Eric Lagerlof
Forum Replies Created
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Dave, thanks for the confidence booster. Your link didn’t go through on your post, but I have been seen it elsewhere, so I’m doing fine.
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Brian, thanks for the response. A GTX280 to answer your question. My motherboard maxes out at 8 gigs of ram, at only 1066 mhz. So I’m hoping that won’t be a bottleneck. But so far it seems realtime playback will work.
I’ve been editing musicals from a performing arts school with quick turnover and two tapes, a wide cover shot and a close-up shot(s) per show. Ten shows this summer. Plus, I capture in HDV and edit in an SD project/timeline, useing ‘pan&scan’ techniques, i.e. scaling and moving the frame. For musicals, realtime is a must and I’ve been using Newtek’s Speed Edit to do the job, but it would be nice to get back to PPro, which is for most of my work, my main editing app.
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Make sure you check with (and if possible, make ‘nice’ with) the people who own/run the venue. You need to check and make sure your camera positions will be approved and work when an audience is present, especially true when swinging a jib around. Also that you will have room for ‘video village’, i.e. where you and your switcher are going to live and that you’ll have tables/chairs to put your gear and yourselves on.
Double check cable runs too, if you have to run across doorways and other footpaths you may have to not only tape but use ‘yellowjackets’ – plastic ramp/trays that you put on the floor. And if you can let house sound know you want a tap from the ahead of time, that’s handy too. And don’t forget clear com!
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This response may be too late, however…
Sometimes what seems like a great idea, like running three different videos at the same time, can be difficult, even irritating for the audience to watch. If the video content is familiar to you and not the audience, they’ve got a lot more to try and ingest and process. They have to decide which video to concentrate on and, in the process, might feel like as they watch one they might be missing out on the other etc, etc.
Just a thought.
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Christies don’t come cheap and you will probably have to price lenses separately. I agree with Mike, don’t go nuts on the projectors unless you have to, mid-priced Sanyos and the like might do just fine. Make sure that the output of your video mixer and the input of your projectors match, i.e. HD-SDI to HD-SDI. If they don’t, or you are going to do anything beyond HD video and/or mix 720-1080 sources or add computer data, a Folsom/Barco image pro or presentation pro might be necessary. ( Just things to think about, otherwise might be not needed.) Under any circumstances, a video DA would be handy.
Also, do you intend to direct the camera operators?. A “PL” system like a clear com system should be added if that is the case. (Do the 700’s have an optional studio kit and would that be handy?) And don’t forget audio! Even if you are plugging into a house PA, your own mixer and cables should be added.
In short, think through your signal chain VERY CAREFULLY, step by step. That wil definately help with your gear choices. Good luck.
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Maxine, I was just cruising by this post, my After Effects is a little rusty… But the moving light texture seems to be an abstracted example of ‘Caustics’. The light behind the letters shining over and past them is an example of ‘volumetric lighting’. Search for these two terms in After Effects tutorials both here at the Cow and on-line in general and you might find at least some of what you need.
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I’m going to take a bit of a different tack here. You cannot replace school with DVD’s or books-true. But until the day when you can take classes…
You can google efp lighting and Walter Graffe (Graff?) for starters as to some basic techniques, and they might even offer DVD’s. Blain Brown’s Cinematography book I really like for covering a lot of different aspects of cinematography. And John Alton’s ‘Painting with Light’ is really cool too, though a little old.
Another set of DVD’s I’d highly recommend – your favorite movies,(especially visually/cinematographically). I love such divergent movies as Coppola/Storaro’s “One from the Heart”, Levinson/ Daviau’s “Avalon” and one of my recent favorites, the British mystery series, “Jericho”, lensed by Alan Almond amongst others. While you may never have the resources that these guys have, just looking real hard, seeing what you like about a scene and trying to reconstruct the lighting plot from what you see can really help. Check out some of the noir gangster movies, which used realtively few lights, (read Alton’s book concurrently).
And for evey minute you absorb stuff, spend five trying to make it happen. Not as cool as school but a reasonable start.
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May be a wild goose chase but… How about creating some cubes ‘inside’ your building. Rough them up by subdiving the cubes and using a matrix extrude for the rough edges, and then use some funtions in MOGraph to scatter them about. I’m still in v.8 so this is totally off the top of my head. But instead of blowing up your building polys, maybe create some of your own?
Also, Andrew Kramer who does some tutorials here at the cow, has an intersting After Effects tutorial on an energy vortes that scatters debris about on a city street. VideoCoPilot is the site, if it’s ok. to mention it. That might help as well.
At least I hope I added some new ideas to the mix 🙂
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I’d love too see a still of your character in ‘extension’ mode when you get done.
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And I’m getting back to you even later… Shooting events is always such a treat. Recently did a concert at a large theater and we preset the cameras to 3200k after a quick check with the lighting director. He didn’t bother to mention that msot of the show his lights would be low and they would be using spotlights as the main lighting tool, xenon spotlights. Everybody blue…lovely.
Thanks for the response-continued good luck…
Eric L.