Ball of the Meat: Social Thread v6.0

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Pft, you wish McCoy.


-Vaportrail

 

I prefer the FTL drive to the hyperdrive or warp drive, myself.

 

Weird.

EDIT:
Also, a local public access station recently bought a bunch of HVXs to replace their old field camcorders.

Guess what I'm gonna use on my fan film.

 

Sometimes happens when you've waited a really long time between navigating to the "Post Reply" page and actually submitting the post. I'm guessing that after a certain amount of time it just forgets that you've requested the Post page and assumes you're an "off-site or off-line source." I'm not really sure why those should be disallowed, though, unless it's in an effort to prevent automated spamming.

-Paul

 

I've noticed in a few threads recently that, when it comes to casting, that certain projects are "non SAG." I thought it was kind of funny at first, and then I got to thinking: With the Screenwriters Guild out on strike, there's not going to be a lot of work for guild actors.

It's sad, really. Corporate greed is cutting out "creativity" and cheating people out of their livelihoods. No, I don't mean the big name, "A-list" actors, but the supporting cast, the crew, and the lesser-knowns who actually need the work.

It makes me sad.

On the positive side, however, this could be an opportunity for non-guild actors and writers (like those found on these boards here) to get some more attention. If something truly awesome comes out, something along the lines of Revelations, in the near future, it could create a new boom for fan films.

Purely speculative, I know. But happy thoughts are few and far between nowadays.

 

Four hours wasted because I forgot to parent a solid layer to a movement null. Four bloody hours.

 

I just discovered I may have spent three hours rotoing a pole yesterday that didn't need rotoed

 

You make me giggle. That train wasn't CGI. It was added in post, but it wasn't CGI. Seriously with the exception of 2D light effects *coughligtsaberscough*, we're generally inexperienced at computer generated stuff.

 

You know you've seen a movie a few too many times when you realize you have the director commentary memorized...

Just sayin'.

 

So Phi and I saw Beowulf in 3D last night. We were primarily interested in seeing it for the 3D aspect, in order to see what the technology is currently capable of, and what the rules for 3D cinematography are.

The 3D enhanced how gross Grendel was, and didn't seem to help any of the over-the-shoulder-talking heads stuff. Even most of the action scenes - spears, arrows etc., seemed weird in 3D... with one exception: the dragon fight, which was amazing. We came to the conclusion that as soon as you start showing things in 3D on a screen as large as IMAX, it screws up your perception of scale.

In 2D film, you can scale your perspective. For example, in a close up, or an over the shoulder shot, you say, "I'm near the person, and hence they're big". In IMAX, everything is far away and super-3D, and your brain interprets that in order to have this much depth, everyone is a GIANT. Not only that, but everything moves too fast. When stuff like arrows, heads etc. moves with the speed it does in a normal 2D film, but in a 3D sense, it's like you're moving and floating around through an enormous 3D space filled with enormous 3D things, moving much faster than they'd normally be able to. Only during the dragon fight, when the dragon was to nearly appropriate scale compared to a real human did the sizes of everything seem to make sense.

Overall, Beowulf as a movie was entertaining enough, but I didn't think it looked particularly photo-real, but it wasn't too deeply entrenched in the uncanny valley either.

-Spiff

 

So far, I don't think the rules of 3D cinematography have been established. I think, right now, it's still 2D cinematography "shot" with 3D cameras. The only thing they do differently in 3D is the occasional shot of something pointing right at you that you wouldn't typically do in a film, except to try and be OMG ITS TOTALLY 3D GUYS.

 

I've got a random stupid question.

Is there a method or something to making a documentary for a movie? Like is there certain questions that are supposed to be asked? Or is it better just to say "Talk about this one situation."...

... Yeah...

 

Microsoft Excel isn't opening now because I can't install the XP SP3 update. It starts to install but it asks for PROPLUS.msi, I haven't a clue where this is, so Excel doesn't open. Whenever I try to open Excel directly the updater starts.

Any help??

 

Like is there certain questions that are supposed to be asked?

Avoid the one about "if you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be".

Here's one tip: don't think if it as asking questions, unless you're specifically on a fact-finding mission. Try to get your interviewees to tell stories. A series of yes-and-no answers doesn't do as much for ya as an illustrative, emotional depiction of the thing in question.



Rick McCallum loves you!

 

Well I didn't mean yes or no questions, more of "What was it like..., or what are your thoughts on..." Like certain topics to ask them to talk about that make for a good watch.

I'm fine with the whole "Fly on set" type of stuff, but as far as the actual docus that pretty much every movie has on the dvd, I've been having trouble comeing up with the basic topis and layouts of it.


On a side note, I just realized that there's a crack about half an inch wide going down my wall in my room... Even through the molding.

 

I havn't seen Beowulf, and don't know if it'll be available in 3D in Sweden.

But I've been to the "local" (= 2 hour drive) OmniMax, which is like an IMax on steroids (hemispherical screen, filling the full field-of-view)

The interesting thing with 3D on THAT screen is actually kind of the reverse of what spiff says; In a 2D showing, you can kind of "perceive" the image as "big", since it is up there on this BIG screen.

But with the 3D done on the omnimax, the image actually became small. Because the 3D stuff I saw (a bunch of "inside the body"/"magical chemistry visualized in 3d" at Cosmonova) was different. It was calibrated such that objects appeared "real sized", and rather than "stuff is inside a big screen far away with some things occasionally poking out" this was really "the things are right in front of you, in the air, and even though the screen is 40 feet away there seems to be connection with that screen WAY over there and these objects sitting right in front of me".

So I think they can work it differently. Sure, OmniMax (with the total-field-of-view screen) is slightly different, and these were special films calibrated for OmniMax viewing. So it was pretty freaky stuff.


EDIT: As far as I've understood, the reason for this difference is this; If you set your film so it is situated "In" the movie screen (with "occasional poking out") it reads to every viewer as "ok", since the movie screen becomes a "window". You CAN arrange your images so even on a flat IMAX screen, the image is sitting "near" the viewer all the time... but you then get problems with the edges. The brain gets freaked because the edge of the image (where the screen "stops") will appear wrong, since you have imagery "near" you but the edge doesn't fit this "imagery is near" metaphor and is "far" where the actual screen is.

So one of the few things of the "cinematography of 3d" that has evolved (as far as I've read/heard) is precicely this "keep the depth deeper than screen for most objects" rule-of-thumb.

Since the OmniMax has no border, you do not need to adhere to that "rule", and this is why you can place things "in the lap of the observer" with none of the disorientating "edge issues".


/Z

 

Okay, so, I recently finished a movie and put it on YouTube. Amazing, eh? So, now I'm trying to open Premiere so that I can render it out all high quality-like for some DVDs. This is where it falls out, of course. See, premiere, when I open the project gives me an error involving

[\dev\stingray\Libraries\Asl\Foundation\Src\PathUtils.cpp-550]

Not sure what the rest is, for it closed before I could copy it all, but does anyone know how to fix this? It happens on my backup project file too. =/

Also, unrelatedly (or, well, you never know...), does anyone know how to change the letter designation on an external HDD? It's been E: for the last year and now, suddenly, when I booted my computer up with another USB thing plugged in, it became F:. Tis annoying to have to find all my files again for old projects..

Anyway, thanks if anyone can help.

 

Any ideas for social thread VII title?

 

"This is not the thread you're looking for."?

 

I like "IFOTOS Release Thread".

 

I know, you guys told me about it. It was a lazy day.

-Vaportrail

 

Meh, that one's been shot down the last three or four times.

One thing we've established is that it has to have, "of the" in the middle. That said, I've got nothin'.

 

Have we? I remember the last one was "Now with added cutting edge digital effects" or similar.

 

IFOTOS has "of the" in it.