am i crazy?

""Get a story worth 50k first" is a classic example of changing the subject rather than answering the question. step one says storyboard the whole script. this sort of implies that the script is already taken care of. otherwise, what would you storyboard.

sorry if this seems negative, but i get this a lot on the net. i didnt ask for general advice, i asked for specific comment. i dont mean to ridicule or anything, just pointing out that my post did have a topic "


Well, EXCUSE ME. I wasn't in any way bashing your script, and my post WAS on topic. We're all allowed to give reasons for our responses, are we not? Personally, I think spending such an incredible amount of time on your bluescreen world and its logistics might detract from concentration on what REALLY MATTERS.
If it will support your story, it's up to you. (I know I haven't seen your script, and not sure it actually exists, you simply outlined a filmmaking process) But, in most cases, DO NOT plan your film's PLOT around a EFFECT or SETTING.

No hard feelings, eh?

 

no hard feelings at all, i was more venting about a tendency i see on fora than i was your behavior in particular. my point was and is that of course discussion of script is valid, just not in this thread.

just to clear up - the script is not written, the storyboards do not exist. but i am utterly uninterested in advice about scripting right now. planning for the future always involves assuming lots of things will go your way, in other words, im planning on having a good script.

if we couldnt plan this way, we would only be able to take one step at a time, instead of walking, as it were.

 

yes you can very much have camera movement in your composites but the camera movement has to be IDENTICAL in big productions their cranes remember the exact movement in hard drives so then they can redo it at any time

 

"your bluescreening needs to be very well done otherwise the illusion is totally blown." i plan to use ultimatte, which will grab hair and shadows, soften edges, and remove spill as well as color correct. i know that making sure the lighting agrees is a very big deal, over and above the big deal good lighting already is to any movie.

question for anyone who studies lighting, is "painting with light" a valid theory? ive heard the term a few times in the past, but never learned anything more about it. but while thinking about lighting last night (while pausing shot by shot thru ep5 it occurred to me there was a better way to learn from existing works than trying to figure out exactly where the lights are and their technical aspects, which is what i was trying to do. it was easy to see generally where the lights were, their color, and whether they were key, fill, or backlights. what was much much harder (for me) was extrapolating a more exact lighting scheme from what was onscreen. then it just hit me - why not just think about how the light is hitting the subject rather than what the wattage of the bulb is? im sure 99% of you are just nodding and saying "well, duh" but this was something of a revelation to me. it made me think of lighting more in terms of results than in terms of some 'golden formula' of hollywood. does this make sense, or am i way off here?

since i have heard the term 'painting with light' used in reference to some geniuses of lighting, this is probably old hat to well read folks, but like i said i havent read anything about it so please enlighten me .


"is there any reason why you can't actually shoot the majority of the film 'for real', and only blusecreen the particularly tricky shots, rather than the entire thing?"

when i really think about it, probably not

"If the backgrounds are real world locatrions, it would definately be easier to shoot the film in these locations, with the actors, as they will inevitably be able to interact with the sets more convincingly."

i think a better idea than my first is to shoot 'sort-of' on location. for instance, say you have a xlong down-shot of a plaza that the actors must walk across. the periphery and background will be cgi enhanced with large, impressive buildings and scenery elements. but the open area of the plaza itself will be on location, say a town square with a suitable design and attractive patterns.

"the only decision is whether you create the backgrounds first, and match the action to that or vice versa."

lol, i was thinking the same thing, whichever comes first from a design standpoint is the deciding factor.

 

"It's going to be very difficult to match the cameras up. You will have to spend half the time measuring your sets to recreate where everything was when you shoot the bluescreen."

while i feel that this is probably the way the big boys are going, i agree that this could spell big trouble for guerilla style. for similar reasons im not planning on using cgi for aliens or monsters, etc. just the old fashioned masks and puppets.

"Why don't you try it now? If you have access to blue screen, test it out. See how well you can match things up and bluescreen. Base your decision on the test."

i definitely plan to set up a blue/green screen studio and test it very soon. a couple of other things are due first though.

 

"Many opportunities arise for interesting shots, during a location shoot, when the actors are present.
You'd lose those, which sometimes make the fillm"

good point, i hadn't thought of that. a lot of ad libbing can be created in a green/blue studio that wouldn't be possible otherwise though.

 

"but it may be cheaper or just a little bit more expensive to shoot your actors on your locations (the real world ones) than it is to rent a decent blue screen stage with proper lighting and a crew that knows what its doing."

i plan to rent or buy studio space and it will include a g/b studio. really, a g/b studio is just like any other studio, but with g/b paint and a g/b program and operator. in a streamlined staff i dont see why a competent editor or compositor couldnt pick up ultimatte with a little practice. i dont see g/b screening as expensive or for the big boys, not anymore that is. i see the real difficulty in lighting.

but your argument is still valid since i plan to pay very little to talent as far as wages go (that goes for all labor involved, actually), as everyone working on the project will have profit shares. lol, im more worried about paying a vamp- er, lawyer to draft the contract for profit sharing than i am justifying the b/g screening costs!

 

"If they are open to tourists, then you'll probably have lots of tourists to contend with in your shot (if they don't bust you for filming). Otherwise you'll need to get a release to shoot at every location,"

my guess is there would be a release for every location. eastern europe is infamous along with the rest of the former soviet bloc for a corrupt and somewhat inane bureacracy (a reputation which is only partly deserved). but i think convincing them that their host countries can get some good press by cooperating a bit could go a long way towards greasing the wheels.

 

"I think you'd be much better off trying to dress local locations and sets if at all possible, and use the fantastic locations just for establishing shots."

good idea

"It might even
be cheaper to road-trip into another state for a location with your actors, than to just take a camera and lighting crew abroad."

i will be in europe already. i plan to make the movie there because thats where ill be . however, i think if i just bus it, youre right. travel expenses shouldnt be too bad.

"And most of those locations you see in pictures probably won't be lit well by default, and lighting them will require more equipment and people than you're probably planning for now"

the more i think about lighting, the more it scares me. sort of.

 

"You might be better off building partial sets on the soundstage, and extending them with compositied in live plates or CG elements."

this was my original idea, then i switched, the best way maybe is just a matter of degree and whats best for the situation?

"At the very least I'd suggest you go to each of these locations to scout them out and see if they really would work before you decide to haul a camera crew out there."

amen

"Even before that, why don't you film a local location and try compositing in some of your friends. You should be able to do that test very cheaply, and find out quickly whether it works or not."

i will do this no doubt, as i have plans for more than just this movie. i want to lay the groundwork for how i can produce a series, if feasible. but that be just pipe talk right now .

"Good luck with it though, and I look forward to hearing about your progress. I myself am alwasy kicking around ideas in my head as to how I'd be able to pull off an epic fantasy genre movie, seeing as I'm living in a very castle and forest deprived area. (^_^)"

thanks, i appreciate it. i would very much like to kick around plot ideas with you and others here, once i have the basic outline of the plot (right now it barely has a spine, mostly a theme collection).

 

You've posted six times in a row. That's just obscene.

That's enough of ur posting streak, young man.

~Neszis~

 

*whew* thanks for breaking that up for me *wipes sweat from brow* hehe

"serial poster at large, reward offered" hehe

 

"i plan to use ultimatte, which will grab hair and shadows, soften edges, and remove spill as well as color correct."

Okay, I want to make you aware that Ultimatte isn't the be-all-end-all of compositing programs. You seem to have been wooed by everything it CAN do, but be aware that that isn't necessarily what it WILL do, particularly when it comes to using DV.

For film those features are fairly easy with Ultimatte, but even then there's a lot of tweaking to be done to get everything to look right.

Ever taken a look at the Ultimatte interface? It's not exactly a panel with a "KEY" button on it.

You've got sliders for Peak Detection, Matte Density, Black Gloss, Black Matte, Black Gloss 2, Clean Up (PLUS Clean Up Threshold and Clean Up Balance), White Matte, Red Density, Green Density, and Blue Density.

And that's just to extract the matte. Color correction of the foreground includes Red, Green, Blue, and Master Veil Controls, White Balance, Black Balance, Gate 1/3 and Gate 2.

Plus for all those purty details like smoke, hair, and shadows, you're looking at Background BG Level Balance, Shadow Noise, external matter, BG Level, Black, and Gamma, each of which is split into Red, Green, and Blue components, and the same for the foreground.

Have any idea what I just said? Will your VFX supervisor? Hell, I barely do, and I've got the manual right in front of me explaining what each one does.

And as I said, that's the amount of control you need for FILM, which is higher resolution by far than DV. On top of that, Ultimatte keys on the luminance values (blacks and whites). That's an issue because DV compresses luminance at a 4:1 ratio (every four pixels have the same luminance value, as I understand it). This often causes a grey "ring" around the foreground when traditional keying methods are applied. There are workarounds, but they are just that. You can pull them off in small doses, but a fully-bluescreened film is just a bad idea for DV.

That's just from a technical aspect.

I should reiterate (from someone else's post) that story is king. It seems to me you're more enamored with the idea of making a fully-bluescreened film (which would be a first, granted) than with actually making a good film telling a meaningful story. Having not read the script I could easily be wrong.

But anyway, my suggestion, unwavering, is to shoot as much as you possibly can on location. You'll discover that the expensive bluescreening solution is actually more of a problem in the end, otherwise.

M. Scott

 

As for matching up camera movement, if you'll recall shots of the making of AOTC, the bluescreens had reference "balls" (I don't know what they were, but that they were)placed every so often. These could be removed with mattes after you used them to align the shots. For example, I did a shot of a guy looking in a photo album. He sees a still, the camera zooms in on the still which begins to animate and that's the next shot. On set, I didn't have any lines or anything on the green construction paper in the photo album, so aligning the screen cap of that still through the zoom was impossible. No matter what I did it shuttered the entire way and looked very fake. If I had reference lines or dots, I could have said, "Ok, the kid's eyes go on this dot and his left foot goes on this dot, etc." Matching the zoom would have been much easier to do in post. I ended up doing cross dissolves between screen caps to make the zoom work (it was an artsy music video, so it worked out), but reference lines or dot would have helped a lot.

 

*agrees with DorkmanScott* That was going to be my next point after finding out what format your shooting on. Trying to use full blue/green screens to composite all your actors/action seamlessly onto live plates is going to be like shooting yourself in the foot with DV. While I love the XL-1 I own one myself and love what it can do, I also know its limitations. I have a lot of bluescreen work to do on my fanfilm as well, but there is no way im going to try and composite it to live plates. Compositing Keyed DV footage on to CG is one thing and can be done, but if you really want to be compositing to live plates and trying to make it look even somewhat real you need to be shooting with 1080i or 1080p or even Digi Beta. The resolution and color tollerances just arnt there in DV to get a clean key.

 

"Compositing Keyed DV footage on to CG is one thing and can be done, but if you really want to be compositing to live plates and trying to make it look even somewhat real you need to be shooting with 1080i or 1080p or even Digi Beta. The resolution and color tollerances just arnt there in DV to get a clean key."

ok im confused...why is compositing onto cg backgrounds doable and onto a live plate not? i can understand that getting a clean key might not be doable with dv, but i dont understand how live plate vs. cg background makes a difference.

 

You can control your CG plate and match its lighting to your blue screened lighting as well as many other factors =) Cant order the sun and the ambient refraction on the set to behave a certain way =)

 

Yo, it is possible to pull clean keys with DV. It's just not a point and click idea. And as far as a fully bluescreened movie not being a good idea with DV, HAVE YOU GUYS EVEN SEEN DUALITY?!?!?

 

so, correct me if I'm wrong, you're saying:
dv will not get a good a key from b/g screening as so you'd better shore it (the bad key) up by using cgi backgrounds rather than compositing the key over a live plate.

how bad looking are the keys from dv specifically? i've read the stuff available online about b/g screening and the caveats about video, but it was never made to sound prohibitive. are you guys saying that b/g screening dv footage only works if you use cg backgrounds?

edit: or are you saying that to get a good key from dv you need to use a certain quality of lighting and this means that the key lighting should determine the background lighting?

 

It would also be extremely difficult to match the cameras. You would need the background camera movements to match those of the bluescreen studio's exactly. With CG (Provided you have the right programs) the computer can match a virtual camera to live video 'easily', so you can then composite the two together with reasonable results.

NXTB

 

I never said that it was impossible to pull a clean key but its not easy. And making it all match up to a live plate can be difficult. I was simply saying that using MiniDV for compositing actors onto a live plate may not be the best idea. I think you would have better luck using nice CG plates.

 

"the computer can match a virtual camera to live video 'easily'"

can you talk about this a bit? what programs? what does 'easily' mean?

"I think you would have better luck using nice CG plates."

i agree with you 100% when you put it that way =). ok about cg, is using photogrammetry a good idea? say you like a building, you take a bunch of pics and use photomodeler pro or whatever to make a model, put it into lightwave or softimage and go from there. assuming you get a usable model, have you helped yourself any, say for pans, camera moves? is that too big of an assumption? or would it be a waste of time to make the 3d models rather than just using the photos?

Dorkmann Scott, how much have you used ultimatte? what kinds of shots/scenes? what kind of cameras/settings? what kind of lights? do you like it? is it stable (you are talking about the software version right?)?

 

Camera matching in 3D scenes is a complicated topic, and there are several dedicated threads to it floating around this board and others, so I'll briefly describe the method I've used using 3DS MAX 4.

Actually, I've found a link that describes the process pretty well. Check it out, I?d be happy to help you find answers to any questions you might have regarding the process.

If you don't have MAX, there are other programs available that will do the matching for you, but I have no experience with them.


NXTB

 

thanks for the link

 

I was refering to a $10,000 program called Boujou 2.0 It does extremely complex match moving generating data for the 3D Camera for mosts major 3D apps.