Film Production Guide

just facts : another guide to digital filmmaking 01

1. IntroductionFirst of all, thanks for downloading this guide. We hope it will help you. We’ll try to give you practical and simple advices based on the experience we got shooting “Marla.”.

You may not find everything you’re looking for in this guide; feel free to ask us questions but remember that the best way to get things working is to practice yourself, there is no magic solution. We’ve chosen to write a rather technical guide because we have no good advices to give on the content of your movie, do whatever you think is right.

So now, read this guide quickly and go kick some serious ass !

another state of mind

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2. Homemade MINI35 for dummiesYou went to all those great forums talking about Mini35? You read those 48 pages long threads about spinning frosted CDs, condenser...? You didn’t understand a single word? Neither did we. So, this is the simplest way we found to build a homemade MINI35.

A. What you need:

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1. camera slr2. plain focusing screen3. digital camcorder4. lenses5. macro adapter6. step-down ring 58-52mm7. wide angle adapter8. sunshade9. camera sunshade10. battery11. viewfinder12. normal focusing screen13. wooden planks14. piece of black paper

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- 24x36 reflex camera (SLR)

Attention: You must be able to remove the viewfinder. We know the Nikon F-F2-F3-F4-F5 does work. Many other cameras will work too but we haven’t tried them. You should better ask your local photo dealer for more information.

Tip: Ebay is a great place to find cheap old SLR cameras and optics.

- plain focusing screen compatible with your SLR camera.

Plain means nothing at all, no grid, no small circle in the middle,.... For Nikon SLRs, it’s a D type focusing screen.

Tip: Ebay is also a great place to find focusing screens or you can try a search in google using focusing+screen+ “cameramodel”. There are some 3rd party manufacturers making plain focusing screens for all camera brands.


- DV Camcorder

3ccd camcorders work better, lowlight sensitivity is important because there’s a loss of light due to the KIT.

- Lenses

You need lenses for the SLR camera. You can use wide-angle adapters on your lenses, it works pretty well. Some hotspot and barreling distortion may occur but it often looks nice.For example, on Marla., we had a 35mm f/2,0 and a 105mm f/2,5. We did use a 0,7x wide-angle adapter (using a step-down ring 52-58mm) on the 105mm to get a 73,5mm and also on the 35mm to get a 24,5mm.

Attention: You’ll probably use this lenses wide open, so choose them wisely or you’ll get a too short depth-of-field.

Tip: Again, Ebay is a great place...

just facts : another guide to digital filmmaking

- Macro adapter

It depends of the camcorder you’re using. On the Canon XM-2/GL-2 we used, a +4 macro adapter was enough to get the focusing screen at full frame.

- Wooden planks & screws

You will need thoses to built the kit

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B. how to proceed

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1. Remove the viewfinder 2. Remove the inapropriate focusing screen

3. Place the plain focusing screen

4. Now you have a nice and clear image

5. Add a step-down ring to your lense...

6. ...And screw on your wide-angle adapter to create a new focal lenght


7. Looks nice indeed... 8. ... And even better with a sunhade 9. Now, screw your camera on the basement of your brand new kit!!

10. Adjust the position 11. Take your camcorder and screw-on a macro adapter (usefull if you want to focus properly on the slr’s

focusing screen)

12. Fix the camcorder on the kit, over the camera and adjust the position

until your are able to get your focusing screen full frame . And then zoom-in if

needed.


13. Take whatever you think usefull to avoid light and dust to go on the focusing screen and

camcorder lense

14. Here you go with your ready-to-shoot-brand-new-homemade-mini35-kit

15. HAVE FUN!!!!!!!!!

That’s all folks


3. Shooting tipsConsumer DV camcorders are not made no shoot movies, they are made to produce some nice colorful sharp videos of your wedding or holidays. Don’t run and go to buy a 16mm film camera, there are many things you can do to tweak your camera before or during the shooting.

- Have a look at the camera settings

Most 3ccd cameras have a setting panel where you can modify the sharpness, color phase,... Push everything a couple of steps down, especially the color settings. Basicaly, every DV camera tends to push the colors and sharpen the image. By pushing the settings down, you will reduce the compression artefacts and get a nicer, softer image.Try different settigs while watching the picture on a TV. For Marla, the color settings where all down to minimum and the sharpness to at least -4.

- Shoot progressive

If you camera is able to shoot in a progressive mode, use it. The Panasonic DVX100 has the best progressive mode but Canon’s Frame Mode is quite good too. We did shoot Marla using it and it was way better than desinterlacing in post.


- Shoot manual

Always use the camera in full manual mode. The shutter should be 1/50 (or 1/25 if you don’t have much light but motion blur will be more apparent). Do not use gain, it always brings too much noise. If you have too much light, use ND filters.Note: if you have to slow down shots in post-production, shoot with a shutter speed faster than 1/50 to avoid motion blur, like 1/250 or more)

- Mess the white balance

Always do a manual white balance. It’s also a great way to change the colors of the picture, to make it warmer or colder. For example, if you make the white balance on something blue, the picture will become more red. Go buy some coloured sheets of paper and simply try, it’s fun to see how it works. For Marla, for the interior shots, we did the white balance on an orange box, making the picture shift to blue-green tones. For the exterior shots, we did it on a soft purple sheet of paper, the picture became warmer with some yellow tone in it.

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4. Post-production“Filmlook” has become a widely used word in the video industry. You get “filmlook cameras”, “filmlook filters”, “filmlook plugins”,…We are still waiting for “filmlook tapes”…If you want to get something close to filmlook using video, you’ll have to get trough a whole process starting from shooting and ending in post-production.Don’t trust any commercial message that includes the word “filmlook” or “cine-like”, trust your eyes only, if it looks like film to you and others, then it means it’s working, as simple as that.

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- Make the best out of DV

DV (we’re talking about Mini-DV form , also known as DV25) is a rather highly compressed video format. Without going into details about colorspace and that kind of things (we’re geeks but not that much), let’s say that DV compresses the colors hardly.Basically it means that the colors are quite often washed out and/or that you’ll see compression artifacts in some areas of the picture (blocky pixels,…). You can minimize the problem by configuring your camera (see Shooting tips) but now, you are in post-production,so the only thing you can do is to avoid creating new compression artifacts!!!

So the first rule, and that’s a hard one because it’ll mean long long rendering times:

Do not ever compress again, work on uncompressed video.

For Marla, we did capture the rushes as DV files (basic Microsoft DV codec), chosen the right takes and did convert them to uncompressed AVI files. Why? We preferred to clean, color-correct and frame the takes before the editing, to avoid any compression loss. We decided to do it that way because you have much more pleasure editing nice color-corrected rushes. Ok, that’s half the truth. Now, the real reasons:Some of our rushes were really weird before the post: picture upside down and/or horizontally flipped, shots that needed to be stabilized, moving framing during shots (if you touch the zoom of the DV camera when using the MINI35kit, it will radically change the framing, Look at the deleted scenes on the website, you’ll see by yourself.


Some other advantages working like this:

- You really see how your movie will finally look like, same as doing it in 16mm or 35mm.- You cannot say “I’ll fix it in post” during the editing process, it’s already done or it’s too late to do it.- When people come to see you during the editing, you’ll not have to say “it will look better when it’s finished”. - If you are one of those who like to edit a trailer before starting the editing of the movie, you can easily do it, it’s always fun.

(But please, wait until your movie is finished to post it on forums, a trailer is not a movie. If your trailer rocks, people will want to see more and you’ll have to show it ASAP).

- If you leave out certain takes during the editing, you can still show them proudly to the world, at least they’ll look nice.

Now, the list of problems:

- Rendering times- Files size- Rendering times- Files size… People will laugh about you when you’ll say that you have about 80gb of uncompressed data, but hey, at least

it sounds professional and you’ll find a use for this new 250gb hard-disk you just bought...- Rendering…Be patient, really, really patient. Get some good CDs, get a Playstation, read a book,…or write your next

script.

Here’s what we’ve done on Marla to get the best out of DV:

- We did capture the rushes in DV.- We selected the right takes and did convert them to uncompressed AVI- We took every single take and cleaned it up. We corrected the framing, removed artifacts and grain using some plugins.- We stabilized some takes (every single exterior shot)- Then we went to color-correction which is the next part.

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- Color-correction

Like always, there’s no magic solution when it comes to color-correction. First of all, you need to know what you want to achieve during the shooting. If your picture is all red and you want a nice blue/green tone, you’ll get mad trying to color-correct it.

Then, choose your tools. Some people are crazy about advanced color-correction tools with vectorscopes and all those kind of stuff that take a lot of space on your monitor. Sure, there are wonderful softwares dedicated to color-correction but we prefer basic tools: layers (and layers transfer modes), levels, curves and color-balance. The good point is that you can adapt yourself to any software offering these tools.

Forget any theory about filmlook curves and other filmlook plugins. Most of the films you see on DVD or in theaters went through a bunch of chemical processes like bleach bypass, cross-processing,… You’ll have to trust your eyes only to recreate these kind of looks (or create new ones) in post.

Yes, but how? We are really sorry to say that there is no rule for that . It depends of what rushes you have and how you want them to finally look.

So start simply, try to define what you want to achieve:

Take a frame of your movie in some photo editing software. Copy this frame on a new layer, so you get two layers with the same picture. Now, play with transfer modes ( soft light, screen,…). If the picture gets too dark, play with the curves on one of the layers. Play with color-balance, saturation (try black and white layers),…You can add as many layers as you think is needed. You can also try to filter your picture using a colored layer (like a plain orange layer for example or a gradient layer).

Now, that you’ve found the look you want, simply apply the same process to video. Watch out not to burn out the whites and crush the blacks. Remember that filmlook is soft and subtle, if you want contrast, it’s ok but take it easy. Also remember to check how it looks on a TV because it’s really different from a computer monitor.

Then, go test it. Show it to people and listen to what they have to say. When we mean people, we mean every kind of people: your mum, your baker, your fellow filmmaker,… Often the people that are the less involved in the movie or have the less knowledge in filmmaking, have the best advices to give.Don’t give up until your mum believes you did shoot a real movie !

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Here are some stills of Marla with and without color-correction.



5. Editing & soundWe don’t have good advices to give about editing and sound. After color-correcting the shots, we did convert them back to DV to edit the movie. We preferred to use an old editing software because all we had to do was basic cutting. There was no need for cutting edge high-end editing software. At the end, we did replace the DV files by the uncompressed ones, so we had a nice uncompressed version of our final cut.

Our sound was not good (blame our cheap minidisk microphone), so we prefer to not say anything about sound, ask professionals. All we can say is that there are great noise reduction plugins on the market.

6. Final tweakingsIt’s never really over. We did some more color-correction on the final cut to harmonize the look between the shots. Then we had to clean the stains on the pictures due to the crappy focusing screen we’ve found. That was a huge task, we ended up cleaning scenes frame by frame in a photo editing software. We stopped after about 8000 frames, we looked like vampires with red eyes and were close to a certain degree of madness. Don’t laugh until you try it.

We still had some kind of aliasing problems on some scenes, so we upconverted the whole movie to HD 720p (1280x720), applied some smoothing and then went back to PAL SD (720x576). This made the picture look softer, aliasing problems were gone, a step closer to filmlook (but it took about 72 hours to render).

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7. References- Websites / ForumsIf you want support, advices,…or if you want to show your work, these websites are just great !

www.2-pop.com www.creativecow.netwww.dv.com www.dvinfo.netwww.dvxuser.com www.hackermovies.com (german)www.cinematography.com www.simplydv.co.ukwww.emotiondv.com www.fusionarena.comwww.dvcreators.net www.dvfreelancer.comwww.microcinemascene.com www.repaire.net (french)www.dvforever.com (french) www.cine-courts.com (french)

- Books

Rebel Without a Crew: Or How a 23-Year-Old Filmmaker With $7,000 Became a Hollywood Player by Robert RodriguezPublisher: Plume ISBN: 0452271878

The original guerilla filmmaker. This book is such a great source of inspiration.

Feature Filmmaking at Used-Car Prices: How to Write, Produce, Direct, Shoot, Edit, and Promote a Feature-Lenth Movie for Less Than $15,000 by Rick Schmidt

Publisher: Penguin USA ISBN: 0140291849

Another amazing source of inspiration, a bit more intellectual but still profoundly guerilla style.

Digital Guerrilla Video: A Grassroots Guide to the Revolution by Avi HofferPublisher: CMP Books ASIN: 0879305754 Or how to run a production company when you have no budget at all. A book that finishes on “…and then go kick some ass” cannot be a bad book.

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8. Final wordsWe just would like to thank everybody on the different websites and forums where we posted the movie. Thanks also to everyone who sent an e-mail. It’s your feedback that made us want to share our little experience. Enough words for now, there’s nothing left to say but…go kick some ass and see you on the web.

www.anotherstateofmind.bewww.marlathemovie.com

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Documents

Film Production Guide