Messages

Thanks for your answers.

I watched it again, after accepting the grade as it is so as not to distract me. It is a great example of visual storytelling. There is no dialogue really so we have to interpret context from our own experiences along with the music which always felt right for the visuals and helps bring the viewer into this girls world. The animation was unexpected but helped me again with context of the inner workings of this little girl while she deals the world around her. I see the animated bits as a clever and cute device for the viewer to readily feel empathy for her situation. Great Job Robinson Brothers.
If you would not mind, I have a couple of questions.
Could you discuss the motivation to use the animation and how you felt it impacted the short?
Could you discuss the development of the final music and anything interesting or troublesome when making the decisions about the music?

Thanks very much for sharing.

I cant really assist with most the questions and comments in your post but I do have some Tips for posting...The subject line should address the feature request you want and the Body should be focused on the request. You also crammed in a bunch of questions. You might get a better response in this forum if you separate out requests and questions into appropriate posts. That being said, you can post however you want, but having been on this forum for awhile, posts like this often don't get very far.

I liked the film but have one critique about the contrast in many of the shots. I think that a proper adjustment of the tonal range and particularly the midtones might help make those scenes pop better. Tone adjustment should be one of the first steps of color correction. If using Premiere Pro you can use the Fast CC effect to make tonal tweaks. Use the "input levels" slider, in conjunction with viewing the YC waveform to push black to 0 (zero) and white to 100, then tweak midrange to taste. You can also use AE or other software to make tonal adjustments too. I think you would be well served in future projects to investigate tonal adjustments when doing color correction, particularly when working with RAW. You should be able to push it hard and still look great. I found I was distracted by the lack of contrast and wanted to see more contrast while viewing your short. Kudos to you and your team using a 550D shooting RAW for this project. Overall I give it  B+.

Not familiar with KDEnLive. Here are some simple steps that might help, but I use Adobe so I have no idea how one would pull this off in your software.
Generic workflow...
color correct to bump up green channel saturation before key. way up.
Use garbage mattes to reduce the areas that need to be keyed
add Key effect and adjust key properties. if you have alternate views other than final, use them to help define white, grey, and black areas.
Pull a mask or track matte from that key mask
Blur/feather masks
Apply the mask/matte to the movie to isolate  the subject..so you'll need to delete that original effect after you generate the mask/matte
You may need to use more than one instance of the key effect prior to or even after mask/matte is applied to deal with spill and fringing.
You may even  need multiple masks/mattes to get the result you want.
Good Luck

Let me start by saying that if you are using Premiere Pro to key then LucianParaian's statement holds a lot of weight. While the compression in h.264 does provide challenges that one will not encounter if shooting Raw on green screen but if shooting h.264 and keying in AE then LucianParaian's statements simply are not true. Using keying and other effects and masks, with multiple layers in AE one can achieve excellent chroma keys from h.264 compressed video. If you only expect keylight or other software to pull an excellent key with one click of the eyedropper then yes, h.264 footage will not key to anyone's liking. youtube, lynda (pay site) or other online resources can provide instruction. I found a video on youtube that had a great workflow and if I can locate it I will update this post with a link. Dont be discouraged, you can key this footage but you may need to invest time learning how to pull keys from h.264 video. I am currently in process of working with many clips shot on green screen and without research and education on how to achieve the results I want, it would have been a failure. I had to take the time to find out what will work best. The are many different workflows to get to the end result. None of them are simple but you should be able to pull together a workflow for yourself.

Thx Frank007

Lovely montage scenery. My eyes want more contrast in most of the scenes. Great footage.

Hi all whats up with no discussion on the 600D shooting raw?  I find videos all over the web, and yet when I upload the latest nightly there's no RAW or load module option?  So has anyone been shooting 600D RAW with the 2014July08 nightly? If so how are you doing it.  I am very eager to try out some different combos other than 960x544.

Yes, it is possible, you have to enable modules to run at start up for to record raw. I am not shooting raw so  can't give you any specific advice, there are a couple of options there. Do research in the raw board and there are some recent 600D raw videos posted in the Videos section that can provide some info on what they did to achieve the final product.

Thanks reddeercity. I appreciate your comments.

Love it

Thanks for the encouragement and advice romainmenke. Part of the problem is that 'my go to guy' for cam and audio got married and I never see him anymore, his wife is always taking him hiking somewhere. So instead of bitching about it I will just work on the solution, which is finding some new folks and providing training for the current group. It is a huge project and it will get done only with the cooperation of many humans and I am the one who has to assemble, teach and direct them. It is awesome and hard, and takes focus and dedication...and production is very fun even when it has its stressful periods.

 I do appreciate your comment and totally it reminded me of my mother. And it strikes me as funny, I'm still laughing about it.  A statement anyone's mother might have said throughout the years. Such solid, logical advice. It could be sooner than later PressureFM and there is always credit for such purchases. It depends how fired up I stay about getting a cam and motivated to rationalize it for the wife to be on-board.

Sounds frustrating. Maybe it is in need of repair. Ive been running ML on my 600Ds since 2012 and never came across this weirdness.

What about video mode?
Other lenses?
Start without ML (hold SET)?
Cycle thru Modes (Av,Tv,M, etc)?

That is all  can think of that you might try. The screen may be defective or maybe the lens circuitry is roached. Good Luck.

I was looking at getting a video cam (canon AX20) in the under 2000$ usd and I came across the panasonic lumix GH4 which is 4/3 and in the price range with lots of yummy specs and cheaper that AX20. (Could buy a lens or two with the diff) I can use adapters for my current lens collection. It is DSLR form factor which is not my initial form factor choice but the specs are making me consider this as a choice. Anyone care to talk me out of buying a GH4 as my primary video camera instead of going with AX20 or similiar? My research is not complete so I would love to hear from anyone who has used either or both cameras. Or just has an opinion either way. My 600D work horses will still be in play as secondary cams. Dont actually have the cash right now so purchase will be later this year.

I am the producer, director, AD, DP, sound,lighting, makeup/efx, writer, actor, editor, colorist, set designer, 2d/3d animation and motion graphics guy, den mother and check writer. Highly motivated at all of those jobs but  only one of me makes it slow. It gets worse when doing location shooting, so those are gonna be reduced and most will be on set ( my garage) shooting green screen. Keep It Simple Stupid is becoming more relevant. As hard and frustrating as it is, I can only say that it is very gratifying to pursue this endeavor. Success is the only option and I will drag who ever is willing along with me, skilled or not. Thanks for your interest and support. On the bright side...doing the shoots are so much fun even when things go wrong.

I am producing six half hour episodes of live action comedy and I have found that it is asking too much to have no and low skill shooters understand framing, composition, safe zones and exposure, let alone deal with on the fly focus, and any ML bells and whistles. Too many shots get discarded and require reshooting It is a struggle to impart artistic and technical aesthetics to the uninitiated, untrained people that I am very grateful to have help me. I think I am going to have to create a crash course for my peeps so that I can get them to understand these concepts and have the technical confidence to manipulate the cameras effectively. The best laid plans often pave a path to hell. I hope it goes well. None of these folks are being paid money, so there's that upside and downside combined. Anyone here had to deal with this issue? Makes me appreciate the skills I have and motivates me to seek skilled cam people locally thru art organizations or something. Hit the pavement and talk to some people is in order, I guess. No one else around to rant about this to, so i thought I would vent it right here for you fine people. I already feel better so I wont start on the difficulty of direction/setup/makeup/lighting/logistics and everything else and then be able to get into a proper place for doing a performance. Doing that switch from 'making sure everything is ready to go guy' to 'calm, motivated performer' is a bitch and i'm still working to be able to make that transition short and effective.

Thanks for contributing to the forum. The video offers a slice of equipment, shoot prep and execution that might assist a shooter of any skill level for hard to plan, dynamic events.

The answer is yes. The first way is without ML and requires that you place the cam in Bulb mode, it is right after 30" setting,  manually trip the shutter, use the accessory wired shutter actuator for that, but it can be done with your finger on the shutter but considering you are taking a long exposure the less you touch the cam the better your image will be. A better choice for one off images and not series that will become a video.

With ML. You dont say what version you are running. v2.3 is slightly different than the March nightly I am running currently. I used these settings to capture a test series of shots @
MAR312014 Nightly. 600D
Using Canon exposure setting, Set exposure to BULB
Using ML Shoot Menu, Set intervalometer:
Take a pic every ...2m30s
Start trigger...Half Shutter
Start after... 3s
Stop after...10 shots
Using ML shoot menu, Set Bulb Timer
Exposure Duration...1m00s

This works fine on my 600D

For v2.3
I am testing right now and will provide details of the settings...Results are In...
Running into problems with intervalometer and bulb timer enabled. Can only get 1 or 2 shots depending on how it is setup. If you are shooting with v2.3 run a nightly build. Intervalometer ends up being off and the cam leaves LV mode. Fail. If I find out anything else I will share. Questioning my results so I will look again. Intervalometer is fine if bulb timer not enabled as far as I can tell.

I am aware of said rubber chunk on the strap but to use it full time requires that the eyepiece be removed. I will stick with my fancy paper

Hey, great idea. I have a recommendation for a slight improvement. Perhaps you could glue small strips of vinyl or similar flexible plastic along the edges that touch the cam. This little plastic edge would spread out and fill any small gaps that might cause light or reflection issues on the screen. You would cut a strip of the needed length and maybe 1/2 inch wide. Glue the strip one side and then loop it over edge and glue to other side of the hood. It creates a flexible edge if you leave a gap and the plastic loop compresses against the cam. That may or may not make sense but I have it visualized perfectly in my head.

I rarely use the viewfinder and to block light entering thru the viewfinder. I implemented a simple solution that is permanent until you don't want it. With paper and scissors one can cut a small strip of opaque paper large enough to fit snuggly when folded in half and placed in the removable eyepiece with the fold facing down. Simple and works. You can easily remove it anytime, if needed. This is a beginners hack of a Canon DSLR.[emoji12] No bootflag modifications needed.

Did you change cards? Did you format the card? Can you verify that ML files exist on the card? If ML is properly structured and has all the files the ML UI should be in the LCD when you hit trash button. It sounds like ML is not loaded. Weird, I cant think of a setting that hides ML entirely with an errant button push.

I dont know the answer to your question since I dont use the audio on my 600d. You or may not find the answer here.
http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=2032.0

There may be a better thread in here to answer that question. Searching is not the greatest on this site but I am pretty sure that has been discussed previously. If you cant find the answer then start tweaking the settings and find the goodness.

I am slightly interested in setting up my win7 64 bit for development but reading thru the win based threads makes it sound like a huge pain in the ass to setup. Or am I just too cynical and its is not really that bad?  My plan is to follow the  "best " instruction I can find and move forward. If I can get it running then I will create a Win7 64bit tutorial. The first decision I need to make is... do I run virtual linux or cygwin? Does anyone have an opinion on that? If you read this and are doing dev on windows, speak up. Peace, Out.