2012 is here and I've already got quite a bit stacked up for the rest of the year. Features, TV shows, web series, etc. Some exciting possibilities down the road but for now a few quick updates. As of last month I'm now officially on the WideOpenCamera.com writing staff. I have been posting tips and opinion pieces that I have found very useful in my own experience. Check back often and make sure to let me know what you think about my posts. I have also recently shot a commercial for my car that made it on one of the biggest automotive blogs on the web. It hit 14,000 views in just a few short days. Not bad for a no budget spec commercial. Check the article and video out over at Jalopnik.com. I have been taking on several short term gigs in the past month here in San Francisco but production on the Greenstart Round 2 web series quickly approaches. There have been some significant upgrades behind the scenes and I'm looking forward to producing a truly high quality series.
You may have noticed the new HTML5 animated banner at the top of the site as well as the new home button. This is just a taste of what's to come over the course of the next year. Kudos to my brother, Nick Walker, for the coding work that he is undertaking as we take this site to the next level.
With that all said, have a look at my current interim demo reel. I say interim because I have been in the process of cutting together a demo reel of all never before web published footage. This reel is a portion of my previous along with a new corporate/documentary segment. Enjoy!
Latest Greenstart Video
Since mid September I've been shooting marketing videos for the cleantech start up accelerator Greenstart. Based in downtown San Francisco, it is their mission to help spur along the coming 'green' industrial revolution by locating and accelerating young companies with technologies that can change the world. It's been a great opportunity to work with some of the best business and science minds out there. I've been shooting these very quickly and cheaply using just my 7D and some bounce boards. All shot on the Cinema picture profile. I still do some color grading in post but it is never that much. Editing has been a breeze through Avid Media Composer 6's improved AMA workflow. Check out the latest weekly video below:
Automatic Duck is now a free plugin available here. See how it can integrate into your Avid workflow in my latest tutorial:
Avid Media Composer 6 First Look!
This morning Avid announced the latest version of Avid Media Composer. It has been completely rebuilt with a 64bit architecture and a great new UI. I'll be posting a series of new tutorials over the next few days showing how you can benefit from the latest improvements to Avid Media Access. In the mean time, check out my quick walkthrough video:
Head over to WideOpenCamera.com for my full scoop on what all the new features are!
On Color and Shooting
This morning I received an email which was essentially asking if color correction was important at all. I was inspired to share my response with everyone. This is not meant to be the be-all/end-all of how to shoot. Take from my approach what you will. Adapt it to suit your needs. I'm just here to share my experiences and hopefully you too can learn from the mistakes that I have made:
"Let me give you the hard explanation. There are 2 ways of shooting everything. First way is to maximize the color and light range capturing capabilities of your camera by installing a LOG picture profile such as Technicolor's CineStyle. What this does is it lowers the contrast to the point where your image will have the full range of color and light for you to manipulate in post. This is key for productions where you know you will have the ability to curate the vision in post. The other school of thought is to bake your look into what you shoot from the beginning. This means what you shoot is what you shoot; there won't be much room for you to change anything in post as half the information is thrown away in favor of this singular look. This will significantly cut down on your post processing time and is something I personally do for corporate video productions. I recommend using the CINEMA picture profile for this. Just have a look at something I shot with all the color baked in from the camera:
On the other hand this can clash with the non-controlled nature of documentary filmmaking. Often times you'll find yourself running into the limitations of what your specific look is capable of capturing. You have to be more selective of the lighting you use in order to maximize the small window of range that baking your color settings gives you. Take for example this test video where I needed to maximize the range of color and light that my camera was capable of capturing so that I could accurately render whatever the film ended up looking like.
As you can see, color correction is pretty much everything you do as a shooter. You need to curate the vision, whether that be in camera or in post. It is up to you. I recommend having both a baked in color profile and a LOG style profile. Out in the field you may find that a high contrast situation would benefit from the extra range of cinestyle."
Kodak Vision 3 VS Canon 7D w/CineStyle: How does digital hold up?
Cinematographer Michael Street recently brought me on board for a 35mm short film project of his. During our camera prep I did my best to match each of Street's shots with my 7D. Completely ad hoc; no tripod for the 7D and I didn't match glass. My goal was to push the smaller digital format to its max and see how close I could get to the 13.5-14 stops of latitude that Vision 3 is known for with what I had at the moment. Overall, I'm extremely pleased with the results. Just using the color correction mode in Avid MC I was able to get really close to the look of the 35mm shots. Of course there was no way around the global shutter causing motion rendering issues or the line skipping aliasing on the finer details but in terms of latitude, the 7D did well. It really just depends on what you're shooting. Most of these shots have relatively small contrast ratios. However take a look at the difference between the 2 shots of the warm light in the middle of the video. As you can see the 7D material has a very hard fall off from the outside of the light toward the center where it goes past 100IRE. Film's negative process still holds the detail in the light all the way through. So keep this in mind when you light your sets. Know that your 7D will only be able to push 10-11.5 stops. Treat it like reversal film. Keep your ratios small, watch aliasing, and minimize rolling shutter issues by moving the camera in slower, calculated ways. Vision 3 tends to crush the shadows a tiny bit. Shoot a 1/4 hot to keep them. DON'T do this with digital. In fact, you should NEVER shoot over with digital as an over exposed digital image cannot be brought back like film. It is recommended that you rate your camera lower if anything so that you build in an under exposure to save your highlights.
Avid to After Effects Tutorial
Chris Marino from WideOpenCamera.com and I were wondering how I would get an edit to him for grading in AE out of Avid with out having to shell out $500 for the Automatic Duck plugin. We started exploring options and it turns out it's quite easy. The obvious route would be EDL but After Effects has no EDL import function. However, Premiere does. Once you use that to get your sequence in and you've relinked it just replace your sequence with an After Effects comp. I don't believe there's a way to get the colored sequence back to Avid but Chris and I are planning to experiment with that and we'll get back to you. Let me know if you guys want to see any other specific Avid tutorials. Thanks for watching!
Feature Film 'No One Will Know' DONE!
Head over here and check out the IMDb page for the feature film I directed photography on this past May. Make sure to check out all the talented people from the cast and crew who came together to make this awesome project happen. This team not only killed it in production but in post as well. A large team of sound mixers, composers, musicians, colorists and editors came together to get this feature 100% finished in time for its sneak preview premiere on September 30th. I've seen the picture lock cut with out final sound, music or color and it already was a fun watch. I can't wait to see how the completed project comes together and I hope to see some of you at the screening. If you're in the bay area, a limited amount of tickets are available for the sneak peak event being held at the Aquarius Theatre as part of the Palo Alto International Film Festival at 10PM on Friday, September 30th. Head here for more info!
CINEMA vs CineStyle Picture Profiles
I've been doing a lot of work with WideOpenCamera.com's Chris Marino now that I'm based in San Francisco. What we have here is a little test shot on the roof of my apartment building comparing the new CINEMA picture profile to the Log CineStyle starring me. Shot and edited by Chris Marino on the 5D. Check out the vid:
For someone who shoots a lot of weddings or corporate gigs but doesn't edit their own media this is a great way to burn in your look and ensure your vision through post. CineStyle is a must for pushing the max out of your camera. For narrative features or shorts where you know you'll be able to over see the post workflow then CineStyle is a no-brainer. That being said, the CINEMA profile looks fantastic. I'm half tempted to start shooting the corporate gigs I do edit with color burnt in because of this profile. Unlike most other profiles this one will run you $19. There are lots of other great options as well. Like always, do some research and choose the best option for your present needs.
For more information or to purchase the CINEMA profile, head here
Whidbey Island in RED
From August 5-20th I was directing photography on the movie Seeking Solace on Whidbey Island, WA. We shot it on the RED ONE with the RED 18-85 T2.9 and a Zeiss 40mm T2.1. Before we started principal photography my camera crew and I shot tests under different lighting conditions and with the steadicam. I've cut that together with some behind the scenes and nature shots taken with the RED. Music is Day 7 by Explosions in the Sky.
I cut this on Avid Media Composer 5.5.3. I created my DNxHD175x media after doing a quick color pass in REDCINEX. Drag MXFs to the Avid media files folder. Import your ALE and relink the files in Avid with 'only project files' deselected.
Tesla Roadster Spec Ad
I've just wrapped production on the feature film 'No One Will Know' directed by Raj Reddy and shot in Marin County, California. During the production Tesla Motors was kind enough to allow us to use their Roadster model in the opening scenes of the film. All we need were a few quick shots of the car driving by, but I got some wild footage just for fun. Decided I had enough to cut a spec ad together and went for it. The cell phone scene is probably a no-no but it just looked too cool not to include. The driver is Jesse Draper of Valley Girl Tv and the Naked Brothers Band TV series. The idea here was to create a very European feel and to create the idea that the car is an accessory. I will most likely be cutting together a more Americanized version in the near future. In the mean time, let me know what you think of this one:
Want to see how much using Adobe Media Encoder can improve your latitude even in other NLEs?
So as a devout Avid MC5 user I wanted to find a way to get Adobe Premiere's extra color/latitude when editing DSLR media. For the past several months I've been having my DIT transcode media on set to DNxHD 175x using Adobe Media Encoder CS5. It wasn't until I got ahold of Technicolor's Cinestyle that I started trying to see the difference. What you see here is some footage recorded with a Canon 7D using Technicolor's CineStyle. One copy of the clip was transcoded to DNxHD 175x using Adobe Media Encoder CS5 and the other was brought in via AMA and then transcoded to 1:1MXF prior to export. Since Media Composer has no LUT support I had to manually recreate the S-curve file provided by Technicolor. I copied the Master Curves over to both the Adobe encoded file and the Avid encoded file. No further color correction was done. As you can see the Adobe encoded file has some extra latitude where as the shadow detail in the Avid file seems crushed. Take a look at the detail in the jeans and how the transition from Porsche to shadow is non-existent in the 1:1mxf.
Essentially what this means is that in order to achieve the maximum latitude possible with your DSLR you must shoot with the Technicolor Cinestyle, and then create your intermediate files (whether that be for Avid or FCP, doesn't matter) with Adobe Media Encoder CS5. Then once you've got picture lock you can apply the LUT that Technicolor provides. In FCP you can use LUT Buddy by Red Giant Software. If you're an Avid DS user you can load LUT files directly. For us MC5 users the best way to apply the LUT is to recreate the S-curve manually via the Master Curves pane under color correction mode.
Let me know if you found this tip useful!
Spring 2011 Director of Photography Reel is now Online!
Since I last released a reel in January of this year I have more than tripled the amount of footage. I figured as I get ready to head off to California to direct photography on a new feature film it was high time to share some of the work I've been doing.
Check it out and let me know what you think!
Constructive Witticism has a web comic version of me!
As part of a continuing plot line in the Constructive Witticism web comic the main character Rex has to shoot a commercial. This means he brings in his right hand man, the director of photography, 'Ivan.' Take a look at the comic below and let me know what you think. Oh and yeah, only Ivan doesn't know to look for the studs before hanging lights from the ceiling...
