my short

[jzakko]

just made a 2 1/2 min short this past summer at a new york film academy summer program. I'm not perfectly happy with it, but i'll resist the temptation to point out all it's flaws to anybody who's about to watch it. Any feedback would be appreciated.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acVTK18Obx0

Thanks for watching

[jeclark2006]

just made a 2 1/2 min short this past summer at a new york film academy summer program. I'm not perfectly happy with it, but i'll resist the temptation to point out all it's flaws to anybody who's about to watch it. Any feedback would be appreciated.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acVTK18Obx0

Thanks for watching

Get rid of the Olympia... that's a writer's blocking device...

But on a more technical note. How was the monochrome achieved. To me it seemed like the image was far flatter than I like to see B&W. Did the fellow have a tanned face?
There's a shot where he has his fingers to his chin, thinking no doubt... but the fingers look to be a stop higher in value...

If the original film stock was color, and you used simple desaturation in the digital editing portion, I'd recommend looking into a method called 'channel mixing', which to me better represents what 'real(tm)' B&W would do, rather than the simple desaturation. And I also prefer a little more contrast as well.

Shaky cam... especially on 'zoomed in subjects'... I could live without that...

The hot spot on the fellows right (his right) side was a bit distracting.

[jzakko]

Get rid of the Olympia... that's a writer's blocking device...

But on a more technical note. How was the monochrome achieved. To me it seemed like the image was far flatter than I like to see B&W. Did the fellow have a tanned face?
There's a shot where he has his fingers to his chin, thinking no doubt... but the fingers look to be a stop higher in value...

If the original film stock was color, and you used simple desaturation in the digital editing portion, I'd recommend looking into a method called 'channel mixing', which to me better represents what 'real(tm)' B&W would do, rather than the simple desaturation. And I also prefer a little more contrast as well.

Shaky cam... especially on 'zoomed in subjects'... I could live without that...

The hot spot on the fellows right (his right) side was a bit distracting.

Thanks for the feedback. I didn't actually consider the main character to have writer's block. I just thought of him as an aspiring writer with delusions of his own brilliance, but no talent, but I see what you're saying, the 'writer at a typewriter trying to think of an idea' thing is trite. I shot this on b&w negative, and to be honest, expected more contrast. I lit it with hard light, but this short, I found a different lab. The previous three, we shot on reversal, and NYFA transferred it with the lowest quality transfer you could possibly imagine, it looked like video from the 80's, shots that are sharp on the film were out of focus with the transfer, and every black was completely crushed. So I guess I was a little conservative with shadows because of prior experiences. The shaky cam is probably my biggest problem with the cinematography of the short, I'm not sure what I was thinking. If I remember correctly, it was awkward to set up those shots with the tripod, and out of laziness I just shot them handheld, so stupid. I'm not sure which hot spot you're referring to, the window?

[jeclark2006]

I shot this on b&w negative, and to be honest, expected more contrast.

What stock was it. This could just be a problem with looking at a 'negative', developed for a 'flatter' contrast, with the expectation that several generations of interpositive/internegatives, will be required to get it to the screen, and so, each generation ads an amount of 'contrast'.

Since you are going direct to digitization, you will need to boost the contrast to the desired value for the presentation.

Since I've never shot 'movie film'... this sort of area is sort of theoretical. However, I have done years worth of B&W stills. In the beginning I did a number of Zone System type calibrations to allow me to set a personal 'ISO' value, neg developer and time, paper type and printing process to come up with approximately 'expected results'.

In that regard I did shoot a little 'movie' color film stock as 35mm stills, it's been so long, but early 70's vintage Kodak..., and the usual result was 'flatter' than what was used for standard still 35mm film. The 'explanation' was due to the above mentioned generations of internegs, etc. But as it was, 'color was not my bag baby'...

[jzakko]

What stock was it.

Kodak 7222, I didn't know intermediates increased contrast.

[jeclark2006]

What stock was it.

Kodak 7222, I didn't know intermediates increased contrast.

Here's a discussion of negative film, gamma, and related info.

http://www.acvl.org/digital_intermediates/dicompanion/ch02.html

In your case you are not proceeding to generate more 'film' prints, but rather want to correctly interpret the digitized image. In looking up this info, my memory was jogged about what formats are 'typical' for scanning film...

The Kodak Cineon or SMPTE DPX seem to be popular when discussion movie film scanning.

I don't know if your material was scanned to this sort of standard, or if you were just given something like a H.264 file...

You should have gotten a file with the Cineon (or the DPX) codecs, and usually the data is in 'log' format.

In any case, the 'gamma' of the Kodak B&W 7222 neg film that you used is the 'standard' 0.6 (or there abouts...), and will look 'flatter' when just viewed 'naked'. (I looked up the specs from the Kodak page...)

If you got a 10 bit log Cineon scan there should be enough bit depth for you to rescale the image to 'boost' contrast. If it was an H.264... well banding may result.

Since I haven't had any experience with dealing with 'scanning' negatives, etc. This is just from what I have gleaned about the process, to understand what 'pro' production processes are.