect other product lines). Then Randy Ubillos retiring (he was the force behind FCP - historically a 'spin-off' of Premiere - , iMovie and then FCP X). Why is it, I asked myself, that FCP X was such a careless fart into the faces of the FCPro users? It obviously aimed at the consumer/amateur market first. Why did they (in 4 years!) not develop the rudimentary color correction tools themselves? Why did'nt they finally integrate an audio mixer (frequently requested by users)? Inability? Strategy! They don't want to frighten off the remaining pros. Am I paranoid? I think all this vanity about professionalism, using the 'right' system and so forth is nothing else but a delusion of us pawns, encouraged by the industry. Sorry for not finding the right words, english is not my native language.

For now, you should read the manual to understand the basics. Leave out what is obviously not your business. For chapters 10&11 (COLOR!), you should reserve 90 minutes a day. Read about it, see an online tutorial dealing with the specific subject and try it with your own stuff. You can be much faster if you use keyboard shortcuts. Print out those 'cheat sheets' (google) or buy removable stickers. Leave out the 'EDIT'-chapters for now. Resolve 12 (announced for June) will probably be a full grown NLE (multicam, audio synchronization, nesting, audio mixer), it can then substitute your beginner's NLEs. BTW: Never grade in iMovie (don't know for PE, but could be the same). It computes in 8-bit (that's why it feels so fast). That means you can only make one change without quickly losing quality ...

​If you've got the choice. Of course. Surely for people who shoot skater videos or dogs shaking their ears. Twixtor is a crook. But if you know your foe, you can plan any dramatically justified slomo with it. The amount of time processing? How many slomo shots can a film have without feeling slow? And again, you can't just shoot everything with 60p for the odd slomo and then believe the stuff will look good @ 24p without considerable render time. ​On 1080 devices, you can't see superior resolution (of original 4k), you can only see inferior (of 'not true' HD) resolution. There is an experience among us former cinema projectionists: one can distinguish 4k when sitting in row six or closer to the screen. Not because beyond this threshold the film looks much better, but on the contrary, you can still endure it in this size, whereas the 2k version is blown up too much. That's all there is to it. I had two 4k sources on my 1080 monitor, and though they apparently were good HD, they were no revelation. How could they be? It's all about size, and nothing else.

​In short: yes.

First of all, let's see what happens with the excellent Twixtor slomos if you have motion blur (influenced by exposure time, the longer, the more blur) in the image, here. You can only slow down to exactly the degree matching the motion blur of a high speed recording with that frame rate, no more. Let's do the maths. A 180° shutter with the Pocket is a perfectly proportional motion blur. 11,25° means 25% motion blur. So you can speed up 4 times (400% duration, 25% speed). If you take 30 fps for 24 fps, you add another 20% (of 400), that means 480% are theoretically possible, equalling ~120 fps. Note, that Twixtor interpolates motion phases as well as appropriate motion blur (and it does so with very little ghosting, like AAE or other apps, left to their own devices). So to be on the safe side, you must not allow any motion blur in the recording. Like with HFR-slomos, this means shorter exposure times. For example, for 11,25° you need sixteen times as much light to expose correctly. The second fact is, that there are movements so fast that you simply can't stop motion blur (at least not with the Pocket, you'd need the equivalent of 1/2000, better 1/5000 shutter), i.e. the dog's ears at 17" here. If there is motion blur (any kind of blur), Twixtor will screw it. Water, on the other hand, is a lesser problem, see 21" in the same clip. Last thought on the subject: you do slomos for a reason, or you don't do them at all. If you know in advance that you need to accentuate a certain gesture with slow motion, you plan that in advance. Film is all about manipulating time, not about real time. So you need Twixtor. Because, even if you do all your shots in 60p, just in case you want to time-remap them later, you need to do it in too small a shutter to allow natural motion blur for 24p. You have to post-process these to add blur. EOSHD member Brandon Li (b.k.a. Rungunshoot) wrote a tutorial about that.

​Certainly you mean for slomos. Because for someone who is after a clean, 'Hobbit'-like look, the Pocket is clearly the wrong choice. As a workaround for missing 60p, you can use 30p with short exposure times and process the footage with Twixtor. Being a cinema lover since my early childhood, I also love the dirty slomo ('trailer slomo') of repeated frames. Use it very often in my wedding videos. I almost always manipulate real time, but I'm not much bothered by technical imperfections of these obvious effects. Nothing is more boring than a perfect slomo. Then, just imagine, you bought the BMMCC with a BMD VA to get 60p, and BM gives us 60p for the Pocket in a FW upgrade, and be it only for ProRes LT. Not completely impossible, we've seen them answering so many wishes of customers in the past. Okay, but some use the SB always or almost always. And raw theoretically is the better codec, allows much more in post. The filter is still an option for me. On the other hand, I try to save money for the Ursa mini​, probably as a christmas surprise, having gotten used to the BM promises ...

Wrong in your chart: The FS7 does 4k, not just UHD. Tested the camera today (borrowed). ​It can use the Metabones EF "Ultra" (latest version) reliably only with lenses with manual aperture. I had read this before and couldn't believe it, but it's true. More often than not, the lens (we tested four new original Canon lenses) loses contact with the camera, and to influence aperture at all, you have to unmount it and put it on again. The original Sony lens is slow, produces videoish images and has no good AF, the only good thing is it's zoom. The specs are a something to remember when you hit the hard ground of reality.

​Let's wait if the biggest drawback - *moire* - has been taken care of in this camera. The rolling shutter is not that prominent.

Sorry, I got this wrong. I had the FS7 today. No idea about the A7s ...

With these specs, no problem, neither with XAVC nor with ProRes 4k. New FCP X swallows FS7-stuff - XAVC-S & XAVC-I - without need for Sony Catalyst. Runs smooth like DV. Raw 4k probably would be too much ...

​Don't get me wrong. I like that too. If something impresses me, I try to capture it, just for me, no intention to impress others. Few years ago, I made this short film about my friend's experiments with the GoPro as an underwater camera in an unsuspicious lake. I graded the stuff as usual (had not much grading experience then) and was mesmerized at how the colors changed magically during a clip. This had to do, as I now know, with asymmetric clipping of the GoPro. So I guess I'm not a purist. If things get weird, look weird, they are interesting. Like I wrote above, I was very impressed by Tarkovsky. In his films, nature always 'does' something. Are they 'contemplative'? Oh yes. Watch this.

​Sure. They manually set exposure and WB at the beginning and then let the camera run. It's kind of a daring concept to expect from viewers to watch this in real time. Nothing unexpected happens, it's like watching paint dry. But I hope you are not determined to repeat this. ​You have to experiment. Your GH4 may allow you to set exposure times of 1/15 s (or so). Because you don't actually have a shutter. Motion rendition, of course, would be poor, you'd have effectively 15fps within 30fps (or 12 within 24). You could also combine time lapse (looong exposure times) and rain, something quite unusual. I saw an experimental short film at a festival a few months ago, where the filmmaker showed a busy highway first, then cranked down fps gradually by simultaneously prolonging exposure times. First the cars became ghostly trails, then they disappeared altogether. If you follow any rules how to make the perfect time lapse, the result will be perfectly boring. If you find your own way to do it, it will be interesting ...

​There are so many possibilities to depict rain. You should find out what rain means to you, personally. A force of nature, a romantic-melancholic mood, an abstract layer/pattern that filters the colors and shades, whatever. You could use sDoF to accentuate individual foreground drops, dripping from a roof or running down a pane. You could use absolute DoF and wide angle lenses to show how the rain decreases contrast in the distance (whereas it increases contrast in the foreground). You could counteract (or not) washed-out colors. You could show dramatic clouds or a perfectly white sky. You could make it look like fog by longer exposure times. Or, on the contrary, you could surrealistically change the rain's direction by very short exposure times (captures individual drops occasionally, which sometimes can make it look as though they were rising). Sound adds a lot to how rain feels. See Tarkowsky's films (i.e. Andrej Rubljev, spelling not checked). In short: Make up your mind about what you want to show. I never made time lapse shots of sunrises/sunsets. Because I felt many had put so much effort in this, and I surely coulnd't top their results. If I needed to, I wouldn't do it as everybody else would do it. Why show the sun at all? Why not only the wandering shadows? Why must there be a smooth fade-in/fade-out or a seemingly evenly lit clip? When the first strong rays appear, why shouldn't my scene not be (slightly) overexposed? Isn't that what makes a sunrise interesting? You know, as beautiful as they might be, nobody likes sunrise-time lapses. Because they tend to look the same whereever they're taken. Make something special. Astonish us.

Indeed. Reminds me of Terrence Malick. In german/french public broadcaster ARTE there was a series of five docs called Schätze Südostasiens (Treasures Of South-East-Asia). It was shot with two cameras: All copter shots were GoPro Hero 4 on Phantom, everything else was BMPCC. They accepted the GoPro shots (though, being 8-bit, they didn't meet the technical requirements). For my taste, they should have boosted the colors more. Also, I think you agree, the GoPro stuff looks sharper. Like in the TV doc Life! (about people from Morocco, who are torn between a better life in Europe and their friends in their beautiful country) - shot completely on BMPCC with speedbooster. I personally like the Pocket because it's about as cumbersome as my old analog Bolex, and the images can be great. It's way easier with other cams (I own some), and at first sight they seem to be 'better'. But there always had been some images impossible to achieve with any DSLR (with the exception of EOS with ML Raw, but THAT'S cumbersome!), and I'm just trying to make every shot that special.

​The successor would be this (139 €). In the image you also see a good way to operate this camera handheld. With a heavier lens and the speedbooster, it's better to move the grip to the side, horizontally. My DIY solution: Had there been the Lanparte-Remote then, I would've used this. Mine isn't that elegant. But it was ~$ 15 ...

​> use only ProRes-flavors > use only Menu >Recording >Dynamic Range >Film > use only Menu >Display >Dynamic Range >Video > use exclusively ISO 800, no matter what > use 180° degree shutter in standard situations (for 24p with 60 Hz power frequency, for PAL countries then 172,5°) > use bigger shutter angles in lowlight for slow moving motifs, up to 360° (doubles exposure w/o more noise or worse DR through ISO 1600) > use smaller shutter angles for slomos (down to 11,25°). Twixtor and the like don't handle motion blur well > roughly guess the right color temperature, i.e. 3200 for Tungsten, 5600 for daylight. You have to grade anyway > buy the Zacuto loupe if you want to see anything > buy a camera grip with remote, like this, not a big cage, rods, mattebox and these gadgets > if you need s.th. like an external monitor, beware! Not all will show an image. Lilliput has a compatibility table (1080p through HDMI) > during recording, leave focus peaking on always (since latest FW update, it stays on after power off-on) > rely on 95% zebra ("ETTR"). It gives better results than trying to get a wide range in the histogram, in my experience > if there is no zebra, it means you don't 'fill the well' because the location is lit too poorly. This ain't the A7s! > therefore: search the sun! or light the scene! High contrasts, backlight: that's where the Pocket's DR shines > use an IR-cut filter > use externally recorded audio (built-in audio only to sychronize it). Or this (resp. it's successor) > use an app that allows to load LUTs (i.e. the free Resolve lite). Try Captain Hooks LUTs, here (download), from this site (starting point for your grade) > don't grade too flat. One gets used to flat looking images very quickly. But others don't. > To quote Stu Maschwitz: plan your shoot, then shoot your plan! Follow the suggestions above, then make a small doc, no cats, no flowers, no landscapes