This past summer and fall I helped with the re-launch of Fordham Lawyer magazine. From the start the goal was to create stylized portraits for the lead stories which would carry through to the inside profiles.
Lead stories:
Jeanne Fromer, intellectual property specialist.
Chi Mgbako, director of the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice.
Profiles:
Professors three: Leib, Brudney, and Davidson. Click to enlarge.
Similar to 2010′s work on Fordham Law’s Dean’s Report I created simple low-key video profiles to accompany the online version of the magazine:
Philadelphia Camera Operator Kevin Ritchie, one of the lucky few to get a Canon C300 in the first shipment, has provided raw c-log footage in ProRes HQ so that others can try their hand at grading it. Kevin photographed the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philly to test out his camera.
Canon’s c-log footage is intentionally low contrast and under-saturated. It is designed to provide the C300′s full dynamic range (~12 stops) and therefore leave the widest range of options for post-production. The trade-off is that it is not viewer ready straight out of the camera, it requires the extra steps of adding contrast, saturation, and potentially stamping a “look” onto the footage.
Kevin’s comparison of his ungraded vs. his graded footage:
My stab at grading Kevin’s c-log (ungraded) footage:
More info about the production behind his shoot.
I made my grade in FCP X and did not use any plugins. I did the grade in four steps. The first put some saturation back into the clips and set their black point, white point, and mid-points. The second provided localized correction using masks with the goal of emphasizing the textures found at the prison. The third worked on a compound version of the clips applying some film grain and color tweaks across all of them. And the fourth was my Vimeo optimizer which compensates for the the darkening and increase in contrast when footage is uploaded to Vimeo, YouTube, and various flash encoders.
More info on c-log, AKA Canon Log, can be found at Canon’s Digital Learning Center.
On location today shooting an annual report in Newark, NJ:
Hallway, State Assemblyman's Office, Newark, NJ. February 10, 2012. Click to enlarge.
Andy Shipsides at AbelCine has posted a great workflow primer on ingesting C300 MXF footage into popular NLEs:
How to Import C300 Footage in Avid, FCP X and Premiere
Update – 2/14/12: Since I wrote the above Canon has provided two plugins, one for each version of Final Cut Pro. They facilitate ingestion of Canon MXF files into Final Cut Pro. Both plugins support the C300, XF305, XF300, XF105, and XF100 video cameras.
XF Plugin for Final Cut Pro v1.2 is for FCP v6-7.03 and it is Lion compatible.
XF Plugin for FCP X v2.0 is for FCP X and it requires both FCP X v10.0.3 and Mac OS X 10.7.x.
To access either on Canon’s site you need to select your operating system in the drop-down menu within “Drivers & Software.” The XF Plugin for FCP X only appears if you select “Mac OS X 10.7.”
Photographed this past fall wall while working with a team from Brown and Caldwell. Their goal – environmental remediation of a brownfield site located near Raritan Bay.
Brown and Caldwell engineers, Fords, NJ. October, 2011. Click to enlarge.
The photos were featured in their magazine…
and in a promotional video (0:38 – 1:05):
Having to work quickly and travel light (OSHA rules limited movement, equipment, and access on the site) most of the portraits were shot available light though a bit of reflector fill was added on some. Lenses used ran the gamut from the 16-35 II (top portrait with the reeds), 24 TSE II (magazine spread = composite of three 24 TSE images) to the 70-200 II for some of the photos seen in the video.
In a tough week this made me smile. All the more appreciated because this is a song I can play on the guitar (I use the term “play” loosely.)
In a world of democratized media production what is king, where does value lie, and what becomes of quality?
FCP X 10.0.3 Custom Sync Options for Multicam or Time-lapse.
Apple updated Final Cut Pro X to 10.0.3 this morning adding multicam and a host of other features. One less obvious one is the creation of time-lapses within FCP X. For an explanation of how to do this watch the Learn more about Multicam video on Apple’s FCP X software update page. It’s about 44 seconds in.
Larry Jordan on other FCP X 10.0.3 features.
Gary Adcock via MacWorld.
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Update 2-13-12: I took the time-lapse FCP X workflow for a spin. While it does work it would be best for smaller time-lapses and ones where you are not using high res. still images (e.g. much higher res. than 1920 x 1080.) With a time-lapse of ~550 Canon 1DsM3 stills, full res. @ 5616 x 3744 px and saved as jpegs, FCP X could do it but it did bog things down quite a bit.
FCP X sets up a the multicam in this case with each still occupying about 10′ each. You can then use the retime control to make the clip shorter, as it would be based on 24p (one still = one frame.)
With so many large still files it was easier to create a Pro Res sequence via Quicktime (import images as a sequence) and then bring that clip into FCP X.
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