[Eli Mavros]

Right, but say I removed the 3:2 in Cinema Tools, it doesn’t ask me to choose a compression…which always led me to believe it worked similarly to the “export quicktime” feature in FCP (as opposed to “export using quicktime conversion”). Maybe it is naive, but I thought Cinema Tools extracts the interlaced frames and then puts the rest of the frames back together and the metadata tells quicktime that it now plays at 24.

Thanks,
Eli

Eli Mavros

[Eli Mavros]

You are right Dave. Unfortunately its not my company, and I can’t make this call, but I will surely pass on your insight and hopefully I will get this straightened out.

Thanks for the quick response.

Best,
Eli

Eli Mavros

[Eli Mavros]

If your footage was shot at 29.97 with a pulldown that you removed, maybe you shouldn’t remove it and work with the 29.97 video and not at 24p. If, on the other hand, you shot at 24p native, you can take your 24p footage into a program like After Effects and then export it with a 3:2 pulldown added to make it 29.97, if you want. The problem with this method is that you will lose timecode, and thus not be able to go back to your original media in an offline/online scenario. I don’t know why Cinema Tools offers a reverse telecine option, but not a telecine option. Would be great to be able to work at 24p and then at the end ad a 3:2 pulldown to a rendered sequence through CT at the end.

Hope this helps…hope you have After Effects.

Best,
Eli

Eli Mavros

[Eli Mavros]

You can with the arrow keys if you hold down the option key. One of the shortcuts I use the most.

Best,
Eli

P.S.
I am excited about the new release, I don’t care what others are saying. I feel like it’s christmas day and I’m six years old everytime a new version of fcp comes out.

Eli Mavros

[Eli Mavros]

I’m with you on the markers…color coding! And don’t forget the new speed tool, something that fcp has needed to address for a long time in my opinion. Can’t wait to get it!

-Eli

Eli Mavros

[Eli Mavros]

Good point Gary, I must have missed that in your post…that is a good enough reason for me to push that through.

Best,
Eli

Eli Mavros

[Eli Mavros]

Wow…how did I not know that. Duh.

Thanks,
Eli

Eli Mavros

[Eli Mavros]

Hey Guys,

Thanks for the input. I am aware of the whole 3:2 process and everything with 24p footage being delivered for 29.97 broadcast. I have also worked with the 30 for 30 type of shoot. I guess my question is a bit of a preference issue. Since everything is being over cranked, the option to get quicktimes at 24 or 30 is up to me, as the film is not being shot at either frame rate but at 150fps. I just wasn’t sure if it would be better for me to work on the project at 30fps or 24fps since the delivery is 1080i 59.94 (also, I guess I am just confused as well because sometimes there is such thing as 60fps HD stuff and I never know how you know what the difference is via the crazy naming conventions out there…I guess you just have to ask the station to be specific). I just get confused about having clips that are 30p but then converting them to an interlaced format. There is some fundamental of interlacing that I still am too dense to comprehend. I just don’t know what would yield better results, working at 24p and then adding a pulldown for delivery, or working at 30p and then dropping that into an interlaced sequence at the end. Something about that latter approach that scares me into thinking I will have field issues. If you have progressive footage (like I always do with 30fps CG), when you drop it into an interlaced sequence (lower fields first for SD and upper fields first for HD), you are basically just telling the computer which fields of the progressive movie to display first? So there shouldn’t be any issue. The issue is when you have footage that was acquired with a certain field dominance and you drop it into a sequence with the opposite field dominance, right?

Thanks,

Eli

Eli Mavros

[Eli Mavros]

Thanks for the responses guys. Apparently the company I am working for has the Gluetools program, so that should be good on that end. I agree about the online/offline approach of this project using ProRes and then 10bit for the final compositing. Is the general concensus that I should have the film transfered and the phantom footage transcoded to 23.98 and then at the very end add 3:2 pulldown? Playing the devil’s advocate here, but say I had the film xfered to 30p, could the spot be finished progressively and then I throw it in a 29.97 HD timeline (upper fields first) and things would be cool?

Best,
Eli

Eli Mavros

[Eli Mavros]

Hi Larry,

Wow! Those were some very nice compliments. I really appreciate that people enjoy these spots as much as I enjoyed making them. Even though I worked on them, I still get tingles watching them sometimes, because these movies are so great and so important…doesn’t it make you want to just stay in and watch old movies all day? It makes me want to.

These two spots were quite a big undertaking as you thought. I did them with two friends of mine who have a small Brooklyn-based studio, Fresh Paint. They are both Maya guys and did all the 3D and compositing (working around the clock for over a month). The compositing was all done in After Effects. As far as editing hours go…well, it took a long time. I think the 2008 spot may have taken longer, as we were in chartered territory. The 2009 spot posed an entirely different challenge…to keep it feeling fresh! We were very careful not to just rehash the same spot and ideas from the year before. There are, of course, some similarities in places, but we were happy in the end that it felt different than the previous year’s.

Both years presented the unique story telling challenge of not only developing a two dimensional narrative of classic movie clips, but also of moving that narrative into a three dimensional space. At times it was a maddening task, to not only have clips play off each-other on screen, but to figure out how their placement and relationship to each-other would create environments that seamlessly transition from one vignette to the next.

As for shooting, all of the stagehands in the 2008 spot were shot over the course of a day on green screen. We recycled the stagehands for this year’s spot, except for a couple…which I shot one afternoon with my girlfriend. In the war scene I’m the stagehand that hides behind the sandbags with a rifle, and my girlfriend is the shadow that walks off stage and waves at the end. Those were last minute additions that I did for Fresh Paint for no budget and no pay…they did not have any time or money for it, but I just wanted them in there so I took it upon myself to make it happen, haha. I don’t know what the overall budget was, but I know that there was less budget for this year’s, even though the previous year’s spot had swept the BDA awards. It was especially strange that there was less budget,seeing that they wanted the 2009 spot to be a full :30 seconds longer than the 2008 one. Oh well…I guess it is just the economy.

Hope that clears things up!

Cheers,
Eli

Eli Mavros