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Author Topic: Our new short... A Man of Limited Emotional Means  (Read 9311 times)

ChristopherBarrett

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Our new short... A Man of Limited Emotional Means
« on: July 27, 2012, 08:32:26 pm »

Check it out, yo... our new short film shot on location in Shreveport, Louisiana.  Roughly autobiographical.  The shoot was a blast.  We had SO much fun with our crew of about 15 and way talented cast.  The full thing won't be online until we finish the festival circuit but here's my little teaser..

https://vimeo.com/christopherbarrett/review/45814722/35d75a3570  Go Full Screen for HD!

A bunch of production stills...  <Right Click>  Open image in new window for bigger.

























And just for fun, a whole bunch of BTS photos...



CB
« Last Edit: July 27, 2012, 08:51:08 pm by CBarrett »
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Sareesh Sudhakaran

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Re: Our new short... A Man of Limited Emotional Means
« Reply #1 on: July 28, 2012, 12:25:38 am »

Love the lighting and the general mood of the piece.

What I'm not a fan of, is the grading:

  • In a typical living room HDTV situation, the 'dark' scenes will be near invisible. On the web it looks worse.
  • The night scenes are brilliant and I love the look. The day scenes are 'washed out' (you can tell a LOG curve was used - was it a RED camera?) and don't match the glow of the night scenes.

Thanks for sharing!
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fredjeang

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Re: Our new short... A Man of Limited Emotional Means
« Reply #2 on: July 29, 2012, 10:41:11 am »

Thanks for sharing Chris.

Great news you're involved in another feature film.

About the vimeo teaser: there has been an intention IMO to match the night-shots high isos in the daily ones, because the grain is constant whatever the lightning.
It sort of gives a taste of a 16mm film look, wich is great. The only "donwside" to my eyes is that it's in the end razor sharp, maybe slightly too sharp.
The grain quality is very good, but noticeably digital.

an italian truth 16mm film in hd: can be a good reference for grain add and then the amount of blurring it according to tastes.

Anyway, very nice images indeed, great low-light shots.

Best luck with the movie.
« Last Edit: July 29, 2012, 11:03:19 am by fredjeang »
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ChristopherBarrett

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Re: Our new short... A Man of Limited Emotional Means
« Reply #3 on: July 30, 2012, 11:05:29 am »

Sareesh, yes it was shot on Red Epics.  On my Eizo and Flanders monitors the day scenes feel good but the night scenes feel rather dark.  I am still working on the grade and a little worried about how it will look online versus dvd versus projected... doing a lot of trial and error.

Thanks, Fred.  The grain is all Cinegrain.  It's actually real film grain scan that you drop on top of your footage with an "overlay" blend mode.  I agree that it feels much too sharp and would blur it a bit.  Actually, though, I'm not sure that I'm going to keep it.  Interestingly, as much as it shows up in the HD digital files, it's barely noticeable on the Blu-Ray version.

Still experimenting!
« Last Edit: July 30, 2012, 11:09:16 am by CBarrett »
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Morgan_Moore

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Re: Our new short... A Man of Limited Emotional Means
« Reply #4 on: July 30, 2012, 12:20:18 pm »

Chris

Great images as ever.

The grain - I felt it looks a little 'slapped on in post' - Im sure you've not locked this down yet

As for the brightness I feel there is little discussion (in general) of final media use

AFAIK TeeVees are more crushed than PeeCees

Iplayer in the UK often has stuff that looks superflat on my Mac, yet wonderful on the Mrs CRT tele

It would seem to me that different final outputs are required

Most of the garbage you see written on the video fora is about delivering for broadcast, when we know that most of the stuff we shoot will be viewed on the web..

I make stuff look good on my Imac.. I reckon most of my viewers are on mac.. so thats the standard to me, however unstandard - I thin there is similar practice in audio mixing too

S
« Last Edit: July 30, 2012, 12:22:03 pm by Morgan_Moore »
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Sam Morgan Moore Bristol UK

fredjeang

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Re: Our new short... A Man of Limited Emotional Means
« Reply #5 on: July 30, 2012, 01:29:10 pm »

I think that there is a lot of useless masturbation on all this, like it happens in still land.
Apart from broadcast,

The gamma shift exists, it's crap yes but...so what? I mean that this topic has been on air worldwide for years and we still turn arround in circles.

I checked (in another topic in this forum) the morgan's videos on both peecees and macs. There is the expected gamma shift (normal), although the irony is that
I would not notice anything strange if not doing a side by side on purpose. (wich in real world I'd  never do)

Included the TVs...well, wich settings? I have a setting in my tv that sort of act on the gamma and matches the computer's. I could tell that there was something wrong on the factory settings because I knew exactly the reds and contrasts of the spanish national teevee, and what my tv displayed was completly wrong (crushed). I applied this setting and the result removed the crushed was then very close to the official spanish tv, even now when I watch a dvd on my computer, my tv output matches it quite well. So wich reference point to take if we can set a monitor or a tv to different configs?  Yes, there is a reference point, but once the footage is on-line, the viewing experience of the audience might be very very different and escapes to our control.

This is exactly like this never-end topic about retouching stills with calibrated monitors, on Mac or Pcs. In the end nobody except the very few people in the image industry will view this material like the master.
Because not only QT is part of the game here but all the chain involved.

You grade like crazy and refined, you burn a dvd, watch it on your expensive workstation and it's fine, watch it on your high-tech tv and it's fine. Then you bring the dvd to a friend's home and Bingo!...it's hoorible. Over saturated and contrasted. Then, with all the doubts in mind you did something wrong, you bring the same dvd to another's people house and this time, it's washed...
It sounds familiar init?

But when we got nothing to compare with...it's all fine in general.

So the grade IMO should be done with the main target in mind.

I've noticed that keeping the scopes in broadcast legal is always a good thing.(regardless of the web)

Something that can be done is: extract still images from the big fishes of advert campaign or great directors big prods (but you need to be sure they were putten on-line by the director him-herself. Recuenco in Vimeo for example is a good choice because what you see is actually the director's page so what they put on line comes from the master: http://vimeo.com/recuenco). Ingest that in the NLE and analyse it. It will reveal a lot of things.

lenguage question: what means slapped on ?
« Last Edit: July 30, 2012, 02:13:05 pm by fredjeang »
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Morgan_Moore

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Re: Our new short... A Man of Limited Emotional Means
« Reply #6 on: July 30, 2012, 02:59:29 pm »


lenguage question: what means slapped on ?

A quick effort - previsualisaion - beta - not the final product,

"We slapped on a quick coat of paint to tidy it up for the visit of the Queen"

As for the gamma shift this is a grab from 'The Bridge' to me it is dull and flat, Im sure not the intent of the production company, this is what it looked like on my Mac, but on The Mrs CRT the image looked wonderfull (both watching Iplayer). the highest value is 203, which I guess is something near the top of the 709 space, but looks stupid on a mac



 
« Last Edit: July 30, 2012, 03:13:59 pm by Morgan_Moore »
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Sam Morgan Moore Bristol UK

fredjeang

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Re: Our new short... A Man of Limited Emotional Means
« Reply #7 on: July 30, 2012, 03:15:05 pm »

A quick effort - previsualisaion - beta - not the final product,

"We slapped on a quick coat of paint to tidy it up for the visit of the Queen"

As for the gamma shift this is a grab from 'The Bridge' to me it is dull and flat, Im sure not the intent of the production company, this is what it looked like on my Mac, but on The Mrs CRT the image looked wonderfull (both watching Iplayer). the highest value is 203, which I guess is something near the top of the 709 space, but looks stupid on a mac



 

I confirm that on peecee web display it looks as washed-out. (I supposed you watched it on Mac)
So really the same.

As the source comes from the prod, they uploaded a badly optimized version.
« Last Edit: July 30, 2012, 03:20:15 pm by fredjeang »
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Morgan_Moore

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Re: Our new short... A Man of Limited Emotional Means
« Reply #8 on: July 30, 2012, 03:36:12 pm »

As the source comes from the prod, they uploaded a badly optimized version.

No they uploaded a perfect one.. for a CRT TV just looks terrible on our computers.
They need to make 2 available IMO

Coming back to Chris's film..

I guess Shareesh is looking on a TV "In a typical living room HDTV situation, the 'dark' scenes will be near invisible" - and my Mrs CRT too

Whereas Chris images look great to me!

Its not masturbation its 10-235 or 0-255 a major difference

S

« Last Edit: July 30, 2012, 03:42:43 pm by Morgan_Moore »
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Sam Morgan Moore Bristol UK

ChristopherBarrett

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Re: Our new short... A Man of Limited Emotional Means
« Reply #9 on: July 30, 2012, 03:42:23 pm »

This is why I grade footage on a broadcast monitor and keep an eye on the scopes.  You can avoid crushing the blacks and still get nice contrast by tweaking the mid-tones.  My DeckLink card also has a Photoshop Plugin so I can export a still image to the Flanders Display.  I use that whenever I'm worried about the color of a still image.  I have found time and again that the still on the broadcast monitor doesn't look that different than the version on my Eizo going through the Graphics card.

But then who's to say what the hell it looks like on my client's screen?

A number of industry professionals have found that the un-calibratable iPad screen is really fairly accurate.  Perhaps that will be the lowest common denominator someday.
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Morgan_Moore

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Re: Our new short... A Man of Limited Emotional Means
« Reply #10 on: July 30, 2012, 03:45:02 pm »

I have an Eizo monitor (in the cupboard gathering dust - I just never set it up when my MacTower went pop) I grade with my Imac which has a Dell monitor on as second display

I think this gives a customer relevant output..

An ipad screen is 100% accurate, if your viewer has an ipad, unlike your eizo :)

I think is 'someday' is 'today'

S



« Last Edit: July 30, 2012, 03:51:00 pm by Morgan_Moore »
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Sam Morgan Moore Bristol UK

fredjeang

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Re: Our new short... A Man of Limited Emotional Means
« Reply #11 on: July 30, 2012, 05:47:37 pm »

Morgan,

Yes, that's what I meant when I wrote "badly optimized version".
In fact their version is perfect for a different display medium but for web display on computers they should have done another version. The on-line material looks indeed crap.



But then who's to say what the hell it looks like on my client's screen?

A number of industry professionals have found that the un-calibratable iPad screen is really fairly accurate.  Perhaps that will be the lowest common denominator someday.

Exactly.

The use of cheap monitoring has been a very important practise in the audio industry for a long time. In recording studios they always have a pair of cheap monitors (don't remember the brand) and it has to sound good on those for the final mastering because they know the audience will generally listen on that spectrum range. They take that step very seriously.
« Last Edit: July 30, 2012, 05:51:28 pm by fredjeang »
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fredjeang

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Re: Our new short... A Man of Limited Emotional Means
« Reply #12 on: July 31, 2012, 02:58:12 am »

2 simple things yo have in mind.

About monitor, the gamma should be set yo 1.8

The space in hd rec709

Most systems like vimeo expect uploads to those specs
And will optimized The convertion for proper display.
If you send a file with 0-250 you sort of double The compansation.

And uf The grade was done with a 2.2 gamma, The issue is multiplied

Most web apps are "thinking" broadcast legal.
But not apply uf you upload your videos yourself in your Server.


« Last Edit: July 31, 2012, 03:10:36 am by fredjeang »
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ziocan

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Re: Our new short... A Man of Limited Emotional Means
« Reply #13 on: August 05, 2012, 10:00:58 am »

Grading fot TV is very tricky!
It depends all on how long the kids had played with the remote today.
Who knows... :)
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Morgan_Moore

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Re: Our new short... A Man of Limited Emotional Means
« Reply #14 on: August 10, 2012, 02:19:23 am »

Moving away from the grading do you want expand on the filming process.

You are DOP? Tell us about this, your relations with the director, how did you learn sequences and the motivation for shots etc..

S
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Sam Morgan Moore Bristol UK

MichaelEzra

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Re: Our new short... A Man of Limited Emotional Means
« Reply #15 on: October 02, 2012, 09:21:33 pm »

Beautifully done!
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