Please watch, comment, help me improve.

liquid wrote on 12/23/2010, 7:45 AM

So here are some test shots for a video I'll be filming in the new year.

Never mind the edits really, I was just playing around with the footage to see what's there. and these aren't meant to represent what the final video will look like

I sought to test out the concept of undercranking, and my cheap portable lighting set up which in this case turned out to be just a reflector because the batteries of my 20 million lumen flash light died after 10 minutes of shooting.

As is now, there's no story development in the footage yet, but I do have a pretty good idea of what it's going to be in the end. For now though, I just stuck to trying to figure out one of the technical aspects of the shoot.

Here are my thoughts, if you'd be willing to share yours I'm sure it would help me
1. This was quite hard to film. I slowed the song down to 38.1% of it's original tempo, so a 4 min song ended up being a gruelling 12 minute exercise of walking backwards painfully slowly, while the singer walked in slow motion sounding like a melting tape deck.

2. There's no way I could hold in front of me my steady cam for 12 minutes, so I ended up using a shoulder rest. Unfortunately, this turned out to be a big mistake because when the footage is speed up by 261.9% to match with the original song, the camera shake becomes unbearable. I will have to improvise some kind of smart solution for this, but short of a real-steady cam (with a vest and all) I haven't come up with anything to solve this problem yet. I tried a wheel chair, but the wheels were hard and wasn't smooth when rolled over the tiles in the metro.

3. The singer had his Ipod in his left ear which means sometimes you can see it, and almost all of my shots where shot from his right side. This really compromises the shots, but I don't know how I could have walked through a mall, without a permit, with a ghetto blaster playing a 12 minute song in slow motion without being arrested.

4. I'm debating whether or not the singer should have just walked at normal speed because when undercranking, his movements look robotic. I find this to be an interesting effect, kind of like stop motion or something, but I've had a few comments from people who find that it simply looks too fake when brought up to speed.

5. I'm actually fairly happy with the lighting, at least on my monitor most of the scene is very well lit.

I'm going to re-shoot this with a steadier camera, and more angles, then blend it with the other scenes we plan on shooting. Any suggestions on how to improve this part of the video are very welcome as is any constructive criticism.

Comments

john_dennis wrote on 12/23/2010, 8:54 AM

A skill that will be invaluable, is knowing how to embed links to Internet resources into your posts.

I’ll give you the English version, (or as close to English as someone in California can accomplish).

Type the left bracket. It looks like this: [

Add the word link. The result will look like this: [link

Add the equals symbol. The result will look like this: [link(equals, can't enter it since the syntax will be interpreted)

Insert your URL. The result will look like this:
[link(equals, can't use the symbol since the syntax will be interpreted)

Add the right braket. The result will look like this:

For a full description of these operations:

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=521496&Replies=0

Cutting and pasting the links into a new browser tab is really easy these days, but it can become very tedious.

I'll spend more time with your video, later.

apit34356 wrote on 12/23/2010, 9:41 AM

Well, as you found out, not all people walk smoothly, especially when they are trying to match someone else's pace. ;-) Practice and then practice some move the pacing.....

Ipod should be hidden in the shoulder of the jacket or glued to the body ;-) .

amendegw wrote on 12/23/2010, 10:05 AM

@John Dennis: How 'bout this?

[link=

You can use html ampersand codes to replace the brackets. That is, & # 9 1 ; (remove the spaces) = [

...Jerry

FrigidNDEditing wrote on 12/23/2010, 10:44 AM

at this point all you can really do is post stabilize it, I would suggest a very good one, like the new Mercalli (based on feedbacK) or possibly the new Deshaker one if you don't want to spend money.

in the future.... GreenScreen, Green treadmill. mall with a dolly, shoot the G/S first or shoot the Mall first, but whatever you shoot first, make sure you can match up your angles and shots based on that footage while you're shooting the other half of it.

Definately though... Small portable dolly solution was needed.

If you're going the no permit route and no greenscreen, you could do a Wheelchair, and a monopod to adjust height that can be broken down and stuffed away in a backpack on the back of the wheelchair, and the talent can sit down in the wheelchair and suddenly you're just pushing your friend around in a wheelchair, should it look like the authorities are on their way. getting a permit would make it less stressful though, obviously :)

Dave

dibbkd wrote on 12/23/2010, 11:06 AM

VERY nice for some of your first attempts at this, I did a sample one when we first discussed this and it was not an easy thing to do! So good job!

As far as the shaky effect from trying to hold the camera steady while walking, how about just put some of the shots on a tripod and have him stand still while the other people move fast? Might not be as cool as walking, but would make the singer look more real and still would be a cool effect.

And as far as making hotlinks in this forum, check out this to make it easy for you:

http://dibbvids.com/linkcreatorAlanC's Link Creator[/link]

Edit: So did you all get strange looks from the public as you walked and sang so slowly? I imagine it was kinda awkward for the singer because of course at the time you aren't exactly acting "normal". :)

richard-amirault wrote on 12/23/2010, 11:16 AM

Suggestion for more accurate step speed:

Record a seperate track with someones voice saying "Step ... Step ... Step ... Step" at normal walking speed. Using an audio editor (Vegas will work) add that to the music track. That way the "steps" and the music will be slowed down equally. The talent uses the voice cues to take each step.

john_dennis wrote on 12/23/2010, 11:58 AM

@Jerry

Thanks, I knew it could be done.
To execute or not to execute,

Some of us don't speak Engish or HTML...

liquid wrote on 12/23/2010, 7:58 PM

Thanks for the HTML tips. What about the lighting? The effect? The camera angle? Or anything else.

farss wrote on 12/23/2010, 9:00 PM

Just my humble opinion. I found the effect distracting and added nothing. It's drawing the eye away from the subject. The extras reminded me of Brownian motion and I kept waiting for them to collide. It's probably not helped by the lack of motion blur.

I'd suggest if you want to shoot in that location find a space where the people are moving more regularly rather than in random directions.

Bob.

liquid wrote on 12/23/2010, 9:35 PM

I agree with your comments Bob. I'd like to use the effect somehow, but more effectively. I'm not stuck on shooting there, but I wonder what kind of spot would be more interesting?
Oh, and how do I add motion blur?

farss wrote on 12/23/2010, 10:43 PM

You can add motion blur in Vegas, covered in the manual (I hope).

I prefer to do it in camera using slow shutter speeds. This video is an extreme example of undercranking at 1 fps with 16 frames of frame accumulation.

This one here:

Is an example of adding motion blur using the motion blur envelope in Vegas.

What would be more interesting?

As it's the background to the subject I'd avoid anything too "interesting". Natural settings, clouds, sun, moon, stars mean constant predictable motion. Sides of long road or freeway, railway line. Maybe waves breaking, would be quite dramatic.

Bob.

liquid wrote on 12/23/2010, 10:59 PM

Thanks for all your answers.

What does this mean 1 fps with 16 frames of frame accumulation. Accumulation?

There's a motion blur envelop in Vegas! Wow, and I thought I was begging to know my way around the program. I'll have to look that one up tomorrow.

I was shooting at 60 frames/second, but if I go too much lower the video starts too look jittery I believe. How could I have smoothed this shot out with a slower frame rate?

Thanks for the suggestions. I"m going to rethink my approach and definitely have a more predictable BG that doesn't take away from the subject as much.

farss wrote on 12/23/2010, 11:33 PM

" Accumulation?"

What the camera does is to keep taking frames at the underlying frame rate and then sums them. Say you have the camera set for 25fps but are using Slow And Quick motion to only record 1 fps. You dial in 16 frames of frame accumulation.

So the camera takes 16 frames, one every 1/25th of a second, sums them and records that frame. Rinse and repeat every second (hence 1 fps).This gives a pretty natural motion blur, is great in very low light, in daylight you can need serious amounts of extra ND filtering.

This feature is not available on many cameras though. The XDCAM EX cameras all have it. A much more basic similar feature exists on some consummer camera for shooting in very low light. You get say 4fps, definately not recommended for hand held.

Bob.

liquid wrote on 12/24/2010, 6:29 AM

I don't have an xd cam, so is there any way to do something similar on my tm-700? I know they have a low light setting that does something funky to the video, but the manual doesn't elaborate.

I inserted motion blur and the video my preview widow could keep up, so that's pretty useless.

But I think anyway I'm going to scrap this idea of shooting in the metro. I think something like passing cars or possibly moving clouds or something is more interesting. Hummm. I wonder what else. Maybe falling snow?

liquid wrote on 12/24/2010, 6:37 AM

I just tried rendering a small section using motion blur and what an ugly duckling that turned out to be. Completely unusable, unless I want my video to be tainted with macaroni cheese color and blown out highlights. Yuck.

farss wrote on 12/24/2010, 2:00 PM

I haven't a clue what you've done.
Never had that kind of issue using it. How many frames of MB and what kind of MB did you use?

If you take a look at the waterfall video I posted earlier you'll see there's no such problems with it. If you set Motion Blur type to Asymmetric Gaussian in your project properties then what you get is close to what the shutter in a camera produces.

Bob.

liquid wrote on 12/24/2010, 5:57 PM

I haven't a clue what I've done either. I'll try again soon. Thanks for taking the time to help me Bob.

DGates wrote on 12/24/2010, 7:17 PM

I like the idea and most of the execution. It did get a bit monotonous. He doesn't have to be in every single frame. Some locked-down, blurred-out shots of the just the people and the station would be good filler.

I had a similar idea years ago to shoot a video of a singer in a waterfall. She'd be singing at 2X the speed, but when slowed down in post to 50%, the water would be in slo-mo but her vocals would be normal.

liquid wrote on 12/25/2010, 4:44 AM

Yes, he's not meant to be in the frame the whole time. We have a whole new sequence planned to blend in with this one, but in retrospect I believe this one's going to be scraped and we're going to try again with a calmer, more constant background.
I like the way you use the word filter to describe cutting in other scenes. I'm actually looking for a book, or video that explains more how to cut and edit scenes, when to use cross fades and not etc... Maybe you can suggest something?

MUTTLEY wrote on 12/25/2010, 11:01 AM

I didn't hate it at all and I didn't mind the movement of people, he's a bit of the calm amongst the chaos. I also think you're beating yourself up a little much on the camera shake, though it was there I didn't notice it as an issue until I read you say it was, I was watching him and he didn't bounce around all that much. My first viewing, without reading what problems you saw with it that never really crossed my mind.

As for the subjective stuff that's only my opinion and doesn't mean a whole lot, I personally didn't like his wardrobe, that was a standout bugged me kinda thing, purely my opinion, to me it didn't go with the song or the environment and made him look like he was going to a club to pick up chicks. If it was a pop song maybe, but its acoustic and it just took away from the sincerity and authenticity for me.

I actually would have liked to see the background stuff going even faster, easier said then done right? And maybe even some where he's moving normal and everyone else is slowed down. I really liked some of the slomo shots ya cut in. I know you're planning on cutting in other stuff so assuming he actually plays guitar I'd like to see it. During some of the walking shots he may actually carry his guitar case either by his side or over his shoulder. This may also help with some of his hand moments that came off a little awkward because of the technique used. I also liked when ya did the little drops in speed, where it was going faster or normal and ya dropped it to slomo, that's almost always cool imho. More b-roll slomo/timelaps/fastmo would help flush it out.

Anyway, take it with a grain of salt, I hate feedback on my work after I'm done with something and a finished piece but since this is a work in progress and ya asked for feedback thought I'd chime in. Upshot is personally I think you're on the right track.

- Ray
Underground Planet

ushere wrote on 12/25/2010, 2:58 PM

matthew,

you obviously have a great deal of talent, and your technical expertise is catching up rapidly as i read your various threads.... so, with that in mind:

a. there are any number of good books about covering every aspect of video / film making, but a great deal can be learnt from simply watching tv. at 60+ i still watch mtv and the like (even though i find a great deal of the music monotonous and abysmal!). ok, they don't walk you through the actual production process, but most of the time it's easy enough to work out how things were / are done.

b. what you're trying to do with this clip is now rather old hat. yes, it's an interesting effect, but it's been done to death on the music channels - and unless you can give it a 'new' slant, a different interpretation, you're simply going to be copying any number of clips already out there.

c. i agree with nearly all ray's comments (especially his last sentence!). then again, maybe looking like a badly dressed saturday night fever jerk is the in thing at the moment, i certainly wouldn't know, but all 'good' and memorable clips usually revolve around great design, dress, etc.,

hey, but it's xmas, so ignore all this and have a great time....

liquid wrote on 12/25/2010, 8:30 PM

You guys have no idea how much I appreciate your feedback. None of it's negative, none of it brings me down. On the contrary, it helps me gain valuable perspective.
The guys clothes are like that because the other scene we'll be merging with this one will be of him dressed as a bum. We're actually waiting a month to shoot the other part and he's growing a beard for it! It should be cool. But I am going to re-shoot this section, and hopefully find another angle to make it fresher. I'll post again down the road when it's finished. For now, you're comments have augmented my understanding of the video making process, and that's all I was seeking. Again, thanks