Monday, September 29, 2008

I Decide: Anatomy of a No-Budget HD Spot

Wherein a great group of people come together for a good cause

This was the first project shot for California’s No on Prop 8 campaign. In an attempt to reach out to young voters I recruited my cousin Catherine, and her best friend Austin, to record an appeal for youth to get up and vote down Prop 8. They’re both politically active and immediately said “yes” to the project.

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Sunday, September 28, 2008

The Thorons: Anatomy of an HD Spot

If you live in California you’ve probably seen this already. Here’s how we did it.

I shot this spot a few weeks ago and it hit the air in a big way on Sept. 22.

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Training • (2) Comments • Most recent comments by: Scott Gentry, Mark Spencer, • Permalink

Saturday, September 27, 2008

Why “Exposing to the Right” Works on the RED

This white paper from Adobe explains it all without making my eyes bleed.

There’s been a lot of talk about “exposing to the right” in the RED community: instead of relying solely on your meter, the idea is to watch the RED’s histograms and use whatever room is available on the right side. If your meter says to shoot at 2.8, and there’s nothing hitting the right side of the histogram, open up the stop and move all the values over until something clips or you run out of stop.

I did this on my last two RED shoots and it worked great. Using REDSpace as my color and gamma preset allowed me to see more-or-less exactly how the image would be seen once processed using those settings in post, and by setting the zebras to come on at their maximum of 103 (I assume that’s 103 ire on a scale of 0-109) I could use them the same way I would on any other HD camera. Processing the footage through RedRushes using the REDSpace preset resulted in images that were very close to what I saw on location while still offering me all the grading latitude that I’d expect from RED raw footage.

This white paper on Adobe’s web site explains what “expose to the right” is and why it works. I highly recommend it.

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Production • (5) Comments • Most recent comments by: Art Adams, billS, Art Adams, Stephan, stephen v2, • Permalink

Saturday, September 13, 2008

RED Workflow Redux

I might be just winging it, but darned if it don’t work!

I haven’t yet found a manual for working with RED footage. The methods that I’ve discovered have been cobbled together by searching through thousands of posts on Reduser.net (which has a very low signal-to-noise ratio), hundreds of posts on the Cinematography Mailing List, and just making stuff up.

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Post Production • (5) Comments • Most recent comments by: George Kroonder, Adam Wilt, George Kroonder, Art Adams, Adam Wilt, • Permalink

Friday, September 05, 2008

Too Much Data!

In a world where tape is disappearing, how do I inexpensively backup all my data shoots?

I’m going into a RED shoot this weekend and I’ve realized my hard drives are full. Now what?

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Production • (5) Comments • Most recent comments by: Neil Sadwelkar, RC Fisher, Neil Sadwelkar, abu nusaybah, RC Fisher, • Permalink

Sunday, August 24, 2008

The Secret of P2 Slating

Do this to see your editor weep with joy

Yesterday I shot a political spot with Simon Sommerfeld, a friend who saved the day after I pitched the concept for this no-budget spot to an agency that then said, “We’ll take it--make it as fast as you can for no money.”

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Monday, August 18, 2008

Rewiring Wired

Wired’s RED article turned out to be the result of a large game of “telephone”

I’ve spoken now with both the author of the Wired article and Jim Jannard and I’m convinced the technical errors in the article are simply a matter of someone outside the industry trying to understand some complexities that not many inside our industry totally understand.

(1) Comments • Most recent comments by: Chris Meyer, • Permalink

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Composition Occurs in both Space and Time

No shot stands alone. A little planning makes all compositions stronger.

I first became aware of composition over time while watching the film The Hit.

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