5D3 raw - MGS Philanthropy - Part 2, Hive Division’s homage to the MGS

[microsoul]

http://www.mgs-philanthropy.net/

[beauchampy]

No words.. just sheer brilliance... All my kudos goes to you!

[mattiagri]

Thank you very much microsoul and beauchampy! I'm Mattia Gri, DoP of MGSP and member of Hive Division.

MGSP2 preview short is the result of our efforts and should have been the presentation video for a crowdfunding campaign, that aimed to raise the minimum amount of money to make the whole 90 minutes movie. Unfortunately, some copyright issues stopped us few days ago just before the start... What you see here, was shot with no budget.

That said, we wanted to thank ML in the ending credits just because without that, this short woudn't have be possible to shoot. A 5Dmk3 with the first raw module available, bring us fantastic images even in very dark conditions! We had some weather annoys while on the set, so you can notice slightly color/contrast shifts that I didn't managed to fix even in post (CC and graded in DaVinci Resolve 10). Btw, the result made us so happy, thank you again ML community!

[beauchampy]

To say that you also accomplished this with no budget is an absolute shocker! You must have some seriously dedicated and talented people over there at Hive Division.

Amazing.. just.. amazing!!

[tonybeccar]

Hey wow!!!!!! Amazing photography and storytelling!!!

Do you mind sharing some technical aspects?? Like lenses, post techniches (denoiser?), etc.. really it looks SO good.. even on youtube! Amazing!!!!

[kgv5]

@microsoul
Just WOW!!!! I love MGS series, i have played all parts on PS1, PS2 and PS3. Attention for detail is phenomenal! This is the first MGS movie which looks and feels exactly like games! Congratulations!
Snake is moving exactly like in games, love all those small details, voice acting is just great, did you hire David Hayter for this??? Sounds exactly like him From the technical side: it looks just great, love the colors, camera moves, lighting. Many thanks from a die hard MGS fan
BTW, i an not buying PS4 right now and thought that i will loose MGS5. The great news is it will be also on PC !!! What a relief
I hope we could see more MGS from you soon. Great work!!!

[Erik Caretta]

Hi guys,

I'm Erik Caretta, VFX supervisor here at Hive Division Thanks everybody for your kind words, but let me THANK all the ML team for the wonderful job you've done! It would not have been possible for us to reach such a quality with almost no budget. The performance of Magic Lantern were great, and definitely saved our production. I admit that on set we had some camera crash and bugs, but overall the experience was very positive. I'm sure that now, almost a year later, ML is far better.

Hey wow!!!!!! Amazing photography and storytelling!!!

Do you mind sharing some technical aspects?? Like lenses, post techniches (denoiser?), etc.. really it looks SO good.. even on youtube! Amazing!!!!

sure thing! We shot with a 5Dmkiii as Mattia, our DOP, said. For the lenses, we shot almost everything with a single Canon lens (Canon 24-70 f2.8 II), because we had such a tight schedule and the weather conditions were so bad that we could not afford to change lens every 2 minutes
The performance of 5Dmkiii + ML were good: we had a decent noise level on most shots so we didn't use any denoiser on most of the short. Some shots are problematic indeed, as you can probably see, but it was our fault since we shot them with "wrong" ISO levels. We used Nuke's denoiser when needed, anyway: since we debayered in Resolve Lite and not in Adobe Camera Raw we had not a good option to easily denoise everything, so denoise was applied ad hoc on some shots.

We used a Resolve-Premiere roundtrip. The workflow was pretty much as following:

- On-set we had Resolve Lite to debayer and create dailies
- Firstly a rough CC was done on Resolve
- Then DNxHD proxies were created in Resolve for offline editing in Premiere Pro CC, and dpx sequences were created for VFX shots
- Once the VFX work was done (mainly Photoshop+Nuke+Blender), we switched back to Resolve (roundtrip)
- Color grading in Resolve, from which a DNxHD master were exported
- Final export from Premiere, with titles, audio, etc

If you have any other question, we'll be glad to reply!

@microsoul
Just WOW!!!! I love MGS series, i have played all parts on PS1, PS2 and PS3. Attention for detail is phenomenal! This is the first MGS movie which looks and feels exactly like games! Congratulations!
Snake is moving exactly like in games, love all those small details, voice acting is just great, did you hire David Hayter for this??? Sounds exactly like him From the technical side: it looks just great, love the colors, camera moves, lighting. Many thanks from a die hard MGS fan
BTW, i an not buying PS4 right now and thought that i will loose MGS5. The great news is it will be also on PC !!! What a relief
I hope we could see more MGS from you soon. Great work!!!

thanks man! Anyway he was not David Hayter, but another talented voice actor, Phillip Sacramento. But we had Paul Eiding on board

[kgv5]

Anyway he was not David Hayter, but another talented voice actor, Phillip Sacramento. But we had Paul Eiding on board

Voices are really great and its very important part of MGS universum (games graphics was changing with hardware generations but voices were the same all the time).

One more question about technical side: what did you use for lighting?

[Erik Caretta]

Voices are really great and its very important part of MGS universum (games graphics was changing with hardware generations but voices were the same all the time).

One more question about technical side: what did you use for lighting?

That's an interesting question

Other than location's available lighting, we had 3 LIPO battery-powered LED lights, 27W each one. So we did almost everything with 81 W. Pretty much incredible, it would have been simply impossible with anything different from 5Dmkiii+ML!

[mattiagri]

Yes, this is one of the most interesting technical questions about our short... As Erik said, the whole set were lighted by 2 big HMI lights that were the diegetic sources you can see on the hangar's walls. For every other set we used 3 LED offroad rooftop lights you can find in any car spare shop. I think that -with the weather issues we had- this have been the only way possible to achieve the result we hoped to get... Even high budget cameras and HMI lights could have been a limit to the prodution schedule. ML made it possible! 

[kgv5]

Guys, how did you make CC in resolve, i mean did you use any flat profile like cinelog and add some stock LUTs? I love this kind of teal and orange look, i know that this was probably more complex thing but could you please tell that your starting point was?.
Explosion in the end looks brilliant, was it made in blender? Thanks

[chmee]

chapeau, guys. marvelous work.

[Erik Caretta]

Guys, how did you make CC in resolve, i mean did you use any flat profile like cinelog and add some stock LUTs? I love this kind of teal and orange look, i know that this was probably more complex thing but could you please tell that your starting point was?.
Explosion in the end looks brilliant, was it made in blender? Thanks

Yes there is a LUT, but then a lot of shot per shot corrections were made, and a lot of secondary CC. Mattia will give you more details, he's the colorist and I'm not 100% informed on his workflow.
The explosion is a mix of different footages, with minor 2D painting and a super rough 3D simulation for the shock-wave.

chapeau, guys. marvelous work.

thanks man, and let me thank you for your work on ML

[arrinkiiii]

Just wonderful and pleasent for the eyes, amazing!!! Good work indeed !!!

-You guys have sad "we shot them with "wrong" ISO levels"   What is the "best"  ISO ?

-Yes, please, if Mattia share the CC and grading trip would be awesome =)))

Thanks for this, appreciated a lot   

PS- No BTS ??

[Erik Caretta]

Just wonderful and pleasent for the eyes, amazing!!! Good work indeed !!!

-You guys have sad "we shot them with "wrong" ISO levels"   What is the "best"  ISO ?

-Yes, please, if Mattia share the CC and grading trip would be awesome =)))

Thanks for this, appreciated a lot   

PS- No BTS ??

yes, back when we shot it there were some preferable ISO levels to use, I don't remember exactly which ones but it doesn't matter since I think it really depends on the ML version you're using.

what you mean with BTS? behind the scenes?

[arrinkiiii]

Sirius, depend of the ML version   ?  Uhmmmmm would like to know what is the best, im shooting with ISO 100 but i think that is not the best...     

Yes, behind the scenes, sorry =)

[Erik Caretta]

Sirius, depend of the ML version   ?  Uhmmmmm would like to know what is the best, im shooting with ISO 100 but i think that is not the best...     

Yes, behind the scenes, sorry =)

yep, it depended at least, not sure how is the situation now with new versions.
Sure thing anyway, we'll post something soon

[a1ex]

yep, it depended at least

Proof please.

[Erik Caretta]

Proof please.

Sure! We had a book, which I can't find at the office right now, that explained that. I guess it was

http://www.eoshd.com/eoshd-5d-mark-iii-raw-shooters-guide-pdf-book-download/

but I can't tell you for sure now.
Anyway, we were using Magic Lantern v2.3, and from page 14 of the user guide:

ISO
Advanced ISO control.
Color coding:
• orange = Canon ISO with good noise or dynamic range (100, 160, 200, 320 ... 3200).
• green = ISO with negative digital gain applied via DIGIC (80, 90, 160, 320 - obtained by
setting ML digital ISO to a negative value). These can have lower noise and/or better
highlight rolloff than their Canon equivalents.
• red = ISO with positive digital gain (avoid these values).

I guess this is the point. Sorry for being so vague but I can't remember more.

[Erik Caretta]

Just found out that v2.3 was not the version we were using.

We were using a nightly build instead, released probably on July or August 2013, running on Canon 1.1.3 firmware. I can't tell you more right now, until I'll find the book

[a1ex]

There are no intermediate ISOs in RAW video mode.

[Erik Caretta]

ok I finally found the book. It is

The EOSHD 5D Mark III Raw Shooter's Guide
By Andrew Reid - First Edition

At the chapter "Chapter 11 - Raw shooting advice by Andrew Reid" it contains this part, at page 92:

Shoot at these ISOs for best results...
The cleanest ISO sensitivities on the 5D Mark III are 100,200,400,800,1250,1600 and
3200. Some others such as 640 and 250 have considerable noise in the blacks.

Of course I can't prove if it's true or not, but we followed this rule
If you say there are no differences I trust you, but at the time we followed these indications.

[a1ex]

Intermediate ISOs only apply to photo mode (both RAW and JPG), and H.264.

In RAW video mode, they only affect the preview image, but not the recorded one.

[Erik Caretta]

I see! Probably the book was wrong or we didn't read it carefully. Well, we used that unnecessary precaution for all the 5 days of shooting
There must be another reason for the bad shots then.

Anyway a1ex, what do you think of the short? Do you think we made a good use of ML?

[a1ex]

A little too violent for my taste, but other than that... hats off.