Mountain unicycling and evil taxi's

**alun1111** · 05-09-2005, 10:52 AM

Yes, hello. Terribly sorry to post a link to our film on my first post, but I really want people to see it. What with you being people this seems an ideal plan. Fear not, I shall hang around to talk after rather than running off and spamming the world.

One is a film we did with the BBC for the Kendal Film Festival about mountain unicyclists and the other was for a Kino event in Manchester about an evil taxi driver. They are housed at www.chateauproductions.co.uk/film. It all looks a mite professional but its all a ploy to make people think we're a flashy big business rather than some drunken rabble.

I'd love to hear your opinions or advice (especially on lighting as we are crap at it

)

**alun1111** · 05-09-2005, 10:57 AM

ah, i can't seem to make a proper link so try these direct ones:

http://www.chateauproductions.co.uk/.../nocycling.WMV

http://www.chateauproductions.co.uk/...m/kingscab.WMV

Sorry, i can feel a wall of flame/retribution barrelling down in my direction.

**Tony A** · 05-09-2005, 04:17 PM

I think the unicycle vid is a nice edit, it holds interest and has a gentle pace. You’ll be severely reminded to (d) by the forum regulars. The light can be great in the Lakes, but you can wait days for it. Luck wasn’t on your side this time.

I liked the taxis vid a lot, it’s a great laugh, and well acted. It proves that urban drama can be made of the simplest themes. Those interiors need at least one keylight with a reflector opposite - or preferably a fill.

Best of all, they must have been fun to make. Well done. No need to apologise for posting - this section is a popular part of the forum.

**alun1111** · 05-09-2005, 04:36 PM

Cheers for your positive comments, you raised a good point with the de-interlacing thingy. We've been having a hell of a time compressing stuff from huge great avi's and have no idea about whether to set interlacing on or off. I'm guessing from your smiley then off is the way forward

Thanks for the tips on lighting, we were relying on the ceiling lights being pointed at the subject, which were pretty inadequate. One question - what do you mean by fill? Is it just a single bright light somewhere to give general ambient light?

Oh and yes, we had lots of fun filming them

Alun

**Marc Peters** · 05-09-2005, 05:23 PM

Very nice, both of them. (We'll mark the deinterlace down as experience

). Makes a nice change from a wedding video too

**Tony A** · 05-09-2005, 05:23 PM

Poor lighting makes colours muddy. I’m no expert on it, but it’s a convention in stills photography to have a mainlight 45 degrees to the side, 45 degrees above. Good daylight from a window can fit the bill.

A fill is simply a quarter-power or larger on the opposite side, variable angle, its role being to soften any harsh shadows caused by the main light, and provide balance. White or silver reflectors can be used to do the same job, but this isn’t so practical for wide shots.

Matching the two gives ‘modelling’ to the subject(s), and helps to sharply separate him/her/them from the background.

Sophisticated setups use background lights to further separate elements of the scene. Video is contrasty, so well-defined colours are a must for professional looking results.

The knowledgeable technies can advise you on compression and de-interlacing better than me.

**alun1111** · 05-09-2005, 05:38 PM

Ah ok, i'm definately going to start thinking of contrast and colours more. I've used the forty five degree rule in stills photography before but didn't bother for some reason when doing these. Its probably because with the films we had a defined location to shoot in and couldn't move about/wait as long to find good lighting. Hopefully with a bit of practive we'll start getting some intuition about it all rather than trying to rely on crappy viewfinders.

Thanks again for taking the time to watch it!

Alun

**wildduck** · 06-28-2005, 11:46 PM

For some reason I cannot get past 1:08 of the Kings video... and I really want to find out what happened!! I've tried running it from temp and I've tried saving target but nither works, I just can't watch past 1 min 8 secs. Very odd.

What I've seen so far though is very good

Tom