The rest of this week will be very busy leading up to next Sunday when I leave for the 2010 SAICFF (http://www.saicff.org).  I’m very excited to leave but going anywhere for a whole week is something I never do and haven’t done probably since the last SAICFF.  Yes, that was a year and a half ago and yes that means I haven’t taken a vacation in that long (if you want to call the festival a vacation).  I have a DVD cover to finish along with disc art, a one sheet for the same product (basically a one page advertisement to go in a catalog), and two websites along with anything else I personally need to do.  Those others are for clients.  Luckily I got some work this month that really helped offset some of the cost of moving in.  Not all of it of course but enough to lighten the load.

WARNING…SEVERE TECHNO MUMBO JUMBO BELOW…

I got a bit more shooting done with my Canon 5D and really got the hang of it.  This camera would intercut with my Canon XH-A1 very well despite their codec differences amongst a million other things.  Here’s a quick look at the difference.  Not the best shot choices but as you can see the texture of the image and the quality of the image is very similar.  The first shot is the A1, the second the 5D. The post workflow on both of them is a bit tedious but that doesn’t bother me much.  Almost every camera now has people converting their footage into something else to edit with.  5DtoRGB is an amazing freeware program I’ve tested out with other friends footage but now I’ve had a chance to work with it on my own footage.  If you have a DSLR to shoot video with and haven’t checked out this program please do.  I noticed the “Add Noise” filter saved many of the shots in this little edit I did, because of the 8-bit color space of the 5D.  It helped offset the stair stepping problems in the footage of the walls of the apartment.  Trust me, it turned some of those shots into presentable ones where otherwise they would’ve looked terrible.  I tried it both ways with every shot that had issues, and it saved every single one.  Also although it’s adding slight color noise to the shot before it transcodes to Prorez, it gives a much cleaner result then trying to add your own noise filter in Final Cut Pro before your Color-Correction filters.  Trust me, I tested that as well with many different examples.  It’s night and day.  If you don’t believe me check this shot out.  I made it black and white and added the same filter to both shots (which is just a contrast adjustment).  The first is a RAW file transcoded to Prorez with 5DtoRGB without the Add Noise filter…the second is with the filter. I shot 100 ISO, F4, Neutral Profile with Sharpness all the way down and Color down 2 notches, and the RAW files looked fine when played back, it was only after you tried to alter them that they fell apart so none of this was a fault of my own or the camera making a bad playable file. It’s no secret that H264 is a delivery codec so the RAW files are normally pretty great, but that’s not what any filmmaker would be using it for. Just wanted to say that to get rid of any naysayers

( http://www.kyleprohaska.com/5d/bwtest_x264.mov )

I’ll let the results speak for themselves.  Not saying you gotta do this with every shot, but with problematic shots that don’t handle the 8-bit very well in regards to what it’s trying to compress (in this case solid or semi-solid color/texture walls with soft lighting all over the place). I’ve done this kind of trick in Photoshop before with 8-bit graphics where the Gradient filters don’t look smooth. You add a slight noise to it just enough to vary each pixel and boom…the gradient becomes smooth. This will come in handy for you.  Your welcome!

Here’s the resulting video just testing out the camera a little.

OK IT’S SAFE NOW…

Wednesday I need to go shopping for clothes for SAICFF because I seriously have just one suit-coat and one dress shirt and one pair of dress pants.  I basically need to wear a suit the entire time which in that weather is going to kill me, and the shoes are going to be murder on my feet so I’m not sure what I’m going to do about that, but we’ll see.  I remember wearing my dress shoes for just one day last year and my feet were sore for a week.  This could be a problem, and I’m actually not looking forward to it.  I might be the guy limping around San Antonio during the festival.

I’ve been reading through Ephesians along with Denise lately.  Every day I read one more chapter into the book but start at the beginning again.  So the first day I just read Chapter 1, but then on day two read Ch 1-2, then day three Ch 1-3, and so on.  It’ll help with memorization and a greater comprehension of the book as it progresses I think.  It’s good to get an idea of what an entire book is trying to say instead of going mid-book and trying to get the same effect.  I need to start memorizing scripture and retaining it so I can recall it in my daily life.  Not my greatest strength, by far.  It’ll take time but I need to start somewhere.

Till next time folks…