Blaise Douros
Forum Replies Created
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A Difference Matte would probably get you the results you want. Original copy of the footage on the bottom layer, liquified version on upper layer, Difference Matte applied to the upper layer. Make sure your new color effects are after the Difference Matte effect in the render order, so that AE applies the effects in the order you want.
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And even simpler than using the Polar Coordinates step–the Audio Spectrum effect allows you to orient the audio samples along a mask path, so if you just draw a circular mask, duplicate it on each instance, you can remove the precomp and Polar Coordinates step, as well as eliminating some of the distortion that comes with that effect.
If that sounds specific, it’s because I jumped into AE to try it, out of pure curiosity. Works great!
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On second thought, Audio Spectrum might work better, because you can make the dots only go in one direction reacting to the audio (via the Display Options and Side Options). Might get you something a little closer to what you’re thinking of.
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Create a solid, with an instance of the Audio Waveform plugin, and make sure the Start and End points are all the way at each left and right edge of your canvas. Set the Display Options in the Audio Waveform plugin to “Analog Dots.” Duplicate it, and change a few settings, perhaps decreasing and increasing the Displayed Samples property on each new layer. When you have a sufficiently complex number of dots on a straight line, precompose all of the Audio Waveform solid layers you’ve created.
Next, apply Polar Coordinates to the precomp. Set the type of conversion to “Rect to Polar.” You’ll now have a circle of dots.
Now, you can load different audio files to the precomp, and set each layer to react with greater or lesser intensity to the sounds. That way, they’ll react together, but at different levels.
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Hey Phil – in a nutshell, yeah, that’s how anamorphic works. It’s not “real” resolution, in the sense that the more desqueezing you do, you will get slightly softer results.
Your project resolution remains the same, and you set the pixel width; effectively the computer then multiplies the clip’s width and maps it across your screen’s pixels, to get your effective resolution.
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I agree, asking what they have budgeted is a good place to start.
Otherwise, I’d do this: break down how many hours of work it’s going to take, and figure out how much you believe is a fair hourly rate for yourself. Make sure to factor in time for client-requested revisions. That’s your quote.
Bill the client hourly; if you finish fast, they get a better price–if they request a bunch of revisions, they’ll have to fairly compensate for them. If you are going to go over, especially if it’s related to revisions, you can let the client know that they’re approaching the budget you’ve set, and whether they want to allocate more for revisions.
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Ultimately, you may need to involve the approvers in the testing setup, as well as setting realistic expectations for what resolution you’ll deliver and what the expected viewing distance will be. “Well, there are several ways we can capture media for this, and here’s what each will cost…”
I would guess that three 4K cameras and some wide or ultrawide lenses would be sufficient to scale to the resolution you need. Three UHD cameras gets you a resolution of 11520×2160 (minus a little for overlapping pixels). That could be as simple as three Sony A7 IIIs. I wouldn’t use GoPros just because of the lack of control over the settings. Any local machine shop would probably be able to knock you up an aluminum plate for camera alignment that would only weigh a few pounds at most.
Something like this, only a horizontal mount: https://petapixel.com/2017/03/28/built-panoramic-photo-rig-made-6-nikon-dslrs-awesome/
The other thing to look into would be anamorphic lens adapters–this would get you additional horizontal stretch without adding cameras. In fact, at UHD resolution of 3840×2160, two cameras with 2x anamorphic adapters would be enough to cover almost the entire native resolution: 2x anamorphic gets you 7680×2160, which means two cameras gets you an effective horizontal rez of 15630×2160. The edges tend to get soft in anamorphic, so that might be an issue for stitching in the center, but you see where I’m going, here. Three UHD cameras with 1.5x anamorphic adapters would be 17280×2160. That’s cooking with gas!
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Slog profiles will change the way you think about shooting–they are designed to take advantage of the full dynamic range of a sensor. In high-contrast situations, they will save your bacon *if* you take the time to understand how they work and how to expose correctly for what they do.
When shooting 8-bit 4:2:0, they are not a cure-all, but it’s better to do that, IMO, than lose highlight data.
Do you know how to use the waveform monitor? I forget if the FS5 has it–I shoot the FS7. If it does, you should enable it and make sure you know what you’re looking at–it’s incredibly helpful in this kind of situation.
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More RAM will never, ever hurt your system. Premiere’s Lumetri Color is also hardware-accelerated, so a good graphics card will really help, too.
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First, your shots are just plain overexposed. I’m wondering if you shot these with the intent to keep skin tones at 72 IRE on the waveform monitor? If so, that is a big part of your problem–that rule is meant for light skin, and unfortunately, there are fewer guidelines on where darker skin “should” live on the waveform. You have to make a judgement call on set, and look at the highlights as part of your overall exposure equation.
These are the situations where Slog2 and Slog3 really become useful. In bright sunlight with white cloth, you’re pretty much screwed unless you’re shooting in a log gamma or in RAW.
I would suggest underexposing a bit if you have to shoot in a standard gamma–if you’re blowing your highlights there’s nothing you can do in post, while a little bit of grain won’t kill you. I would also suggest picking up some scrims and flags, so you can cut the light on your actors a bit on set.