Cliff of Sand and processing

Had an opportunity the other day to go to the west coast of Denmark and take my new SONY NEX 5N for a spin. Must say I'm pretty impressed from what I've seen until now. The heavy aliasing seen in SONY NEX VG10 footage seems drastically reduced - to the point where I couldn't really spot any annoying aliasing artifacts of the landscape footage I shot this weekend. From what I've seen until now I'm very impressed by what this little beast can capture and render.

Anyway, below is a still taken with the NEX 5N, with the processing involved in it. The texture I used below is from flickr user borealnz and available here.

- First I did some minor curves adjustments in Photoshop Raw and increased the clarity a bit before importing to Photoshop.
- Cropped the 3:2 image to a ratio of 1:1,618 tweaking the composition a bit.
- Duplicated the base layer, denoised a bit without reducing the sharpness in contrasting areas and applied the high pass filter. The layer was then set to overlay @ 47% opacity.
- New curves adjustment layer. A very slight S curve on the red and green channels and pulled the white output down to about 230 and black output up to about 8 on the blue channel.
- New dark blue solid fill at blending mode exclusion and 10%.
- New gradient map with default black and white set at softlight 61%.
- New Black & White adjustment layer tweaked to bring the tones of the sand ranging from soft, bright tones toward the bottom of the picture to the dark black shadows in the cracks on the cliff of sand. Set to Divide at 8%.
- Flattened the image.
- Duplicated the image and applied Add Noise filter at 400% Gaussian monochromatic. Blurred this with Gaussian blur set to a radius of 1,5. Set the layer to overlay @ 61% opacity.
- Added the texture PB-cream from borealnz, and set it to darken @ 30%. This also served to control the luminance and tones of the water in a nice way.

And that was that.

Flexible Film Grain Effect

Thought I would post a little tip to a quick, nice and very flexible way to work visually pleasing film grain into an edit. I haven't been too happy with the plug-ins I've tried - they've either been to rigid in they way they apply grain or make to much changes in the luminance levels of the image.

So here goes another option which I use in Premiere, but I guess it is equally applicable on other editing platforms.

First we have the start image - for illustration I'll be using an untouched still outtake from some video footage I had (click to download large image):

And here goes the procedure:

First copy your clip and place it on the video layer above your base clip properly aligned in time. The top layer will serve as your adjustable noise layer.

Now add the native effects of Premiere of Noise, Color Balance (HLS) and Gaussian Blur, and as a starter adjust the parameters of the filters as shown in the screenshot below:

The filters need to be applied in the order shown on the image; the HSL filter has to be applied after the noise filter to pull down the saturation in the colors of the generated noise, and the blur filter likewise should be applied at last on both filters.

Noise filter
First of all I apply the noise filter and tick off 'Clip Result Values'. This choice is a matter of taste in the particular project - by ticking 'Clip Result Values' your grain will manifest normally in the midtones and blend more in at higher and lower luminance values. This might be what you're going for, but if you are applying blending modes like overlay or softlight on the noise layer it will also increase the overall contrast. By unticking this box you'll start off with a much more neutral noise layer that won't change the luminance make-up of your grading. Here I also pull down the amount of noise to 90% just to bring a little image info from the original image through.

HSL filter
The HSL filter is then used to pull down the saturation so the noise color is more pleasing to the eye.

Gaussian Blur filter
The blur filter is used to smooth the grain out a bit and also determine the size. The more radius - the larger grain.

Blending
Finally I work out a fitting blending mode and opacity setting for the layer. For this example I've used overlay at 38% opacity. By using overlay and the relatively neutral settings on the noise filter, I get noise that moulds nicely into the image without upsetting any additional grading done. Here I'd also try out different settings and clipping the values of the noise filter making for a more dramatic application of the noise layer (quite nice for BW).

So here's a screenshot with grain (click for high res):

And here with clipped noise values and otherwise same settings:

Finally, keep in mind these shots weren't graded - normally this step would also come towards the end of the grading workflow.

Towards the wood project

Just finished editing a short docu for director/choreographer Felix Bürkle and his upcoming stage performance 'the wood project'. We were in South Germany where they held rehearsals in the forested rolling hills of Schwarzwald. Beautiful country and exciting to film extended improvisations in a setting like this.

Filming the improvisations was especially intriguing. They were very long, ranging between 15 minutes and over an hour, and quite intense. This made for quite focused and controlled filming, and the possibility to delve into the matter in a very inquiring way.

I shot the film using a Sony NEXVG10, two Canon Canon T2i/550d's and also brought along the small Sony HX9V. For the most, I had the Samyang (Rokinon etc.) 8mm F3.5 Fisheye mounted on one of the Canon's coupled with Marvel cinestyle as picture profile, and a zuiko 50mm f1.8 on the other Canon for close ups and more controlled frames. I actually started with a zuiko 50mm f1.4 auto-s, but the hard cat's eye bokeh at f 1.4 and 1.8 on it are not appealing to me. I much prefer the way the f1.8 goes out of focus. These are nice and affordable lenses, making them perfect for running around in the forest a few days - I don't have to be nervous about them because of their cost, and they perform very well.

Some notes on the Sony NEXVG10. Pretty hard aliasing going on there, but this can be mitigated some by using portrait mode and -3 on alle settings. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the stabilisation in the lens almost completely eliminated rolling shutter issues. If stabilizing was off, there would be rolling shutter distortion like on other dslr's, but once the stabilizer was on the issue became negligible. The onboard microphone on the nex vg10 has been lauded some, but I found it pretty much useless. The slightest handling is picked up through the body and the stabilizing motor is picked up as well. Also, the fact that the vg10 neither has focus assist or focus peaking has made me very wary of using it with my other lenses through adapters, which for me is one of the main points of a large sensor video camera. I had one experience while shooting the road movie for Don*Gnu where I shot a whole sequence focusing past infinity with the Samyang 8mm attached via adapter because I simply couldn't tell the shot was out of focus from the viewfinder. It wasn't far out of focus, but enough to annoy and possible trash the whole shot. It's a strange beast the nex vg10, but the 18-200mm F3.5-6.3 kit lens and it's stabilizing is great and I find myself using it quite a lot.

Below here is also a short teaser we produced for the same performance, and based on the same footage.

Dance Film 'RUSH'

The dance film 'RUSH' ('Hastværk') produced by RØRSTRØMSK Dance Company that I have been DoP on as well as editing, will be premiering at Bora Bora Dance House in Århus this Friday. The above is a still image from the film.

Looking forward to Friday's showing, and will be posting later on some issues that cropped up during post-production. One of them being a closer look at Premiere CS5's much vaunted on-the-fly chroma-interpolation to 32-bit color space of dslr footage. Was a bit interested in testing this carefully during post as the film was shot on Canon dslr's. For quite heavy grading I was doing it turned out it was quite poor and pretty useless, so no short cuts in the work flow.

Still - happy days, and looking forward.

Video snapshot #2 - Don Gnu Roadmovie

Don Gnu still searching, and now in the mountains close to Junkerdalen valley...

Just arrived in Oulu, Finland, and will be staying here for workshops and shooting until the 18th.

Video snapshot #1 - Don Gnu Roadmovie

Don Gnu searching across the mountain plateau of Dovre...

Still on the road shooting Don*Gnu's Roadmovie. Have had a chance to test the Sony NEX VG10 extensively - image ok, kit-lens is a bit slow but versatile with great stabilisation (The shot above was done handheld!). Handling is quite fiddly and bad. No focus assist is definitely a big minus. Makes me use my Canon cameras even when I could have good use for image stabilisation in the Sony lens. Also, the color profiles available for Canon cameras are preferable to the onboard tweaking on the Sony.

Don*Gnu Roadmovie - on the move

On monday, finally, Don*Gnu sets sail for Norway, Sweden and Finland on their roadtrip to find their inner selves, and to be documented as a roadmovie. Looking forward to shooting this project, and also working with these great guys.

The teaser above is based on test shoots we did for the film, a lot of which turned out quite good so we might actually use it in the final product. The music was a hidden pearl of a recording Jesper Kaltoft had hidden away.

The crew is small and will be crammed into the same bus, so equipment is kept light. I'll be shooting off Canon dslr's and a Sony nex vg10, and have only brought a few lights. So the style will be harsh and documentary with mostly natural light. This will prove challenging in the north of Norway, Sweden and Finalnd where the angle of the sun doesn't excede 27 degrees above the horizon these days. Hard light!