Colin Read/Mandible Claw (Tengu director) interview

[joseph]

Talking about VX vs HD, fiming for Tengu and more :
http://liveskateboardmedia.com/en/article/meeting-colin-read

[wario]

ah shit, i didn't see this and just posted it in photo-video.

[Loyal Pawn]

Such a good read.

[CossRooper]

An excellent read on all fronts.

I'm always happy to hear well-reasoned views on the VX vs. HD "issue".

I've said this before on here, but I've always wanted one of these hardcore VX dudes to try and use an adapter to put a traditional 4:3 fisheye on an above-average HD camera, and record with one of the 4:3 settings. Something like 1280x960. That way, you get the increased resolution and clarity while keeping the 4:3 aspect ratio, allowing you to shove the camera way up in the skater's shit and keep the excitement of Deathlens footy. NateNola on here sent me a clip of him doing this, though his DSLR only supported 4:3 modes at SD resolution. Still, the lens worked good and it was proper 4:3.

I'm also glad he mentioned the problem of the lack of HD camera standardization and quality. HD footage should not be judged based on some kid's T3i setup with stock recording settings; almost everything I see on YouTube from non-professional filmers in HD is grainy, washed out, and rendered so bad to the point where everything is soft. When you watch something filmed by Jon Miner, Ty, or that Huf filmer dude on actual purpose-built HD video cameras, the footage is absolutely incredible.

On a somewhat related note, HD footage cannot be judged in the format that it is currently being put out in. The VX footage of yore that VX purists hold dear is usually maxed out in terms of bitrate/render quality in a 480p Vimeo video or DVD... especially DVD's. A VX-filmed 40 minute video routinely takes up most of the 4 gigs on a DVD. However, HD filmers upload their full length video to youtube at 720p and the filesize ends up at sub 1-gigabyte-- some of the worst ones I've downloaded are 300-400mb. The HD footage has 2 times, sometimes 3 times the resolution and god knows how many times the effective bitrate and quality. But the HD footage we watch is compressed and eroded to sometimes 1/4th the quality of a skate DVD from 2003! It's crazy. There are definitely exceptions (Pretty Sweet's Blu-Ray was like 35 gigabytes), but your average thrasher part or whatever is encoded SO BAD.

If the quality we watch HD footage in scaled properly according to the DVD quality we judge VX footage by, maybe the average perception of HD would be different.

/essay mode.

[natenola forever]

yeah i've been shooting HD with a smaller fisheye and then cropping that to 4:3, the results have been really cool, heres a few examples of it
http://vimeo.com/81827325
http://vimeo.com/77168775

[CossRooper]

yeah i've been shooting HD with a smaller fisheye and then cropping that to 4:3, the results have been really cool, heres a few examples of it

Awesome! Thank you for the examples.

So before you crop the extra widescreen resolution off, is it just black area outside the vignetting?

EDIT: If I was rich as shit I would literally commission somebody like Mandible Claw/Josh Stewart/Sabotage to do an experiment with this. Rent a proper camera, get a 4:3 lens, rig up a setup like this, film some of that real fuck you street shit (tm), slap some Big L over the top and post it in 1080p to their respective YouTube channel with no mention of the origin and see what dudes think. Bonus points for rigging up a VX off to the side solely to record Audio, and then track the audio over the HD footage while editing.

[The Ghost of Lenny Kirk]

i thought the new habitat video did a good job of framing tricks and having some nice landscapes thrown in. Id like to think that was HD done right. its awesome in the right hands.

[natenola forever]

Expand Quote

yeah i've been shooting HD with a smaller fisheye and then cropping that to 4:3, the results have been really cool, heres a few examples of it

[close]

Awesome! Thank you for the examples.

So before you crop the extra widescreen resolution off, is it just black area outside the vignetting?

EDIT: If I was rich as shit I would literally commission somebody like Mandible Claw/Josh Stewart/Sabotage to do an experiment with this. Rent a proper camera, get a 4:3 lens, rig up a setup like this, film some of that real fuck you street shit (tm), slap some Big L over the top and post it in 1080p to their respective YouTube channel with no mention of the origin and see what dudes think. Bonus points for rigging up a VX off to the side solely to record Audio, and then track the audio over the HD footage while editing.

yeah it's just black with the circle vignette, kinda looks like all the old Hi8 stuff when people were using random fisheyes and stuff

[CossRooper]

i thought the new habitat video did a good job... Id like to think that was HD done right. its awesome in the right hands.

I was really looking forward to Search the Horizon because it could have been a really defining moment for great HD full lengths. Castrucci's editing and motion graphics are probably among the strongest aesthetics in skateboarding, and a true-to-form Castrucci masterpiece in HD could really have shown that a companies' look didn't have to be tied to a 20 year old camera.

The whole video end of that thing felt so rushed to me though. The intros and editing didn't seem half as unique and well-thought out as Mosaic/Inhabitants or even Mosaic: The song transition in Poppalaro's Mosiac part more directly shows Castrucci's style than the all of StH. Basically every interview Castrucci did regarding StH alluded to the fact that he thinks Company videos are becoming more vehicles for clips than these big productions, and that big companies have to sacrifice creativity and production time just to put something out there more frequently. I think Search the Horizon is a reflection of that for sure. Beyond this different outlook going in, I think it was a victim of tight deadlines too... on one of the landscape shots they forgot to crop/zoom the widescreen bars off the top and bottom; stuff like that.

The clips were from all over too, I'm sure there were more than a few cameras and lenses in the mix for that video, as Colin said.

That's all from a video standpoint; the skating was off the charts for sure. I'm just not sure I would use Search the Horizon as my poster boy for carryout out a filmmaker's style and representing a creative direction in HD. Some of the HD was great in parts of Pretty Sweet; I'd agree that in great hands it can be awesome.

[weaselhead]

Expand Quote

Expand Quote

yeah i've been shooting HD with a smaller fisheye and then cropping that to 4:3, the results have been really cool, heres a few examples of it

[close]

Awesome! Thank you for the examples.

So before you crop the extra widescreen resolution off, is it just black area outside the vignetting?

EDIT: If I was rich as shit I would literally commission somebody like Mandible Claw/Josh Stewart/Sabotage to do an experiment with this. Rent a proper camera, get a 4:3 lens, rig up a setup like this, film some of that real fuck you street shit (tm), slap some Big L over the top and post it in 1080p to their respective YouTube channel with no mention of the origin and see what dudes think. Bonus points for rigging up a VX off to the side solely to record Audio, and then track the audio over the HD footage while editing.

[close]

yeah it's just black with the circle vignette, kinda looks like all the old Hi8 stuff when people were using random fisheyes and stuff

I've been thinking about this alot lately, cause the thing that kills be about hd is the aspect ratio. I don't mind it if its still 4:3.

This dude does something similar I think on his channel
sideyard, YAHURRD!
lessnowdawgs

[CossRooper]

I've been thinking about this alot lately, cause the thing that kills be about hd is the aspect ratio. I don't mind it if its still 4:3.

This dude does something similar I think on his channel
sideyard, YAHURRD!
lessnowdawgs

Those vids are SO SICK! On other video he crops the vig like NateNola's vids too. Probably not the setup destined to dethrone the VX, but props to that dude for thinking outside of the box.