True 'dat! Composition, lighting and setting the proper angles so your edits don't cross the line are just some of the keys to proper cinematography.
I liked the short I thought the actor did a wonderful job of showing ones natural nervousness walking into to what he thought may have been a cornholing Especially given his size I thought he played the gentle giant well Whether it was a magnificent interpretation or just purely coincidental luck thru his natural untrained thespian thing it worked for me
You missed the point. It wasn't about 4K, it was about the availability of affordable high quality tools. It just takes the willingness to learn and apply. Plus 4K is a lot closer than you think. Very different scenario to the 3D debacle. 4K also gives you the ability to reframe your shots if final output is 1080p. The latest Intel CPU's support up to 8 cores for desktop versions, and 64gig a ram on a desktop. Workstations offer even more power. Quality quad HD monitors have dropped below 600.00 USD. You can build a system significantly more powerful than the latest tricked out Mac Pro for less money. Free versions of Fusion give you powerful compositing tools. A new compositing program called Natron, with similar features to Nuke, is free and unlike the free version of Fusion, accepts OpenFX plug-ins. Blender has gotten competitive with the commercial 3d Modelling packages. Has a very nice built in photorealistic renderer. Completely new version of Lightwave 2015 is under 1K. Both free and commercial packages are using opensource/industry standard/free file formats to exchange data. ie...OpenEXr, Collada, Alembic to name a few. 3Delight and Guerilla offer free versions of their Renderman compatible renderers. There will be a free version of the latest Renderman available in Jan. What this means is even groups of modest means around the world can collaborate and create at least broadcast quality movies. Whether they be Mac, Windows or Linux. I thought it was understood that good cinematography, lighting and audio (after great script and performance) were a given if one wanted a superior movie in any genre. Didn't realize it needed explaining.
Given how often those issues seem to pop up at just about all levels of fan films it really can't hurt to repeat it. Nice to know that bad framing can be cropped if you're shooting in 4k, but that's really a workaround that's bound to be more time consuming than simply setting up the shot correctly to begin with. However, you are correct that better technology is getting cheaper and that really does blur the lines even more between fan films and pro productions.
jojo, you said, in short, that with all this low cost and free tech there's no excuse for messing up the picture and sound. My response is that the tech isn't the solution, as one can make a splendidly awful looking film on UHD as well as HD if you don't understand filmmaking. Also, I'm perfectly aware of where 4K is, and you're presupposing ignorance on my part.
You seem to presume that people who read this board don't understand the basics of good movie making. I'm presuming they do, so don't need to remind them of film 101. This doesn't mean they don't make crappy looking video, but that they know better and know it's crap. All I really meant was... no excuse for making your fan movie look like a home movie anymore, unless you want to. Sorry for not making that clear. Also, new tools for wide area collaboration have gotten better and less expensive. Too many are acting like one man bands, or small isolated groups, when there is a wealth of resources available among the millions of people who love Trek. Your statement about 4K being only good for future proofing was only partly true. Most broadcast companies are now requiring 4K delivery (Discovery being one of the most well known. Netflix being another). Most of the commercial youtube channels are capturing in 4K. Look for 2015 to be the year 4K hits mainstream. There is nothing to prevent one from shooting in lower rez formats. It's nice they don't have to anymore, just to save costs.
Getting it right the first time is always the best way, but... reframing is cheaper and better than trying to reshoot the scene. Especially if your talent is no longer available or you have a bad case of shaky cam, or you need to match up a vfx plate.
I'm quite aware of where 4K is. But until it's widely adopted in homes, it's not a done deal, any more than 3D TVs were. Oh, it's very likely to happen once the cost hits bottom, but the technically best format doesn't always succeed. The marketplace decides. I don't presume anything about the "people who read this board", as I don't lump people together so broadly. However, many of the fanfilms do, in fact, demonstrate that many fan filmmakers "don't understand the basics of good movie making." I've had plenty of private conversations with many of these people, and a lot of them are self-admitted rank beginners, many of whom are happy to get pointers and feedback. Not all do, sure. Make what you will of the fact that a number of higher end fanfilms still habitually make beginner-level mistakes related to the most basic rules of cinematography and directional continuity, amongst other things.
3D is pretty much passe. 4K is being adopted faster than HD. Caught many by surprise. Good quality UHD TVs are now available for under 1K. I remember paying 2800 for my HDTV and at the time it was a bargain. Yes, even the very best make mistakes. So what. They know when they make a mistake and don't need remedial lectures on it. Would like to see all the resources and talent get together and knock one out of the park. Collectively there is enough horse power to create VFX that rival a studio. Enough good writers to create a great story. Enough talented amateur actors to get great performances. I don't see that happening anytime soon, but one can dream. Anyway, don't want to start conflict, just expressing my .02. Thanks for your input. All of you.
I am in complete agreement about the idea of groups working together, and it does happen. Not as much as I'd like to see, but it's a start. I'm hoping to see a little more of this in 2015.
Making these things is hard. Getting volunteer labor to stick with it through the long haul is harder.
Does anyone remember the @home distributed computing used to solve protein problems? I wonder if that could be possible with Trek fans with the right (free) software for VFX rendering. Trek@home anyone? Part of a kickstarter campaign? OK, I know I'm just dreaming. You can gibb slap me now.
Doesn't make sense from a logistics standpoint, because a render job needs to be finished within a certain timeframe, whereas SETI doesn't really give a damn whether record #968414651165154 gets processed this week or two years down the road. Not to mention how you could be sending your assets to various strangers leading to the data ending up in the wrong hands or simply the sheer amount of data to be sent around (complete scene file and assets in one direction, uncompressed images in the other). Stuff like this only works in a controlled environment, like FIRE at Foundation Imaging, back in the days of Babylon 5 (before the whole "Netter Digital" thing) and Voyager (when they took over after Amblin Imaging closed its doors, beginning the transition to an all-digital show).
Also, it's rarely rendering horsepower that's at issue: it's designing and texturing models, designing shots, animating them, etc. etc.
Tell that to the many animators I hear from. Most of them dream of more and more powerful computers. Many a project has languished because of computer power.
Actually it could work. Not much different than cloud rendering. Scenario.... Using Blender as an example, and its excellent built in renderer that can be either pure CPU or hybrid GPU/CPU. Establish a minimum system requirement (doesn't have to be HP Workstation powerful). Have them download and install Blender. A typical vfx shot is 7 seconds or shorter. Same if making a fully animated movie. You divide your rendering into shots, not scenes. Send shot to be rendered to distant computer, have the output uploaded to a central storage area (ie Dropbox or similar). Bring output in compositer, go from there. You could even have multiple sites for compositing, major studios do that when using indian or chinese render farms. Yes, it takes time and effort to setup properly, but is doable and most shots, even on a typical desktop computer can be rendered in less than 12 hours. You can even subdivide the shots into different layers to make things even simpler. There is other free software, like LuxRender that operate as standalone or plug-in to ouput photorealistic images (great for set extension, replacement). Does anyone know people in their neighborhood who would like to help out? Mainly using the computers overnight. Important to do a small test render on each machine to ensure output is what you are expecting.
@jojolimited: Since you don't even seem to know the difference between a movie scene and a scene file in rendering/animation, not to mention how a project like that has to be set up and the technical/legal considerations this entails (e.g., software licenses), I'm looking forward to hearing more about your Keystone Kops approach to the problem.