COMPOSITION
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9 Best Hacks to Make a Cinematic Video with Any Camera
Read more: 9 Best Hacks to Make a Cinematic Video with Any Camerahttps://www.flexclip.com/learn/cinematic-video.html
- Frame Your Shots to Create Depth
- Create Shallow Depth of Field
- Avoid Shaky Footage and Use Flexible Camera Movements
- Properly Use Slow Motion
- Use Cinematic Lighting Techniques
- Apply Color Grading
- Use Cinematic Music and SFX
- Add Cinematic Fonts and Text Effects
- Create the Cinematic Bar at the Top and the Bottom
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SlowMoVideo – How to make a slow motion shot with the open source program
Read more: SlowMoVideo – How to make a slow motion shot with the open source programhttp://slowmovideo.granjow.net/
slowmoVideo is an OpenSource program that creates slow-motion videos from your footage.
Slow motion cinematography is the result of playing back frames for a longer duration than they were exposed. For example, if you expose 240 frames of film in one second, then play them back at 24 fps, the resulting movie is 10 times longer (slower) than the original filmed event….
Film cameras are relatively simple mechanical devices that allow you to crank up the speed to whatever rate the shutter and pull-down mechanism allow. Some film cameras can operate at 2,500 fps or higher (although film shot in these cameras often needs some readjustment in postproduction). Video, on the other hand, is always captured, recorded, and played back at a fixed rate, with a current limit around 60fps. This makes extreme slow motion effects harder to achieve (and less elegant) on video, because slowing down the video results in each frame held still on the screen for a long time, whereas with high-frame-rate film there are plenty of frames to fill the longer durations of time. On video, the slow motion effect is more like a slide show than smooth, continuous motion.
One obvious solution is to shoot film at high speed, then transfer it to video (a case where film still has a clear advantage, sorry George). Another possibility is to cross dissolve or blur from one frame to the next. This adds a smooth transition from one still frame to the next. The blur reduces the sharpness of the image, and compared to slowing down images shot at a high frame rate, this is somewhat of a cheat. However, there isn’t much you can do about it until video can be recorded at much higher rates. Of course, many film cameras can’t shoot at high frame rates either, so the whole super-slow-motion endeavor is somewhat specialized no matter what medium you are using. (There are some high speed digital cameras available now that allow you to capture lots of digital frames directly to your computer, so technology is starting to catch up with film. However, this feature isn’t going to appear in consumer camcorders any time soon.)
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Composition – These are the basic lighting techniques you need to know for photography and film
Read more: Composition – These are the basic lighting techniques you need to know for photography and film
http://www.diyphotography.net/basic-lighting-techniques-need-know-photography-film/
Amongst the basic techniques, there’s…
1- Side lighting – Literally how it sounds, lighting a subject from the side when they’re faced toward you
2- Rembrandt lighting – Here the light is at around 45 degrees over from the front of the subject, raised and pointing down at 45 degrees
3- Back lighting – Again, how it sounds, lighting a subject from behind. This can help to add drama with silouettes
4- Rim lighting – This produces a light glowing outline around your subject
5- Key light – The main light source, and it’s not necessarily always the brightest light source
6- Fill light – This is used to fill in the shadows and provide detail that would otherwise be blackness
7- Cross lighting – Using two lights placed opposite from each other to light two subjects
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HuggingFace ai-comic-factory – a FREE AI Comic Book Creator
Read more: HuggingFace ai-comic-factory – a FREE AI Comic Book Creatorhttps://huggingface.co/spaces/jbilcke-hf/ai-comic-factory
this is the epic story of a group of talented digital artists trying to overcame daily technical challenges to achieve incredibly photorealistic projects of monsters and aliens
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StudioBinder – Roger Deakins on How to Choose a Camera Lens — Cinematography Composition Techniques
Read more: StudioBinder – Roger Deakins on How to Choose a Camera Lens — Cinematography Composition Techniques
https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/camera-lens-buying-guide/
https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/e-books/camera-lenses-explained-volume-1-ebook
DESIGN
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Pantheon of the War – The colossal war painting
Read more: Pantheon of the War – The colossal war paintingFour years in the making with the help of 150 artists, in commemoration of WW1.
edition.cnn.com/style/article/pantheon-de-la-guerre-wwi-painting/index.html
A panoramic canvas measuring 402 feet (122 meters) around and 45 feet (13.7 meters) high. It contained over 5,000 life-size portraits of war heroes, royalty and government officials from the Allies of World War I.
Partial section upload:
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Kristina Kashtanova – “This is how GPT-4 sees and hears itself”
Read more: Kristina Kashtanova – “This is how GPT-4 sees and hears itself”“I used GPT-4 to describe itself. Then I used its description to generate an image, a video based on this image and a soundtrack.
Tools I used: GPT-4, Midjourney, Kaiber AI, Mubert, RunwayML
This is the description I used that GPT-4 had of itself as a prompt to text-to-image, image-to-video, and text-to-music. I put the video and sound together in RunwayML.
GPT-4 described itself as: “Imagine a sleek, metallic sphere with a smooth surface, representing the vast knowledge contained within the model. The sphere emits a soft, pulsating glow that shifts between various colors, symbolizing the dynamic nature of the AI as it processes information and generates responses. The sphere appears to float in a digital environment, surrounded by streams of data and code, reflecting the complex algorithms and computing power behind the AI”
COLOR
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Capturing the world in HDR for real time projects – Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare
Read more: Capturing the world in HDR for real time projects – Call of Duty: Advanced WarfareReal-World Measurements for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare
www.activision.com/cdn/research/Real_World_Measurements_for_Call_of_Duty_Advanced_Warfare.pdf
Local version
Real_World_Measurements_for_Call_of_Duty_Advanced_Warfare.pdf
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What light is best to illuminate gems for resale
Read more: What light is best to illuminate gems for resalewww.palagems.com/gem-lighting2
Artificial light sources, not unlike the diverse phases of natural light, vary considerably in their properties. As a result, some lamps render an object’s color better than others do.
The most important criterion for assessing the color-rendering ability of any lamp is its spectral power distribution curve.
Natural daylight varies too much in strength and spectral composition to be taken seriously as a lighting standard for grading and dealing colored stones. For anything to be a standard, it must be constant in its properties, which natural light is not.
For dealers in particular to make the transition from natural light to an artificial light source, that source must offer:
1- A degree of illuminance at least as strong as the common phases of natural daylight.
2- Spectral properties identical or comparable to a phase of natural daylight.A source combining these two things makes gems appear much the same as when viewed under a given phase of natural light. From the viewpoint of many dealers, this corresponds to a naturalappearance.
The 6000° Kelvin xenon short-arc lamp appears closest to meeting the criteria for a standard light source. Besides the strong illuminance this lamp affords, its spectrum is very similar to CIE standard illuminants of similar color temperature.
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Victor Perez – The Color Management Handbook for Visual Effects Artists
Read more: Victor Perez – The Color Management Handbook for Visual Effects ArtistsDigital Color Principles, Color Management Fundamentals & ACES Workflows
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Photography basics: Why Use a (MacBeth) Color Chart?
Read more: Photography basics: Why Use a (MacBeth) Color Chart?Start here: https://www.pixelsham.com/2013/05/09/gretagmacbeth-color-checker-numeric-values/
https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-a-color-checker-tool/
In LightRoom
in Final Cut
in Nuke
Note: In Foundry’s Nuke, the software will map 18% gray to whatever your center f/stop is set to in the viewer settings (f/8 by default… change that to EV by following the instructions below).
You can experiment with this by attaching an Exposure node to a Constant set to 0.18, setting your viewer read-out to Spotmeter, and adjusting the stops in the node up and down. You will see that a full stop up or down will give you the respective next value on the aperture scale (f8, f11, f16 etc.).One stop doubles or halves the amount or light that hits the filmback/ccd, so everything works in powers of 2.
So starting with 0.18 in your constant, you will see that raising it by a stop will give you .36 as a floating point number (in linear space), while your f/stop will be f/11 and so on.If you set your center stop to 0 (see below) you will get a relative readout in EVs, where EV 0 again equals 18% constant gray.
In other words. Setting the center f-stop to 0 means that in a neutral plate, the middle gray in the macbeth chart will equal to exposure value 0. EV 0 corresponds to an exposure time of 1 sec and an aperture of f/1.0.
This will set the sun usually around EV12-17 and the sky EV1-4 , depending on cloud coverage.
To switch Foundry’s Nuke’s SpotMeter to return the EV of an image, click on the main viewport, and then press s, this opens the viewer’s properties. Now set the center f-stop to 0 in there. And the SpotMeter in the viewport will change from aperture and fstops to EV.
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What is OLED and what can it do for your TV
Read more: What is OLED and what can it do for your TVhttps://www.cnet.com/news/what-is-oled-and-what-can-it-do-for-your-tv/
OLED stands for Organic Light Emitting Diode. Each pixel in an OLED display is made of a material that glows when you jab it with electricity. Kind of like the heating elements in a toaster, but with less heat and better resolution. This effect is called electroluminescence, which is one of those delightful words that is big, but actually makes sense: “electro” for electricity, “lumin” for light and “escence” for, well, basically “essence.”
OLED TV marketing often claims “infinite” contrast ratios, and while that might sound like typical hyperbole, it’s one of the extremely rare instances where such claims are actually true. Since OLED can produce a perfect black, emitting no light whatsoever, its contrast ratio (expressed as the brightest white divided by the darkest black) is technically infinite.
OLED is the only technology capable of absolute blacks and extremely bright whites on a per-pixel basis. LCD definitely can’t do that, and even the vaunted, beloved, dearly departed plasma couldn’t do absolute blacks.
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FXGuide – ACES 2.0 with ILM’s Alex Fry
Read more: FXGuide – ACES 2.0 with ILM’s Alex Fry
https://draftdocs.acescentral.com/background/whats-new/
ACES 2.0 is the second major release of the components that make up the ACES system. The most significant change is a new suite of rendering transforms whose design was informed by collected feedback and requests from users of ACES 1. The changes aim to improve the appearance of perceived artifacts and to complete previously unfinished components of the system, resulting in a more complete, robust, and consistent product.
Highlights of the key changes in ACES 2.0 are as follows:
- New output transforms, including:
- A less aggressive tone scale
- More intuitive controls to create custom outputs to non-standard displays
- Robust gamut mapping to improve perceptual uniformity
- Improved performance of the inverse transforms
- Enhanced AMF specification
- An updated specification for ACES Transform IDs
- OpenEXR compression recommendations
- Enhanced tools for generating Input Transforms and recommended procedures for characterizing prosumer cameras
- Look Transform Library
- Expanded documentation
Rendering Transform
The most substantial change in ACES 2.0 is a complete redesign of the rendering transform.
ACES 2.0 was built as a unified system, rather than through piecemeal additions. Different deliverable outputs “match” better and making outputs to display setups other than the provided presets is intended to be user-driven. The rendering transforms are less likely to produce undesirable artifacts “out of the box”, which means less time can be spent fixing problematic images and more time making pictures look the way you want.
Key design goals
- Improve consistency of tone scale and provide an easy to use parameter to allow for outputs between preset dynamic ranges
- Minimize hue skews across exposure range in a region of same hue
- Unify for structural consistency across transform type
- Easy to use parameters to create outputs other than the presets
- Robust gamut mapping to improve harsh clipping artifacts
- Fill extents of output code value cube (where appropriate and expected)
- Invertible – not necessarily reversible, but Output > ACES > Output round-trip should be possible
- Accomplish all of the above while maintaining an acceptable “out-of-the box” rendering
- New output transforms, including:
LIGHTING
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Simulon – a Hollywood production studio app in the hands of an independent creator with access to consumer hardware, LDRi to HDRi through ML
Read more: Simulon – a Hollywood production studio app in the hands of an independent creator with access to consumer hardware, LDRi to HDRi through MLDivesh Naidoo: The video below was made with a live in-camera preview and auto-exposure matching, no camera solve, no HDRI capture and no manual compositing setup. Using the new Simulon phone app.
LDR to HDR through ML
https://simulon.typeform.com/betatest
Process example
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Composition and The Expressive Nature Of Light
Read more: Composition and The Expressive Nature Of Lighthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-danskin/post_12457_b_10777222.html
George Sand once said “ The artist vocation is to send light into the human heart.”
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StudioBinder.com – Photography basics: What is Dynamic Range in Photography
Read more: StudioBinder.com – Photography basics: What is Dynamic Range in Photographyhttps://www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-dynamic-range-photography/
https://www.hdrsoft.com/resources/dri.html#bit-depth
The dynamic range is a ratio between the maximum and minimum values of a physical measurement. Its definition depends on what the dynamic range refers to.
For a scene: Dynamic range is the ratio between the brightest and darkest parts of the scene.
For a camera: Dynamic range is the ratio of saturation to noise. More specifically, the ratio of the intensity that just saturates the camera to the intensity that just lifts the camera response one standard deviation above camera noise.
For a display: Dynamic range is the ratio between the maximum and minimum intensities emitted from the screen.
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HDRI shooting and editing by Xuan Prada and Greg Zaal
Read more: HDRI shooting and editing by Xuan Prada and Greg Zaalwww.xuanprada.com/blog/2014/11/3/hdri-shooting
http://blog.gregzaal.com/2016/03/16/make-your-own-hdri/
http://blog.hdrihaven.com/how-to-create-high-quality-hdri/
Shooting checklist
- Full coverage of the scene (fish-eye shots)
- Backplates for look-development (including ground or floor)
- Macbeth chart for white balance
- Grey ball for lighting calibration
- Chrome ball for lighting orientation
- Basic scene measurements
- Material samples
- Individual HDR artificial lighting sources if required
Methodology
- Plant the tripod where the action happens, stabilise it and level it
- Set manual focus
- Set white balance
- Set ISO
- Set raw+jpg
- Set apperture
- Metering exposure
- Set neutral exposure
- Read histogram and adjust neutral exposure if necessary
- Shot slate (operator name, location, date, time, project code name, etc)
- Set auto bracketing
- Shot 5 to 7 exposures with 3 stops difference covering the whole environment
- Place the aromatic kit where the tripod was placed, and take 3 exposures. Keep half of the grey sphere hit by the sun and half in shade.
- Place the Macbeth chart 1m away from tripod on the floor and take 3 exposures
- Take backplates and ground/floor texture references
- Shoot reference materials
- Write down measurements of the scene, specially if you are shooting interiors.
- If shooting artificial lights take HDR samples of each individual lighting source.
Exposures starting point
- Day light sun visible ISO 100 F22
- Day light sun hidden ISO 100 F16
- Cloudy ISO 320 F16
- Sunrise/Sunset ISO 100 F11
- Interior well lit ISO 320 F16
- Interior ambient bright ISO 320 F10
- Interior bad light ISO 640 F10
- Interior ambient dark ISO 640 F8
- Low light situation ISO 640 F5
NOTE: The goal is to clean the initial individual brackets before or at merging time as much as possible.
This means:- keeping original shooting metadata
- de-fringing
- removing aberration (through camera lens data or automatically)
- at 32 bit
- in ACEScg (or ACES) wherever possible
Here are the tips for using the chromatic ball in VFX projects, written in English:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bellrodrigo_here-are-the-tips-for-using-the-chromatic-activity-7200950595438940160-AGBpTips for Using the Chromatic Ball in VFX Projects**
The chromatic ball is an invaluable tool in VFX work, helping to capture lighting and reflection data crucial for integrating CGI elements seamlessly. Here are some tips to maximize its effectiveness:
1. **Positioning**:
– Place the chromatic ball in the same lighting conditions as the main subject. Ensure it is visible in the camera frame but not obstructing the main action.
– Ideally, place the ball where the CGI elements will be integrated to match the lighting and reflections accurately.2. **Recording Reference Footage**:
– Capture reference footage of the chromatic ball at the beginning and end of each scene or lighting setup. This ensures you have consistent lighting data for the entire shoot.3. **Consistent Angles**:
– Use consistent camera angles and heights when recording the chromatic ball. This helps in comparing and matching lighting setups across different shots.4. **Combine with a Gray Ball**:
– Use a gray ball alongside the chromatic ball. The gray ball provides a neutral reference for exposure and color balance, complementing the chromatic ball’s reflection data.5. **Marking Positions**:
– Mark the position of the chromatic ball on the set to ensure consistency when shooting multiple takes or different camera angles.6. **Lighting Analysis**:
– Analyze the chromatic ball footage to understand the light sources, intensity, direction, and color temperature. This information is crucial for creating realistic CGI lighting and shadows.7. **Reflection Analysis**:
– Use the chromatic ball to capture the environment’s reflections. This helps in accurately reflecting the CGI elements within the same scene, making them blend seamlessly.8. **Use HDRI**:
– Capture High Dynamic Range Imagery (HDRI) of the chromatic ball. HDRI provides detailed lighting information and can be used to light CGI scenes with greater realism.9. **Communication with VFX Team**:
– Ensure that the VFX team is aware of the chromatic ball’s data and how it was captured. Clear communication ensures that the data is used effectively in post-production.10. **Post-Production Adjustments**:
– In post-production, use the chromatic ball data to adjust the CGI elements’ lighting and reflections. This ensures that the final output is visually cohesive and realistic.
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