PRE-PRO Archives - Budget-stretching tips for filmmaking, animation, motion graphics & visual effects

A simple little hair/makeup kit for no-budget filmmakers… a crucial weapon against Murphy’s Law

Imagine this scenario: you and your minimal crew of two or three people meet up at 9am on a Saturday for a guerrilla shoot at a slightly out-of-the-way distinct location… a ravine with a great vista, a creepy old barn, a horse stable, a honky tonk diner on top of an erupting volcano, whatever.

You have coffee & food for your people, and all the gear you need, so you’re good to go. Then an actor shows up with beard stubble, even though in the scene before and after this one (that you shot last weekend) he’s clean shaven. And you’re a fifteen minute drive from his house. Which means at least forty minutes to send him back to shave. Not to mention that he’ll hate doing it, because he probably already hates being there at 9am on a Saturday. And he’ll probably mutter some comment about not having enough gas to get to work after the shoot. Basically what I’m trying to say is that your actor hates you 14% more now.

This will happen to you. I’m not putting a voodoo curse on you. Because I don’t need to. Because it naturally will just happen to you.

Maybe you’re thinking “my actor is awesome and would never show up unshaven!” Well, what about your friend Jason who has a small part making snarky remarks while helping him carry a dead body to the car before being melted by alien lasers? Jason is usually hungover before 1pm and hence totally like forgot to shave this morning.

So, be readyz for dat. Go to Walgreens or whatever and grab a few things for a simple, minimal hair/makeup kit. I figured this out so early on that I had completely forgotten about it… I just happen to come across mine as I was cleaning my workshop. And now this little blog post is born… ah, the miracle of life.

So here’s what I would recommend you have in your lil’ kit…

1. A bag of cheap disposable razors.

2. Shaving cream.

3. A hairbrush.

4. The strongest hair gel they gots. Satan loves being a stubborn rear cowlick incarnate. Because ruining your film is a top priority for him, duh.

5. Good quality, name-brand absorbant paper towels. In remote locations, they can hold water like a sponge for when washing hands etc. … in a way that’s much less wasteful than pouring it out of a bottle. In school I once actually ran out of drinking water on a remote shoot because we had to use water bottles as wannabe faucets to clean stuff. Also bring a bone-dry oil-sucking soap like Neutrogena for getting all the potato chip grease off your hands before touching gear again.

6. A few dryer sheets in a ziplock bag. This can help if a piece of costume or wardrobe smells unpleasant and bothers an actor. If actor A had a scene with a chain smoking character a few days ago and now their jacket wreaks of Joe Camel, you can rub a dryer sheet all over it (not joking) after first shaking it out. Dryer sheets are also helpful if you have stale-smelling, “dry clean only” thrift store wardrobe that you can’t afford to dry clean.

Okay I need to preface the next part by saying I don’t know anything about makeup, so keep that in mind. Luckily, I have pro makeup artists for shoots nowadays, but these suggestions worked for me back in my no-budget days…

7 a. Baby powder. If an actor gets hecka shiny, you can put a little on a paper towel and dab away (if the paper towel alone doesn’t do the trick). It’s not exactly the best way to handle this, but for no-budgeters, it gets the job done. There’s probably better powder options at Walgreens in the makeup section, but I have no idea what they are. But worst case scenario, if you’re shooting in the middle of nowhere and your only nearby shopping option is a gas station, baby powder can work.

7 b. Kryolan Colorless Anti-Shine Powder. This is a more effective and more professional alternative to baby powder. If you’re gonna be shooting a lot in hot, humid environments, or for long hours under hot lights, I’d recommend you buy some.

8. Powder puffs. These work better than a paper towel for powder. If you know you’re gonna need to powder actors, get some, they’re cheap.

How did this article end up being like twenty paragraphs, when it should’ve been like three sentences? Anyways, I hope that somehow helps someone.

Efficient footage filenames when using an external recorder

If you haven’t noticed, most of the tidbits I put on this here blawg are born-ed of my trial & error, my woeful miseries, and my occasional tiny logistical victories over the ruthless gremlins of Murphy’s Law. Wait, that makes it sound like this article is going to be a lot more exciting than it actually will be — you’re all “dayumm this gonna have gremlins an’ stuff in it, like some Ghostbusters 3 shii ri here.”

Nope, boring. Just filename suggestions for recording footage to an external recorder like a Sound Devices PIX 240i.

Recently I was DP on a feature, shot on a Sony F3 with one. I assume other external recorders allow for flexible filenaming with automated take number advancement, just like the PIX 240i does — which is great. Because of this, I recommended to the producers that we shoot without slating. It can save significant time on a production, especially one like ours where we had a language barrier, chaotic locations, and a tight schedule… along with all the other factors of a low budget production.

So here’s the formula I recommend for the filename structure:
(project acronym)_(scene number)_(date)__(take number)

If your film’s called “The Buried Dirtball“, you’re shooting scene #26 on July 10th, and it’s the fifth take, then itsa gunna looka lika thissa:
bd_s026_07.10__005.mov

Though there’s one caveat… I don’t have a 240i in front of me, so I’m not 100% certain you can get all that stuff into the filename. But as I recall, you can manipulate the naming pretty heavily.
Including the date may seem cumbersome and maybe even unnecessary at first, but to me it is now essential. We didn’t use it when shooting the aforementioned feature, and that’s exactly how I learned that we should have. You may end up shooting shots from a particular scene many days apart from one another, so trying to figure out what the last numbered take was for that scene can be time consuming, if even possible at all when on location. But you probably can remember if it was earlier that day. So anyways, this can help prevent you from having shots with the same filename, which can be disastrous if one file happens to overwrite the other when placed into the same folder.

Note the three digit numeral for the scene & take numbers. That’s so if you put all your .mov files into the same folder, they’ll stack in proper order, making it easy for you to find stuffz.

Also, don’t use spaces instead of underscores… yes, I know it’s not 1997 anymore, but if for some reason the spaces cause some kind of problem for like your sound designer or colorist, then you’ll get to send a text message to yourself with nothing but a saddyface emoticon in it. Also, I’ll get to laugh loudly in your face. And I’ll probably make sure I eat something stinky immediately before. Like dog feces. That’ll teach you a lesson. Haha, in your face, bro. Jaykay, that’s just simulated schadenfreude– I would probably send you an upbeat, encouraging emoji to make you feel better, like that iPhone one of the twins in cat suits dancing.

The extra underscore before the take number is just there to visually scan better.

Also, you can use s000 (scene #0) for random unassigned stuff like 2nd unit exteriors, etc. I prefer this over other methods since those shots will all be easy to find in one place.

If you have a script supervisor on set, they can notate the “o’clock” time for shot numbers if you’re not slating (ie. shot3A was shot 2:16 – 2:38pm), and the assistant editor can then check the “date created” and rename the clips in the editing software, or just organize them into folders if you don’t need to go that hard.

Yeah, so anyways, based on my experiences on productions big and small, this format should work as a catch-all, with minimal time, energy, or headache during shooting and post. You can add more stuff to the filenames I guess, but going into the recorder’s interface to add shot numbers can be a slow and confusing hassle, especially if you’re not a fully crewed production with a dedicated script supervisor and 2nd AC. I would recommend the sorting of footage by shot be done in editing software, where it’s pretty simple & painless.

The simplest way to add production value to your film: Avoid white walls & wardrobe

To me there’s four explicit things that differentiate professional films from their student/amateur counterparts (other than marketing budgets, ha)…

Sophisticated lighting
Extensive foley
A lack of white-walled interiors
A lack of white wardrobe

Numbers 1 & 2 usually cost some mucho money. But 3 & 4 don’t, so you should totally jump all up on those for your projects.

Go to the Apple trailers page and watch a bunch of ’em. Count how many times you see white-walled interiors versus color ones. Usually the more fantastic & stylish the film, the darker the color of the walls… and even with “realistic” films, the walls that “feel” like they’re white are actually light gray or beige or light blue. That’s because professionals know to avoid putting white on-camera, because it limits your lighting options since you’d have to walk on proverbial eggshells in order to not have it blow out overexposed. And that’s working with film and its 13-14 stops of dynamic range, as opposed to your (assumed) DSLR/DSLM/video camera’s 7-10 usable stops. Which means you should be extra concerned about avoiding white walls.

So you can either choose locations with that in mind, or you can score extra go-getter points by painting your location’s walls. House paint is pretty cheap, especially considering the visual difference it makes for your film. If just hearing the concept of spending a day laboring away to make your bedroom’s walls mauve or pistachio sounds like absolute insanity to you, then –REALTALK– you may not be cut out to be a filmmaker. No-budget filmmaking is 60% moving heavy objects. Wait, unless you have a big trust fund… then just hire someone else to do it and soldier on.

Yeah so anyways, get those white walls out of your film and it’ll not only look better, it’ll convey the mood/tone better (omg the scary room’s walls are bLoOoOood rEd), and will give you more lighting options without fear of blowing out the walls to yucky clipped white. The lighting thing is especially true if you have limited light modifying gear, which is probably your case. Unless the aforementioned trust fund thing applies.

And needless to say, that stuff applies, like, tenfold to white wardrobe. Because limiting how contrasty or varied you can light your actors is like shooting yourself in the foot. This is something that I’ve seen occur in a lot of student and amateur films. What’s most hand-to-forehead inducing about it is how easily avoidable it is. So don’t put your actors in white clothes in like direct sunlight, unless they’re supposed to be visiting from the afterlife. As with walls, “white” wardrobe in professional films are usually actually a little darker. Often a preexisting piece of white wardrobe will be lightly dyed, though I have no direct experience in that, so I can’t offer any advice or suggestions on doing it yourself.

Checkity these details from the last of the above framegrabs. Note that the towel on Sally Field’s shoulder is blown out white, with the same RGB values as the blown out practical light units.

That means a white dish towel will blow out on a $230 million superhero studio film shot on Red Epic… so a white dress shirt will likely do the same on your project shot on a DSLR. I assume that since it was a minor prop, they didn’t bother to dye it, or maybe they didn’t realize it was going to sit on her shoulder or whatevs. But there’s no way they’d have a piece of wardrobe doing that.

Also worth noting is that some folks feel the same way about using pure black wardrobe, which can appear on-camera as pure formless black in some lighting situations. Though this is less perceptually disrupting than a blown-out white shirt, in my opinion.

I’ve shot projects where white walls and shirts were beyond my decision-making control, and I had to work around them. All of those projects would’ve turned out better-looking had the white been replaced with something else.

Best starter filmmaker lenses for mirrorless cameras: Nikon IX rises from the grave

Listen up, I feel like this is kinda a big deal. So you’re dirt poor. Or a student. Or a dirt poor student. Or a dirt student (agriculture major). And you wanna put an earnest effort into seeing if you can cut it as a filmmaker. So you buy a mirrorless camera that shoots video, and you go the ultra-frugal route and get only the body without kit lens.

So here’s what ya do about lenses: get on the ol’ eBayz and search for “nikon ix”.

These lil’ dudes are dead lenses. We’re talkin’ in a sealed coffin dressed in their mom’s favorite outfits. They deaddddd. They were made for Nikon’s Pronea cameras, which were part of APS (Advanced Photo System), a failed consumer photo film format thingee from the 90s. Made for a now-extinct film format, these lenses can’t work on present Nikon or Canon DSLRs because they have rear protrusions that would hit the reflex mirrors.

Well now we gunn git our George Romero on, bcuz these now be ZOMBIE lenses. Their putrifying little lens hands are reachin’ up out of the dirt in front of their little tombstones. Except instead of wanting to eat our brains, they wanna help you get yr filmmakin’ on, deep discount style — because they can work great on Micro Four Thirds, NEX, Sony E-mount, NX, and whatever else mirrorless cameras with a lens mount.

Once you apply all my advicey thangs listed later in this article, you’ll find yourself with some nice video-friendly lenses that are lightweight with good optics, with a useable focus throw, hard stop focus ring, and a clickless aperture… at an incredibly affordable price. You can have two filmmaking-ready zoom lenses that span from 20mm to 180mm for as little as $60.

They may not be Nikon’s finest lenses, but they’re still Nikkors made with mid/late 1990s lens technology. I really don’t think you’ll find this kind of quality at these price points. Here’s your shopping list…

1. THE LENSES

20-60mm f/3.5-5.6 (black model)

This is the first lens you wanna grab, since short focal length lenses are generally more sought after. Made in Japan, weighs just six ounces, close focus of 1.1 feet, 52mm filter thread, and a seven-bladed iris for nice fourteen-point lens flare sunstars– kinda a minor thing but I’m not too into six or eight pointed sunstars (fyi: odd number of blades creates double the number of sunstar points, and even number of blades creates the same number as blades). Actually, all the Nikon IX lenses are seven-bladed, hooray. Originally $380 back in the day, this guy usually goes for $15-40. Mine was brand new dead stock, $15. That’s absurd.

60-180mm f/4-5.6 (black model)

Made in Japan, 9.5 ounces, close focus 3.9 feet, 52mm filter thread, seven-bladed iris. It originally went for $245, and can be found for $15-60.

So with those you’re covered pretty well, focal length-wise. But if you care there’s an in-between zoom…

24-70mm f/3.5-5.6 (only available in black)

Made in Thailand, six ounces, close focus 1.1 feet, 52mm filter thread, seven-bladed iris. Original price $160. They show up on eBay for about $15-50… mine was new dead stock.

And here are the later white models… note that their eBay prices are generally the same as the black models, though specs-wise the black models seem to be a better choice. The differences are in italics.

20-60mm f/3.5-5.6 (white model)

Same specs as the black model, except this one’s made in Thailand instead of Japan.

60-180mm f/4.5-5.6 (white model)

Alright, this one is considerably different than the better black model. Made in Thailand, 9.5 ounces, close focus 3.9 feet, 46mm filter thread, seven-bladed iris, and it has ten elements in seven groups while the black version is eleven/eight. It originally went for $100-150, which was a lot cheaper than the black model. Note that the minimum f-stop is 2/3rds a stop slower as well.

30-60mm f/4-5.6 (only available in white)

Made in Thailand, weighs a ridiculous 3.4 ounces, close focus of 1.1 feet, 46mm filter thread, seven-bladed iris. I don’t really see a point in getting this one if you can get a 20-60mm instead… other than its insane light weight. Unless if you need to tie your camera to a helium balloon, I dunno.

2. NIKON G TO MFT LENS ADAPTER

So with the G-Type adapter, there’s a little ring that allows you to have stepless aperture control. Booya. To me this is a huge deal– to be able to have minute control over how your highlights look is important to me, as well as being able to do simple iris pulls during a shot (like when you follow an actor through a tunnel or exiting a building into the sun). Kinda a big deal to have this feature using a $20 lens. One downside is that you’ll have no f-stop indicator to let you know what stop you’re shooting at, though this isn’t really a big deal with digital cinematography and its WYSIWYG LCD screens… and this is coming from a snobby, fluent practitioner of the Zone System.

Here are a couple low-priced adapter options for MFT cameras… I’ve used them both and they do the job. But the Fotodiox’s aperture control ring is way, way better than the Fotga.
Fotodiox Nikon G to MFT lens adapter (about $26)
Fotga Nikon G to MFT lens adapter (about $10)

The Fotga’s ring isn’t dampened at all and it has annoying click-stops at wide open and a little past closed. The Fotodiox will travel the entire iris range without engaging an annoying click at fully open or closed, and the ring is somewhat smooth and dampened… well worth the price difference.

Or if for some reason you wanna get a high quality, first-class adapter with a nice smoothly dampened aperture ring (and without any clicks), then here ya go…
Novoflex Nikon G to MFT lens adapter (about $260)

3. FOTGA LENS ADAPTER MODIFICATION

Alright, let’s say for some reason you have to go with the Fotga adapter. Remember when I mentioned iris pulls a minute ago? Well trying to do that with the Fotga out of the box is a headache. That’s because of those annoying aforementioned clicks on the aperture ring. When you have your iris open all the way and you try to smoothly close down a little, there’ll be a clumsy pop as you disengage from the click. Even if you never do an in-shot iris pull, it’s still annoying.

But luckily the aperture control mechanism is pretty simple. It’s just a little bolt jutting into the inner barrel of the adapter that pushes the lens’s aperture actuator lever (the same thing that the camera engages to control the iris). So if you carefully study the actuator lever’s behavior and how it corresponds to the adapter’s bolt, then you can grab some needle-nosed pliers and bend the end of the bolt a little so that it pushes the lever more towards the open iris direction.

By doing this, you’ll reach fully open iris before the adapter’s ring is able to rotate to the “open” click.

If you do it right, it’ll still completely close the iris before the ring rotates to the “lock” click… which means you’ll now have full adjustable range of the iris without engaging the annoying click when wide open. If it takes a little adjusting to get it right, no biggee, it’s a metal bolt and can withstand a little bending. Plus, it only cost like $10. Just make sure you thoroughly clean out the adapter of any metal flakes from using the pliers on the bolt… you don’t want that stuff getting on your sensor or rear lens element.

Whether you’re using a modified Fotga or a Fotodiox, the rotation throw is really short, so doing a smooth in-shot iris pull might be challenging. If you think you’ll need it, I’d recommend this Varavon Sling thingee… it’s a little awkward looking (and I feel like it should have a little fist at the end of it), but it’ll increase the rotation radius to help make up for the adapter’s ring. I have one and it works well for iris pulls.

4. FOCUS RING REMEDY

The Nikon IX focus rings suck. Like suck really hard. Like horribly bad… sucky majoris. Look at this photo:

See the tiny little sliver of a ribbed ring at the very end of the lens barrel? Well that’s the focus ring. It’s way too small to put a geared ring on it for use with a follow focus, and the focus throw is tiny. All the IX lenses are like that. But here’s how to fix that.

First, get a 52mm-82mm step up ring for each of your IX lenses. You can get them for about $2 each on eBay, but with a long ship time from China.

Then get two 82mm UV filters per lens from eBay or wherevs. They should be about $3-4 each. Just get the cheapest you can find. The quality of the threading & metal are irrelevant– you’re not going to be screwing & unscrewing them over and over, which is when that would matter. Once you get them, just carefully break out the glass… like maybe put them in a paper bag and just pop ’em with a hammer. Then carefully clean them out of any tiny glass pieces. Next, take all the shards of glass out of the bag and rub them all over your face. Just kidding, don’t do that. Because of that joke, I’ll probably have to get a lawyer now.

Now just stack all them doodads onto the front of the lens… step up ring + empty 82mm ring + empty 82mm ring. Now there’s a little more travel distance for focusing by hand, but more importantly you now have plenty of room to add a geared lens ring or whatever else.

Because the focus throw was so short to begin with, I’d recommend getting a bigger geared ring to help increase it. I’d suggest this one (these are what I use)… it should be about $17.
Geared lens ring for 75mm-85mm diameter from eBay seller up2uhk

Btw, I’d recommend you change out those screw clamps for my DIY elastic version so you can easily move it from lens to lens. You can read about it in my article about no-budget options for geared rings.

The focus throw is still far from ideal, but it’s now at least useable. And also, like all Nikkor lenses, the focus ring rotation is reversed compared to other lenses, but this is a pretty minor issue.

If you prefer a semi-permanent and more svelte-looking geared ring, you can use Half Inch Rails’ Zip Tie Lens Gears, though the smaller overall circumference will give you less of a focus throw than the other geared ring above. But whatever you’re comfortable with.

THE SUPER BIZARRO CATCH-22

Alright, something’s gotta give. Nikkor optics, stepless aperture, feather light, follow focus compatible with hard stops, and at the price of like four McDonald’s extra value meals? We live in a cruel, cruel world that loves to dangle such sweet globs of nectar in front of you, only to replace it with something grody like a stale McNugget with a hair stuck to it just as your hungry lips are within striking distance. Yeah so, here’s the issue: if you don’t find one with the rear end cap included, then you’ve got a little problem. That’s because the end cap model (Nikon LF-3) is no longer made. How weird & dumb is that? A piece of plastic whose compatriots cost ninety-five cents can mess this all up. Cool, whatevs, you’ll deal. I happened to already have an old Tamrom Adaptall 2 Nikon end cap that works though, so maybe there are some other older third party Nikon end caps that just happen to be long enough, I dunno. Maybe try going to a used camera shop and asking. They’ll often have a box full of random old end caps that you can sift through. The Nikon LF-3 and aforementioned Tamron one are both about 20mm or 7/8″ long if that helps as a guide.

That’s the 20mm long Tamrom end cap that works, and the Nikon LF-3 end cap will have that cute little Illuminati planetary alignment APS logo on it. I probably shouldn’t joke about that, I hope Jay-Z and Kanye don’t come after me.

But really, worst case scenario is that you just permanently keep one of those lens adapters on each lens and get MFT end caps, it’s not the end of the world. Just the world continuing with a little less money in your pocket.

The biggest catch is that it’s likely just a matter of time before other people figure all this stuff out and the IXs’ prices increase.

USING NIKON IX LENSES ON VARIOUS CAMERAS

They should totally work with up to APS-C sized sensors. The APS film negative was 30.2 × 16.7mm, so any sensor that’s APS-C or smaller should be fine. As far as sensors bigger than APS-C, I dunno, I haven’t tried.

One thing to look out for is that these lenses protrude from the rear mount, about 17mm.

So that means they’ll only work with cameras that are using a long enough lens adapter that the rear protrusion won’t hit the camera’s sensor… ie. is the Nikon 46.5mm flange focal distance more than 17mm longer than your camera’s? Though this is in theory, and I haven’t tried them on anything but a GH2.

If you hate reading words in paragraph form and ignored the above section, here’s a neat little list…

MFT: Yes.

Canon EF/EOS: No. There’s only a 2.5mm flange distance difference, so the rear protrusion will smoosh all up against your Canon’s guts an’ stuff.

Nikon DX & FX: No. Like with Canon, it’ll hit the mirror.

Samsung NX: Yes, in theory… though I haven’t tried it.

Sony NEX/E-mount: Yes, in theory… haven’t tried.

Note that this is as of July 2012, so in future times that list may become inaccurate. But you’ll be too distracted by flying cars and at-home plastic surgery kits to care.

OKAY THIS LONG-ASS ARTICLE IS ALMOST OVER

So there ya go. Practice and shoot your own projects with these thrifty amigos, and instead spend your money on lighting & light modifying gear. If you get a sweet client project with a budget, then you just rent pro lenses like Zeiss CP.2s (or even a better camera). Honestly, if you don’t have much money, or are just starting out, this is such a no-brainer to me.

There’s definitely other pricier still lenses that are better suited for video out there, but maybe these will help someone get started.

Here are some sources I pulled some specs from, as well as some further info I’ve dug up online…
imaging.nikon.com/lineup/discontinue/lens.htm
photosynthesis.co.nz/nikon/specs.html#IX
heritagecameras.co.uk/nikon-ix-nikkor-aps-lenses…
photosynthesis.co.nz/nikon/serialno.html#IX
kenrockwell.com/nikon/ix-lenses.htm
photo.net/nikon-camera-forum/0090yh

Planning for reflections for highly efficient VFX

So this is about using additional “reflection takes” from a shoot to greatly aid in a composite.

Here’s a scenario: you shoot an actor on greenscreen that, in the final composite, will be walking past a wall made of brushed aluminum, or polished granite, or even dark plastic. You should shoot an additional take with a mirrored panel reflecting the actor mimicking the “real” take, but with blocking altered to ensure the actor never overlaps the reflection (since this will give much more leeway for manipulation in post). Then it’s relatively quick and painless to composite the reflection onto the wall or whatever, better melting the elements together visually while also giving an organic look to CGI objects without spending eleventeen thousand hours on shaders and rendering in 3D software.

Here’s some more specific guidelines…

Plan for objects that have less than perfectly crisp reflections. This is because your “reflection take” will likely not perfectly match the real take of the actor’s performance… not to mention that your reflection panel probably wasn’t a high quality mirror to begin with.
Shoot the actor’s performance on greenscreen like normal, with no reflection panel (thus allowing for a simple composite without having to roto out the panel).
Then set up a mirror or shiny board where the reflective object will be in the composite. Reblock the actor doing their performance so that you get an unobscured shot of the reflection. This will likely require some spatial cheating, but whatevs. It’ll help when compositing if the background in the reflection is either greenscreen or black (duh), but this usually isn’t super essential. I’d suggest having the actor watch the “good” take a few times so they can study & mimic their movements and timing.
In composite, finalize the actor’s position and timing into the shot. Then throw in the reflection take and tweak it to match the reflective properties of the particular surface. You’ll likely be using “Add” or “Overlay” composite modes. Btw, you should be working in linear blend mode whenever you’re doing photoreal-ish compositing or using motion blur (if using After Effects via the “Blend Colors Using 1.0 Gamma” checkbox under File > Project Settings).
Geometric mega-accuracy of the reflection’s placement and angle aren’t nearly as important in selling the shot as having the kinetic properties of the reflection match the actor… meaning that the timing of an arm swing or head turn need to be pretty close, so bust out the retiming/speed change plugin/tool if it doesn’t.

Back in ye olde 2007, this technique really saved my skin when a project I was directing/DP/compositing became logistically stressed with revisions when the signoff process grew more complicated than anyone expected. Nobody’s fault, just the nature of the beast. To put it lightly, we found ourselves in a super crunch, both in terms of time and budget. If any students are reading this, note that this kinda stuff happens all the time and probably the primary difference between a professional and amateur is that the pro is able to not bother dwelling on obstacles and just focus on figuring out a way to deal with it as best as possible within the limitations, without ripping their own hair out and going insano. Then, theoretically, you eventually matriculate to projects with big juicy budgets and long healthy schedules that are super fun with lots of creative latitude. I’ll let you know when I ever hear of one of those. The clients who give those out must hang out with Santa Claus and ride unicorns or something.

Anyways, we had to reassess a sequence that contained a CGI refrigerator. It originally was going to animate into existence in a fancy way that can only be done in 3D software, and the shot was to be 3D matchmoved. But due to aforementioned schedule/budget factors, we were hard-pressed just to get the shot done with the fridge static, un-animated. Because of the “reflection take” I was able to use just a still image render of the fridge and make the shot look “good enough”. This saved us several hours, since it nixed having to matchmove as well as eliminate the render time for the fridge. Here’s a lil’ video clip showing a breakdown where you can see how big of a difference the reflection take makes…

Is it optically accurate? Not at all. But it “feels” right to the average viewer. Is it invisible realism? Nope. But it sells the shot with a minimum amount of time and resources.

The key to good handheld: The horizon line… particularly with CMOS sensors

Okay first, just to get some quick terminology clarified, there are three axes to change the orientation of your camera framing:

Pan (turning to look left and right)
Tilt (looking up and down) *As a side note, some people use the word “pan” to describe a tilt. Don’t do that, it makes you sound like a rookie cookie. Or maybe just a producer, ha.
Roll (making the horizon line rotate, as if laying your head on your own shoulder)

Pan & tilt are no problemo as part of anyone’s camera dynamics repertoire. But there is a huge caveat with roll. That’s because when us humans experience this in real life, our inner ear’s vestibular system does a primo job of conveying to our brains that it’s our head’s orientation that’s changing and not the planet earth’s.

So when a camera uses roll, that offset reaction in our vestibular system isn’t occurring, and in its absence our brain’s initial primordial reaction is that the onscreen world is changing in orientation… which is usually not what the film is intending to convey. Except when you’re faking an earthquake or the 1960s USS Enterprise being hit by a Klingon laser beam. I jest, but those are actually perfect examples of this phenomena– it’s the lack of vestibular system reaction that allows those illusions to occur. Who like totally loves that I used the word “jest”? We totally got some Shakespeare In The Park On The Internet On A Blog goin’ on.

Attention Star Trek nerds: that’s a 3 degree roll of turbulence inflicted on the ship, from the episode “The Corbomite Manuever”… ya know in case you wanna like run calculations on how that would’ve affected the warp drive’s dilithium crystals or whatever. In my defense, I had to wikipedia to find a nice trekkie vocabulary word like “dilithium crystal”. I MEAN IT I’M TELLING THE TRUTH.

So anyway, if you’re trying to give a handheld POV chase shot an energetic, actiony feel, then put in a lot of frenetic pan and tilt, but try to minimize the roll. In a nutshell, the mantra of handheld should be “keep the horizon line straight”.

Though there may be times that you want to induce disorientation, confusion and even nausea in your audience, and that is when you do use roll.

And there’s also an additional factor with roll when shooting with CMOS sensors. Good handheld camera craftsmanship in general is of über-importance due to the sensors’ rolling shutter. To avoid “jello-cam” you have to be firstmost concerned with fast, jittery panning… but lots of fast back & forth roll can also give your footage that jibble jabble gloopy glopple jiggle, as pictured in the framegrabs below:

So here’s a simple solution for minimizing roll: increase the radius of your support points from the camera, ie. maximize the distance between your hands. That way, when your left hand shakes half an inch, it’ll just create a 2 degree change in roll… as opposed to if it was one third the distance, the roll would be about 6 degrees. Here are a couple ways to apply this to your handheld shots:

If you’re using a rail system, put your handles as far apart as logistically possible.
You can use a cheap, light tripod with its legs together or a monopod and have one hand at the baseplate and the other as lower down as possible.

For a little more help, you can also use a bubble level on your hot shoe and adjust accordingly during the shot.

Panasonic’s GH2: If you’re an aspiring filmmaker then you really really really have no excuse anymore

You’ve probably already heard some stuff about the GH2 and how great it is for video. I bought one and days later used it for a client project, and have since ran some tests. This camera is a big deal. Seriously, I can’t believe this thing exists… for the money, it just can’t be beat. For now at least.

Pictured here with the 14-42mm kit lens, and Fotodiox adapter which puts to use old analog SLR lenses I already done ownededed. Neato.

No need for me to go over all the technical specs, that’s what the entire rest of the internet’s for. Here’s the bits that matter most in regards to low-cost filmmaking (I could care less about it as a stills camera)…

It has a swivel screen, which right off the bat will save lots of time and headache in a no-budget shooting situation. Otherwise there’d be some low/high/oddly angled shots you just wouldn’t be able to get without shelling out for an external monitor.
The Micro Four Thirds format has a sensor that’s slightly smaller than the size of 35mm motion picture film, which means it has a depth of field that’s close to such. Spherical-lensed, 1:85 35mm cine film (the most common format up until the mid/late 90s) has an image area of about 21.95mm x 11.87mm, and the GH2’s sensor in video mode is 18.8mm x 10.6mm (though nowadays nearly all Hollywood non-digital acquired films are shot on 24.89mm x 13.45mm Super 35mm). In my opinion, the mega shallow depth of field obtainable with the Vistavision-sized 36mm x 24mm sensor of the Canon 5D Mark II, while a nice option, is unneeded 99% of the time for video. And once you start shooting actual dramatic/narrative setups with focus-pulling, you’ll appreciate having more breathing room, especially if it’s a no-budget situation where you can’t afford to lose takes to focus problems. Bottom line: the depth of field “shallowness” is beyond good enough.
The video footage looks great. It doesn’t have the aliasing/moiré/pixel-skipping issues that Canon’s 5D Mark II and 7D have… thin diagonal lines are smooth and clean in the GH2. The rolling shutter isn’t too much of an issue, and the compression looks pretty good for AVCHD.
Probably the best thing about the GH2 is that you can use almost any old lens on it. This is huge. Once you make the jump into shooting with interchangeable lenses, the cost of glass usually becomes half the money involved. The flange distance (from back of lens to sensor plane) on the GH2 is really short, way shorter than analog SLR or DSLR formats. So if you simply get a cheap $30-40 adapter (basically just a metal ring that puts the lens further away from the sensor plane), then you can choose from literally hundreds of great old cheap lenses from ebay, garage sales, craigslist, whatever. Like go search for old Nikon F-mount manual lenses on ebay and behold. And on top of that, since the smaller sensor uses only the center of the lens, that means you can usually even resort to using ultra cheapo bad lenses, since most lens problems occur around the edges (you’re also scaling down to, and resolving for, only 1920 x 1080 pixels for video, which is very low res compared to still photos, so lower grade lenses generally should still perform perceptually fine). Take all that money you save and put it to work in front of your lens in the form of props, costumes, locations, actors, whatever. Just note that the effective focal length of 35mm still lenses will be doubled on the GH2… ie. an old 50mm Pentax K-mount lens will look like a 100mm in your footage. So you may end up buying a Micro Four Thirds lens if you like short focal lengths. One more note about using old lenses: if you don’t already own some, I’d recommend going with the Nikon F-mount adapter since there’s a lot of great old cheap Nikon lenses. And an added bonus: if you later get a Canon camera, you can use those Nikon lenses on it with another adapter because the Nikon flange distance is shorter than Canon’s.
The body is only $900. THAT’S JUST FARGING RIDICULOUS THAT YOU CAN GET A CAMERA THAT SPITS OUT FOOTAGE LIKE THIS FOR A PRICE LIKE THAT. I started out with super8, then Hi8 video, then 16mm, then DV, HD… all those formats & cameras had some kind of serious flaw in regards to cost versus quality, and what I see in the GH2 is none of that. This is by far the most bang for your buck I’ve ever seen. And I have a feeling we’ve kinda reached the ceiling for a while in that regard. So waiting around for something better & cheaper is probably not gonna yield anything other than wasted time.

$900 GH2 + $30 Pentax adapter + $220 Peleng 8mm lens = Footage that looks like this. Unheard of. You can peep the raw frame as 90% quality jpeg here.
Okay, so here’s the bad things about it…

You gotta deal with the audio issue… either record double system with something like the Zoom H4n for $300, or plug the GH2 into a BeachTek box. Orrrrrr… if you already have a miniDV or whatever camcorder with decent audio, then you can use that to record audio. Having the visual reference in the audio footage also can make synching sound to picture faster.
It’s usually out of stock, so finding one takes more legwork than just clicking five or six times in your browser. I have a feeling video production companies are buying them in three’s. I wonder if anyone has bought it not primarily for video… probably not, that’s what the Canons are for. REALTALK.
Using multiple old lenses makes using filters complicated. If you’re shooting in direct sun and wanna open up your aperture wider than like f8, you’re gonna need an ND filter. So to not spend mucho bucks on multiple screw-mount ND filters for all the varied lens face sizes, you either need to invest in a matte box & rectangluar filters (very expensive), or get one set of ND filters in a big face size and a step-up ring for each of your lens face sizes (not as expensive).

Of course, there are many higher quality, better workflow video camera options out there (duh), but if you’re looking for a camera to try out filmmaking or up your game from HDV/etc with minimal financial risk, then straight up the GH2 is it. Feel lucky you weren’t born twenty years earlier. Or thirty. Or whatever, you know what I mean.

Check out my recommendations for a barebones budget GH2 kit.

Paying off location owners with your day job’s free perks

So this is probably gonna be more anecdotal than pragmatically useful. But maybe someone can use this for their project…

When I was a 21 year old art student, I was asked by a peer in the department, Chad Hutchison, to be DP for his very ambitious film project. He didn’t really have the money to make it happen, but we found all kinds of ways to stretch the budget. His part-time job was as an assistant manager at a big chain movie theater, where he was regularly given a booklet of vouchers to hand out to complaining customers, basically to make them shut them up and go away.

To most people, free movie tickets are as good as cash. So he would kinda ration them until he’d be given a new booklet, and we could have our little pile of “filmmaker Monopoly money” as I would call it. We were able to pay for two days of shooting at a local pub by shelling out a stack of them to the owner. If you’ve ever shot at a private location with the owner/manager present, then you know how huge of a difference it makes if they’re getting compensated– asking them to flip a circuit breaker or turn off a loud ice machine is no big deal for them when they have something in their pocket from you, versus it being a big annoyance when they’re doing it as a free favor. Oh yeah, I remember we also decorated the bar for halloween… it’s a safe bet that had we not been paying, they wouldn’t have allowed that, which would’ve had a definite negative impact on our already meager production value. So if you have any kind of access to job perks stuff like that, keep in mind you might be able to pay people with it… never hurts to ask. After a particularly long, exhausting shoot day our actors appreciated them as well.

Yeah so, I guess if you don’t have any budget and you work at like a pizza place that lets you take home one pie at the end of your shift, maybe work out a deal where you drop it off after work for X number of days. Okay, maybe I’m just fantasizing that someone would be paying me that way. Like right now. Whatevs, I’m hungry.

You can see clips from that film (including some from the paid-for bar scenes) at dopjaan.com/213.html.