The Secret Life of Foley (Short Film)

Watch foley artists Sue Harding and Peter Burgis at work in the studio.

For those interested, check out the Story of Sound workshop this weekend in Brighton (Nov 19th, 2016) with Sue Harding herself.

Ingesting Video into FCP

If you've used one of our cameras to shoot your film, you will use the following workflow:

Here's a reminder of how to connect the camera and transfer your footage to your FCP project:

DSLR Workflow

 

You will need to follow these steps when editing in Final Cut Pro 7:

1. Make a new folder on the desktop.

2. Insert the SD card into the card reader slot in the side of the mac.  An icon will appear on the desktop.

3. Copy your videos from the SD card to the folder you created on the desktop.

4. Launch Compressor from the dock at the bottom of the screen.

5. Drag your videos from your folder (on the desktop) into the top left window in Compressor.

6. Once they've loaded drag the Apple Pro Res 422(LT) preset onto your clips.  It may take a minute to load.  Click on Submit.

7. You will see the status and time estimate of your conversion jobs in the bottom right window of Compressor.

8. Your converted files will automatically save to the folder that you created on the desktop.

Be sure to copy your folder from the desktop to the Network to back them up.  

STAY ORGANISED!!

9. Now you can import your converted movie files into Final Cut Pro from the network OR the desktop**

**If from the desktop:  a) you will need to return to that machine each time you edit  b) others can access and mess around with your folder... you could relocate that folder to a more secure partition on the machine - ask Sophie.

**If from the network:  a) you can move around to other machines and access your footage  b) it may be a slower connection and footage may stutter or lag.

10)  The first clip that you drag down into the timeline will set your project to THAT format and size.

11)  When FCP asks if you want to set the project to the settings of the clip, click YES.

If in doubt, ask Sophie  :)

Slugline

Here's a free trial for some really useful software!  You simply type in your content and it will do all of the formatting to turn it into a screenplay.  Amazing! 

 slugline.co

Creating Your Animatic

 Once you have a complete storyboard put together and the rough timing for each shot figured out, you can then create a simple mock-up of your film.  

1)  Photograph each frame of your storyboard.

You may use your phone for this or you can borrow a camera if needed.  *It is very helpful to number each scene to identify later in editing.  

2)  Upload the photos to the computer, making sure they are in your folder on the network.  Put them in a folder that is clearly labeled.

 3)  Import your images from the network into Final Cut Pro.

*After you have saved the new FCP project to your network space, of course! 

*Note:  as a default, still images are set to around 10 seconds in FCP.  You can adjust the length of a still image by dragging the endpoint in the timeline...

 ...this is often a bit fiddly.

Alternatively, you can change the duration of a still image in the Viewer beforehand.

1) Double click on your image in the Browser to load it into the Viewer...

 2) At the top left of the Viewer, change the duration from 00:00:10:00

3) ... to 00:00:05:00!  Presto!  This clip is now exactly 5 seconds long!

Now when you drag your image down into the timeline, it will already be set to the exact time you require.  Do this for all of your images beforehand and you're basically done!

Fantastic Film Series "The Science of Editing"

Is Good Editing Just Instinct?  The first in a series by Sven Pape and Dr. Karen Pearlman

Student Work 2015-16

A2 Film:

A2 Media:

 

Posting Videos to Blogger from YouTube

Adding a video to Blogger is very easy, but even easier and better when you use YouTube.  You'll have the advantage of being able to upload a higher resolution video, but also it will continue to exist as its own entity once you leave college.

To upload to YouTube you need to be logged into your group's google account, then simply go to YouTube, click on upload, then drag and drop your video into the drop zone.  Once it's finished processing you can go back to Blogger, create a new post, then select the "my YouTube videos" option to find and select your video within the "insert a video" option in Blogger.

You can also upload directly to Blogger by clicking the "Insert Video" icon and then dragging and dropping a video (under 100MB) into the drop zone.  If your video has been exported from Final Cut or GarageBand using the iphone or ipod export setting it should be small enough to upload easily.

How to Make Your AS Evaluation The Best it can Be

Add text, sound, and graphics to an average video presentation to earn points!  It will be much more interesting to watch and much more effective in communicating your ideas.

How to add text to your video project:

How to import still images and resize them to fit frame in frame.

LED and Plasma Lighting For Video

Is this the future of lighting for film and video? 

Stephen Gladstone reviews the recent developments in Plasma and LED lighting

 "Video needs lighting. This is a statement worth repeating: video needs lighting. Yes, you can shoot available light, and now there are cameras with obscenely high ISO ratings, but think about it—if you are shooting at 100,000 ISO, 400,000 ISO, or 4 million ISO, what is the quality of your light? And what exactly are you shooting? If you are shooting at high ISO ratings, most likely you are shooting in extremely low light, and although you may be able to get a decent exposure, it is unlikely there will be much contrast in your shot. This is a pity, because unless your project calls for dull, lifeless, flat, and even images, then contrast, along with bright and dark references in your shot, are some of the components that have always made moving images come to life for me."

We may not be ready to discard our redheads just yet, but there are certainly developments worth watching.

In lighting, the variables to consider include: controls of intensity and direction; power consumption vs light output; power source, heat produced, colour temperature, flicker rate ie, does the light spike within a certain spectrum.

Plasma Lighting

Remote Phosphor LED

Resolution Wars

Matt's guide
You may be aware of the term UHD (Ultra-HD) or 4K, and the fact it roughly equates to twice the resolution of a ‘Full HD’ or 1080p image. UHD and 4K TVs are selling in shops, and DSLRs with video functions are touting 4K video recording… Even your smart phone might manage a 4K video function! So naturally, higher resolution = higher quality? 

The answer isn’t that simple…

Cinema Filming resolution

More and more high end cinema cameras are touting resolutions of 4K and above, and increasingly 35mm films are being scanned at 4K resolution for digital distribution. 

But this isn’t always the case…

• The industry standard Arri Alexa digital cameras have filmed at 2K resolution for years, only recently receiving an update to 2.8K resolution. In fact, a specific model is required for 4K resolution. 

• The popular RED cameras often boast 6K (and now even 8K) sensors but until recently utilised those extra pixels on the sensor to deliver a denser pixel version of 2k or 4k. 

Arri Alexa

Red ONE

Editing and Grading a DI

• Film scans have for many years been created at 2K resolution, and since the digital post-production-era have almost always been edited, graded and mastered in a 2K Digital Intermediate or “DI” (its called an ‘intermediate’ because it is the working product rather than the final delivered version, which can be either printed to film or delivered as a digital presentation). 

So, assuming the majority of cinema projections you’ve seen in the last ten years have been 2K resolution – would you say it felt the same as footage from a 1080p DSLR? Or did it feel worse than your smartphone’s 4K resolution video? Why not just buy a £400 DSLR with a nice lens and that should match the £40,000 Arri Alexa, resolution-wise – right?

Why sensor resolution isn’t everything

Ignoring the creative and technical disciplines required to make a cinematic lighting set up and the vastly expensive lenses used on cinema cameras, what about the actual camera technology differs?

Stops of dynamic range 

A comaprison of dynamic range stops on three large-sensor cameras

• Literally the cameras ability to interpret every step between the darkest and lightest parts of the image it captures. The more stops, the more detailed and ‘deep’ the image appears – because it represents a much wider range of colour, light and detail. 
• Think especially of bright backgrounds such as a summer sky, which on a consumer camera will often appear flat and single-coloured (or white-out over exposed) when captured alongside a correctly exposed foreground, versus on a professional camera it will appear with gradations of blue and white much closer to how we see it.
• For example: a typical consumer DSLR with HD video will have around 10 stops of dynamic range, whereas a digital cinema camera like the Arri Amira will have 14 stops. 

Chroma subsampling

A graphic depiction of how the channels are sampled 

• 4444 vs 4:2:2 vs 4:2:0
• All ways of the camera interpreting  chroma, luma and alpha channels of an image
• All you need to know is that a cinema camera can manage RAW 4444, representing the full range of an image; whereas a consumer camera will typically offer 422 which ‘subsamples’ to create an overall image. This offers less image complexity to work with when editing and grading. 

Compression

• Similar to the above, your DSLR or Smart phone will output even the highest resolution footage it takes in a ‘lossy’ codec such as H.264 and stored in a compression container such as MP4, AVI or mpeg-2. 
• Whilst digital cinema cameras can also output in this way, they can also output RAW footage, or uncompressed codecs optimised for editing such as Apple ProRes 4444 or Avid’s DNxHD.  
• Compression HAS to happen at some point in your production chain, but the optimal time is in the post-production phase (as you would compress digital cinema camera footage for delivery), NOT before you’ve even taken it out of your camera (as you’ll find in consumer cameras). 

8 bit vs 10 bit vs 12 bit

note the differences in the sky outside and the shadow detail around the corner of the room

• Again, like above, this represents the various levels of depth in an image. There is an effect called ‘posterisation’ where colours seem to not blend as well that is a result of 8-bit recording versus the smoother gradation of 10 or even 12 bit. 

Bit rate

• Not to be confused with the ‘bits’ above, this is literally the amount of data that is recorded every second – therefore the higher the bit rate, the more information is being captured from the sensor per-second (and most likely the less compression is taking place). 
• For example: an Arri Alexa XT has a 330mbps bit rate, versus a typical consumer/”prosumer” DSLR bit rate which varies between 30 and 100mpbs.

Log footage versus video

An example Log image being graded, note the desaturated and flat Log image versus the graded image side

• ‘Log’ footage is what digital cinema cameras (and increasing numbers of high end video DSLRs) can record their video in.
• It mimics the flat, un-saturated, low contrast image of the actual sensor, so that colour grading can work with the widest possible dynamic range. 
• LUTs (look up tables) are created for digital cinema, often to mimic the characteristics of film processing. This goes back to film days when a camera would record a ‘flat’ image to the film stock (which had its own characteristics) and then the particular processing of that film stock added a further level of character to the image.

So why bother if it can’t match up to cinema cameras?

If anything, this highlights how much more important effective lighting, sound, and production design is than resolution. 

Many great films have been made on incredibly basic camera set ups, because it’s not about the tools you use but the image captured… the important thing is not to get hung up on resolution. Lest we forget, Danny Boyle shot 28 Days Later on standard definition DV tape cameras from Canon (and we have two of them if you wanted to rent an old-school video camera)!

And a final quote from cinematography legend Roger Deakins (Skyfall, No Country For Old Men):

I was in Albuquerque shooting Sicario and they were talking about [shooting formats] and they said, “I don’t know how you feel about it, but I think we want to go on film.” And I said, you know, “I don’t mind. I’ll shoot it on a cell phone if you like. I don’t mind. I really don’t.”

Diagetic/Non-diagetic Sound

An extract from the 1967 film "Point Blank".

Still Frames in Final Cut Pro

Sometimes you might need to create a still image from a particular frame of your video. Two possible uses could be:

• Using a still in Photoshop for your poster or review designs
• 'Freezing' on a particular frame within your film for dramatic effect

There are separate ways to do this, which saves confusion!

Exporting a still for use in Photoshop and InDesign

• First make sure the playhead is at the moment you want to capture a still from (it'll be in the Canvas window)
• Go to File>Export>Using Quicktime Conversion... [See below]

• In the dialogue box that appears, make sure to select Still Image in the Format box (see below). Click Save once you've set where its saving to!

Creating a 'Freeze Frame' in your edit

• Like above, make sure your Canvas is showing the still you want to create
• Go to Modify>Make Freeze Frame (see below)

• Your newly created freeze frame will appear in the Viewer window. Simply drag it down to the timeline to add it to your edit. It can be extended or shortened as you see fit

Fixing Out of Sync Audio

In Final Cut Pro 7, sometimes when you are working with an edit the video and audio can slip out of sync - which looks like this:

A red bar with a + or - number in indicates out of sync audio

It can be frustrating trying to get it to match up again, but there is a really simple fix built into FCP.

How To Fix It:

1. Control-Click on the red box
2. Choose 'Slip into Sync'

This will automatically fix the issue! Just be sure to double check it's worked correctly before saving the changes.

Bonus Tech Tip!:

• 'Move into Sync' is only available when there's empty space to move either the audio or video in (it's possible in my above clip because there's a gap in the audio...
• ...Whereas 'Slip into Sync' works even without empty space by moving the reference clip's 'In and Out points' appropriately. Another reason to keep your workflow managed so the reference clips are neat, tidy, and easy to find!