Biaff at Harrogate

A forum for sharing views on the art of film, video and AV sequence making as well as on competitions, judging and festivals.
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stingman
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Post by stingman »

billyfromConsett wrote:Sorry Dave
I can get exasperated at times. I've even got a fever since the day I came back from Harrogate!! I'll be fine next week though.
Being a Projectionist or Sound Mixer Man is a very challengeing job indeedee! I used to sweat and shake. I felt that I had been beaten up by a Boxer. I felt like it had taken 10 years off of my life each time. I could hear all the time (what I thought was) feedback and then I would go into a jerky panic attack :lol: :lol: :shock: :D :roll: !

But it was all good fun.............................

You just have to know the equipment blindfoulded inside and out and ALWAYS have a plan B, C, D, E up your sleeve!

Be good..

Stingman
Ian Gardner
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billyfromConsett
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Post by billyfromConsett »

I'm still feeling some severe man-flu, and I've probably taking this projection too seriously in the face of a few fair-minded mutterings, but my benchmark standard is to put on the screen exactly how some of our brilliant film-makers would be proud to see and hear their movies.

Hey thanks Willy for you pigskin explanation, I would have understood, eventually. :oops:
Thanks people, I mean it. I'm sure I'll serve again. Now let me get back to feeling poorly again....
Mike Shaw

Post by Mike Shaw »

Well, I'm glad (I think!) that I'm not the only one who came away from Harrogate with a severe case of the sweating lurghies: only now am I able to raise my head without it spinning into a global meltdown, though normal, as yet, I am not.

I thoroughly enjoyed Harrogate. Having been on the fringes of helping to organise theTonbridge show last year (my contribution was pretty minimal) I know just how much goes into these things - which is why this year, I just sat back and enjoyed. I enjoyed meeting people who had just been names on paper. I enjoyed the plethora of fine films. I enjoyed the food, the Hotel, and Harrogate. I'd like to have enjoyed Bettys as well - but after waiting a long time in the queue ... and checking out the prices for a 'coffee and a bun', I think we saved ourselves having to remortgage by going over the road to an equally celubrioous but less demanding establishment.

One thing I did learn from Harrogate ... my films will never be in the Sunday category. But I shall keep trying....

Now, back to the sweats.
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Dave Watterson
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Post by Dave Watterson »

Sorry to hear that you were caught by the flu-like bug too, Mike.

I know Billy Ellwood, Peter and Mary Rouillard all had it.

I suppose it is a risk when you have so many people packed together in a hot hall for hours on end. Any bugs can spread easily.

Hope all you sufferers make a quick, full recovery.

Dave
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Post by stingman »

I hope that it wasn`t anything in the water or badly cooked food :lol: :lol: :lol:

Get well soon :wink:

Be good

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Ian Gardner
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Post by Dave Watterson »

For a brighter view of the festival take a look at the main website, especially http://www.fvi.org.uk/central/biaff2008 ... event.html
where you can see some fun pictures, details of the new FACIs and read Romy Van Krieken's very funny toast to the IAC.

There are also more articles by film makers about their award-winning movies going up every few days. The one by Scott Hillhouse about Life's Little Gaps is almost a film-school course on production.

Say a special web-forum cheer for the Fellowship granted to Richard Palmer. Richard owns the company which hosts the IAC website and the forum as well as handling emails and the email group for the IAC. He has generously provided all those services without asking a penny. He gives hand-on help to people with lost passwords, to tasks like keeping spam off this forum and to helping the last three webmasters make the site bigger and better.

He is also an active film maker, specialising in sound recording for the much-admired Channel 7 Group in St. Neots.

Richard is one of us and a real good guy. He more than deserves recognition.

Dave
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Post by Dave Watterson »

Did anyone on the forum see the mini-cinema show which included The Messenger - the final part of the animated wartime teddy story told in rhyme? If so, please drop me a pm (private mail)

Dave
Peter Copestake
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BIAFF at Harrogate

Post by Peter Copestake »

D & I enjoyed the film show on the Sunday. Having read the preceding remarks I still don't understand what the problem was but it didn't spoil it for us. In my very limited experience something should always go wrong, otherwise it's not natural! 'Life is just one damned thing after another' isn't it?

I only noticed whether films were widescreen or not in two cases. The screen was, presumably deliberately, very crowded side to side in 'Life's Little Gaps' even though it was widescreen; surprising!

In one shot in 'Mosel Gold' (4:3) I wished I could see a bit more what was off to the side, in other words, to my eyes the framing was too tight. But would someone enlighten me - if that had been shot in widescreen at the same focal length, would we have seen more to the side or less top and bottom?
As lenses are circular I don't understand how at a given focal length there can be more width without less height. (I know some lenses can squash more width in but you need to use the same shape lens to project)
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Post by stingman »

The same at Top to Bottom. But more screen from Side to Side. THAT`S THE POINT OF W I D E S C R E E N !

Be good...........

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Ian Gardner
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Post by Peter Copestake »

Thanks, Ian, but I still don't understand HOW -
Quote:- As lenses are circular I don't understand how at a given focal length there can be more width (without less height. )

Sorry, this should have read 'without more height!
Do these cameras somhow use all the lens or not?
Don't make it too complicated! I'm obviously getting senile!
I've seen photos of widescreen cameras and they look to have widescreen-shaped apertures in the lens hood. It was this that led me to think that the top and bottom of the image were chopped off and that, for some reason some people think this shape is more attractive. I do see the point of wide screen, and tall screen (if only!), to concentrate the eye on the point the director is making but I was trying to make the point that, to my eyes, the result isn't necessarily more effective. In 'Mosel', there was a very beautiful long shot of the valley, which, being long and relatively narrow, looked very good. It certainly wasn't this one that made me wish I'd seen more to the sides but one of the rows of vines, a quite closely crooped shot.
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Post by ned c »

Yes, the image is circular but the aspect ratio is determined by the "target", ie 35 mm film, 6cm x 6cm film or CCDs/CMOS chips the circular image is "masked" to give the desired aspect ratio and coverage.

The size and aspect ratio of the target in most cases is fixed but on many HDV (16:9) cameras you can also shoot SD (4:3) the number of pixels exposed to the image is fewer and masked differently. Where you shoot 16:9 on a SD camera really designed for 4:3 then the sensors (not the image) are masked and you lose some of the pixels. The best HDV cameras have "native" 16:9 pixel arrays. You can of course have 9:16, just turn the camera and the projector on their sides!

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Post by stingman »

On `Proper` widescreen cameras, they have a 16/9 CCD. On cheaper one`s they use a normal 4/3 ccd and electronicly cut out the top and bottom bands.

Be good.....

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Ian Gardner
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Post by Peter Copestake »

Thanks again, Ian, and to you too, Ned.
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Post by Dave Watterson »

I had been hoping for even more technical enlightenment from the knowledgeable people on the forum about this.

Yes most lenses give a circular image - and some of the earliest still photos were circles with fuzzy edges. Anyone who made a pinhole camera will have found the same is true of those.

Quite quickly still photographers changed to a shape with straight lines - presumably because it is easier to handle such shapes in a camera mechanism and less wasteful of materials, since cutting circles out of any material leaves a lot of waste.

But a logical shape would have been square to capture as much of the circular image as possible. Some photos were that shape but most were an oblong shape. It seems that a "landscape" format oblong is more aesthetically acceptable to human beings than a square.

When it comes to cinema, once screens had stretched from stage to ceiling the only way to get bigger was to go sideways so the oblong stretched more.

I suspect that people like to film in that format partly because it feels nicer to most eyes and partly because "that is the way the professionals do it" so we are used to it. But in fact that is not always what professionals do ... see below.

An interesting point in video handling is that some SD cameras create the anamorphic effect not by using a special lens to compress the image horizontally but by capturing it on a wide chip and then storing the image on a normal shaped video "frame" using oblong (portrait format) pixels. These can be edited by most computer systems as normal and output to tape or DVD in the same way. When the tv or projector receives those pixels it can convert them either to a square shape which appears as widescreen.

As someone who regularly watches commercial films on my home projector I am also slightly surprised at how few such movies are actually in the 16:9 format. I set my projector to 16:9 but the actual ratio is often 21:16 (2.35:1) so they have a black band at top and bottom of my screen. Yet when I show an amateur 16:9 film it really is in that format and fills the whole screen in a very satisfying manner.

Dave
Mike Shaw

Post by Mike Shaw »

Interesting. The choice of format size - 4:3, 16:9 etc is also interesting because, as far as I can see, neither perfectly fits the 'Golden Ratio' which is, supposedly, the most aesthetic and pleasing ratio.

(As a reminder, the golden ratio is where a line is divided into two such that the ratio of the line to the larger section, is the same as the ratio of the larger section to the smaller section. (Mathematically, that ratio works out to be approximately 1.6 as a 'value).

In an oblong, the ratio of the longer side to the shorter side would be that 'golden' ratio. a 4:3 oblong is 1.333 (4/3), and a 16:9 oblong is 1.78 (16/9) - so 16:9 is closer to the golden ratio than 4:3 and so, technically (or theoretically!!), should be a more 'pleasing' shape to the eye.

Interestingly (or not) A4 paper has a sides ratio of 1.3 - very close to the 4:3 size of the original screen

It would seem that the practicalities of using all of the 'good' information obtained from a lens are sacrificed for the sake of a more acceptable / pleasing / aesthetic viewing shape.

Facts about the Golden Ratio - and how to construct an oblong of that ratio, the history of it etc - can be found all over the web - but good coverage is here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio
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