Last month Sony Professional asked us if we wanted to have a play with their new professional 3D camera, the HXR-NX3D1 (or to be exact the HXR-N X3D1E which is the PAL variant). Of course we said a great big YES PLEASE and they invited us to Sony Basingstoke for a masterclass in 3D shooting.

In this 3 part series we will look at everything to do with 3D filmmaking. Part 1 (this one) we will look at the science of 3D shooting and the theory you need to bear in mind. In Part 2 we will look at the Sony NX3D1 itself with our detailed review and in the final part we will look at the post production side with a little write-up of Sony Vegas 11 Pro.

In these posts we will be giving you an example of shots in 3D. The chances are you don’t have a 3D monitor so we will be using the Red/Cyan Anaglyph style to display our images. To really take in all we have to offer get yourself some red/cyan anaglyph glasses from here on eBay for 99p. Or if like us you will be using them quite a bit you may want to splash out a couple of quid on some more permanent ones like these.

 

REAL 3D vs FAKE 3D

3D has taken some flack lately and it’s not without reason. 3D comes in 2 flavours. Real 3D where they film everything in stereo using a lovely big setup of 2 camera lenses converging on one point. This gives you true 3D with real depth to everything. The problem with this is it can be quite expensive to film as its so new and requires old school filmmakers to have to think differently.

The next type is the fake 3D. This is where they film in 2D like they normally do and then in post production separate those 2D scenes into multiple depth planes and using CGI create an illusion of depth. The problem with this is they often fail to add depth to the actors so their faces, where the emotion and real acting takes place just looks like a cardboard cutout. The other problem is that as most movies contain an awful lot of CGI and the CGI is often rendered in true 3D so the backgrounds and CGI are lovely and real 3D but then the actors and all the stuff filmed in the real world will appear flat and without depth. If you’ve seen the 3D pirates of the Caribbean you will know what I mean. Lovely 3D boats and monsters but a horribly flat Jack Sparrow.

For me, I love a true 3D movie and loathe having to pay extra to see a fake 3D movie which just leaves me feeling disconnected from the narrative. Thankfully the NX3D1 is a true 3D camera. Huzzah!

 

THE SCIENCE OF 3D MOVIES

The basics to how a 3D camera works is pretty much the same way your own eyes work. Two lenses at a certain distance apart record everything they see at a slightly different angle. All sounds simple enough, the issue comes when it’s time to play back the footage as all our display mediums be it a cinema screen or TV are actually 2D devices. So what we have to do is to trick our brain into thinking what it’s seeing has real depth, despite it actually having zero depth.

In the real world our eyes pick something to focus on and they both converge on that point. With 3D movies there is no real object to converge on so we simulate this using parallax.

This is where we make the viewer either focus on an image which appears on the screen itself (zero parallax), behind the screen (positive parallax) or in front of the screen (negative parallax). Take a look at this image from depthbeyond.com which gives you an idea how your eyes would work in these given scenarios.

Notice how to view things in negative parallax you need to go cross-eyed. If you’ve ever wondered why 3D movies don’t keep making things jump out of the screen for that “WOW!” 3D effect this is why. To do that and for you to try to focus on something which appears to be popping out of the screen requires you to go cross-eyed and this is never the most comfortable of positions for your eyes. This is a key part of shooting 3D, you nearly always want to make EVERYTHING look like it’s behind the screen in positive parallax for your 3D effect rather than jumping out at you.

When it comes to shooting 3D you have a number of different ways to decide what appears in front of the screen, on the screen or behind it. One way is to angle the lenses so they actually converge on an object. This can be quite tricky technically. Another is to adjust the disparity of the lenses (how far apart they are). Increase the distance between lenses to increase the depth, decrease the distance to decrease the depth. Again, this requires a mechanical movement and is also quite tricky. The way that the NX3D1 does this is to have lenses at a fixed convergence point and a fixed disparity and move the two images it records so they overlap each other. As the NX3D1 actually records an image greater than 1920×1080 it has a bit of space to do this without loosing quality. The benefit of this method is that in post production you can actually change the 3D depth. You can give things greater depth, make them appear to be coming out of the screen or going further back into the screen. Take a look at this screenshot from the 3D film we will be showing in part 3 using your red/cyan anaglyph glasses (with the red lens on the left).

On the left is how we shot it on the NX3D1 with Joshua’s little hands appearing on the screen glass at zero parallax and everything else behind it. On the right we adjusted it in post in Sony Vegas 11 using the Sony Stereoscopic 3D Adjust plugin so that his hat and face appear on the screen and his hands appear to be coming out of the screen slightly. We added some text on-screen to help demonstrate this effect. More on Vegas and doing this later. What you’re doing here is effectively adjusting the disparity. It’s the same as moving the lenses further apart or closer together. This is an absolute necessity as we found ourselves shooting and setting one thing as being at zero parallax but in post production realised we wanted something else to be at zero parallax.

 

BEWARE OF THE EDGE. THINKING ABOUT VISUAL CUES.

How we show 3D movies is all an illusion but an illusion which takes into account how you see the world. When you see depth your actually using a whole host of visual cues to help you gauge the depth. Motion, if your travelling in your car and you see things whizzing past your window you know that the closer objects will be moving faster and further away will be slower. This is down to the motion parallax visual cue. You also know that objects further away should be smaller, have less detail in their textures, maybe a little out of focus. There are a whole load of visual cues involved in 3D shooting but thank fully shooting with 2 lenses means most of these are taken care of for you.

One visual cue you absolutely must always consider when shooting 3D is that of occlusion. We know that if an object passes in front of another object then the object blocking our view of the other object must be closer. The issue we have with 3D shooting is we have the power to break that rule and therefore break the illusion. When I placed the text in the image above I was very careful to not place the text for the image on the right over Joshua’s hands. On the left it doesn’t matter, his hands are on the screen and everything else is behind it. On the right however our brains are saying “The text is on the screen and his hands are in front of it”. But if we put the text in front of  his hands we cause something called an Edge Violation. This is where our brains are being fooled into seeing something in front of the screen but then something else, like the edge of the screen or an overlay you have applied in post then appears in front of this thing which our brains are seeing as in front. Take a look at this image below;

On the left all is well. But on the right you are now going to have a hard time focusing on Joshua’s hands because your eyes and brain are having a little bit of a conflict. Your brain knows that text should not be visible and parts should disappear behind Joshua’s hands but it doesn’t. What we have done is broken the magic trick. What we expect to see is the image below;

There, doesnt that feel better? We have fixed the edge violation and maintained the illusion and it also really demonstrates how much his hands appear to be leaping out of the screen. However, if you scroll so the edge of your browser cuts off his hands you once again break the illusion and will start to get a headache. Here we have broken our occlusion depth cue.

3D cameras will have a function which lets you decide what appears in negative, positive or zero parallax. This can take the form of adjusting the angle of the lenses and thus your convergence point, adjusting the disparity between the two lenses or in the case of the NX3D1 this takes the form of a little knob just below the lenses which adjusts the way the two images overlap. Using this feature we found you want to keep everything appearing behind the screen so you adjust your camera so that the closest object is on-screen and everything else just naturally falls behind. Unless you want to make a specific object jump out of the screen like with Joshua’s little hands. We will talk more about shooting 3D with the NX3D1 in our next post.

 

TO INFINITY…

When your driving along a country road and you look out of your window you will notice how the different depth planes will be moving by at different speeds. But there comes a point where the background is just flat and has no depth. This is usually around the infinity mark on your lens. This is something to bear in mind that when shooting 3D there will come a point where there just isn’t any more 3D and nor should there be. In the real world this is because most of our visual cues are no longer effective. A key one being convergence which is most effective for distances below 10 meters. After this all textures start to look the same, perspective is the same and all our other visual cues have little or no effect. It would be possible when shooting 3D to shoot a lovely mountain scene with some depth but to do so you would have to increase the disparity (the distance between the lenses) to such a huge degree that the camera lenses would need to be meters if not miles apart.

An example of this can be seen in the 3D version of the Marvel superhero movie Thor. In this film it is filled with wonderful vistas of the mythical city of Asgard, the camera sweeps above the city and when watching in 3D you can see the depth of the buildings. However… due to your visual cues like familiar size and motion parallax your brain knows that a city of that size and viewed from this distance shouldn’t have any depth yet here it is. This ends up making you feel like the whole thing is more of a model than a huge city. To do this the CGI artists must have placed the virtual cameras at some great distance apart to give it a 3D effect when in fact they should have left it and accepted that a city of that size would have no real depth.

 

DISPLAYING 3D

This camera films in lovely 3D but can we see them in full colour 3D on our 3D TV? Absolutely YES! We have so far captured everything in stereo with one image designed for each eye but how do we get that into our brain? In the examples above we used the old-fashioned anaglyph method which using coloured filters allows one image for one eye and another image for the other eye. We use this as the chances are you won’t be reading this on a 3D capable monitor. But what if you did have a 3D capable monitor or TV? Well, it doesn’t matter as there is no standard or method for transmitting 3D footage via the internet, certainly not using a simple web browser. You see, the TV has to talk to the player. This means when you play a 3D movie on your Blu-Ray player the TV and the player talk to establish how this is going to happen, what method to use and then they work together. The same applies for your Sky HD box or Virgin TiVo box. It all gets very complex but the bottom line is… there is no way for me to show full colour 3D images or films in your browser. I would have to send you a Blu-Ray disk that you put into your home 3D theatre setup.

So you have a 3D TV, just how do they work? The most common 3D TV’s work by making you wear a pair of special active shutter glasses. These glasses are synced via a little sensor to your 3D TV so that one eye will be able to see the screen while the other will be blocked, a split second later it will swap so the other eye can now see the screen. At the same time the TV screen will display an image for the left eye and as the shutter in your glasses swaps the TV will also swap and show the image for the right eye. It does this so fast you don’t notice but the overall effect is the TV will show one image to one eye and another image to the other eye.

The other type uses those hipster glasses you use when viewing 3D movies at the cinema. Instead of the TV displaying one image and a moment later displaying the other it actually displays both at the same time. One line displaying one eyes image and the alternate line on your TV displaying the other eye. When you see the image without the glasses it just looks like a ghostly blur but with the polarized glasses combined with the polarized glass of the TV each eye sees just what it needs to see (until you tilt your head 45 degrees).

The next type is where you can view the 3D image without the need for any funny eye wear at all and this is the method the NX3D1 uses to display 3D on it’s built-in LCD screen. More on this in the next part of this 3 part series.

Each has their advantages and disadvantages and Wikipedia has everything you need on the subject if you want to know more.

 

WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT?

So what have you picked up so far? 3D filming is all an illusion and we need to do what we can to maintain that illusion. Having things fly out of the screen is all very nice and fancy but it has to be done with some consideration. Will the edge of the object be clipped by the edge of the screen? If so then this will break the illusion.

Are you shooting something off in the distance? If so then accept that it may not appear to have much of a 3D effect and adding depth by increasing the disparity or in post using the Sony Stereoscopic 3D Adjust plugin will once again just break the 3D illusion.

You can use other visual cues to enhance the 3D effect. In the examples above it wasnt always each to notice Joshua’s hands popping out of the screen. But add a nearby object like the text which appears on the zero parallax it helps your brain register that the hands and ball should be appearing in front of the screen plane.

 

To get you ready for the next part here is a neat little video from Sony Professional about the NX3D1 with some more details on the science of 3D shooting as well as a little look at the camera itself. If you look carefully enough you will see me in the background pondering.

 

In the next part we will be taking a look at the Sony NX3D1 and in the final part we will look at the post production of working with 3D as well as our latest part in our series on the life of Joshua Jackson | My First Year in 3D. Again, you will need your red/cyan anaglyph glasses to view this work.

Disclaimer: Sony are in no way sponsoring this series of posts. During our masterclass they provided us all with lunch and some very tasty mini jacket potatoes as well as a full copy of Sony Vegas Pro 11 for editing our 3D footage. The camera was given to us on loan. Unfortunately no free 3D TV’s.

-Danny

In our last behind the scenes post we spoke a little about colour grading. We have had a few people email us asking for a little help as they have tried to replicate what we suggest with mixed results. It’s important to remember that we colour grade our footage in both Sony Vegas and Final Cut Pro so it’s totally possible to replicate this in other NLE’s. Part of the key to sucessful grading is to shoot using the correct picture profile. But what is the best picture profile? Should you use standard, the flat profile others recommend or the cinestyle super flat profile? We shall look into picture profiles a little more and even show you exactly what we shoot everything with.

There are many tutorials out there which talk about picture profiles (also called picture styles) but they all seem to be based on the same theory that the flatter, the better. They also tend to be written by people who spend most of their time working on a controlled set with time to spare. But for us event filmmakers these picture profiles are less than desirable and often do more damage. I shall explain why in a moment.

 

WHAT IS A PICTURE STYLE / PROFILE

Let’s start with just what a picture profile is. For the photographers out there this may be easier to explain by saying that shooting video is a lot like shooting in JPEG mode. Your control over white-balance, exposure and all those other factors is greatly limited so its important to get a look in camera that you can work with. So just what does a picture profile do? When your cameras sensor takes an image, be it photo or video that image is processed by the camera before it’s written to the card. Part of this processing is to apply your particular picture profile to the image.

A picture profile has 4 main parts. Base picture style, sharpness, contrast and saturation. I’m not going to talk about colour tone as I haven’t really got a clue what it does and I’ve had no need to find out

Using a picture profile you have the power to make the footage you capture really contrasty, have a high saturation, no saturation at all so it’s black and white, low contrast, sharp, not so sharp. There is so much you can do and if you get it wrong then your footage and look and feel awful. But get it right and you have so much more power. What it doesn’t do is change the colour’s i.e if you want things to be blue to represent coldness or isolation. This is done using the white-balance.

First up, for those who have yet to delve into picture profiles have a watch of this to see just how you set yours.

So, in there you got to see just what our picture profile is. But we think it’s important for you to not only know what we do but why. Why did we select those settings over what everyone else tells us to use? Let’s kick things off by seeing what the most common picture styles are out there and why we decided against them;

 

STANDARD

Here is where everyone starts. The standard picture profile that is set on your camera when you take it out of the box. High contrast, high saturation and when taking your photos makes them look excellent without any work. But there in lies the problem. This picture profile is designed for photographers. When producing photos to have a high contrast, high saturation image is often desirable. They pop and look AWESOME!!! But for film this isn’t so ideal. The thing to remember about film and video is that your images wont be printed by a professional photographic studio to a standard set of rules. You will be playing your work on a TV and people set their TV’s to all sorts of different things. My parents have their contrast really low but the saturation quite high. Others have their TV’s set to automatic, dynamic contrast so it’s up and down like a tarts knickers. The bottom line is most people have their TV saturation too high and if your use the standard profile your skin will end up being super red and your blacks just crushed. High contrast footage also has a feeling of malevolence about it. Not something you want in your wedding and events films. Best thing to do is avoid.

 

FAITHFUL

This is where we sat for a long time. Very much the same as Neutral but according to the camera manual is said to be more colorimetrically correct at certain situations. What we found was that when using faithful the white-balance presets for situations i.e using cloudy when it was cloudy actually gave us inaccurate midtones (which are usually skin) which meant we had to always use a custom white balance. By switching later to basing our picture profile on Neutral we found we could once again use the presets.

 

CINESTYLE OR SUPERFLAT

This is where people tend to go next because the internets say “Cinestyle is the best and really filmic”. The best thing to do is have a read of this fantastic article by Shane Hurlbut about the Technicolor CineStyle picture style. Shane goes into great detail but I will sum it up for you. The problem with this profile is that if you were to go out and shoot an event you will end up underexposing your footage. You will shoot based on what you’re seeing on-screen but when you get it back to your editor and apply the basics to get the footage looking nice you will realise everything is a little too dark. Shane recommends switching to the Standard picture profile, setting your white balance and exposure and then switch to your CineStyle before hitting record. GREAT!… if your working on a controlled set with oodles of time but in a run and gun wedding this takes too long. While it can give you a beautiful image, assuming you know what you’re doing it’s a little too much work. A similar thing can be said about superflat profiles although in our experience superflat may give beautiful graded shots of buildings and cars but often when you have corrected the footage you are left with really muddy, fake looking skintones.

If you still want to give the CineStyle a go then hop on over to this link http://vimeo.com/23284490 where Matt Dennie has a lovely video on how to use it as well as a little write-up.

 

THE POPULAR CINEMATOGRAPHERS STYLE

NEUTRAL
Sharpness: 0
Contrast: -4
Saturation: -4
Color Tone: 0

This is probably where most people end up. A picture style where you set the base style to neutral and then knock your sharpness, contrast and saturation all the way down. For us this is where we started and it was a good start, but had its flaws. The use of the natural base curve is vital. This gives you an image where the camera is doing the least amount of processing to the image and it’s colours. This gives YOU the control. They then recommend adding sharpness, contrast and saturation back in post production. The problem we found though was that with such low saturation you would white-balance, think it’s all fine and then when you added it back in post you realised your colours were WAY off. Also the super low saturation also meant things didn’t quite work out right. Especially when you exposed for a bride in a shiny, white dress standing next to a guy in a black suite. This is where most picture profiles fail, they arent designed for weddings with such extremes in exposure. We also were never happy with the results of removing sharpness only to add it back in. Your trying to sharpen something which isn’t there. We found it best to get it right in camera.

 

THE MINTY STYLE

NEUTRAL
Sharpness: +2
Contrast: -2
Saturation: 0
Color Tone: 0

I say minty but I know others who use the same style. But for argument’s sake it’s the one we use so it’s the minty style. The key thing we realised was that your better off getting the look in camera which is pretty much how the final image will look. This means less rendering time, less to correct and an overall better look. We went for the neutral curve so that we had the control over the image and it’s colours.

We add a slight amount of sharpness over the default of zero. Again, why add it in post when you can add it in camera? We also found it easier to focus while running and gunning when you had higher sharpness. When it was too low we found ourselves sometimes missing the mark on the camera’s back screen. We didn’t find any evidence that lower sharpness improved the effects of moire or aliasing despite the interwebs saying it does. It was also a shame to remove the sharpness that our lovely lenses gives us.

Contrast is reduced just a touch. This gives us a little more dynamic range in low light situations but also doesn’t affect our exposure too much later in post. It also allowed us to retain detail in the grooms suit while still exposing for the brides dress.

Saturation was left in the middle. Again, we didn’t see the point in removing saturation only to add it back and as I mentioned previously by having a low saturation image you can often get your white balance wrong. It meant we could achieve better white balance on the day.

That’s our style. No fancy downloaded profiles, just what comes with your Canon DSLR.

 

POST PRODUCTION

So now you have this footage what do we do with it to give it the final look? Very little, we colour correct each scene as needed and then for the final look we apply an overall grade depending on the feeling we are looking to get across, a film grain and sharpness (very VERY little sharpness) and that’s pretty much it. We don’t add any contrast back in, we leave it slightly low to compensate for people’s TV sets and dynamic contrast settings. We don’t add saturation as it’s fine from the camera.

 

OUR TIPS

Dont go too flat, especially in sharpness. You will find it REALLY hard to get correct focus without using an eye piece or external monitor. We often use people’s hair to get our focus, when you see the sharp, individual strands of hair then you know you’re in focus. With sharpness too low its hard to see these and you can often miss the sweet spot.

Disable the cameras auto screen brightness. Set all of your cameras to the same level (Menu > Yellow Spanner > LCD brightness). This is VERY important! If the screen brightness is always moving up and down then you will always get your exposure wrong and if your working with multiple cameras you may think one is under exposed when it could actually just be the LCD brightness being lower. Our personal preference is to set all cameras to 6.

Get the look in camera as close to how you want the final look as possible. The less work you have to do the quicker your renders and the better your shots will look generally.

When previewing your work on your TV disable all dynamic contrast or auto adjustment settings. Most modern TV’s will change the image brightness and contrast based on what is being displayed. This can mean the TV will make things look under or over exposed depending on what is going on in your image. Like shooting on your camera the auto get’s things wrong. Turn it off.

Ignore all advice, even our own. The best thing is to find a profile which works for you, your shooting style and your editing capabilities. Not everyone works with colour curves in Apple Colour or uses magic bullet. Play around with the various options and see which gives you an image you are happy with and you can easily work with.

Remember, any changes you make to your picture profile will also mean you need to change your post production too.

-Danny

Some of you may be wondering how you get the password for the blog post below or what it’s even about. Well I shall tell you.

In the post below we talk about getting started with short form edits but not only that, we also have one of our full films for you to watch. For free!

All you need to do to get your password is sign up here http://www.mintyslippers.com/thesociety/. Don’t worry, your not committing to anything. We will just send you emails about our latest educational blog posts, behind the scenes videos and details about the Society of Movement event when they become available.

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In our behind the scenes posts we like to tell you all about the thoughts that go through our heads when we’re shooting and just what we do in post production.

In this one we will be talking about our biggest production to date and our first destination wedding. We will be looking at the wedding of Andrew and Jessica.

 

GETTING TO A DESTINATION WEDDING

Usually when we film a wedding we have a car filled with Steadicam, tripods, monopods, sliders and camera gear. Now, we have a baggage limit which not only has to accommodate our gear but our shorts and shoes too. What’s more, we didn’t want to compromise our work by using a restricted gear list.

We decided that after getting to know Andrew and Jessica (and knowing what their friends would be like from a previous wedding) that we would most likely have a high energy piece on our hands. The meant we were going to use the tripods very little and the monopods more as the natural movement they inject into your shots lends itself to high energy productions. So, we packed two Manfrotto BHDV561 monopods and 1 tripod as well as the Steadicam and slider into our check in baggage. All wrapped in bubble wrap and packed in-between the socks and pants we spread the weight across all our baggage.

We decided that everything we need to film a wedding would come with us in the carry-on, just in-case the luggage gets lost. Each of us had a Lowepro Fastpack 350 for our 3 DSLR bodies, lenses, audio and filters. Just be warned, when it comes to the x-ray they may need you to empty your bag, windjammers and all.

Let’s get started, first up have a watch of this so the rest makes sense;

 

BROADCAST FILTER?

One of the filters we use on the entire timeline in ALL our projects is the broadcast filter. That’s what its called in Sony Vegas (yes, we use Vegas) but I’m sure each NLE has its own equivalent. This does a few things to the footage but the main reason we use this is to limit the luminance of our footage. We eluded to this in our last behind the scenes post but will now go into it in a bit more depth. If you ever use the video scopes in your editor you will notice that the highlights in your HD footage goes over 100 and creates what is known as superbrights. If you were to play this back on your parents super old TV set the chances are when a superbright is visible the TV will make a high pitched squeal and maybe just go white. The broadcast filter allows us to limit the brightness to 100, within safe limits for broadcast. But what we use it for is to change the footage aesthetics. Often we limit our luminance to around 90 and in some cases 80. If you ever load a Hollywood DVD into your editor and view the video scopes you will notice the luminance is around 90. The key thing this does is make the footage more comfortable to watch but for us DSLR peeps it can give the illusion of improved dynamic range and removes distractions. Have a good look at the image below (click for a full resolution version)

And here is what our video scopes look like for this particular scene. Notice the highlights max out at 90 (click for a full resolution version).

Let’s talk about distractions. Here’s a fun fact; The human eye will always be drawn to the brightest object in any given scene be this luminance or colour. Ever notice how the fire extinguisher in your shots seems to be the first thing you notice? Now look at our image above, what is one of the first things you notice? The really bright seat in front of Andrews stomach or any of the other highlights coming off the boat? This wasn’t what I wanted our viewers to notice, it’s a distraction and it’s important to remove distractions so the viewer can focus on what you want them to. This is part of the reason we use DSLRs with shallow depth of field as it allows us to use focus to remove distractions and tell you what we want you to look at. If we wanted to remove these while shooting we would have to lower the exposure but this would underexpose our subject, boat captain Andy.

Now take a look at the second image, notice how the distracting highlights are gone? Also, to watch the footage back on TV is soooo much more comfortable. The lower luminance also adds to our filmic look.

Another way to limit your luminance if you don’t have a broadcast filter is to use a colour curves and bring down highlights for all channels.

UPDATE: In Adobe CS5 and 5.5 use the ‘Video Limiter’ effect and set the ‘Luma Max’ to your desired level to achieve the same result.

 

COLOUR GRADING (OR COLOR DEPENDING ON WHERE YOU LIVE)

We colour grade EVERYTHING! The aim though is that your average Joe shouldn’t notice it’s been graded. All too often, and the old MintySlippers is guilty of this is we used to apply a random ‘cool’ grade to a clip for no obvious reason. We also used to make awful decisions about the colour we would use. One minute the footage would be normal and then ‘BAM!’. It would have a green tint. Why? We have no idea, it was there in magic bullets so we used it. We now know what the colour green says to your viewer… And it’s not a colour you want in a wedding video.

Let’s look at a typical grade and why we use it. In the scene below we have the raw clip on the left and the graded clip on the right. Open it up and have a look.

This was a Steadicam shot and we exposed the scene for where the camera would end up. The reason for this is the finish was in sunlight and would be overexposed, once you do this the footage is lost but I knew I could boost the brightness of anything underexposed. Therefore the first thing we had to do was to boost the brightness of the clip using levels. Next, as the brightness comes up you loose some colour so applied a 3 way colour corrector to increase saturation. Finally we had to fix the white balance as it was configured for the lovely, sunny finish point. We also wanted to make it feel much ‘happier’ and one way to do this is to make the image warmer. The final plugin we used was the colour curves. With this we lifted the centre of the red curve upwards and the centre of the blue curve down, ever so slightly. This adds a subtle warmth of the scene. Et voila!

Let’s take another scene, Andrew getting ready. Click for a full size view.

The thought at the time of shooting was to show what Andrew was doing. The issue we had was Andrew was standing in front of a huge window with the Caribbean sun behind him. The result would have been a very VERY backlit scene. This isn’t a problem though, you can still get across what is going on without traditional methods. A simple silhouette can show just what is happening. To achieve this we exposed for the outside and let the inside become mere darkness. As you can see from the image on the left it wasn’t quite a silhouette and thanks to the filtered glass windows the scene was a little more St Albans than St Maarten. So to fix this we use the levels to crush the lowlights and make the blacks really black. We then used NewBlueFX tint to easily add blue to the image. Normally a tint will affect skin-tones but thanks to the silhouette we we have no such issue.

The same principles are applied to all our scenes with the goal to always make it look natural and not scream out that it’s been graded. In the final example we had to make this one look as sunny and bright as the previous shots as the sun went in and the jump from bright and sunny to dull would have been jarring to the viewer. For this one we didnt want to colour the whole scene so decided against the NewBlueFX Tint. Instead we used the colour curves and brought up the centre of the blue curve. We then used a 3 way colour corrector to increase overall saturation. Again, if this had skintones the skin would end up being too orange.

As well as handling each individual clip we apply a series of secret sauce filters to the entire timeline and thus affecting all clips. These are a mix of colour curves, 3way colour corrector, broadcast filter, sharpen, film grain and more. The end result is a single clip can be graded by 9 or more filters.

 

SILENT MOVIES ARE SO 1894

The aim for most of us is to have the viewer create a connection with what they are watching but this is almost impossible without any natural audio and just a piece of music. Having a link between what we see and what we hear helps us form a connection. Sometimes the song can do this but natural audio is the real magic key. It helps the viewer pick up the vibe for what’s going on and done right you can even use the natural audio from a scene as well as music AND VoiceOver.

Have a watch of the video below. To start off with we have the typical wedding video situation of music and a VoiceOver and no natural background sound. Then, we add in element like the sea, waves, Avery and Riley playing and a fire.

Visually identical but which one did you ‘feel’ a greater connection with?

Excluding the natural audio can also make what people are watching feel jarring, especially in the form of loose jawing. This is where you see someone talking but hear no words. Your brain is screaming out “what’s being said? What’s the conversation?”. We often try and avoid showing any lips moving unless you can hear something. This doesn’t have to be anything audioable, it could just be background conversation noise. Also try and remember your distractions, do you want the natural audio to be a distraction? If not turn it down and make it there but only just.

That’s it for this tutorial. What we hope to achieve through these is to help you to think differently. All too often we focus on the technical and forget how something feels. By removing the harshness of highlights, warming up an image and using audio to help form a connection we help our work ‘feel’ differently. Try removing blues from your image, lower the contrast or include some background sound and see how it feels.

What would you like to see from future tutorials. Let us know in the comments below.

-Danny