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sparhawk

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I always wondered about that. Since we have some guys doing movies here maybe they can answer my questions. :)

 

First of all. When you see a movie in the cinema they are usually atmospheric and feel realistic. On the other hand, if you watch the 'Making off' of some movies and you see the real takes while they act it, often these shots look just like amateurish as my own shots. So there has to be some magic thing that happens that transforms the footage into the atmospheric stuff you can see on screen afterwards. Don't know how to explain this well. I happen to take some shots with my video camera and once I accidently got a few seconds where the atmosphere was as good. Since I didn't know how this happened I can't really repeat this. So I wonder how this is done. Is this pure post porcessing? Somehow I don't believe that this is all done by post processing. I think a big part of it is also the proper lighting and such.

 

One other thing that I also wonder about is how to maintain the colour and feeling of the movie. What I mean is - when I take shots i.e indoors and then go outside they look totally different, because of the different lighting conditions. When you look at a professional movie, then the coulour theme is consistent and there is no difference between indoor and outdoor or different daytimes. Everything fits together. How is this best to be achieved? Actually that is also one thing that was well done in drewb50's zombie flick, because the overall theme was consistent, which mkaes all the difference between the typical amateur home video and this one.

Gerhard

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It's the difference between viewing 35mm film shot by a professional cinematographer and viewing a digital or TV camera recording of the same scene. The "proper" film gives you a much better picture, probably due to a number of factors like progressive versus interlaced, widescreen versus 4:3, and the general colour and lighting response of the film.

 

As well as the picture itself you also have differences in the way it is shot and edited, for example the making of features are probably done with a small hand-held camera which wobbles all over the place rather than the film camera which is on a mount to smooth its motion.

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Yes, the quality of the picture alone won't make a badly-shot film look good, you still need a good cinematographer to make the decisions about film, lenses, aperture, exposure, lighting, camera motion and so on.

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There are like a million of those kinds of books! Seriously, I went to Barnes and Nobles (bookstore) to that section and *make your own movie* books, from writing to storyboarding to cinematography to producing, were everywhere.

 

So I've been working on a treatment for a little while and sometimes wonder if I could make something out of it. I really like the idea and I can see it having a kind of mass-cult market appeal like Blair Witch did if it's made and promoted correctly. I mean, it's custom made for the reality generation. Maybe when I'm ready and have a little money I'll get in touch with some of you guys to help me think about how I'd want to do it.

Edited by demagogue

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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So I've been working on a treatment for a little while and sometimes wonder if I could make something out of it. I really like the idea and I can see it having a kind of mass-cult market appeal like Blair Witch did if it's made and promoted correctly. I mean, it's custom made for the reality generation. Maybe when I'm ready and have a little money I'll get in touch with some of you guys to help me think about how I'd want to do it.

 

If it's Big Brother meets Texas Chainsaw Massacre I'm in.

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Not exactly, although people do (so far) get "killed", well, gunned down by military guards for being found where they aren't supposed to be. :ph34r:

 

Another thing I was wondering about ... has there been any team that's used modding to make a (good) movie via screencapture. It seems natural because you could make really elaborate sets and characters (AI) and then just script in the basic blocking, throw in some cool particle effects and events with objects, etc, set the camera and its motions, and let each scene play out. And then maybe add in facial emotions and mouth movements, etc, even afterwards.

 

Esp if you use stock assets, the main outside thing to add would just be voice acting, sounds, and music. I mean I know this has probably been done, but have there been any good ones. If the writing were good, this also has a lot of potential to make something good relatively cheap and easy.

(although maybe then you couldn't market it unless the engine and assets were all custom.)

 

I'm thinking a big limitation would actually be the writing (and time to do it) ... although I'm sure there are technical reasons why it's not so popular ... limited or unrealistic movements of the AI, limited stuff you can do with the camera, difficulty blocking, sequencing events in tandem. But then again, there have been some kick ass cartoons, like in the 80s, that had relatively simple animation but awesome writing that were still great.

Edited by demagogue

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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If you watch the kids TV there are several series which are IMO made in such a way. Just look at "Jimmy Neutron", "Bing & Bong" and other such series. I'm pretty sure that they are made in quite a similar way. Maybe they don't use a game engine for it, more a custom engine. But even with modern game engines it should be feasable to achive this quality. So you only need a good scripting editor. If you write such an editor you could do the same in Doom 3 as well.

Gerhard

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Somewhat related to the topic, has anyone ever seen the Masters of Russian Animation series on DVD? There are at least a couple of disks in the series, wonderful cartoons, claymation, cut-outs. One was about the siege of Kiev ( I think) by the Mongol hordes, done with cut-out figures, shadows, and careful lighting. It was incredible.

 

Also, there is this Eastern European puppeteer, Jan Svankmajer, who has done some incredible stuff. he did a version of Faustus thats hilarious and terrifying at the same time. I've also seen a number of collections of his shorts.

 

Also, the Bolex Brothers out of London do some incredible stuff, including one of the finest science fantasy pieces ever made, The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb, which I have raved about in this forum in the past. I cannot recommend that movie enough.

 

As weird as it may seem, I have found animation to be some of the most compelling, immersive media around whereas many films done by actual humans are impossible to swallow. I wonder if this is because you can suspend your beliefs so much more easily for anima, whereas with people you expect a bit more.

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Another thing I was wondering about ... has there been any team that's used modding to make a (good) movie via screencapture. It seems natural because you could make really elaborate sets and characters (AI) and then just script in the basic blocking, throw in some cool particle effects and events with objects, etc, set the camera and its motions, and let each scene play out. And then maybe add in facial emotions and mouth movements, etc, even afterwards.

You mean like this? :)

My games | Public Service Announcement: TDM is not set in the Thief universe. The city in which it takes place is not the City from Thief. The player character is not called Garrett. Any person who contradicts these facts will be subjected to disapproving stares.
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There's also the concept of the medium reflecting an aesthetic of the film, for example, Micheal Mann's latest film, Miami Vice was shot on a pretty grainy digital video camera, but it added a sense of gritty realism to the film. War of the Worlds or Lord of the Rings were meant to be epic scale films, so they shot 35mm with anamorphic lenses and such. Other films such as Run Lola Run or Strange Days integrated both for aesthetic reasons. In most films, there is a reason that they were shot or played out a certain way other than "it just looks good," they were meant to evoke a feelign or mood. Just look at Casablanca and it's lighting.

 

And Odd's right about the redcam changing A LOT of things when it comes out, I've been following that for a while. (A 4k camera for 20 grand? Goddamn!)

 

Demagogue, no matter what you make, the biggest concern you should have is to have a good, interesting, story to tell. If you can do that, then people who know what they're doing in other areas will flock to it. Though believe me, putting together a full crew of professionals for even a short film still is no easy task.

http://www.thirdfilms. com

A Thief's Path trailer is now on Youtube!

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LotR and WofW are both good examples of how lighting and composition make a film look good. If you watch LotR a few times it is noticeable how much coloured lighting there is, such as the green fields of the Shire and the red fires of Mordor.

 

If you tried to do this as an amateur using a video camera, you would just get a whole load of washed-out bland scenes full of autofocus and autoexposure effects.

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I don't think that this is the major difference. After all, there are movie projects which are done with commercial quality video cameras and you can see similar quality there. So my bet is on the way the movie is shot and edited.

 

I use a Panasonic DVX100 which has 24fps progressive (same frame rate as a film camera). That plays a part in eliminating some of the interlaced video effect. The other part, is that video cameras have a very narrow dynamic range -- the amount of steps between the brighest white and the darkest black -- when compared to movie cameras. So care must be taken with lighting an lens settings to fully utilize that range.

 

So my opinion is that camera, lighting and post are all factors.

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This thread reminds me of watching movies with my film-studies neighbor.* Seriously every scene he'd want to point out what the director was doing with the lighting, or the blocking, or the camera ... usually stopping the film to literally point it out, as if the smallest details had a purpose.

 

I quickly learned if I was going to watch a movie with him, it wasn't to passively enjoy it and take it for granted, but to always be on the look out for how the director did things. I actually found it very interesting, because he could spot important things better than I could ... but other friends couldn't stand it! :D

Now when I watch movies, though, I can't help thinking like that a little, from his influence.

 

 

*(now working on films in Europe, one in Budapest, another in Belfast. Reminds me I need to look him up).

Edited by demagogue

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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That is certainly one problem. I'm not really a movie maker, just itnerested in the topic. But still it happens that I also notice things that I shouldn't. :) Usually this happens either when it was bad enough done or when the movie is boring. As long as the movie is immesive enough this rarely happens. :) My wife is also annoyed when I point out such things, because she says I should see the movie and the details. :)

Gerhard

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And Odd's right about the redcam changing A LOT of things when it comes out, I've been following that for a while. (A 4k camera for 20 grand? Goddamn!)

I'm confused. You're excited about a $4,000 camera (4K) being $20,000 (20K)? The Redcam is $17,500 MSRP, and the lenses are like $5,000. Not cool. Maybe you're trying to say typical movie cameras are 400K ($400,000)?

 

I also wish I could make pro looking videos, but anything us regular consumers make always looks like home videos. It has to do with the quality of video camers. I don't think there's any way to make an $800 Sony Video Cam look like a pro movie, no matter how good the lighting or cinematography. It's just not technologically possible, imo.

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What the 4K refers to is the image. A 4K image has the same resolution as standard 35mm. Even the high end Panasonic HVX or other cameras cap out at half the resolution of 35mm film. It also can (at least from test footage shown) emulate the dynamic range of film, and all the contrast levels. Basically it's the dream of any independent filmmaker, as we can make professional-looking films for a fraction of the cost of a $250,000-350,000 film or high high end digital studio camera, except it has all the advantages of being a pure digital format.

 

Hell, I'm really hoping that I'll be able to use a redcam when I shoot my first feature in a few years.

 

Also, consumer camera video footage can look like hot shit when you convert it to black and white and play with contrast levels. :)

 

(Edited to fix da spelling typos)

http://www.thirdfilms. com

A Thief's Path trailer is now on Youtube!

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I also wish I could make pro looking videos, but anything us regular consumers make always looks like home videos. It has to do with the quality of video camers. I don't think there's any way to make an $800 Sony Video Cam look like a pro movie, no matter how good the lighting or cinematography. It's just not technologically possible, imo.

 

That's where you are wrong because it is not true. That would be the same as if you were saying that you can not do high-quality renders with Blender because it is the cheap low-end version and you need a high-end app to achieve professional quality. The quality is mostly determined by the skill of the artist. There are already enough examples where professional level movies were done with "simple" consumer level hardware. And especially today this is more true then i.e. 15 years ago, because the hardware becomes ever cheaper so that hobbyists can afford it. And one other argument to proove you wrong: Professional movies are done since about 70 years or longer. So if you consider the professional equipment of a movie from the 60ies it would be definitely worse then equipment hobbyists today regularly use. So if your statement were true, we should see a lot of amateur movies at least on the level of that time, but we don't. And the reason is, because the hardware is limitting - yes, but not THAT limiting.

Gerhard

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I agree with sparhawk on this one, and I think it applies to computer games as well. Sure, you can have your fancy $500,000 per-pixel lighting engine with normal mapping and dynamic self-shadowing and noodle widdobling, and it will look pretty good; but you don't need all of that to make an attractive-looking game. Witness, for example, certain Dromed creations; the technology is primitive by modern standards, but the art some people have created with it is fantastic, leading to some really sweet-looking FMs.

 

It isn't quite the same situation but I think the analogy holds anyway. :)

My games | Public Service Announcement: TDM is not set in the Thief universe. The city in which it takes place is not the City from Thief. The player character is not called Garrett. Any person who contradicts these facts will be subjected to disapproving stares.
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I think it's true that with all else being equal, a film camera is always going to produce better results than the currently-available home video cameras. That said, the varying skill of the photographer is going to be far more significant than the camera used -- a professional cinematographer using a home video camera will produce much better footage than an amateur using a movie camera.

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