November 2008: Crossroads

**mhh** · 12-23-2008, 12:36 PM

Thanks for the comments. For the “strobing” effects at the end I used an over/under cranking preset in after effects. The preset can be found on the DVD that accompanies the “DV Rebel guide to making action movies” book. It is an excellent read and well worth the money. I overlaid the preset over the footage in after effects and then played around with the settings to alter the speeds and exposures.

The Canon HV20 is a high definition camcorder and produces stunning, clear images outdoors. So the differences you’re seeing is probably due to the higher resolution rather than the 35mm adaptor. If anything, the adaptor softens the image somewhat and makes it considerably darker as it is very light demanding. Indoors it is a completely different story. By default the HV20 applies massive amounts of gain to the picture when the lighting isn’t adequate, as is the case with most indoor settings. There are ways around this but to be honest I find it to be a bit of a pain. I much prefer my old Panasonic GS400 which had better manual controls and you didn’t have to jump through so many hoops to get a decent picture. I’ve just finished filming my daughter’s nativity and I wish I had used the GS400.

**Lorraine Grula** · 01-02-2009, 08:57 PM

Generally, that was very nice. Overall effect is excellent.

I liked the script and music better than the visuals. More close-ups of the little girl!

The bird tweeting in the beginning needed some variation, bring it up and down a bit.

It would also probably benefit from being a bit shorter, as almost all videos would

**Mark W** · 01-02-2009, 09:11 PM

" I much prefer my old Panasonic GS400 which had better manual controls and you didn’t have to jump through so many hoops to get a decent picture. I’ve just finished filming my daughter’s nativity and I wish I had used the GS400. " - petrol / flame

Lols - that made my day - wedded as i am by reasons of poverty and stubborness to SD DV.

DV still wins when the light is bad. The trick with any format is to exploit its good bits. The new is rarely the best, in spite of what Kevin in Dixons may say.

In answer to a point furhter back - HDV uses temporal compression, this means that it works in the same bandwidth as sd dv, but the sound is of a much pooer std - decent mp3 v uncompressed for DV. It works best on the sort of program in mmh's film - lots of lovely static landscape type shots. Film a flock of seagulls or falling leaves for example and the res soon drops to sd level as those bits get spread out across all those changing pixels.

They should have left dv alone and given us HD proper with 50 mbit when techically possible at consumer prices - alas.