Short Film and Final Cut Pro

[Rob Gee]

VERY nice looking footage. Couple questions: did you add the mask in FCP, or is that the letterboxing that your Panny gave you? It’s very wide, almost a Cinemascope ratio.

Also, your colors are so bright a vivid. Did you do anything in FCP or during compression to give the colors an extra punch? Nice work. – Rob

[Walter Biscardi]

Congrats Nathan! We’re about to finally get to principal photography on our short film in two weeks and will edit everything in FCP. Looking forward to having as much fun as you did!

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.com

Now in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Nathan Beaman]

For the letterboxing – I sent a 2.35:1 signal out of FCP into a DVX-100, a DVX-100a and an NTSC field monitor. I put camera tape over the “unseen” portions of all three to keep the framing consistent on all. I shot full frame in order to use the full res of the CCDs instead of digitally letteboxing it in camera and using less of the chips. We shot using the tape as framing guides and then masked it in FCP duting post.

As far as the coloring goes – for the most part the real vibrant colors existed in the original footage. I dropped the gamma then color corrected. After this I nested all my sequences and color corrected them once again shot by shot isolating the greens and using stills from “Amelie” as a guide.

I was happy that the colors still looked so vibrant on the web compression, but it still pales compared to the original footage.

There is a whole other issue with the color as far as using the LCD of the DVX-100 as a reference.