Chris Smith
Forum Replies Created
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Coincidentally, I was doing lens and lighting tests Friday. Part of my tests were checking out the lens flares on Panavision C series anamorphic lenses. I think they are actually the exact same lenses that Claudio used on the Alpine spot. I know he used C series because I emailed and asked him once. There are only a set or two around and these came from the same place Claudio gets them (Panavision Woddland Hills) so these are probably they. Here is an excerpt from those tests showing how they flare. Notice that if you simulate it in AE with Knoll lens flares or whatever that your footage should change contrast in sync. You’ll see that the more that the flare hits the lens, the less contrast the image has:
https://sugarfilmproduction.com/LensTest.mov
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
Create a new material. Load the movie into the color channel. You’ll need to turn on the animate option and hit analyze button so it knows how many frames. Then apply that material to whatever you wish.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
I just may add that not using correction filters is not a big deal and is quuite standard. What I don’t get though is why not just have your transfer colorist set the look you desire?
But we (me and my usual DP Bill) almost always shoot tungsten film inside and outside with no filtration. I know for a fact that a few of the other directors or DP
s in town also shoot uncorrected. The difference between the colors is minimal when considering that telecin -
Try creating a solid that matches the color of the filter (orangish). Then multiply that solid with your footage. That’s basically what the filter is doing. You may have to adjust levels to compensate though.
But if it were me, I’d just add a Color Finesse and color correct it to eye to what I think is pleasing, not necessarily what is “Correct”.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
I might add that this technique works brilliantly using Lighten mode when you are trying to get rid of darker than skin or darker than (any surface really) spots, or blemishes.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
Reality:
If you mean the vertical smears, they change the timing phase of the camera so that the film is pulled to the next frame while the gate is still open insted of when it’s closed.After Effetcs:
Make a duplicate of your footage. On the duplicate, add Levels. Crush down the blacks and gammas a lot, then clip the highe end just a little. So in the end, you have a very dark image with only the brighter areas showing. Now add a hue/sat and pull the saturation way down to balance the color back to the way it was.Now add a directional blur and set it to vertical then crank the blur amount way up. Then on this duplicate, set it to Screen transfer mode.
If you set the levels and blur right, it should look very close to the camera phase effect.
If you were talking about the horizontal smears in Claudios work, those are lens flares from using the old Panavision C series anamorphic lenses.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
Half of the effect is in the keyframing. Those don’t even look like they are clipping anything or changing the speed like the stop/start of a film camera really does. If you just put a white solid over the footage and keyframed the opacity from 0 to 100 to 0 over a few frames, then changed your velocity curves to a peak (so it looks like a spike and not a triangle) you could simulate this movie. If you want it more like a film camera, do the same keyframe curve on a levels so the whites crush down and back up. But you’ll need to do the same to a hue/sat at the same time so the saturation doesn’t blow through the roof during the increased contrast. Then to make it even more like a film camera, do the same curve to a time remap so it speeds up then returns to normal at the same time.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
I might add that I seem to remember they also did the camera out of phase thing for the vertical smear. Which is where you put the gate out of sync with the claw pulling the next frame of film. So instead of the film being advanced in the cam only while the gate shuts off the light, it advances a little while the gate still exposes light making a vertical smear.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
A lot of that was just color correction and editing different in-camera techniques together.
For example, the surreal time warpy stuff is editing using the flash frames and bits of handcranked camera. It may seems strange, but you can get hardware to handcrank an ARRI 435. So you’re using a modern camera and film, but handcranking. This gives the film that weird, time distorted, freaky exposure. Obviously the sloppier you do it, the more bizarre it is. They would take certain shots and run an additional camera and manually crank it to have bits to edit in.
Obviously flash frames from any film camera is an exposure and time warp effect since the film slows to a halt, then speeds back up to speed. Just simply choose to use these bits in the edit.
As far as the look, Stefan Sonnenfeld did the Color Correction. No big trick there, just choose to be that extreme (and talented at color correction). Add Color Finesse to a clip and go to town. If you clip the whites (turn on the soft knee limiter), darken the blacks. Push the blacks toward a cyanish, the mids very yellow/green and the whites toward baby blue you should get pretty close.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
Yes. The whole AMD 64 series is 64 bit (like mine/ half price of my G5). Not sure which Intel chips are.
Of course my decision to use AMD over Intel was purely due to the fact that they sponsor Schumi and Rubens’s F1 Ferraris. 🙂
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com