Create Your Own “Private Ryan” Movie Shot – Day 1

Awesome!! I agree with Fred, most of you people troll around creating any opportunity to bash on anything. Everyone wants to complain, yet no one steps up and and makes a difference.

That rocked! very nice colors and effects!

Thanx for the tutorial

We need more tutorials from Lloyd. If you want to find tutorials NO ONE will complain about…..look at his. The man is a master. So many of these have such limited appeal…that is what creates the complaints. Each one has something to teach, but so many of these just don’t get the views based on what they are really doing.

MORE TUTORIALS LLOYD!!!!

I really like the final outcome (bar the sounds), it’s great. And the techniques used are great too. Thanks.

Amazing!
Continue!

French are here :)

Michal…..that is actually quite inaccurate. There have been several tutorials posted by others that i have enjoyed and learned quite a bit from. Face it….this tutorial has limited appeal…and actually even the generic AE techniques are not that advanced and have been covered elsewhere.

I suggest that you put on a “thicker skin.” If you are going to post tutorials be ready for some criticism. Ironically enough, I didn’t even really criticize your work. Sorry you are so sensitive….but I can’t help that.

For anyone interested there are probably more efficient steps to take in pre-production, principal photography and processing (or your DI), than going straight into the realm of visual effects.

The “Saving Private Ryan” look is a combination of low-shutter angle shooting (this is “controllable” on most pro-sumer camcorders) and a bleach-bypass to the physical negative in post. (Along with other alterations to the cameras and lenses that are beyond the common persons means.)

If you can afford to shoot 16mm or 35mm the DI is probably a safer place to apply a faux-bleach bypass than to your actual negative. And of course the shutter angle can be controlled physically on the camera.

For digital capture (excluding most digital cinema cameras) the shutter is electronic, but similar effects can be achieved through manipulating it. Try 90 degrees instead of the default 180. This will give you a crisper image, where particles in the air, rapid motion, etc. register far clearer than we are used to seeing.

However, be wary of “strobing” occurring at low shutter angles. Motion becomes sharper because less blurring is occurring, but you will reach a point where the illusion of fluid motion caused by showing 24 images simultaneously is lost, and thing will look stuttered.

Thanks for the tutorial Michal.

I mentioned this on another tutorial (the battleship one): try different modes other than ‘screen’ or ‘add’ when dealing with smoke, fog and dirt hits.

Screen and Add brighten the pixels underneath them. Smoke and dust actually diffuse light making what’s underneath them a darker/harder to see.

perhaps try pulling luminance keys or using colour channels to get a mask and then merge/over the hits and fade them down.

I realize that this is not a cinematography website or tutorial, but for anyone seriously interested in achieving the popular war film aesthetic it may help to understand the camera. (Michal’s tutorial is useful, I am not suggesting otherwise – I simply recommend not going straight to post if this effect is your intention.)

I’d just to mention that “shutter speed” is not synonymous with “shutter angle.” I notice people might be using that term interchangeably.

Shutter speed refers to how fast a rotating shutter is spinning. (On a digital camera, ie. the FX7 mentioned above, there is no “shutter,” so we use this term to state how long each frame is exposed.)

Shutter angle refers to (on cinema cameras) the “shape” of the rotating disc shutter. So 180º refers to a shutter that is essentially half of a circle. A 90º shutter is three quarters of a circle, etc. On cinema cameras the shutter can often be physically altered (by removing the lens) it can be removed and replaced, or on newer cameras, the physical angle can be controlled as a setting.

Traditionally, while the shutter is closed, the film is being advanced by one frame. A tighter shutter angle thus exposes the film frame for a shorter period of time, allowing for less motion blur, yet the shutter spends more time closed, as the film is advanced and the shutter disc makes a complete rotation. This creates extremely sharp images, but images that are farther apart on the celluloid. (You’ll have to imagine this as a piece of film, regardless of your capture medium.)

Thus in cinematography we do not set a “shutter speed,” rather the speed is a result of the angle and the frame rate. Rather than doing the calculations, we reference a chart (You can find one in the American Cinematographers Manual.) A 90º shutter at 24fps is a shutter speed of 1/95.

On a camera where “shutter angle” is not actually controllable, either physically or through simulation, setting the “speed” at which each frame is exposed is about the closest you’ll get to achieving this effect. Referencing the aforementioned charts will give you an idea of what speed you should be looking for. If anyone would like a chart I can provide one.

(Some cameras, ie. the Panasonic HVX-200, Sony PMW-EX-1 will actually simulate shutter angle. I won’t get into that process though.)

[This image: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/Moviecam_schematic_animation.gif from the wikimedia commons illustrates a rotating disc shutter if you are unfamiliar with motion picture cameras.]

The shutter’s angle can not be changed (as no physical shutter exists.) The shutter speed (how long the camera will record each “frame”) can be changed on even the FX7 in manual mode (up to 1/10,000 – which is so extreme that you would probably have a hard time deciphering what’s actually going on.)

A shutter speed of 1/1728 would be achieved on a film camera at 24fps with a shutter angle of 5º, which is extremely narrow and an impossible angle at which to record fluid motion.

Video is of course different (the shutter speed is really a measure of how long the censor is allowed to generate charge for, and in turn record an image) so a shutter speed of 1/10,000 is possible to simulate. Be aware that you will need more light to expose the narrower your shutter gets (which is why this technique works particularly well for war films which are shot in daylight.)

I would advise running some tests and seeing what effects you can achieve.

Michal mentioned that he had his shutter at 1/60 which is default. (A shutter angle of approx. 180º.) To me the footage looks consistent with a 180º shutter all the way through. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but a matter of taste.

Frame blending in AE compensates for time remapping – it will interpolate missing data that wasn’t captured in the camera if your footage doesn’t match your composition.

This is the kind of effect i love. Its not in your face and obvious. It enhances the shot and unless your told its an effect you would think it was all real. Great tutorial and great effect. I wait eagerly or the next one.

Very cool. Thanks for the tut!

Can anybody explain how the color for the film is done?

I don’t like wars. :(