Lens flares: yes or no

[Greenlaw]

Back in the late 1990's - early 2000's, I was creating VFX for low budget action and sci-fi movies and we found banding could be really bad for undersea shots...and we did a lot of underwater shots. (I'd built some neat submarines for the studio I was working at, and they liked them so much that wanted to re-use them in every movie. Oh, and it saved them money to reuse things of course.)

Anyway, the banding occurred because we worked in 24-bit color or 16.7 million colors, which isn't nearly enough to get smooth gradients in the blue range. To improve this we added a ton of grain, which was a cheat but it really did help 'smooth away' the banding. This was fine because our movies were still shot on actual film at the time and the grainy CGI footage cut together with the naturally grainy non-CGI footage nicely.

As a matter of fact, we had use a device to optically record our cgi footage to film so the footage could be physically spliced into the rest of the movie. Sigh...that seems like ancient history now.

At the time we had no choice but the render in 24-bit color but by 2005 or so, I was working at another studio and we switched to rendering to EXR format which significantly expanded the range of color we could work with, and banding was never problem for us again.

This is one big reason why I keep asking for EXR support in Moho. But even if Moho only got expanded color depth support for PNG, I'd be extremely happy.

[chucky]

Recently I've heard that streaming services compress films so much that there's no grain left, and add artificial grain in the player again. Didn't verify this yet, but if so, it would be a serious intrusion into the director's intentions.

Wow,
hopefully data rates and compression tech will hopefully make for less of those 'GOT' moments.
...

This is one big reason why I keep asking for EXR support in Moho. But even if Moho only got expanded color depth support for PNG, I'd be extremely happy.

Totes

[SuperSGL]

On the shaky camera effect ; I'm really beginning to hate it. Especially in the (Marvel) fight scenes. I'd rather see a bunch of cut scenes from different angles then the shake. I guess it's intended to submerse the viewer into the movie, but I find it so distracting it takes me out of the movie. I can understand when a heavy character falls or gets slammed against a wall there could be a shake,but not during the entire fight scene ughh!
Lens flare I agree with what everyone has said about it. When realistic or when appropriate. Titles and ending sequences probably most suited.
Certain compressions tend to add grain to the video and if you already have it can look like it's over compressed. Of course in the old days you had to over compress videos if you wanted to upload it in less than a couple of hours

[Greenlaw]

I agree about hand-held 'shakey' cam. This technique is way overused nowadays and often inappropriately. To me, the technique is meant to be a character POV device, otherwise it's a distracting technique that can pull me right out of the story.

Some examples of where it works:

- Stories or scenes that are told exclusively from a character's POV. This can get gimmicky and tiresome so it should be used sparingly. Back in the mid-2000's, I worked on a series of Call Of Duty commercials that were told from a soldier's POV. I think these were very effective...but they were each only about 20-25 seconds long.

- TV shows like The Office. The handheld camera suggests there is a documentary crew present, making the unseen cameraman another character in the narrative.

- Action and fight scenes where the camera has been choreographed as carefully as the fight itself. A lot of Chinese martial arts films use hand held cameras to carefully follow the action without drawing attention to itself.

To me, the Marvel movies you alluded to seems to use shaky camera hide mediocre martial arts choreography. And when the fight choreography is actually great, the shaky camera does a disservice to it. I mean, how can you tell? The flow of the action is constantly disrupted, almost randomly, and you can't focus on anything. To me, this is laziness or insecurity on the part of the filmmakers. (Which is surprising considering how much money is being spent here.)

- I sometimes use shaky cam in VFX work. Actually, I use it a lot in VFX work, and it's used typically used to punctuate impact and explosions. Again, this is most effective when the camera motion doesn't draw attention to itself.

Anyway, just my personal thoughts on the subject.

[SuperSGL]

To me, the Marvel movies you alluded to seems to use shaky camera hide mediocre martial arts choreography. And when the fight choreography is actually great, the shaky camera does a disservice to it. I mean, how can you tell? The flow of the action is constantly disrupted, almost randomly, and you can't focus on anything. To me, this is laziness or insecurity on the part of the filmmakers.

That was something else I was going to comment on as well. I actually never watched the Office but I did like "Parks & Recs" which was based on the Office way of telling a story.

[Greenlaw]

More handheld camera examples I find interesting....

Abbot Elementary is another one with the handheld 'documentary' cam. It's funny when a teacher acknowledges the cameraman's presence by giving them a look that says "Can you believe this? I'm glad you're filming this because no one would believe me."

One curious use of hand-held was Takeshi Miike's Audition. Well, at least what I recall of it...it's been many years since I saw this movie. Note: I'm not recommending watching this movie unless you're a horror fan because the movie is pretty horrific. Anyway, almost the entire movie uses lock-off shots, that is the camera is on a tripod and then left untouched for entire scenes, and it remains that way even when characters or actions go off-screen. This gets really unnerving at times. Then there is one scene where a character is having a panicked conversation with a colleague and suddenly the camera is handheld and weaving around nervously. Then the rest of movie goes back to using lock-offs. Again, that's how I remember that movie and it made quite an impression on me, at least as far as how to use the camera to build tension. (I would go back and watch it again to verify what I just wrote but I don't have the nerve to watch this movie again.)

A truly masterful example is Sam Mendes' 1917...if you haven't seen this, I HIGHLY recommend it. The entire movie is edited to appear like it's one single hand-held shot, and I think it's one of the most immersive movie experiences ever.

[slowtiger]

When we did "Werner - Beinhart" in 1990 the storyboarders wanted to include several meta-gags with the camera, but to my knowledge only two survived: in one scene the main character hits the camera so it shakes a bit, and in another a handful of goo lands on the lens and slowly drips down. Mind you, this was all done the old fashioned way, animated on paper. Unfortunately no one seems to notice these gags. I guess the audience of that time wasn't prepared for that kind of gag yet, and there was no hint of any meta-humour elsewhere in the movie.

A very good example of "animated hand-held" of course is Joanna Quinn's ""Dreams and Desires – Family Ties" from 2006.

[MrMiracle77]

Tex Avery's "The Magical Maestro" has an in-camera gag designed to make it look like a hair has fallen into the projector shutter. Butch Dog then pulls the hair free and shrugs. It doesn't translate as well to tv audiences.