Hey all, thanks for the responses – I appreciate your input.
It turns out that I’m gonna use this camera for shooting as well, and since I have some money coming in from my tax return I’ll probably be able to spend between 400 and 750 dollars. Is there a particular MiniDV camera you’d recommend that’s in this price range?
I’m hoping for the best possible image quality.
Also, another question: where’s the best place online to buy a camera like this? Since MiniDV cameras are fairly common these days, it seems like I’d be able to get a good deal on one.
Recently I shot many rolls of Super 8, but the camera that I was using turned out to be a bit defective, so the resulting footage (which I’m putting together in digital video) is vertically jumpy.
Downloaded the demo for the application iStabilize and running the bouncy footage through it seems to be the perfect solution to this problem.
But before buying iStabilize, I was wondering what others thought of it, and whether anyone had recommendations for other image stabilizers for the Mac.
iStabilize looks pretty good, but I’m not at all experienced with these sort of things, so any input on this matter would be appreciated.
T., did you mean to say the Canon HV30? (A quick search for “Panasonic HV30” didn’t yield much.)
Also, isn’t the threading of most 35mm lenses brand-specific, such that you can only, for example, use a Nikon lens on a Nikon camera? The reason I ask is that I’m curious if the HV30 in question has an adapter that allows for any number of different lenses made from different companies so long as they are 35mm.
I was wondering if there’s an effective, reasonably priced application for the Mac that’ll remove unwanted specks and debris from transferred film footage.
Currently I’m using Final Cut Express. Most of the footage that I have in mind is comprised of “still” shots with little to no camera movement, so it seems feasible that I’d be able to run it through a program of some sort that would be able to detect the presence of a speck or splotch and do something like copy the same tiny region of the unblemished frame before or after it and then paste this on top of the offending area. (I have no idea how the hell these things work, so pardon my crude description.)
Surely most post-production houses have high-end programs like this at their disposal, but I’m wondering if there’s a comparable application or plugin for the low-budget freelance filmmaker.
Also, if one was feeling ambitious and had enough time and wanted to do this sort of thing “by hand” (on a frame by frame basis, in a Photoshop sort of setting), what would be the best way of going about such an endeavor?
I’m thinking of getting the footage retransferred, actually, because even after running what I’ve got through iStabilize, it looks a little warped, thanks to the lab’s rushjob. (Never using Cinelab again… If you’ve got any recommendations for good places to get film [Super 8 and 16mm] transferred to digital video, I’m all ears. A while back I used Yale Film & Video and they did a good job so I’m thinking of going through them again.)
Anyway, now that I’ve altered the files from the image sequence, how do I turn them back into a movie once they’re imported?
[Ray Carney] has been pestering the Cassavetes family to “release” the first assemblage of “Shadows” — claiming it’s the original “true” version.
Carney has never claimed that the original, 1957/1958 edit of Shadows- which he miraculously recovered after it had been missing for decades - is thee definitive version.
Go ahead and comb the internets all you want — you will not find him saying anything of the sort.
Instead, Carney has argued that the first version of Shadows- which, I might add, was not considered a work-in-progress at the time of its release - is simply worthy of being seen; that anyone who has an interest in the films of John Cassavetes might appreciate being able to watch both versions should she feel so inclined.
Since Cassavetes has said on record that if the first version surfaced it should be “allowed to be shown at any time,” it seems especially idiotic that Criterion and Rowlands have done their best to ignore and suppress it.
Indeed, it would have been a masterstroke on their part to have included the earlier version of Shadows in the John Cassavetes: Five Films boxset, which definitely seems lacking in the quality “extras” department.
Personally, I believe the divisive factor here — the main reason they didn’t include it — was money, seeing as how Carney may have been entitled to some had the original print been allowed an official release, and seeing as how its presence in the world at large might, from an economic standpoint, undermine the value of the 1959 version.
He also operates [under] the delusion that there is a connection between Cassavetes and Frank Capra.
Cassavetes once said that when he was younger all he wanted to do was make films like Frank Capra.
Ever seen Too Late Blues ? It’s quite a forgettable film but nothing if not Capra-esque.
Also, aside from Carl Dreyer, Frank Capra was Cassavetes’ favorite filmmaker.
Though formally and stylistically the two artists are generally worlds apart, there is arguably a thematic link between them as well, though I don’t at all care to elaborate on that.
Apparently the HV40 records in 24p. (I had thought the HV30 did as well, but I just learned that instead it records in something like 24f — a fake 24p???) T. would know a hell of a lot more about this than I do.
Another difference – the HV40 records on HDV (and not MiniDV) tapes.
At any rate…
So far, I like my HV30, but the built-in mic isn’t very good at all.
And I must say, since the aspect ratio of the project that I’m working on is 4:3, it would be nice if the HV30 would record high-definition video to 4:3 instead of just 16:9. (I guess the dimensions are 1440 × 1080, though, but the HDV pixels are rectangular and not square, so that’s why it looks the way it does.)
Since I’m still learning the basics of Final Cut, I need to figure out the best way to routinely crop the sides off of a 16:9 image to make it 4:3. (I know there’s a crop tool, but perhaps there’s a more “systematic” way of doing this.)
Various Artists – The Northern Soul of New Orleans, Volume 1
Swell Maps – In Jane From Occupied Europe + A Trip to Marineville
Seefeel – Quique + damn near everything else
The Great Unwashed – Collection
Experimental Audio Research – The Koner Experiment
El Michels Affair – Sounding Out the City
Bottomless Pit – Congress
The Feelies – The Good Earth + Crazy Rhythms
Cath Carroll – True Crime Hotel
CAN – Ege Bamyasi + Future Days
Arthur Russell – World of Echo + Love is Overtaking Me
Bert Jansch – s/t + Birthday Blues + damn near everything else
Lungfish – Sound In Time + Indivisible
Pierre Bastien – Meccanoid
Pere Ubu – Dub Housing + The Modern Dance + “Heaven”
Devo – Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!
Guided By Voices – Alien Lanes
Jacques Dutronc – Complètement Dutronc
V/A – Ethiopiques, Vol. 8: Swinging Addis
Spare Snare – Live at Home
Buzzcocks – Spiral Scratch + Operator’s Manual
Gas – Pop + Königsforst
Josef K – Entomology
ESG – Come Away With
The Monks – Black Monk Time
Luigi Nono – La Fabbrica Illuminata…
Syd Barrett – The Madcap Laughs
The Clean – Anthology + Vehicle
Squarepusher – Hard Normal Daddy
Joy Division – Closer
Leonard Cohen – first three albums
Modern English – After the Snow
The Homosexuals – Astral Glamour
Prurient – Church of Ammunition
Linton Kwesi Johnson – Forces of Victory
Gang of Four – Peel Sessions
Young Marble Giants – Colossal Youth
Autechre – LP 5
The Haters – Mind the Gap
Bedhead – Transaction de Novo
Brian Eno – Another Green World + Discreet Music
Lee Hazlewood – Requiem For An Almost Lady
Frederic Chopin – Nocturnes
Vashti Bunyan – Just Another Diamond Day
The Smiths – The World Won’t Listen
Lennie Hibbert – Creation
Mindflayer – Take Your Skin Off
Shellac – At Action Park
Cabaret Voltaire – first four albums
Dmitri Shostakovich – string quartets, any of them!
Wire – first three albums + Document & Eyewitness
Francoise Hardy – The Vogue Years + La Question
Subjex – Supersonic Mezze
Bad Brains – Black Dots
Erik Satie – Piano Works
Broadcast – Work And Non-Work
The Bats – Daddy’s Highway
Delta 5 – Singles & Sessions 1979-81
Jorge Ben – Africa Brazil
Disciples of Annihilation – New York City Speedcore
Burning Star Core – Challenger
The Raincoats – Odyshape
That’s the best I could do at this ungodly hour while going over my iTunes.
Have a lot single tracks (especially funk and soul) culled from different albums and compilations, but listing those would take forever and this list is already long enough.
One drastic difference between the two artists is that Tarkovsky had a tendency to regard the edit as a crutch, something generally to be avoided because it interrupted the viewer’s experience of the flow of time as it naturally passed through a shot.
By contrast editing figured quite prominently (and successfully) in establishing the rhythms of Bresson films, and Bresson rarely used long takes.
If you’re a sexually obsessed gay dude with an overactive imagination, you might very well believe that Jesus dangling from the cross is a homoerotic gesture.
That’s your right—we’re all entitled to our impressions—but for what it’s worth it strikes me as unflatteringly absurd that any number of queer-oriented cineasts would feel an overriding need to talk about Bresson’s oeuvre in gay terms, as if the value of his films has anything to do with a certain cross-section of people’s over-identification with their own sexuality.
It seems misguided and reductive, but above all, as a kind of thematic framework, I just don’t buy it, anymore than I would subscribe to the notion that there’s something legitimately gay about me hugging my best friend.
Also, this feeble speculation regarding Bresson’s orientation is in poor taste, particularly given that it prompts the resurfacing of an unsubstantiated rumor that he was a “gigolo” in his youth. (These sort of assertions say more about the people making them than they do the subject at hand, and if you don’t feel like a fool for making them…well, I suppose that’s its own punishment.)
I liked Rear Window quite a lot when I was a kid, but it’s been almost ten years since I’ve had any use for the films of Sir Alfred.
He was a brilliant craftsman, and I can understand why plenty of people (including some filmmakers I happen to like) admire his movies, but if “pure cinema” exists, I imagine it would be a lot less corny and clichéd than anything by Hitchcock.
Jon Jost’s Frameup is one of my favorite films of all time.
Not long ago I asked the director if Frameup will ever be properly reissued, and he had this to say:
“I am going to be making an HD or maybe 2K digital of LAST CHANTS FOR A SLOW DANCE, and as some circumstances have arisen where maybe it will be appropriate, I am going to try to get a handful of archives to go together to try to appeal to HS Rosenthal, purported producer of said films, though the truth is quite another story, to let the original negs of SURE FIRE, VERMEERS, THE BED YOU SLEEP IN and FRAMEUP all be digitalized. I have had no access to those films since 1994 and the DVDs of them are rather bad and FRAMEUP only ever had a really crappy VHS. All courtesy of HSR. I have a really lousy DVD of FRAMEUP made off the VHS. It’s better than the VHS, but if you start with a good film, turn it into electronic shit, and you have to work off that, well….”
Wim Wenders has made more than a few undeniably great films:
Alice in the Cities The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick Wings of Desire The Wrong Move Room 666 Kings of the Road Paris, Texas The State of Things
The American Friend is also worthwhile, and his recent Twelve Miles to Trona short (from this compilation) was pretty good too.
Plus, I have yet to watch many of his lesser known efforts, and it wouldn’t at all surprise me if there happened to be some neglected gems in there.
Yes, the likes of End of Violence and The Million Dollar Hotel are not very good movies, but as far as I’m concerned if someone makes a film as powerful and inspired as Wings of Desire, he can do whatever the hell he wants afterwards and still be considered one of the better filmmakers of his generation.
Also, I don’t know much about Wenders’s personal life (and frankly, I don’t care to), but if I had to guess, I’d say the apparent decline in the quality of his output has more to do with him becoming hugely successful than it does a change in personal beliefs.
Just to clarify things, I believe this is the film we’re talking about, yes?
I managed to catch The Holy Girl while it was doing the rounds in theaters a little while back, and I remember it being quite good, even funny here and there, but so far that’s all I’ve seen by Lucrecia Martel.
If James Quandt says The Headless Woman is the best film of the year, that’s enough to pique my interest. (Quandt’s video essays in the Three Films by Hiroshi Teshigahara boxset are extraordinary, and the Robert Bresson book he edited for the Cinemateque Ontario is a must-have tome, despite a few so-so essays.)
As far as The Headless Woman getting booed at Cannes…We should never forget that when L’avventura premiered there, the audience was so insensitive toward the film that they began making fun of it, eventually causing Monica Vitti to break down and cry. The moral of the story: just because a film is playing at a “world-class” festival doesn’t mean it’s being screened before a “world-class” audience.
I still have my HV30, and plan to use it in the coming weeks on this project that I’ve been putting together.
I’m a Mac user, and the film I’m making is a mixed-format experimental narrative.
Since my transferred Super 8 and 16mm footage came back from the lab as Apple ProRes 422 (HQ), I’ve decided to settle on that as the format for my movie and timeline in Final Cut Pro 7.
Because of this, I’ve been trying, ahead of time, to get all of my footage in 23.976fps at 1920×1080 (with square pixels).
The HV30 records at 29.97fps at 1440×1080, using rectangular pixels…but I guess it can be imported in 1920×1080 somehow, by using the HDMI output, though I know nothing about this.
After combing the HV20/30/40 forum in search of the best way to remove pulldown, I came across a link for a free application from Apple called JES Deinterlacer.
I have never used After Effects, which I’m sure is superior, but so far, JES Deinterlacer seems decent, and I’ve already used it to successfully convert the HV30 footage into 24p at 1920×1080, so I know that it works and might even recommend it.
So there’s that.
Also…
I have yet to come across a standardized way for creating pillar boxes in 16:9 footage such that they yield a perfect 4:3 aspect ratio. (Since I’m using transferred Super 8 and 16mm footage, along with the HDV, I’ve decided make everything, even the video, in 4:3 with black pillar boxes on either side.)
I think I’m gonna call Phil at Pro 8mm tomorrow and ask him how exactly they do it— I’ve captured still images of the transferred footage they gave me, and determined that the pillar boxes are each 240 pixels across and 1080 pixels high, but I’m curious how exactly they make them.
For instance, in Final Cut, you can create pillar boxes by clicking the Motion tab, then the Crop section, and putting certain values in the “Left” and “Right” fields. BUT (!) I’ve found that these aren’t entirely precise: When I enter 12.5 in both fields, this seems very close, but when I zoom the cropped footage to 500% and compare the edges to that of the still images with the 240×1080 boxes on both sides, there’s a slight (albeit negligible) discrepancy.
Okay, I just talked to someone at Pro 8mm, and he said they create their pillar boxes during the transfer with the Da Vinci.
Phil wasn’t in, so I wasn’t able to get the exact specifications for the pillar box dimensions, but it would seem, based on the transferred footage I’ve got, that they are each, as mentioned in the previous post, 240×1080.
Being a novice at digital editing, I don’t yet know how to create mattes, but I think matting the pillarboxes onto the footage that needs them would be the best way to go.
I tend to agree with this: The same shot or edit can have entirely different meanings depending on its surrounding context.
A friend of mine, after finishing his debut feature, commented on a particular scene in which he filmed, from downward angles, two characters talking on a couch, saying, “If I had the chance to do the film over again, I would never shoot this scene like this.” When I asked him why, he said something to the effect that anytime one shoots people from above their heads, it implies a certain superiority of the director over his characters, and since he didn’t feel that he was “above” his characters or their dilemmas, it would be disingenuous of him to consciously shoot them from downward angles. (His movie was made in roughly a week, amidst strained conditions, so he didn’t have time to contemplate each shot and its supposed implications.)
While I can appreciate this approach, personally I reject this sort of “shot psychology.” When I film someone’s face, for instance, I’m mostly interested in finding a good angle to bring out the uniqueness of its bone structure. If I like the way the light hits a person’s skin from a certain angle, and the composition looks nice—assuming I’m trying to make an agreeable film—whether the camera is placed above or below her is of very little consequence. Similarly, if I spontaneously film garbage men taking out the trash from my third story window, to me, it doesn’t mean that I’m looking down on them in any way but literally.
I was wondering if any of you film/videomakers have suggestions for going from high-definition video to DVD.
I have a 1080p video in ProRes 422 (HQ) and I’m trying to make a reasonably decent DVD from it, but so far everything I’ve tried has yielded less than flattering results.
I understand that there’s an inherent loss of quality in going from high-definition video to DVD, but still, there must be a way to make a better DVD than this. (I went from ProRes 422 (HQ) to H.264 to MPEG-2. The applications I have at my disposal are FCP7, Compressor, Toast Titanium 10, and iDVD.)
I only went to H.264 because I heard it was a good intermediary codec, but now I’m getting the impression that I should export the video from FCP7 in its original, 1080p format and let Compressor do the rest.
It would be nice if we could devise an optimal workflow for going from a high-definition format to DVD because surely there are plenty of others out there who would also benefit from knowing this.
Recently, I asked a friend of mine, and here’s what he had to say:
If you have to export self authored programming to DVD in order to create a screener etc., you should be able to use FCP and iDVD…. but yeah I recall the results were much less than flattering (as you yourself have found) but quite acceptable using the high-quality 2-pass preset in Compressor, set timeline for 16:9, Motion Estimation Quality/rate conversion to BEST, video format 29.97,… it’s been a while so I don’t recall. But some trial and error in Compressor should yield okay’ish results…
Any further suggestions from anyone else would be appreciated.
I did some more trial and error and managed to get pretty good results simply exporting my video from Final Cut Pro in its original format and making a DVD of it straight from Compressor using the optimal settings.
Now I feel immensely stupid because it was easy as pie, and in retrospect I have no idea why I was fucking around with H.264 in the first place. (I guess one would only use H.264 if he was burning a BluRay disc, but Compressor would handle the conversion anyway.)
In answer to your questions, the project is (or rather will be) roughly 25 minutes. I would post a comparison between the 422 (HQ) and the MPEG-2, but it’s too early in the game for me to share screengrabs.
1. Nobody Knows – Hirokazu Kore-Eda
2. The Man Without a Past – Aki Kaurismäki
3. The Son – Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
4. Schizo – Gulshat Omarova
5. Goodbye Dragon Inn – Tsai Ming-liang
6. Crimson Gold – Jafar Panahi
7. The Taste of Tea – Katsuhito Ishii
8. Lights in the Dusk – Aki Kaurismäki
9. The Time of the Wolf – Michael Haneke
10. The Ninth Day – Volker Schlöndorff
There are still many movies from this decade that I haven’t seen, though, and since I’ve been out of film school for over seven years I’ve had minimal access to “experimental”/“avant-garde” cinema, so I’m largely clueless there.
Incidentally, has anyone caught Peter Mettler’s poetic 2002 documentary Gambling, Gods, and LSD? My friend Trond recommended it to me and though I’m only halfway through it I’m pleased to report that it’s very rewarding. Mettler’s movie deals obliquely with “spiritual” fulfillment in the modern world and covers a wide variety of subject matter. Some of the video footage is so-so and just a tad amateurish, but the film images are uniformly striking and often hypnotic. Will be interesting to see how it all concludes.
I think my favorite documentary from this decade is The Bridge. Suicide is morbid territory, but the The Bridge is exceptionally well structured and loaded with insights. Waffles are in order for the cheesy swelling synth music—which (like most mood music) seems tacked on and unnecessary—but the interviews with the witnesses and survivors are quite fascinating… definitely the sort of movie that makes one appreciate life so much more after viewing it.
Appreciation over 3 years ago
Bresson’s the best.
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PLEASE RECOMMEND A REASONABLY GOOD, INEXPENSIVE DV CAMERA... about 3 years ago
…that one could use for the sole purpose of transferring footage from MiniDV tapes to his computer.
This camera shouldn’t be too costly, but it should be reliably functional.
I’m looking for a DV camera that probably doesn’t have a fancy lens or all that much in the way of special features.
I won’t be using this to shoot anything.
Instead I’ll be using it to import DV footage into my iMac.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
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PLEASE RECOMMEND A REASONABLY GOOD, INEXPENSIVE DV CAMERA... about 3 years ago
Hey all, thanks for the responses – I appreciate your input.
It turns out that I’m gonna use this camera for shooting as well, and since I have some money coming in from my tax return I’ll probably be able to spend between 400 and 750 dollars. Is there a particular MiniDV camera you’d recommend that’s in this price range?
I’m hoping for the best possible image quality.
Also, another question: where’s the best place online to buy a camera like this? Since MiniDV cameras are fairly common these days, it seems like I’d be able to get a good deal on one.
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IMAGE STABILIZERS about 3 years ago
Recently I shot many rolls of Super 8, but the camera that I was using turned out to be a bit defective, so the resulting footage (which I’m putting together in digital video) is vertically jumpy.
Downloaded the demo for the application iStabilize and running the bouncy footage through it seems to be the perfect solution to this problem.
But before buying iStabilize, I was wondering what others thought of it, and whether anyone had recommendations for other image stabilizers for the Mac.
iStabilize looks pretty good, but I’m not at all experienced with these sort of things, so any input on this matter would be appreciated.
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PLEASE RECOMMEND A REASONABLY GOOD, INEXPENSIVE DV CAMERA... about 3 years ago
T., did you mean to say the Canon HV30? (A quick search for “Panasonic HV30” didn’t yield much.)
Also, isn’t the threading of most 35mm lenses brand-specific, such that you can only, for example, use a Nikon lens on a Nikon camera? The reason I ask is that I’m curious if the HV30 in question has an adapter that allows for any number of different lenses made from different companies so long as they are 35mm.
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REMOVING SPECKS AND DEBRIS about 3 years ago
Hello.
I was wondering if there’s an effective, reasonably priced application for the Mac that’ll remove unwanted specks and debris from transferred film footage.
Currently I’m using Final Cut Express. Most of the footage that I have in mind is comprised of “still” shots with little to no camera movement, so it seems feasible that I’d be able to run it through a program of some sort that would be able to detect the presence of a speck or splotch and do something like copy the same tiny region of the unblemished frame before or after it and then paste this on top of the offending area. (I have no idea how the hell these things work, so pardon my crude description.)
Surely most post-production houses have high-end programs like this at their disposal, but I’m wondering if there’s a comparable application or plugin for the low-budget freelance filmmaker.
Also, if one was feeling ambitious and had enough time and wanted to do this sort of thing “by hand” (on a frame by frame basis, in a Photoshop sort of setting), what would be the best way of going about such an endeavor?
Thanks,
Dave
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PLEASE RECOMMEND A REASONABLY GOOD, INEXPENSIVE DV CAMERA... about 3 years ago
Well, I received the HV30 in the mail this week, and so far I like it just fine.
It’s surprisingly compact, like a small pet that I have to be mindful not to trample.
Bought a lens hood and a UV filter and I’m thinking of procuring an external mic. Any suggestions?
Should probably also get a case for it.
And yes, a tutorial of the sort you described would be appreciated, but no rush on that.
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REMOVING SPECKS AND DEBRIS about 3 years ago
The original source was film, Super 8 Tri-X.
I’m thinking of getting the footage retransferred, actually, because even after running what I’ve got through iStabilize, it looks a little warped, thanks to the lab’s rushjob. (Never using Cinelab again… If you’ve got any recommendations for good places to get film [Super 8 and 16mm] transferred to digital video, I’m all ears. A while back I used Yale Film & Video and they did a good job so I’m thinking of going through them again.)
Anyway, now that I’ve altered the files from the image sequence, how do I turn them back into a movie once they’re imported?
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So when is Cassavetes gonna get an Auteurs profile? about 3 years ago
[Ray Carney] has been pestering the Cassavetes family to “release” the first assemblage of “Shadows” — claiming it’s the original “true” version.
Carney has never claimed that the original, 1957/1958 edit of Shadows
-which he miraculously recovered after it had been missing for decades-is thee definitive version.Go ahead and comb the internets all you want — you will not find him saying anything of the sort.
Instead, Carney has argued that the first version of Shadows
-which, I might add, was not considered a work-in-progress at the time of its release-is simply worthy of being seen; that anyone who has an interest in the films of John Cassavetes might appreciate being able to watch both versions should she feel so inclined.Since Cassavetes has said on record that if the first version surfaced it should be “allowed to be shown at any time,” it seems especially idiotic that Criterion and Rowlands have done their best to ignore and suppress it.
Indeed, it would have been a masterstroke on their part to have included the earlier version of Shadows in the John Cassavetes: Five Films boxset, which definitely seems lacking in the quality “extras” department.
Personally, I believe the divisive factor here — the main reason they didn’t include it — was money, seeing as how Carney may have been entitled to some had the original print been allowed an official release, and seeing as how its presence in the world at large might, from an economic standpoint, undermine the value of the 1959 version.
He also operates [under] the delusion that there is a connection between Cassavetes and Frank Capra.
Cassavetes once said that when he was younger all he wanted to do was make films like Frank Capra.
Ever seen Too Late Blues ? It’s quite a forgettable film but nothing if not Capra-esque.
Also, aside from Carl Dreyer, Frank Capra was Cassavetes’ favorite filmmaker.
Though formally and stylistically the two artists are generally worlds apart, there is arguably a thematic link between them as well, though I don’t at all care to elaborate on that.
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PLEASE RECOMMEND A REASONABLY GOOD, INEXPENSIVE DV CAMERA... about 3 years ago
Apparently the HV40 records in 24p. (I had thought the HV30 did as well, but I just learned that instead it records in something like 24f — a fake 24p???) T. would know a hell of a lot more about this than I do.
Another difference – the HV40 records on HDV (and not MiniDV) tapes.
At any rate…
So far, I like my HV30, but the built-in mic isn’t very good at all.
And I must say, since the aspect ratio of the project that I’m working on is 4:3, it would be nice if the HV30 would record high-definition video to 4:3 instead of just 16:9. (I guess the dimensions are 1440 × 1080, though, but the HDV pixels are rectangular and not square, so that’s why it looks the way it does.)
Since I’m still learning the basics of Final Cut, I need to figure out the best way to routinely crop the sides off of a 16:9 image to make it 4:3. (I know there’s a crop tool, but perhaps there’s a more “systematic” way of doing this.)
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Another off Topic/Your Favorite Albums about 3 years ago
Another dreaded list!
Various Artists – The Northern Soul of New Orleans, Volume 1
Swell Maps – In Jane From Occupied Europe + A Trip to Marineville
Seefeel – Quique + damn near everything else
The Great Unwashed – Collection
Experimental Audio Research – The Koner Experiment
El Michels Affair – Sounding Out the City
Bottomless Pit – Congress
The Feelies – The Good Earth + Crazy Rhythms
Cath Carroll – True Crime Hotel
CAN – Ege Bamyasi + Future Days
Arthur Russell – World of Echo + Love is Overtaking Me
Bert Jansch – s/t + Birthday Blues + damn near everything else
Lungfish – Sound In Time + Indivisible
Pierre Bastien – Meccanoid
Pere Ubu – Dub Housing + The Modern Dance + “Heaven”
Devo – Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!
Guided By Voices – Alien Lanes
Jacques Dutronc – Complètement Dutronc
V/A – Ethiopiques, Vol. 8: Swinging Addis
Spare Snare – Live at Home
Buzzcocks – Spiral Scratch + Operator’s Manual
Gas – Pop + Königsforst
Josef K – Entomology
ESG – Come Away With
The Monks – Black Monk Time
Luigi Nono – La Fabbrica Illuminata…
Syd Barrett – The Madcap Laughs
The Clean – Anthology + Vehicle
Squarepusher – Hard Normal Daddy
Joy Division – Closer
Leonard Cohen – first three albums
Modern English – After the Snow
The Homosexuals – Astral Glamour
Prurient – Church of Ammunition
Linton Kwesi Johnson – Forces of Victory
Gang of Four – Peel Sessions
Young Marble Giants – Colossal Youth
Autechre – LP 5
The Haters – Mind the Gap
Bedhead – Transaction de Novo
Brian Eno – Another Green World + Discreet Music
Lee Hazlewood – Requiem For An Almost Lady
Frederic Chopin – Nocturnes
Vashti Bunyan – Just Another Diamond Day
The Smiths – The World Won’t Listen
Lennie Hibbert – Creation
Mindflayer – Take Your Skin Off
Shellac – At Action Park
Cabaret Voltaire – first four albums
Dmitri Shostakovich – string quartets, any of them!
Wire – first three albums + Document & Eyewitness
Francoise Hardy – The Vogue Years + La Question
Subjex – Supersonic Mezze
Bad Brains – Black Dots
Erik Satie – Piano Works
Broadcast – Work And Non-Work
The Bats – Daddy’s Highway
Delta 5 – Singles & Sessions 1979-81
Jorge Ben – Africa Brazil
Disciples of Annihilation – New York City Speedcore
Burning Star Core – Challenger
The Raincoats – Odyshape
That’s the best I could do at this ungodly hour while going over my iTunes.
Have a lot single tracks (especially funk and soul) culled from different albums and compilations, but listing those would take forever and this list is already long enough.
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VANGUARD RESTORATION: THE FIRST FILMS OF THE WCF about 3 years ago
Thanks a lot!
I look forward to checking these out.
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Tarkovsky/Bresson almost 3 years ago
Just thought of something…
One drastic difference between the two artists is that Tarkovsky had a tendency to regard the edit as a crutch, something generally to be avoided because it interrupted the viewer’s experience of the flow of time as it naturally passed through a shot.
By contrast editing figured quite prominently (and successfully) in establishing the rhythms of Bresson films, and Bresson rarely used long takes.
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Campy Bresson? almost 3 years ago
People tend to find what they’re looking for.
If you’re a sexually obsessed gay dude with an overactive imagination, you might very well believe that Jesus dangling from the cross is a homoerotic gesture.
That’s your right—we’re all entitled to our impressions—but for what it’s worth it strikes me as unflatteringly absurd that any number of queer-oriented cineasts would feel an overriding need to talk about Bresson’s oeuvre in gay terms, as if the value of his films has anything to do with a certain cross-section of people’s over-identification with their own sexuality.
It seems misguided and reductive, but above all, as a kind of thematic framework, I just don’t buy it, anymore than I would subscribe to the notion that there’s something legitimately gay about me hugging my best friend.
Also, this feeble speculation regarding Bresson’s orientation is in poor taste, particularly given that it prompts the resurfacing of an unsubstantiated rumor that he was a “gigolo” in his youth. (These sort of assertions say more about the people making them than they do the subject at hand, and if you don’t feel like a fool for making them…well, I suppose that’s its own punishment.)
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Have your film watched by Herzog almost 3 years ago
This thread delivers.
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Questions on pure cinema almost 3 years ago
I liked Rear Window quite a lot when I was a kid, but it’s been almost ten years since I’ve had any use for the films of Sir Alfred.
He was a brilliant craftsman, and I can understand why plenty of people (including some filmmakers I happen to like) admire his movies, but if “pure cinema” exists, I imagine it would be a lot less corny and clichéd than anything by Hitchcock.
(Semantics, yes.)
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Jon Jost almost 3 years ago
Jon Jost’s Frameup is one of my favorite films of all time.
Not long ago I asked the director if Frameup will ever be properly reissued, and he had this to say:
“I am going to be making an HD or maybe 2K digital of LAST CHANTS FOR A SLOW DANCE, and as some circumstances have arisen where maybe it will be appropriate, I am going to try to get a handful of archives to go together to try to appeal to HS Rosenthal, purported producer of said films, though the truth is quite another story, to let the original negs of SURE FIRE, VERMEERS, THE BED YOU SLEEP IN and FRAMEUP all be digitalized. I have had no access to those films since 1994 and the DVDs of them are rather bad and FRAMEUP only ever had a really crappy VHS. All courtesy of HSR. I have a really lousy DVD of FRAMEUP made off the VHS. It’s better than the VHS, but if you start with a good film, turn it into electronic shit, and you have to work off that, well….”
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Wim Wenders a master Director ?!? almost 3 years ago
Wim Wenders has made more than a few undeniably great films:
Alice in the Cities
The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick
Wings of Desire
The Wrong Move
Room 666
Kings of the Road
Paris, Texas
The State of Things
The American Friend is also worthwhile, and his recent Twelve Miles to Trona short (from this compilation) was pretty good too.
Plus, I have yet to watch many of his lesser known efforts, and it wouldn’t at all surprise me if there happened to be some neglected gems in there.
Yes, the likes of End of Violence and The Million Dollar Hotel are not very good movies, but as far as I’m concerned if someone makes a film as powerful and inspired as Wings of Desire, he can do whatever the hell he wants afterwards and still be considered one of the better filmmakers of his generation.
Also, I don’t know much about Wenders’s personal life (and frankly, I don’t care to), but if I had to guess, I’d say the apparent decline in the quality of his output has more to do with him becoming hugely successful than it does a change in personal beliefs.
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Response to The Headless Woman over 2 years ago
Just to clarify things, I believe this is the film we’re talking about, yes?
I managed to catch The Holy Girl while it was doing the rounds in theaters a little while back, and I remember it being quite good, even funny here and there, but so far that’s all I’ve seen by Lucrecia Martel.
If James Quandt says The Headless Woman is the best film of the year, that’s enough to pique my interest. (Quandt’s video essays in the Three Films by Hiroshi Teshigahara boxset are extraordinary, and the Robert Bresson book he edited for the Cinemateque Ontario is a must-have tome, despite a few so-so essays.)
As far as The Headless Woman getting booed at Cannes…We should never forget that when L’avventura premiered there, the audience was so insensitive toward the film that they began making fun of it, eventually causing Monica Vitti to break down and cry. The moral of the story: just because a film is playing at a “world-class” festival doesn’t mean it’s being screened before a “world-class” audience.
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PLEASE RECOMMEND A REASONABLY GOOD, INEXPENSIVE DV CAMERA... over 2 years ago
I still have my HV30, and plan to use it in the coming weeks on this project that I’ve been putting together.
I’m a Mac user, and the film I’m making is a mixed-format experimental narrative.
Since my transferred Super 8 and 16mm footage came back from the lab as Apple ProRes 422 (HQ), I’ve decided to settle on that as the format for my movie and timeline in Final Cut Pro 7.
Because of this, I’ve been trying, ahead of time, to get all of my footage in 23.976fps at 1920×1080 (with square pixels).
The HV30 records at 29.97fps at 1440×1080, using rectangular pixels…but I guess it can be imported in 1920×1080 somehow, by using the HDMI output, though I know nothing about this.
After combing the HV20/30/40 forum in search of the best way to remove pulldown, I came across a link for a free application from Apple called JES Deinterlacer.
I have never used After Effects, which I’m sure is superior, but so far, JES Deinterlacer seems decent, and I’ve already used it to successfully convert the HV30 footage into 24p at 1920×1080, so I know that it works and might even recommend it.
So there’s that.
Also…
I have yet to come across a standardized way for creating pillar boxes in 16:9 footage such that they yield a perfect 4:3 aspect ratio. (Since I’m using transferred Super 8 and 16mm footage, along with the HDV, I’ve decided make everything, even the video, in 4:3 with black pillar boxes on either side.)
I think I’m gonna call Phil at Pro 8mm tomorrow and ask him how exactly they do it— I’ve captured still images of the transferred footage they gave me, and determined that the pillar boxes are each 240 pixels across and 1080 pixels high, but I’m curious how exactly they make them.
For instance, in Final Cut, you can create pillar boxes by clicking the Motion tab, then the Crop section, and putting certain values in the “Left” and “Right” fields. BUT (!) I’ve found that these aren’t entirely precise: When I enter 12.5 in both fields, this seems very close, but when I zoom the cropped footage to 500% and compare the edges to that of the still images with the 240×1080 boxes on both sides, there’s a slight (albeit negligible) discrepancy.
Hmmmm.
Elijah… anyone… what do you think?
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PLEASE RECOMMEND A REASONABLY GOOD, INEXPENSIVE DV CAMERA... over 2 years ago
Okay, I just talked to someone at Pro 8mm, and he said they create their pillar boxes during the transfer with the Da Vinci.
Phil wasn’t in, so I wasn’t able to get the exact specifications for the pillar box dimensions, but it would seem, based on the transferred footage I’ve got, that they are each, as mentioned in the previous post, 240×1080.
Being a novice at digital editing, I don’t yet know how to create mattes, but I think matting the pillarboxes onto the footage that needs them would be the best way to go.
(Don’t mind me—I’m just talking to myself.)
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FILM FESTIVALS over 2 years ago
For experimental narratives, these seem like great festivals:
International Film Festival Rotterdam
Images Festival
TIE, The International Experimental Cinema Exposition
Confidential to Elijah: HELLO!
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Great films with terrible acting? over 2 years ago
I remember watching the first third of I Am Cuba and feeling shocked that a film with such assured and innovative cinematography had such poor acting.
Also, Paul Morrissey’s Trash — good movie.
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Psychological Effect of Different Shot Types over 2 years ago
Good thread.
I tend to agree with this: The same shot or edit can have entirely different meanings depending on its surrounding context.
A friend of mine, after finishing his debut feature, commented on a particular scene in which he filmed, from downward angles, two characters talking on a couch, saying, “If I had the chance to do the film over again, I would never shoot this scene like this.” When I asked him why, he said something to the effect that anytime one shoots people from above their heads, it implies a certain superiority of the director over his characters, and since he didn’t feel that he was “above” his characters or their dilemmas, it would be disingenuous of him to consciously shoot them from downward angles. (His movie was made in roughly a week, amidst strained conditions, so he didn’t have time to contemplate each shot and its supposed implications.)
While I can appreciate this approach, personally I reject this sort of “shot psychology.” When I film someone’s face, for instance, I’m mostly interested in finding a good angle to bring out the uniqueness of its bone structure. If I like the way the light hits a person’s skin from a certain angle, and the composition looks nice—assuming I’m trying to make an agreeable film—whether the camera is placed above or below her is of very little consequence. Similarly, if I spontaneously film garbage men taking out the trash from my third story window, to me, it doesn’t mean that I’m looking down on them in any way but literally.
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Psychological Effect of Different Shot Types over 2 years ago
On second thought, this thread kinda sucks.
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Psychological Effect of Different Shot Types over 2 years ago
Sorry, Robert- too busy today.
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GOING FROM HIGH-DEFINITION VIDEO TO DVD over 2 years ago
Hi there.
I was wondering if any of you film/videomakers have suggestions for going from high-definition video to DVD.
I have a 1080p video in ProRes 422 (HQ) and I’m trying to make a reasonably decent DVD from it, but so far everything I’ve tried has yielded less than flattering results.
I understand that there’s an inherent loss of quality in going from high-definition video to DVD, but still, there must be a way to make a better DVD than this. (I went from ProRes 422 (HQ) to H.264 to MPEG-2. The applications I have at my disposal are FCP7, Compressor, Toast Titanium 10, and iDVD.)
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
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GOING FROM HIGH-DEFINITION VIDEO TO DVD over 2 years ago
I only went to H.264 because I heard it was a good intermediary codec, but now I’m getting the impression that I should export the video from FCP7 in its original, 1080p format and let Compressor do the rest.
It would be nice if we could devise an optimal workflow for going from a high-definition format to DVD because surely there are plenty of others out there who would also benefit from knowing this.
Recently, I asked a friend of mine, and here’s what he had to say:
If you have to export self authored programming to DVD in order to create a screener etc., you should be able to use FCP and iDVD…. but yeah I recall the results were much less than flattering (as you yourself have found) but quite acceptable using the high-quality 2-pass preset in Compressor, set timeline for 16:9, Motion Estimation Quality/rate conversion to BEST, video format 29.97,… it’s been a while so I don’t recall. But some trial and error in Compressor should yield okay’ish results…
Any further suggestions from anyone else would be appreciated.
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GOING FROM HIGH-DEFINITION VIDEO TO DVD over 2 years ago
Hey all, thanks for the responses.
I did some more trial and error and managed to get pretty good results simply exporting my video from Final Cut Pro in its original format and making a DVD of it straight from Compressor using the optimal settings.
Now I feel immensely stupid because it was easy as pie, and in retrospect I have no idea why I was fucking around with H.264 in the first place. (I guess one would only use H.264 if he was burning a BluRay disc, but Compressor would handle the conversion anyway.)
In answer to your questions, the project is (or rather will be) roughly 25 minutes. I would post a comparison between the 422 (HQ) and the MPEG-2, but it’s too early in the game for me to share screengrabs.
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THE AUTEURS BEST OF THE DECADE: FILMS over 2 years ago
Okay, here’s my top ten…
1. Nobody Knows – Hirokazu Kore-Eda
2. The Man Without a Past – Aki Kaurismäki
3. The Son – Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
4. Schizo – Gulshat Omarova
5. Goodbye Dragon Inn – Tsai Ming-liang
6. Crimson Gold – Jafar Panahi
7. The Taste of Tea – Katsuhito Ishii
8. Lights in the Dusk – Aki Kaurismäki
9. The Time of the Wolf – Michael Haneke
10. The Ninth Day – Volker Schlöndorff
There are still many movies from this decade that I haven’t seen, though, and since I’ve been out of film school for over seven years I’ve had minimal access to “experimental”/“avant-garde” cinema, so I’m largely clueless there.
Incidentally, has anyone caught Peter Mettler’s poetic 2002 documentary Gambling, Gods, and LSD? My friend Trond recommended it to me and though I’m only halfway through it I’m pleased to report that it’s very rewarding. Mettler’s movie deals obliquely with “spiritual” fulfillment in the modern world and covers a wide variety of subject matter. Some of the video footage is so-so and just a tad amateurish, but the film images are uniformly striking and often hypnotic. Will be interesting to see how it all concludes.
I think my favorite documentary from this decade is The Bridge. Suicide is morbid territory, but the The Bridge is exceptionally well structured and loaded with insights. Waffles are in order for the cheesy swelling synth music—which (like most mood music) seems tacked on and unnecessary—but the interviews with the witnesses and survivors are quite fascinating… definitely the sort of movie that makes one appreciate life so much more after viewing it.
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