[Fusion CIStudios]

I just finished working a large pipeline for a doc. We handled everything in 32bit and half float openEXR. We comped in Nuke (which only works in 32bit float color space), Used Maya and MentalRay (half float files). Color correction was handled with Nuke (float), photoshop (float/half float) and final gamma in FCP (custom gamma filter in 10bit). The end product was an uncompressed 10bit 4:2:2 D5 master. Lots of time went into color and gama correction. I have not used AE in a long time. I personally don’t like that app. Nuke is really solid for me. I connect to it really well.

32 bit is great to work in, however, the files are large to contend with and the end product usually always goes out 8bit (we do half float for film record outs). Some of our working images were 10k in size! With 32 bit float we had a 3D comp that would take 20 hours to push out 1200 frames in 1080×1920 square pixels (this was done on a single dual xeon box with 4gigs of ram, we were not using our allready taxed render farm). So time can become a serious issue.

We ONLY work with zchannels in float.

If you’re recording out to film you work in float. You want to maintain highlights and rich shadows. We dither down to half float openEXR files then push it to film.

With 32bit you get more precision, which in-turn, provides better results. But you need to be careful. You can look at a blur in 32bit and it’s fantastic, then when you get to the SD 8bit master it becomes aliased. It’s ugly. So experience alows you to find the happy medium and it’s important to know what is happening mathematically between float, half-float, and 8bit images. You only get so many shades of grey.

Nuke and Shake are my primary compositing tools. They both work great. In the end I prefer Nuke. FCP has a long ways to go as a pro-app. Look into Smoke from Autodesk.
All of our 3D is half float or 8bit.

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[Fusion CIStudios]

By using the file in node you can import the image sequence with an expression that will only bring in every other frame to get the 16fps that you are looking for. This will bypass the timex node and when you do your composite everything will be frame accurate at 16fps. You can do the same thing with a file-out node. Render out a 16fps image sequence then bring it back with a file-in node. Set the time line to 24fps and then render out a 24fps sequence.

The problem here is when you time-stretch to fit the 24fps the software is going to add frames which will kill your effect. You don’t need to time-stretch just make sure your 16fps moments are long enough with-in the 24fps sequence. If there not then make sure your 16fps moments are 4/6’ths longer then what is needed. This will give you some room to fit your true 16fps moments in the 24fps timeline with-out time stretching.

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[Fusion CIStudios]

You can create heat distortion with an Idistort node (or whatever combustion may call it). You can create a particle emitter that pumps out tiny little polygons, use an Idistort with the background, and then feed the Idistorted polygons into the alpha channel. The next step is to slightly color the distortion.

I hope this makes sense,

I could break it out how to do it in Nuke but I’m not fully rounded in Combustion.

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[Fusion CIStudios]

For your interviews there is no reason to go beyond stereo. In fact most dialogue is recorded in mono only to be mixed in stereo later. If you’re after ambient sound (for folley or sound design) record in stereo.

If you’re going to do four track what I suggest is use a boom and a lav mic. If you’ve got a sound guy that would be fantastic. To get great sound it’s best to have a member of the team only focusing on that.

Get the best mic you can buy or rent. Make sure the mixer can record +4db (ideal).
If you’ve got a compresser then bang your in business. It can be easy to clip your sound so make sure to have everything properly beaded. And make sure your boom is always at axis.

It’s also a good idea to record at least 60 seconds of room tone. Especially when lots of locations are involved.

[Fusion CIStudios]

I recomend the Northlight from Filmlight Ltd.

http://www.filmlight.ltd.uk/northlight.html

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[Fusion CIStudios]

Good question.

The rate is based on the skill and experience of the editor. Using FCP doesn’t mean anything. Will this editor be able to work in the format you need, provide the skill, and have the facility. There are a lot of factors.

A professional editor can (should) make $65-$150 per hour. Usuall running at 5,000 or 8,000 dollar weeks. Depending on the facility of course.

Now, if it’s joe young filmmaker at home with his decklink and G5 well that could be a different story. Now, if this person is really good you pay them the above wages. If this person is a novice you should pay no more than $15-$25 per hour. You should never work with someone for free. Especially when editing is concerned. Especially if you want a professional product. The grim reallity to produce successful projects. You have to pay money to make money and only when you do this will you get real favors that let you utilize some ones talent for free.

So, be thoughtful and honest. If you screw around with your editor and pull indie-amature-producing tactics your project is destined to fail. Or, a fight is most certainly in the near future. And you wouldn’t want your editor holding you film for ransom because you were cheap, thougtless, in-experienced and rude.

You are only as good as the people you work with. Something to always keep in mind when producing a film project.

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Plus if you’re working with an editor. Be as organized and patient as possible. Editing is a tough skill and turning on FCP DOES NOT MAKE YOU AND EDITOR.

[Fusion CIStudios]

Dig into the Colour Management with LUTs chapter in the Flame manual. Lots of great info in there. [/i]

[Fusion CIStudios]

You’ll need to work with a 3Dlut. Flame is 12bit but if you apply a 3dLUT you can get floating point results.

[Fusion CIStudios]

The Shake manual will have some good info on Rotoscoping. There is a great article on Fxguide here http://www.fxguide.com/fxtips-243.html

Practice makes perfect with Roto.

You can also roto in Photoshop and import the image sequences into shake. works pretty good.

[Fusion CIStudios]

You can use the re-master tab in Shake. It produces good results.

[Fusion CIStudios]

There is no linux version of quicktime, however, there is a free quicktime for linux software that will read and write .mov files. Here is the link
http://linux.softpedia.com/get/Programming/Libraries/Quicktime-for-Linux-257.shtml

Or you can use Sequence Publisher from the company that gave us framecycler.
http://www.sequencepublisher.com/index.html

What I have done in the past is save my image sequences to disk and hot swap the drive to an OSX workstation to create my .mov files.

[Fusion CIStudios]

Super16mm is 1.69:1 and a 35mm still standard is 1.37:1.

[Fusion CIStudios]

after effects is always worth a discussion. It’s not as robust or powerful as other compositing platforms but it is still very capable of good/great work.

If you look deep into this site you can find plenty of ae tips in the forums. Also, anything pretaining to Shake, Toxik, Flame etc is always worth understanding. Many of the same tips and tricks in those software apps can be either done in ae or emulated.

AE is at a disadvantage with bicubics and fully robust 3D workspace, etc. But shake has some of the same 3D limitations.

Check out the forum about expressions. You’ll find many ae tips in there. Lots of links to AE forums from other sites.

If Adobe keeps chugging away someday AE may become a truly robust pro compositing tool (it’s only recently that you’ve been able to work in float color space).

Besides, I got my start with AE. Then moved on to DF, Combustion, and Shake. I am not thrilled with the gui but I was able to learn a ton with a tool I could easily get.

I hope more people talk about it.

[Fusion CIStudios]

Thanks for the input. It’s a very powerful machine and it’s a challenge to get it running at it’s full potential. We do have access to a 64bit running version of Renderman for the Itanium2. From the begining of this project we wanted to utilize Renderman in every area of rendering in the pipeline. Be it 3D, Compositing, Color Correction etc.. We call it Renderman as Quicktime with an exclusive exr pipeline.

I’m not sure if Shake is capable of running in 64bit. As far as I know it’s a 32bit application. I believe Nuke is written in 64bit. But I’m not 100% positive.

[Fusion CIStudios]

You won’t find much in PDF form unless you find it with bittorent or something. The Shake 4 quick reference guide is handy. It’s $20 and it can be bought from Peachpit Press. http://www.peachpit.com

Suggestions: Use Adaptive mode (optical flow). Use spline curves when you want a smoother ramp from one key frame to another. Use Hermite when you want the ramp to fire closer to the key frame. Use fast for the de-interlace mode if using SD footage. If working in higher res or if there is a lot of movement set the de-interlace to good. Always interpolate your ramped footage. This will create new frames and will not use frames from the original sequence. It also helps smooth the ramps and limits strobing.

Use blend (mixed frames/fields) only as a proxy, keep the frame weight at 0.

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