Todd Terry
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COW Coin
Forum Replies Created
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Erik is right on several fronts there, good post.
Yep, true cine lenses don’t “click” through the f-stops, whereas still lenses do. That’s not a huge obstacle, though.
To me, the much much bigger issue is focus. Cine lenses are much easier to pull focus than still lenses are. That’s simply because of the range of travel of the focus ring. With a still lens, you only have to turn the focus ring a very short distance (usually 1/8th to 1/5th of a full barrel turn) to go from the nearest focus point all the way to infinity. With a cine lens, it’s almost a full barrel turn to go through the full range. If you are shooting wide open with a very shallow depth of field, with a still lens that can make it almost impossible to pull a good focus on a moving subject because the ring has to be turned in such tiny miniscule increments… whereas with a cine lens you have much more room for error because you’re turning the ring much more.
Also, unless they are very very high-end lenses, almost all still lenses will breathe, whereas cine lenses don’t. That’s not a big deal until you are doing a lot of focus pulls or rack focusing… and then the breathing stands out like a sore thumb.
Erik is also right about the Leica glass… it’s awesome. My current set of primes started life as Lieca/Leitz still lenses… until a previous owner (a DP of some note) somehow got Panavision to rebarrel them years ago (and that was not just remounting to PL, but a full rebarrel, so they are true cine primes now). The glass is just incredible.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Ok, this advice should be the same whether you are doing compositing in AE or editing in Premiere… here’s how I would do it…
Firstly, do ALL your work in a 23.976 composition in AE, or on a 23.976 timeline in Premiere. Create your master at 23.976.
Then in Premiere, still on a 23.976 timeline, output a 60i version of your project. Go FILE > EXPORT > MEDIA (or with the timeline active just click CONTROL + M). That brings up the Export Settings box. It will likely be defaulted to whatever specs your timeline is, which would be 23.976. After you select what format you want to output, under the VIDEO tab change the FRAME RATE from 23.98 TO 29.97. You will now also get radio buttons that let you select whether you want it to be interlaced or progressive. You want this to be interlaced for television use, so click the “Upper First” button under “Field Type.” Click the picture below to see it full size, it’s hard to read embedded here.
Export your new file, and that should give you a 60i file with a perfect 2:3 pulldown and your motion should look smooth.
There is no doubt a similar way to do this in AE, but we just use AE for compositing, and do all of our actual editing in Premiere.
Hope this helps.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Sorry Danny… I really don’t have any further useful advice. As I said, I personally avoid anamporphics at almost any cost, and haven’t had need to touch any in a very very long time.
For me personally anamorphic lenses just have a huge long list of negatives, and absolutely zero positives, so I don’t have any current useful advice. Others of course feel differently, which is fine.
Sounds like you have good sources though of people who are using them with success, they are probably your best route for good advice.
Good luck!
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Oh gosh… this is one of the harder things to explain (up there with explaining the difference between shutter speed and frame rate, which some people just don’t get)….
I will try to give a short/simple explanation, but it would probably be better for you to do some Googling and research about “3:2 pulldown” to get a clearer explanation that I can do.
[Ali Quintana] ” for every 4th frame there is a still frame added which is the same as the 3rd frame.”
Well… this is not what you want to see, so at some point your conversion is incorrect.
When 24fps (or 23.976fps) is converted to 60i (30 frames per second, 60 interlaced fields), this is what SHOULD happen (again, this is pretty hard to explain).
Think of the 24fps footage as frames. Since the 30fps footage is interlaced and each frame made up of two fields, lets not think of it as 30 frames but rather as strings of 60 fields.
SO… we need to convert 24 frames per second to 60 fields per second. How to do that?… since that is not easy math.
Here’s how that is done, with the “3:2” pulldown…
Film frame 1 becomes video fields 1, 2, and 3 (using three fields).
Film frame 2 becomes video fields 4 and 5 (using two fields).
Film frame 3 becomes video fields 6, 7, and 8 (using three fields).
Film frame 4 becomes video fields 9 and 10 (using two fields).
This 3:2 pattern continues, and when you reach the end of 24 film frames you also perfectly reach the last video field.
This is NOT what you are getting when you are seeing yours with three frames and then a repeated frame.
What you SHOULD be seeing is three interlaced frames followed by two progressive frames. That is, when you toggle through your converted 29.97 video you should see interlaced images for three frames (you’ll see motion vibrate if viewed on a CRT monitor), followed by two progressive frames).
So, somewhere in your conversion process things aren’t right. We don’t use AE for conversion… here’s how we do it…
Since we shoot everything 24p (23,976) we also produce everything at 24p. When we have a final 24p master, then we output a 60i version for broadcast. We do this in Premiere just by changing the output settings, and it works perfectly.
Someone who is more of an AE expert might be able to give you better guidance as to how to do it properly in After Effects… but once you have the proper 3:2 pulldown conversion, your motion should be smooth.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Not exactly.
Real movies were not shot at 23.976 fps.
Historically, real films (those shot on actual film), where shot at true 24fps.
Today, the majority of digitally-originated “films” are shot at either 23.976fps or true 24fps. Electronically-originated projects destined primarily for the big screen, or for when an actual film print is to be struck, are typically shot at true 24fps. Projects destined primarily for television are typically shot at 23.976.
Television commercials that have a cinematic look are typically shot at 23.976fps, although some are shot at 29.97fps, progressive (24p vs. 30p), which gives a slightly smoother look to motion (although appears, to my eye, a bit less cinematic).
No theatrical projects to speak of are ever shot at 29.97… 24fps is still the norm.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Take all of Mark’s excellent advice, he’s right on the money.
As for avoiding camera reflections, yes, use a polarizer which will cut some of them, but not all. Judicious masking of the camera and environment will help that.
If you have side windows that are giving you reflections, simply roll them all the way down (if they will, in today’s cars not all side windows will roll all the way down, especially rear windows). For windshields, for big budget productions it’s not uncommon to have the windshield removed, but you probably won’t have that luxury (I never have). But with those angles camera reflections are unlikely, anyway. You’re more likely to have reflections of lighting instruments.
And yes, you will find adding reflections in post to be a bazillion times easier than doing it practically or with projection. And you have infinitely variable control of it in post… with practical or projected reflections, those are going to be baked in and you are stuck with what you shoot.
Done well, they can be pretty realistic, or hyper-realistic…
The windshield reflections were added in the third shot of this spot, at about the :06 mark….
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Admittedly those don’t look that realistic (the angle is impossible for one thing, and we should have warped them some), but in that case hyper-realistic was ok for us, because all of the other fake signage had a surreal look as well.
This fifth shot in this spot (at about :06) is a bit more realistic…
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In this case, the RV was not moving. We couldn’t tow a gigantic motorhome, nor did I want them to actually drive and tailgate a camera car that closely… so they were parked and I did a dolly shot with an arcing truck move around the nose of the vehicle, and the sky reflections were added in post. I was going to run out with a hood-mounted camera and shoot some real moving sky, but our first try just used still images of a sky we hand on hand with motions applied to them, and the result fell into the “ehh that looks good enough” range and I didn’t even bother with the other shoot. Looks fairly realistic, I think (and the fact that it is less than a two-second shot helps).
Let us know how it all works out… or show us.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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There’s actually a lot of great info if you watch all of that rather lengthy video.
The pilot certification requirement is obviously the most restrictive… and as the guy says it has nothing to do with the actual flying. I’m a pilot, and can tell you first hand that my experience as a pretty decent fixed-wing pilot has absolutely zero benefit nor is a factor at all in my fair-to-average ability as a RC quadcopter pilot. None. Nada. Zip. Totally two different worlds. It would be like your accountant saying “You can trust me with your taxes, I’m a world-class fly fisherman.” They are just almost completely unrelated in skill and ability requirements.
I have my fair share of hours in the cockpit, but there are no doubt plenty of whiz kid teenage gamers who’ve had a joystick in their hands 24/7 for the last five years who could fly circles around me (literally) with a drone.
But, as the guy said, the pilot certification is there so operators will know about controlled airspaces, what NOTAMs are, how to file flight plans and communicate with controllers and all that jazz. But honestly all of that can be taught in ground school that would take a fraction of the time (and money) that it takes to get a real pilot’s certification.
Maybe one day they’ll have that in place… unfortunately government gears grind slowly.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Well in my case it was absolutely unwatchable. Totally and completely.
Hopefully those who watch it on the more conventional IMAX screens will have a better experience, but if your only choice is the domed IMAX surround screens then don’t even chance it… it’s terrible.
I did read that sometimes people are not seeing what they think they are paying for… if you saw the 3D version in an IMAX theatre, you were indeed seeing 3D but you were not seeing 70mm. Disney did not strike 70mm prints of the 3D version… so you’re actually just seeing it in an IMAX theatre, not watching an IMAX-sized print.
But as I said previously… it doesn’t matter what gauge of film you blow it up to, it matters what you start with.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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I would suggest a two-step answer…
1. Ask someone in the Cinema 4D forum
2. Wait for their answerThis is pretty much purely a cinematography forum… I can’t recall that anyone has ever even mentioned Cinema 4D in here before.
That’s not to say that some of us don’t use Cinema 4D and you might actually get an answer… but I think you are much more likely to get useful help over in the specific C4D forum…
https://forums.creativecow.net/cinema4d
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Just a couple of general quick observations…
If you want to try anamorphics, go for it… I’m always for trying new things and for experimentation. BUT… if your chief goal is to make your video look more cinematic, please go into it with reasonable expectations, I don’t want you to be disappointed. There’s a whole bunch of things that help video look more cinematic, and oval bokeh highlights and lens flares are pretty far down on the list (in fact, I don’t think either of them are even on my personal list of cinematic-looking things). I don’t think just plain “video with oval highlights” is the goal, but that’s what could happen.
Another thing to think about… real cine anamorphic zoom lenses are, as my dad would say, “scarce as hen’s teeth.” They are just very hard to find (if you can find them at all), and when you do they are big, heavy, and slooooooow as molasses. So, you are probably looking at primes rather than a zoom (which is the traditional way to shoot anamorphic, anyway). Ergo… you are probably looking at trying to find multiple lenses, or preferably a matched set (individual randomly-found primes are not likely to match very well as far as color/contrast/sharpness goes).
You still have the lens-mount issue, but that might be easily solvable. Probably virtually all of the cine anamorphics you’ll find will be PL mount. There are PL-to-EF lens mount adapters, which would allow the lens to be mounted to your camera. BUT… just because a lens will mount doesn’t mean it will work… because of different flange depths of various PL lenses some will work and some won’t (with some the rear end of the lens will extend way too far into the camera body, and will not focus when married with an adapter… especially at the near-infinity mark). It just depends on the lens. With most lenses, the longer the focal length the longer the rear barrel physically extends… but that’s not always the case… it just depends on the design for that particular lens.
And lastly, as for that eBay auction… that’s a projector lens, not a camera lens. You might could rig up something with it for some funky experimental shots, but not for “real” usage (and you’d need to concoct some way to control exposure since it has no iris… maybe a polarizer-based variable neutral-density filter).
If you want to go down this road the best option with the existing gear you have is probably not to use real cine anamorphics, but to get a front-of-lens anamorphic adapter. You can use that with the EF camera body and lens that you have. And you can get one for a couple of thousand bucks or less… as opposed to multiples of ten times that much for real cine anamorphics.
I still stand by my original advice… I personally would never ever choose anamorphic lenses over spherical lenses unless there was a really really compelling reason to do so… and even then only if I was shooting real 35mm film (which I haven’t done in a long time now).
Good luck!
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
