HOW CAN I GET A TRULY CINEMATIC LOOK WITH MY CANON GL2 MINI DV CAMERA? I MEAN IS IT THE LIGHTING, THE CAMERA OR WHAT?

Whoa, chill the **** out. Calm down, turn off CAPS LOCK, and you'll realize it's the parts that make the sum of the whole. It's all about zen baby.

elliott.

SWITCHING THE FILM MODE TO 30P IS AS CLOSE AS YOU CAN GET TO A "TRULY CINEMATIC LOOK" WITH A GL2. OTHER THAN THAT, LIGHT WELL.

BY THE WAY, YOU MIGHT WANT TO CONSIDER INVESTING IN THIS FANTASTIC KEYBOARD, WHICH FEATURES AN EASY-TO-REACH CAPS LOCK KEY THAT WON'T FREEZE UP ON YOU. I'VE JUST ORDERED MINE.

DAM DIRTY APES!

I HAVE AN ERGONOMIC KEYBOARD SO I DON'T GET CARPOL TUNNEL WHILE SCREAMING AT THE INTERNET. YOU CAN ALSO LOOK INTO SOME SOFTWARE PROGRAMS, SUCH AS "MAGIC BULLET" OR USE VARIOUS POST PRODUCTION FILTERS TO GET A MORE TRADITIONAL FILM LOOK. JOREN, A POSTER HERE @ STUDENTFILMS, WROTE A PRETTY GOOD ARTICLE ABOUT THIS ON HIS SITE: HERE!

its everything... lighting, the way you move the camera (don't zoom in, be steady, use tripods), film grain, the exposure of the film, and of course depth of field. your depth of field isn't that great on most mini-dv cameras... they're pretty much flat. some software can add grain, you can kick the framerate down to 24p, but the only way to get a film look is to really shoot on film.

I think lighting is my problem, because that seems to be the only thing im not doing. maybe with a good lighting technique ill get a less amateur feel to my films. thanks again.

Lighting is important. Also, color correction. White balance to off-white colors for nice tints.

Lock the camera down on a tripod and zoom in from a distance, this gives a nice shallow depth of field with blurry backgrounds much the way a film is shot.

Can we stop SHOUTING? Thanks. Sorry - all caps is a pet peeve of mine.

-Chris
Studentfilms.com

I have a Sony Handycam DCR-HC20 Mini DV camcorder..anybody know how I can get my camera to look more Cinematic?

Same way as the original poster See the above posts.

haha..."cinematic look" that term is so overlooked. People think its a button or something you press to turn their DV tapes into 35mm film stock. Be like everybody else and buy a DVX if you want to shoot 24fps and get that "film look"

nobody said it was a button im asking for a good technique to achieve that look.

My school has a "media" department which uses all DV equipment. The most professional stuff I've seen was very well lit, well mic'd and filmed @ 24p with the DVX100a. It wasn't film, but it still looked amazing. I'd say the most important factor is probobly the lighting, which really makes the difference between a home video and a "film".

Something I've learned is to get rid of shadow grain. this means toying with the exposure.

You know when yuor filming someone under a light, but everything else is dark, and the camera tries to compensate by adding more light? turn your exposure on the camera down a tad and it will get rid of that.

Using the manual features makes that work a lot better too

A trick I use in Final Cut and probably any advanced editing software is to render at 24 fps, but don't forget that digital projects images differently than film. Just because it is 24 fps won't work. If your camera has progressive scan, then it's fine, but most digital cameras are interlaced scanning, which means that there are two images fields instead of one. You'll be dropping frames and it'll look jittery.

To correct this, de-interlace two fields of video on top of each other, and make the top one the opacity of about 50-70%.

Probably have no idea what I'm talking about - if you want more details, you can just ask me.

About 24p - is it possible to edit it if you don't have editing software that supports it? How would that work?

-Chris

one word... lighting it can change the entire look of the film oh and try clsing the shutter a little (or iris) switch it to manual lenses will help i would also like you to stop with the CAPS LOCK it is quite annoying thanks

Another thing to do that is pretty easy is to add a black matte to the top and bottom of the screen. Just two bars of black. I know it's cheesy but it works well when you have no other capabilities such as knocking down the frame rate.

quote:

Originally posted by titaniumdoughnut:
Lighting is important. Also, color correction. White balance to off-white colors for nice tints.

Lock the camera down on a tripod and zoom in from a distance, this gives a nice shallow depth of field with blurry backgrounds much the way a film is shot.

I have worked with a DVCPRO camera and the studio that used it had warming cards, which were different colored to give a different temperature depending on skin tone. I was told by one of the engineers that the GL-2 only uses a 1 phase white balance, not a multi-phase like the DVCPRO. I didn't know what he meant. Can you get different types of looks if you white balance off of say a yellow or a bluish background? If I tried to mess with a vectorscope in post, the colors have to render and thus, I lose picture quality.