A new way of shooting coverage with the RED?

[tallsided]

A while back when George Lucas shot Attack of the Clones, he claimed that they could take a long shot of the footage shot with the Sony HDW-900 and zoom into a medium or a close up of the actor if they needed it for cutting purposes.

This style of editing really interests me and the options it opens up for an editor in post is huge. I'm thinking if you shoot at 4k and export a final version at 2k, you have 2k worth of "disposeable" resolution to take advantage of. You could create your shots in post! Panning, dollying, cropping, etc.

I think for Indie filmmakers, the ability to re-work your shots in post would create a greater freedom during editing while alleviating some of the pressures involved in shooting (ie -- budget).

For instance, you wouldn't need as much coverage. If two people are on the couch talking, light the scene accordingly. Shoot a couple takes as a long shot and a set of medium shots for both actors. Then you would have the freedom to create the rest of shots in post.

It would make shooting a movie faster and cheaper because you wouldn't have to worry about as many lighting set ups or camera set ups. You wouldn't have to lay down a track for a dolly or set up a jib for a small crane shot. You could achieve all those results in post while minimizing the expense involved with the actual production.

Am I crazy in thinking this way? Would this new workflow concept work well with the RED? I hope it will be a workable concept.There's a lot of talk about Red's integration with FCP. Hopefully FCP and RED will be able to support this style of filmmaking / editing. I hope they will allow you to edit in 1k, create your shots in post (dollies, cranes, close ups, inserts, etc.) and allow you to export all your changes through the edl to the master 4k version. Wouldn't that be amazing? I think all indie filmmakers would be a little more relaxed if the RED allowed this kind of creative freedom in post.

[Michael Schrengohst]

You can do that now with HD. I sometimes need to crop in on an actor.
But it is not the same as moving the camera around and getting a real close-up. What you are talking about is similiar to pan and scan which they have been doing for years.

[Thom Steinhoff]

it's nice to know the cropping safety net is there, but I wouldn't plan on falling into it every day as part of my act!

Just "zooming" in for a closeup would not seem natural as it would become a 3rd person closeup and if two people are talking you would want to move to an OTS.

Also, the best part of the dolly is that it is truely moving through that space and the camera can pan back with the actors to follow the action and be part of the scene. I think an artificial dolly move would be a bit lifeless (almost like a pan of a still)

Again, I think it is nice to know the net is there but just shoot like it's not there and if the editor needs to use it--they'll be glad they can.

[David Mullen ASC]

It's fine to use these tricks in editing, but to actually shoot a movie that way comes off as a bit lazy.

When you specifically set-up a close-up, you tweak all sorts of things to improve the shot -- move the off-camera actor closer to the lens for a tighter eyeline, improve the lighting on the face, adjust the placement of background objects (or move the camera) for better compositional balance, plus get the mic closer to the actor for better sound.

You may also discover certain problems when you enlarge in post, like the focus being off. And you are essentially using a smaller portion of the lens optics compared to setting up a closer shot. Plus noise problems may be more obvious.

Plus, of course, you've limited the final project to 2K.

So I would keep in the back of your mind that post-enlargement is an option - like when you shot a medium-shot of a baby and never got a needed closer shot because the baby went away. Or a dog or other pet doing unrepeatable action. Or a perfect performance that only happened in the looser angle.

But I wouldn't plan a day's worth of shooting with this notion that you'll just zoom in later in post to get all your tighter coverage. I think the results would be somewhat stylistically mediocre with that technique. There is a whole art to composing a shot on a set that get's lost when tighter shots are just "grabbed", whether in post or with a second camera not placed carefully. Not to say that we don't rely on 2-camera techniques to save us all the time, but we have to understand the compromises we are making so we can plan accordingly.

[Jason Murphy]

Gotta second David Mullen here. Getting everything right on set while shooting may require a little extra work, but it will save EVERYONE headaches in post. You should know what you want before you shoot, and make every effort to get it, unless you're working in some improvisational style, in which case you should still eventually (hopefully somewhat quickly for the sanity of your crew) nail down what you want and get it during shooting. Shooting with a plan to fix everything in post is lazy filmmaking, and it almost always shows in the final product. Get the exposure right, get the framing right, get the camera movement right, make sure the performance is right. It's worth it in the end. Coverage is certainly useful, but it can be a crutch.

Of course, I remember hearing the more extreme viewpoint of this during a talk by Chris Doyle about his cinematography, and the differences between shooting films in the US and Asia, during which he said flat out: "If a director shoots coverage, he doesn't know what he's doing." Of course, shortly after Doyle said that, he ended up shooting a ton of coverage for Barry Levinson in "Liberty Heights," so... :)

[David Mullen ASC]

The other problem is this insistent need that directors and editors seem to have for close-ups because they are cutting the movie on a computer monitor and can't imagine who the scene will play on a larger screen.

I shot a 35mm anamorphic 2.35 film once and the editor threw out most of the wide shots, used mostly just the close-ups, and on a third of them, digitally zoomed in closer to make them even tighter. So when the whole movie was recorded back to film for projection, it was awful -- just a bunch on giant heads on the big screen.

So half the time, I'm almost happy when we run out of time to shoot tighter coverage and the scene has to play in a medium shot with some camera movement rather than get all chopped up into tight shots.

I did another feature with a TV director who wanted over-the-shoulders, close-ups, tighter close-ups and ECU's on practically every scene no matter what. Boy, that was tedious... plus we seemed to work nothing but 16-hour days to get all of that. Again, the final cut of the movie was a string of choker close-ups.

[tallsided]

All very good points. Thanks. I thought of this workflow style and got excited, but didn't think of all the things you have all said. mise-en-scene isn't broken so no reason to fix it. Thanks again.

[zak forrest]

on the making of the big lebowski, you can see that roger deakins made a little cutout with paper or something, the shape of the backs of heads and seats, and he puts that at the bottom of the video tap, i suppose to help him imagine what it will look and feel like in a movie theater, big.

[David Mullen ASC]

George Miller said something like that when he did "Road Warrior" -- when he looked at the viewfinder image, he imagined it was being projected on a big screen with tiny people sitting below it.

[MikeCurtis]

One smart thing I overheard when talking to some guys who shot an IMAX feature - even though they were cutting in DV, they used a projector and were looking at a 6 foot wide image just over the top of their computer monitors. Helped them to remember the Imax scope of things.

I'd recommend a similar approach for anything feature-bound if:
a.) editor wasn't used to cuttting for Big Screen
b.) you had budget for projector
c.) you thought it was kewl to do so.

: )

-mike

[PaulClements]

Perhaps with Red's projector the future reality of cutting in 4k on a relative screen size won't be out of the question Mike. Sounds like an editors dream come true to me.

[Jason Murphy]

Well, Mike, if the RED 4K projectors are half as good as the RED ONE seems to be in terms of price and performance, viewing dailies and edits on one of those guys could (and in many cases should) become an excellent addition to the 4K post workflow.

And tallsided, you're certainly not alone in thinking of all sorts of cool new and perhaps unnecessary or aesthetically detrimental things that can be done with 4K acquisition. I've been coming up with a number of them myself (I plead the Fifth here).

And your suggestion certainly has its own applications: if you're doing a project where you're taking 4K footage, going into the image and doing more experimental stuff with it, like the equivalent of complex optical printer work that many avant-garde filmmakers (like Pat O'Neill et al) did in the 70's and 80's, 4K is a huge boon, and very exciting. This seems to me to be a huge area of potential for the digital image that very few people are taking advantage of.

Of course, another thing that we can all take away from this thread is this: just because George Lucas did it doesn't make it a good idea. 'Attack of the Clones' was crap, and I think it may not be unfair to lay some of the blame on aesthetic laziness brought about by the discovery of newfound digital tools that were totally unnecessary.

[M Most]

It's fine to use these tricks in editing, but to actually shoot a movie that way comes off as a bit lazy.


True for theatrical releases. But for television, this has been done for quite some time. Back in the early 90's, I was the colorist on "L.A. Law," which for a number of years, we transferred directly from assembled negative. On most of the courtroom scenes, two cameras were used for pretty much every setup. For shots of witnesses on the witness stand, the usual M.O. was to shoot two sizes, relatively wide and relatively tight, and if a 3rd size was needed (usually a tighter closeup), it was created in post from the tighter angle. This was useful in part because courtroom days were interminably long (you have no idea), and also because on those days, the company exposed copious amounts of film already. Using the post route for some of the tighter shots really did help in terms of production time. We would also create push-ins in post for similar reasons.

[David Mullen ASC]

Well, that's one of the exceptions like the ones I mentioned, like when a baby leaves the set before you got the close-up or the actor delivered a better take in their medium shot. Yes, in multiple-camera scenes with crowds, whatever, occasionally you have to create a tighter shot in post to get a cutaway of a reaction or something.

But as you said, the lower the resolution of the final distribution medium, the more you can get away with tricks like that.

Truth is that when you're talking about close-ups of people's faces, you can get away with a little resolution hit from a minor crop & enlargement as long as there isn't grain being enlarged, so zooming-in a little digitally is not a big deal if it's not overdone.

[Deanan]

George Miller said something like that when he did "Road Warrior" -- when he looked at the viewfinder image, he imagined it was being projected on a big screen with tiny people sitting below it.


That's a very cool vizualization technique.

Hmmmm, how wrong would it be if we put a little audience
in the EVF?

I'm only half kidding :)


Deanan

[d. sweetman]

I want to see more coverage like RAN. I don't think there's a single close-up in that film, and it works so much better than a lot of today's seemingly DVD-conscious coverage style. I think as more people get HD TV's and HD DVD's coverage will start to move back out.

[Gavin Greenwalt]

That's a very cool vizualization technique.

Hmmmm, how wrong would it be if we put a little audience
in the EVF?

I'm only half kidding :)


Deanan

I've been saying this since the beginning and I'm going to continue hounding this idea until the camera ships. I want 8bit grayscale tiff import for arbitrary gates. Whether that be horizon lines, aspect ratios or little mystery science theater cutout people at the bottom. I really do believe there is a huge opportunity for an overlay in the monitor. This could also be really handy if you plan on later overlaying something like binoculars or rifle scopes just to help you compose better.

You could upload several uncompressed grayscale tiffs and then you can adjust the opacity and blending mode so if you want it to be an add or a subtract depending on the lighting.

[Nick Shaw]

I gather the overlays in the EVF are done with a Flash engine, so in thoery anything's possible with future upgrades.

[Stephen Gentle]

Well, Mike, if the RED 4K projectors are half as good as the RED ONE seems to be in terms of price and performance, viewing dailies and edits on one of those guys could (and in many cases should) become an excellent addition to the 4K post workflow.

The RED 4K projector would be excellent for dailies if they supported the RED-DRIVE - imagine shooting to a couple of RED-DRIVEs, and then just plugging them in and playing out the clips - that would be awesome.

Also, editing with a 4K projector would be amazing.

I can't wait for some more details...

[zak forrest]

That's a very cool vizualization technique.

Hmmmm, how wrong would it be if we put a little audience
in the EVF?

I'm only half kidding :)


Deanan



man we shoudl be able to superimpose anything we want into that thing. it would be awesome.

[Bruce Allen]

Interesting discussion.

A few years ago I directed a greenscreen music video - shot on HDV. At some point, I realized "hey, since I'm going to do a garbage matte anyway, I can tell the DP that she is allowed to leave lights in-shot as long as they don't cross in front of the singer..."

We're doing a trailer right now for an animation-heavy movie coming out later in the year and watching the rough cut of the film I noticed that they had the mics in shot most of the time, since they were going to cut them out in post - clever... sound was good actually - usually in rough cuts I can't hear what anyone is saying. When it comes out, see if you can hear the difference and guess the movie.

So if you're doing green screen, a couple of the disadvantages of punching in for closeups disappear.

In fact, I always plan to punch in a little - I leave the periphery of the shot for tracking markers, etc.

Music videos are still SD deliverable most of the time, so I can do this with even HDV. When HD becomes the standard, I'll be ready with Red... bwahaha

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

[Vincent Rice]

Walter Murch uses 'little people' in front of his computer monitor when cutting in FCP.

Actually Walter's whole methodology is very interesting and practical.

[dalemccready]

What this extra resolution could give you is the option for some funky techniques for promos though.

I recently shot and composited a video using 4 locked-off 35mm shots from a central position around a pool... the 4 shots made up a 360 degree view and most of the camera moves were done in post by hand keyframing.

I had a lot of grain when zooming in (up to 4000%) in places, the red should make tiled shots pretty easy.

I've always thought 4 cameras up on a steadicam could be good to post pan around while also walking the camera through space.

If anyone's interested...
you can check out the tiled clip on my site, it's the Del Rey one on my directing page (I co-directed that one).

I can't wait to use the Red fort his sort of experimentation between shooting and post.

[zak forrest]

What this extra resolution could give you is the option for some funky techniques for promos though.

I recently shot and composited a video using 4 locked-off 35mm shots from a central position around a pool... the 4 shots made up a 360 degree view and most of the camera moves were done in post by hand keyframing.

I had a lot of grain when zooming in (up to 4000%) in places, the red should make tiled shots pretty easy.

I've always thought 4 cameras up on a steadicam could be good to post pan around while also walking the camera through space.

If anyone's interested...
you can check out the tiled clip on my site, it's the Del Rey one on my directing page (I co-directed that one).

I can't wait to use the Red fort his sort of experimentation between shooting and post.

can you tell us more details about the 4 cam/post panning etc, on that vid? its really cool. seroiusly. give up all the deets. i love it

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I've never done it with camera footage, but I've done post panning/zooming with rendered backgrounds (animated and still). Can make for some nice FX. This would sure require a lot of overhead if you're using 4xRED shooting 4K. ;)

Anyway, nice video Dale -- you've got a couple nice works on your site. You can see it when you push in too far, but the effect was still good and like you said, RED should really help with that. :)

[vanguy]

I've used the post panning and post closeup technique in documentary quite a lot. We're shooting in HDV or XDCam HD and delivering in SD, so there's a lot of room to fiddle around. HDV is typically quite a bit softer than XDCam HD on these digital zooms (probably the lens), but you can still push in a lot, or pan across the frame.

It's saved our butts on a number of occasions, but I wouldn't use it for drama. I like my camera moves too much. There's still no way to do a crane shot in post.

[Rudi Herbert]

Well, you don't really need to wait for a 4 K projector as a tool in referencing size and proportions for bigger than standard Tv screen sizes. I've done mostly TV work, but once it became clear that most of our documentaries would be shown at festivals on cinema screens, I started editing more for the big screen. I still used my JVC CRT and an apple 30" for color grading, focus checks, etc, but I used the S-video feed out of the card and plugged into an old $600 Epson 480p projector onto a $100 100" screen and that did the job quite nicely. I was surprised at how much sharper and clearer than expected the image was (without loosing track of this set up's limitations). So, you can get yourself a big screen monitoring option for very little money and keep it running all day long ($50 for a new lamp every 500 hours), since you should still do most of the grading and critical work on calibrated monitors anyway.

Just my two cents,

Rudi Herbert

[vanguy]

If you're a true geek and a tweaker like me, you might like a CRT projector. Old technology, heavy, and difficult to set up, but AMAZING picture, and capable of resolutions up to 2000x2500. I've got an NEC (140 pounds bolted to the ceiling) and after a few hours of setup, the picture is like being in the cinema.

The best part is they're really quite cheap. Projectors that used to cost upwards of $25,000 can be had for 2K or less, and in mint condition. You can even get into an entry level one (1080i capable) for under a grand. They're not as bright as modern projectors, but the colors are truer. And the blacks are rich and structured.

Editing to one of these babies is luxury.

check out www.curtpalme.com

[Rudi Herbert]

Hey Vanguy,

Any suggestions for CRT projectors? The weight and hassle is no problem, come on, if you can't handle that, then get out of the kitchen or the editing room :-) anyway, any models you can recomend?

Rudi Herbert

[Robert Sanders]

One smart thing I overheard when talking to some guys who shot an IMAX feature - even though they were cutting in DV, they used a projector and were looking at a 6 foot wide image just over the top of their computer monitors. Helped them to remember the Imax scope of things.

I'd recommend a similar approach for anything feature-bound if:
a.) editor wasn't used to cuttting for Big Screen
b.) you had budget for projector
c.) you thought it was kewl to do so.

: )

-mike

Here here! Absolutely.

I'm old enough to be the last film school generation to graduation before the NLE's showed up on campus. We cut on Moviolas. But the great part was at the end of the day we'd thread the picture and sound on a projector and watch the day's work. You really got a different sense of pacing and spatial relationships between the actors and the scenes.

We're finally getting our first projector. And I'm thoroughly excited to be able to go back viewing the day's work on a large screen.

[Robert Sanders]

I want to see more coverage like RAN. I don't think there's a single close-up in that film, and it works so much better than a lot of today's seemingly DVD-conscious coverage style. I think as more people get HD TV's and HD DVD's coverage will start to move back out.

Agreed. At least I hope so.

Just drop in the Lawrence of Arabia DVD and enjoy the old-school way of shot composition and framing. There were no other formats to worry about then. Just the big screen.

Ahh. The good ol' days.

[Robert Sanders]

Well, you don't really need to wait for a 4 K projector as a tool in referencing size and proportions for bigger than standard Tv screen sizes. I've done mostly TV work, but once it became clear that most of our documentaries would be shown at festivals on cinema screens, I started editing more for the big screen. I still used my JVC CRT and an apple 30" for color grading, focus checks, etc, but I used the S-video feed out of the card and plugged into an old $600 Epson 480p projector onto a $100 100" screen and that did the job quite nicely. I was surprised at how much sharper and clearer than expected the image was (without loosing track of this set up's limitations). So, you can get yourself a big screen monitoring option for very little money and keep it running all day long ($50 for a new lamp every 500 hours), since you should still do most of the grading and critical work on calibrated monitors anyway.

Just my two cents,

Rudi Herbert

Yup. You can even get 1080p LCD projectors for less than $3k these days. Good ones! And run those in your suite. Edit, edit, edit...turn your head, lean your chair back and watch the big screen...make a judgment, and then get back to edit, edit edit!

[vanguy]

Hey Vanguy,

Any suggestions for CRT projectors? The weight and hassle is no problem, come on, if you can't handle that, then get out of the kitchen or the editing room :-) anyway, any models you can recomend?

Rudi Herbert

Check the www.curtpalme.com website. Tons of resources there. And Curt's a good guy, with a double garage full of projectors. He'll take care of you.

I used to have a Sony 1031Q, but it was rather dim, and needed parts. Now I have an NEC PG6000, which is quite nice, and Curt recommends for skin tone. The Electrohome Marquee series are also quite good. Get an 8" ("Intermediate") or 9" ("high performance") for the resolution. The rest is a price/performance equation.

Just be careful when mounting it. I shattered my desk and killed off some hardware when my hoist failed. 138 pounds falling six feet is deadly. :poster_oops:

[beatniq]

You wouldn't have to lay down a track for a dolly or set up a jib for a small crane shot. You could achieve all those results in post while minimizing the expense involved with the actual production.

Punch in, maybe. Pan-scan, yes (ech!).

Dolly shots and jibs, no.

Think about it. How are you going to do a dolly or jib shot from the same exact angle?

[Friedrich Moser]

I want to see more coverage like RAN. I don't think there's a single close-up in that film, and it works so much better than a lot of today's seemingly DVD-conscious coverage style. I think as more people get HD TV's and HD DVD's coverage will start to move back out.

It's already on its way. Just think of BBC's series "Planet Earth".

[Jonathan L. Bowen]

I think David was spot-on in page 1, as usual though, he has great advice.

I wouldn't shoot a movie relying on these kinds of techniques, but it's not at all crazy to think you have a bit more leeway just in case. That's not craziness, that's just a nice safety net. It's true, though, you really want to light every shot for its specific setup, that yields the best results. From my understanding it's even not something most professional DPs want to do to have two cameras shooting the same scene from different angles unless it's some type of stunt or action sequence (in which case it could be more than two cameras and I think always would be), because if you have a dramatic scene the lighting looks different if you have two totally different camera angles shooting it. At least, that is what I've heard from a few professional DPs.

There are a few things I don't think would be bad to do in post with 4K footage, though. One is correcting shaky footage and stabilizing it, because if it's just barely shaky you will hardly lose any image quality and there's absolutely positively no way anyone could notice the difference if you shot in 4K and a few shots are at 90% quality because you had to correct for a bit of unwanted camera motion. I actually found doing a few projects that you couldn't tell even with HDV footage if there was a bit of motion, we were able to get away with zooming in at 105% and fixing it, which wasn't much quality loss. The other application is a very slight zoom-in that would be about like a constant zoom feature on some cameras. If you did that in post I don't think it'd be bad, but I agree you wouldn't want to try to mimic full dolly movements in post because the look I just don't think would be the same.

Still there's no doubt to me that playing in a 4K sandbox does allow for a bit more lenience than anything else before.