Dan Goldman is an old friend of mine from ILM. He now works for Adobe's top-secret God Dammit Put This In A Product Now division.
Its no Cartoon effect, but it's got promise.
Oh Canon...
How can you, on the same page, say both this (italics mine):
…This sensor size difference means that for any given combination of aperture value, subject distance and angle of view, images from the EOS 5D Mark II are going to have much shallower depth of field than images from a conventional HD device… This difference in the look of movies created by the EOS 5D Mark II is part of the reason why we believe it will be embraced by creative professionals.
…and this:
In addition to the adjustable settings listed above, the following settings are made automatically by the camera and cannot be adjusted by the user:
- ISO speed
- Shutter speed (from 1/30 to 1/125)
- Aperture
Yep, if there’s one thing creative professional embrace, it’s an utter lack of control.
Please Canon, the camera is released, it’s a huge hit. Get to work on a firmware update to add 24p and manual exposure control.
Canon EOS 5D Mark II in the Wild
The Canon EOS 5D Mark II has shipped in Asia, and the videos are pouring in. Today we have a Korean adaptation of Reverie and some gorgeous Beijing streets at night, complete with perhaps my most vivid Beijing memory, constant spitting.
Both of these movies allow Vimeo members to download the originals for closer inspection, which is worth doing as Vimeo tops out at 24 fps for HD. That means these 30 fps movies are getting a crappy 24p conversion when Vimeo compresses them, which hides some of the 30p smoothness, but not in a good way. Watching the originals, you vividly perceive the you-are-there smoothness that comes from 30 fps and a 360 degree shutter. Some love it, I hate it, but regardless of how you feel, on Vimeo you are not getting the true 5DmkII footage experience.
Discussion with Dan Chung here.
Vincent Laforet has some new footage up on his blog as well, including some aerial tilt-shift work.
LA has a subway?
Gage made a subway short using, get this, a video camera (a Panasonic HMC150 to be precise). Apparently people still use those.
Subway Short from Devon Sloan on Vimeo.
As anyone who's read The DV Rebel's Guide knows, I made my subway short ten years ago:
But there must be some mistake because both of these were shot with 1/3" sensors, which everyone knows are worthless.
The Bourne Inspiration
In response to the subway short trend, Eric Escobar blogged about a scene in The Bourne Supremacy that he finds rebelliously inspirational. That struck a chord with me, as I too have a Bourne scene that inspires me. It’s the Waterloo Station scene in The Bourne Ultimatum.
In this scene, Bourne outwits CIA operatives while guiding a reporter to safety. It was shot in London’s busiest train station without disrupting thousands of commuters and travelers. That’s right, it’s the ultimate subway short!
What’s amazing about this scene is that it follows the DV Rebel rulebook to the letter. They used a minimal crew and natural light. When out among the general public, the only props we see are cell phones and a syringe. It’s only when the action moves to a stairwell that the guns come out. A sniper gets involved, and his footage too is shot separately from the actual station (a wee bit of greenscreen work connects the two). All of this is intercut with people in a room full of monitors. There’s nothing in this scene you couldn’t do yourself, without permits.
For The DV Rebel’s Guide my editors went to great effort to secure the rights to use the kitchen scene in La Femme Nikita as an example of an approachable DV Rebel action scene. But as the Bourne films show us, such scenes are abundant. For every Bond-style chase with flipping cars and helicopter shots, there’s a gritty, tense mano a mano battle that requires nothing more than hard work and great choreography.
I think this guy’s got a power window on his face.
And color correction. The Bourne sequels are great examples of the hidden gift to the DV Rebel that lurks in many a DVD—the supplemental materials feature deleted and alternate scenes prior to their DI color correction (see Color Makes the Movie). It’s easy to see how the vérité footage, often shot without immaculate control over lighting, becomes more cinematic and pointed thanks to the DI. Color correction adds style, but it also helps tell the story by subtly altering the lighting. Again, this is 100% Rebel-compatible—with readily available tools such as Magic Bullet Looks, Colorista, Apple Color and Adobe After Effects (plus the DV Rebel Tools), you can often color-correct your way to high production value—and you’ll be in good company doing so.
A pre-DI shot from the deleted scenes
That same shot is in the film, color corrected